Rug Radio Recap - January 29, 2023

gm! We're almost 1 week away from the Rug Radio x Cory Van Lew PFP Mint and we hope you're as excited as we are. A quick reminder that no one will ever DM you a mint link and we won't drop a surprise link on any of our socials. The official announcement of the mint will come from Farokh live on a Twitter Space and via email shortly afterwards...Stay safe fam!

Here's what we've got in this week's recap...

• Rug Radio Updates: Town Hall notes, Farokh on Decrypt & BinanceNFT, Creator interest form

• Porsche NFTs: The Surprise Comeback?

• Doodles makes an acquisition, partners with Flow

• Market Summary

January 27th Town Hall

In case you missed it, we hosted our bi-weekly Town Hall on Friday where we heard from Loxley, our new co-CEO, about his background and plans for the role. We also heard from Jess who gave some updates on the progress of our rewards and creators program.

Meet Loxley

On Monday at 9am EST, we released an announcement introducing Loxley as our new co-CEO where we outlined his background and vision for Rug Radio. Later that morning, we chatted with him on GM WEB3 as well (fast forward to minute :40).

Farokh's appearance with Decrypt & BinanceNFT

Decrypt, one of the most popular web3 media outlets, released an interview with Farokh talking about his background, how he got into the space, and an in-depth look into Rug Radio. Farokh also appeared on a Space with BinanceNFT talking about the Life of a Founder and a little bit about the ecosystem.

Creator Interest Form

While we restructure the process for our creators and get ready to reopen the application process for the next wave, we wanted to hear from anyone who might be interested in becoming a Rug Radio creator. Fill out this quick 5 question form and you'll be first to know when official applications reopen!

Porsche NFTs: The Surprise Comeback?

Porsche opened the mint for their Porsche 911 NFTs on Monday, which are digital versions of their most popular car model, the Porsche 911, that promises utilities such as customization and access to "money can't buy" experiences, but it didn't quite go as planned. 

A few days before, they tweeted that the mint would be .911 ETH (~$1,450 at the time of writing) per NFT with a collection size of 7,500 and were immediately met with negative feedback regarding the price with many suggesting that a price .0911 ETH would likely result in an instant sell out. Others also called out that this wasn't the first time a traditional company attempted to enter the space to extract value before providing it, and instead should have partnered with web3 native advisors and built a community if they were truly aligned with the values of the space.

The narrative appeared to shift, after Porsche tweeted that they would cut the supply and close the mint resulting in a supply of 2,363 out of the original 7,500. Shortly after closing the mint on Wednesday, the company released a thread outlining the utility for the NFTs causing the floor price on OpenSea to hit 3.2 ETH at one point after falling below the mint price. At the time of writing, the floor price was sitting just above 2 ETH.

Porsche may have been able to rebound from the initial setbacks, but how they execute from here will determine if this was just another Web2 company failing to properly enter the space or if they will lead the way. Interestingly, if the former is true and the price falls significantly, the NFTs may be refundable...

Doodles announced the acquisition of Golden Wolf animation studio and that Doodles 2 will be launching on the Flow blockchain.

Pudgy Penguins announced that their companion collection, Lil Pudgys, are officially cross chain starting with Arbitrum, Polygon, and BNB chain.  

Kevin Rose's wallet was compromised for millions of dollars in NFTs after signing a fake phishing transaction, including NFTs such as Chromie Squiggles and Autoglyphs.

Beeple released his first book, Beeple: Everydays, the First 5000 Images, featuring the 5,000 images he created from the debut of his career.

Ahead of the Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade, developers announced that mainnet shadow fork went live. The major change with this upgrade is the implementation of ETH staking withdrawal capability.

Context

• Crypto markets were relatively sideways for the week with mixed economic data, ahead of Wednesday's Fed rate hike decision where the consensus is a .25% hike. We also get the payrolls report on Friday which is one report fed officials pay close attention to when deciding monetary policy; A higher than expected number could mean maintaining a restrictive monetary policy and interest rate hikes.

• NFT volumes were lower this week with most of the volume in the Yuga ecosystem, The Memes by 6529, and a few other popular new mints.

Buckle up, Henry...We're just getting started🫡