In my last article, I talked about my experience actively buying NFTs. Let’s expand on the topic with more structured ideas about how to analyze NFT collections and projects with the aim of providing some guidance for those starting out.

Not all NFTs are created equal, so we shouldn’t use the same criteria for evaluating them. Although most great projects or collections have common characteristics, we need to think differently if we’re judging a purely artistic NFT compared to one that has additional utility.

Similarly, different blockchains (i.e. Ethereum, Solana, Tezos, etc.) are used by different types of artists and teams. This means that each ecosystem is unique.

The first step when evaluating an NFT project is to understand the general markets and agents in the space. For instance, NFTs as PFPs (profile pictures) and 10,000-item collections were popularized on Ethereum. Solana is also flooded with these. However, there haven’t been many large collections on Tezos, apart from some recent notable exceptions.

A characteristic in Tezos is that artists launch multiple copies (known as editions) of the same artwork. On the other hand, Ethereum and Solana NFTs are typically collections of unique but similar items (see above), which sometimes have a strong focus on roadmaps and deliverables.

Collectors Kevin Rose and Chris Wallace recently said that NFTs on Tezos are much cheaper than on other blockchains, with Chris stating that those on Tezos can trade for 5 or 10 times less than on Ethereum. In my experience this rings true, and NFTs on Tezos are also cheaper than on Solana. There’s no other place where I’ve been able to collect works for amounts as little as 60¢ or $3. Excluding free-to-mint NFTs, some of the cheapest ones I’ve seen on Solana and Ethereum cost somewhere from 0.1 SOL to 0.5 SOL or 0.04 ETH to 0.08 ETH (in USD, these are $10 — $50 and $120 — $240 respectively, at today’s prices). Often, they trade for much more.

Another difference is that I haven’t yet seen teams developing roadmaps on Tezos. Mostly, this blockchain is used by artists selling unique artwork rather than teams working on deliverables.

Now that we’ve seen some differences in NFT projects based upon their native blockchain, let’s talk a bit more about assessing NFTs that are purely artistic versus those projects that have a defined roadmap.

I am definitely not an art expert, so there are only four methods I use to assess purely artistic NFTs:

Somewhat unrelated to the above, price is another key factor I use to consider whether to purchase NFTs or not. However, this is not exclusive to this subset of NFTs. No matter how great an artwork, artist, or team behind an NFT is, there’s an amount at which I will no longer consider buying it.

Now let’s take a look at how NFTs become valuable and different types of NFT utility in the space. Here I’ll mostly focus on the Solana ecosystem because it’s the one I’ve followed most closely, although I’ve seen a fair share of projects on Ethereum and they have many similarities.

Many teams behind NFT projects have created roadmaps with the aim of providing further value to holders and early supporters. Examples of these include regular airdrops of new NFTs, merchandise, comic books, governance tokens, staking mechanisms, and early or discounted access to other NFT projects.

Why some NFTs are more valuable than others comes down to three factors: being early, executing on a roadmap, and community.

First and foremost, being early pays off. CryptoPunks are highly regarded in terms of historical and cultural value because they were one of the earliest projects that launched.

Second, when there is a roadmap, execution is crucial. If you’re buying NFTs you’d do well paying close attention to the team behind it. Are there identities known? Have they built something before? What’s their track record? Do they have a reputation to live up to? None of these things guarantee that the project or collection is going to succeed long-term, but it definitely makes it more likely than an anonymous team that hasn’t created anything before.

These are important questions to ask before getting in, and this is why some people say that picking NFTs feels similar to angel investing: ultimately you’re betting on people and their ability to deliver, and most projects will disappoint.

Something you can do early on is join their Discord and get a sense of what the team is all about. If they host Twitter Spaces or community calls, it makes sense to listen and see what they say. Does it make sense to you? Are they promising too much? (Not everyone can ship great work!) Are you genuinely interested in what the team is planning to build?

Finally, the community is an important factor that ultimately affects the direction of the project. The kind of people an NFT project attracts and engages with can say a lot about it. But what does community mean exactly? Let me show you three different kinds of communities I’ve seen and it will become clear.

I’ve been in some Discord channels where all people do is chat about the floor price: “Why isn’t the price going up?”, “This will 10x in a few days!”. This leads nowhere. Most people in these communities bought the NFT to make a quick profit. If holders aren’t engaging in positive ways (asking genuine questions to the team, building derivative projects or applications around the NFT), that’s a bad sign.

Another red flag is if the team behind the NFT is never showing up in the chat engaging with holders, building community, or executing their roadmap. I’ve seen teams that managed to create a strong, positive, and friendly community around them by showing up throughout the day to chat and get to know the people in the Discord, hosting Q&A sessions, creating contests, hosting trivia events, and so on. One project excelling at this is Grim Syndicate.

Another special type of community I’ve seen is one filled with developers or other kinds of builders. Clear examples of this are Loot or Adventure Cards. If you hop into the Discord channels of these or similar projects, you’ll find people constantly talking about further development and coordinating to build things together.

Builder/developer communities and positive early adopter communities have better chances of succeeding long-term.

When people mention community as being a key driver of a specific NFT’s success, that’s what they mean. Are people chilling, getting involved, building things, hyped about the things that are coming next, and creating things around the project? Or are they only concerned about the price? Identifying the community vibe surrounding an NFT can help predict long-term success.

Something should now be obvious. Teams behind NFT projects are effectively building a reputation and constructing a brand, whether conscious of it or not, and their NFTs represent precisely that. Pixel Vault has become one of the most reputable and recognizable brands in the NFT space because they’re constantly overdelivering and focusing on their early supporters. And when people use their NFTs as PFPs, they’re signaling they’re part of a community that’s valuable to them.

That is why non-web3 native brands are experimenting with NFTs and utility. Adidas recently dropped an NFT that is tied to exclusive merchandise drops to holders during 2022. But this is just one example; many brands are using NFTs to focus on their biggest fans and fostering brand loyalty. Because of the nature of NFTs as gateways to private and exclusive communities, events, and other type of perks, the space has been quickly gaining popularity.

Note also that when there are brands with a reputation behind a project, the stakes for them to deliver are high. So buying NFTs of well-known brands should be much safer than a random project with unproven or anonymous founders.

Deciding on whether you want to buy an NFT or not is only half the work. The other half is following up. Your goal is to find evidence that confirms or negates your initial judgement. And if you end up buying, your next task is monitoring your NFT collection every so often. If you own a lot of NFTs this can require a significant amount of time, but monitoring doesn’t mean looking at prices hourly or daily.

Mostly, you’ll want to pay attention to what the artist keeps creating, or what the team is building. Occasionally it also makes sense to pay attention to prices. Discord, Twitter, and any community calls or updates the artist or team does are some of the best ways to catch up on what’s happening. Generally speaking, any kind of regular update that provides transparency on development is a good sign.

Whether you decide to keep a particular NFT for a long time or sell it after a short time, it is good practice to stay well-informed about the community, the market, and trends in the NFT space. That way you can make decisions based on experience rather than emotion.

Author Bio

Marc Bisbal Arias focuses on research, analysis, and investing.

BanklessDAO is an education and media engine dedicated to helping individuals achieve financial independence.

Disclaimer: this isn’t investment advice. This article has been written for informational and educational purposes only and it reflects my personal experience and current views, which are subject to change.

Please check out the NFT Red Flag Checklist for practical steps you can take to protect yourself while NFT hunting.

Last week, we received nearly 40 optimization suggestions and feedbacks, some of which have been adopted and are under-optimized, some are to be optimized in the future, and others require more communication. The remaining parts are temporarily not adopted based on product development ideas, and the possibility of future adoption cannot be ruled out.

Advice Adopted and Devs Working on It

Advice adopted, and will optimize later

Other important work at Metatime last week includes:

1. Metatime prepares for lowering the threshold by launching METAYC, a derivative NFT collection of BAYC, as the second batch of Entry NFT.

2. Berry Data and Crypto Piece joined Metatime platform.

3. Over 10 Million $DSG has been exchanged for $TIME.

4. Many more KOLs and projects have experienced Metatime and give valued comments.

5. Metatime joined an AMA held by QiaoDong.

6. Follow us on

7. Telegram: https://t.me/MetatimeGroup

8. Twitter: https://twitter.com/Metatime_social

9. Medium: https://medium.com/@Metatime_social

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You can buy these products at the official store of the company — https://www.crypto-energy.de/webshop/.

Remember that every purchase adds funds to the $CET token liquidity pool!

1. Create a Coinbase account

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NFT is an abbreviation for “non-fungible token.” When something is fungible, such as a dollar bill, it is equivalent to and can thus be exchanged for any other dollar bill. A non-fungible token, on the other hand, is a one-of-a-kind digital asset that cannot be exchanged for any other NFT. This means that each NFT is a ‘one-of-a-kind’ item. NFTs are transferred from one owner to another using blockchain technology, which creates a digital trail from seller to buyer that verifies the transaction. This encodes the buyer’s one-of-a-kind ownership rights (new owner).

The physical world equivalent would be a one-of-a-kind collectible asset, such as a work of art, for which you might have a certificate of ownership attesting to its authenticity. The NFT, with its blockchain technology, eliminates the need for ownership certificates. There are some NFTs that use blockchain technology to create a digital ownership certificate for a unique physical asset, though this is not widely used at the moment.

Despite the fact that they have been around since 2014, NFTs became a popular investment in 2021. As the popularity of cryptocurrency investing grew, so did the concept of selling specific digital assets to investors for purchase online.

The Monkey Kingdom is a collection of 2,222 randomly generated 32x32 pixels NFTs on the Solana Blockchain. Each Wukong is unique and comes with different traits and attributes varying in rarity.

Portals is a browser-based metaverse that we’ve been working on since early 2021. With a focus on a dense city center and zero-friction user experience, Portals is an immersive social space where you can explore, make your own, and gather with others.

With easy drag-and-drop build tools and built-in communication features, we make it simple to customize immersive virtual spaces — such as residences, offices, game experiences, or storefronts — in a downtown metropolitan area. We want to build a dense, virtual Neo-Tokyo/New York, where people can explore a single city block with hundreds of fun things to do and discover.

City planning and real estate will be executed in a way that ensures a dense, interesting city center for everyone to explore. We’re starting with an emphasis on user experience first to build an awesome community of builders and players.

Our mission here at the academy is simple: Take 10,000 of the smoothest brained apes, put them all in one location and let the mayhem ensue. The academy was founded on the principles of friendship making, crayon eating and absolute, unregulated, deplorable, degenerate behavior. Welcome fellow apes, to the Degenerate Ape Academy.

Bōryoku Dragonz are an exclusive collection of 1,111 Dragon NFTs on Solana, backed by a top team of NFT collectors, designers, community builders, and artists. The project brings a fresh design to Solana, with daily token airdrops, a breeding game with token burning mechanics, and a multi-chain community that completely transcends a simple PFP offering.

Taiyo Robotics are 2,121 Robots that have been manufactured on the Solana blockchain. They have been created to protect the world against giant monsters that have plagued earth.

AURORY is a Play-and-Earn game where players areinvited to explore a rich and diverse universe. They willtravel across the worlds of Antik and Tokané as theycomplete quests, discover lost relics, defeat enemies,and compete against other players using creatures called “Nefties”.

These magical creatures can be hatched, evolved, traded, used to battle, and have been designed as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They will accompany players as they embark on their adventure through a variety ofimmersive game modes in this compelling JRPG.

4200 Stoned Apes Form The Genesis Collection In The Crew With 4 Roles, Allowing Staking For Daily Rewards Of Our Utility Token $PUFF, An NFT Evolution Process With Token Burning Mechanics And More Dope Real-World Utility. More Than Just Your Typical PFP Project.

Shadowy Super Coder DAO

Galactic Gecko Space Garage is an NFT Social Adventure Club featuring 10,000 warrior turned space racing geckos. “Sponsor” a Galactic Gecko by owning its NFT on the Solana Blockchain. Doing so will grant you a spot in the most elite, fierce and thrill-seeking club in the universe. Choose your faction (or factions) wisely. It has cosmic consequences…

The Degeniverse is expanding. We are the Degenerate Trash Pandas. A collection of 20K cunning critters that live for one thing and one thing only: To scavenge the blockchain.

Inhabiting their own underworld society, the Trash Pandas are governed by no individuals and live by no rules. What they have though is their trash, and their trash is their treasure. They’ll do whatever they can to get their little paws on it, even if it means befriending an Academy of oafish Degenerate Apes.

Solana is an open source project implementing a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. The Solana Foundation is based in Geneva, Switzerland and maintains the open source project.

It is possible for a centralized database to process 710,000 transactions per second on a standard gigabit network if the transactions are, on average, no more than 176 bytes. A centralized database can also replicate itself and maintain high availability without significantly compromising that transaction rate using the distributed system technique known as Optimistic Concurrency Control [H.T.Kung, J.T.Robinson (1981)]. At Solana, we are demonstrating that these same theoretical limits apply just as well to blockchain on an adversarial network. The key ingredient? Finding a way to share time when nodes cannot rely upon one another. Once nodes can rely upon time, suddenly ~40 years of distributed systems research becomes applicable to blockchain!

Perhaps the most striking difference between algorithms obtained by our method and ones based upon timeout is that using timeout produces a traditional distributed algorithm in which the processes operate asynchronously, while our method produces a globally synchronous one in which every process does the same thing at (approximately) the same time. Our method seems to contradict the whole purpose of distributed processing, which is to permit different processes to operate independently and perform different functions. However, if a distributed system is really a single system, then the processes must be synchronized in some way. Conceptually, the easiest way to synchronize processes is to get them all to do the same thing at the same time. Therefore, our method is used to implement a kernel that performs the necessary synchronization — for example, making sure that two different processes do not try to modify a file at the same time. Processes might spend only a small fraction of their time executing the synchronizing kernel; the rest of the time, they can operate independently — e.g., accessing different files. This is an approach we have advocated even when fault-tolerance is not required. The method’s basic simplicity makes it easier to understand the precise properties of a system, which is crucial if one is to know just how fault-tolerant the system is. [L.Lamport (1984)]

Furthermore, and much to our surprise, it can be implemented using a mechanism that has existed in Bitcoin since day one. The Bitcoin feature is called nLocktime and it can be used to postdate transactions using block height instead of a timestamp. As a Bitcoin client, you would use block height instead of a timestamp if you don’t rely upon the network. Block height turns out to be an instance of what’s being called a Verifiable Delay Function in cryptography circles. It’s a cryptographically secure way to say time has passed. In Solana, we use a far more granular verifiable delay function, a SHA 256 hash chain, to checkpoint the ledger and coordinate consensus. With it, we implement Optimistic Concurrency Control and are now well en route towards that theoretical limit of 710,000 transactions per second.

To learn more about Solana, visit their website.

Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be shaping and building out our vision for what we want this community to become. With brilliant female minds across engineering, strategy, marketing, customer support, design and leadership, we want you to join us.

Register now, and throughout the coming weeks we will unveil the full extent of our mission, including new opportunities to give back, connect and grow. You don’t have to be an active member of the Gala community to join this initiative, and you don’t even have to be a woman to be a supporter of this incredible cause.

At Gala, we’ve been horrified by the situation in Ukraine and with the help of our community, have already made substantial donations of supplies, but we are eager to do more.

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All of us in the Gala World would like to wish you a happy International Women’s Day. ❤️

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