Many things happened in the NFT market over the course of several months.

Azuki which has been securing solid FP(while others are falling) has proven that nobody can survive from dilution and the bear market through Elemental drop.Doodles said that they are not NFT project.Ether which was the most anticipated drop failed to sold out.

NFT market unique traders, trading volume is decreasing, FP is falling even though projects are still delivering.

NFT used to be considered as strongest catalyst of web3 mass adoption.But people nowadays are saying that NFT is dead.

So is NFT dead?

Let’s find out.

Let's begin by summarizing how the NFT market flourished during the previous bull market.

To summarize the previous playbook of NFT projects, it can be stated as follows:

• Limited edition (10K narrative)

  • 10K narrative started from Genrative art like Crypto Punks and so called blue chip projects like BAYC, Azuki, Doodles and CloneX made it as a major framework through successful growth. With the success of this framework, most of the projects regardless of the sector applied to their ecosystem design.

• NFTs serve as the core assets of the ecosystem.

  • Since the project places emphasis on a limited number of NFTs, the roadmap focuses on valuing the holder. The NFT itself serves as the core asset of the ecosystem, and the community becomes the product.

  • The project grants NFT and token airdrops to holders, and they can monetize these by offering them to those who want to join the community. To protect the OG collection, the project chooses to scale through launching secondary collections or tokens that worked as a yields or dividend of the OG collection. The Yuga ecosystem is a perfect example of valuing the holder while expanding the ecosystem through a pyramid structure.

• Hype!

  • With a fixed amount of collection, the sales method focused on creating demand. Similar to an ICO, a 10K narrative created unique phases like 'sales' and 'allowlist' distribution to gather funds. As demand increased and their pre-sale branding became more solid, the project was able to sell their collection at a higher price.

  • Through the Allowlist, the project gathered qualified community members. They tried to collaborate with well-known NFT projects and Alpha community members to distribute. And with their own grinding system they filtered people, and created buzz and activeness within and outside of the community.

  • Announcing the reveal date, sneak-peeks, diversifying sales methods by phase (e.g., private, public), and pricing was a big plus to hype.

  • Moreover, the mysterious roadmap, combined with a strong team, VC, and advisors (mostly web3 influencers), helped the project to brand itself as something special. By joining this community and holding NFT, members were expected to get something unique.

• Business Model: Sales Fund + Loyalty

  • It’s natural that the focus was on increasing the volume and FP, as there were no additional cashflow besides the sales fund of the 10K collection. Anticipation was key to increasing the volume and FP when there was enough liquidity in the market.

  • The next choice was to drop secondary collections and vertically scale based on the OG collection, which boosted their volume with anticipation and created additional cashflow to project through additional sales and loyalties from the secondary collection.

Unfortunately, this euphoria doesn't last long. Flywheel started to break down because there isn't enough liquidity to anticipation <> money exchange.

But is it just a matter of liquidity? I don't think so.

Think it’s a matter fundamental limitations of the structure and the playbook.

So, NFT is not dead. Just the playbook is dead.

We're in the midst of a paradigm shift in NFTs where everyone is waking up from "hopium" and realizing that mass adoption of NFTs won't come from trading 100 ETH JPEGs.

In the next article, let’s talk about the limitations and how we can move forward by changing the perspective.