Note: This is a story of the current situation of Aptos NFTs, info about different collections, and my personal thoughts on how things are. If you wanted to give your thoughts, you can DM me on Discord: Chetan#7559
Aptos, one of the most hyped networks on the Blockchain in the past few months, came into existence, i.e. Mainnet not long ago. It is exactly two weeks since the launch of Aptos and the entry of the token itself was a little confusing, to begin with. The exchanges, largest to smallest, announced the trading schedule while the entire Crypto market was confused not knowing anything about the tokenomics, what to expect, and whether the seed investors would be getting unlocked tokens during the point of sale, but once things got cleared out and Aptos Labs actually offering free tokens, a total of 20 million to all the early supporters and users, it was a smooth sail for the first day. But Aptos was seen as a Solana killer specifically for the NFT ecosystems because SOL wasn’t able to handle things when there was even a little network congestion and Aptos seemed to have solved everything.
But, just offering a better network was enough to attract the investors from Solana?
Here starts the struggle. After months of building the Discord communities, and Twitter followers, giving daily updates, and giving their entire time into building their NFT project, some of the early projects didn’t even end up getting minted fully even though over-allocating the whitelist spots. I have been tracking Aptos NFT projects since the early days and have seen every mint status closely. What went wrong? Let’s take it directly with the names.
One of the earliest mints and projects was Aptomingos which was offered as a free mint, and with a limited supply of 1212 flamingos, this was projected to run well because of the zero risk involved and the promises though there was not much to expect from it. The floor while writing this story, sits at 50 APT and the total volume of Aptomingos on Topaz is over 100K APT.
AptosMonkeys was one that was building for months and with over 100k Twitter followers and a very strong community on Discord, and of course, this being a Monkey project that anyone would relate to the ETH leading project Bored Ape Yacht Club, there were huge expectations from it. The AptosMonkeys supply was much higher, at 7777 Monkeys, and the mint price of 7.7 APT, and interestingly, the entire collection sold out with ease. In fact, the hype was so big that for a single-day chart of trading volume, AptosMonkeys beat every NFT project including the ones on the Ethereum chain.
Where it sits right now, is at about 24-26 APT and taking those small jumps and falls with the floor stabilizing as the ones with huge expectations leaving, and the ones that are looking at the long-term potential entering the community as a holder. For the minters, they are well above double the mint price, and there are many who took good exits at 50-60 APT but the ones who bought at that price would have their recurring episodes of panic after investing at that high due to the jump in sales after mint. While writing this story, the volume of AptosMonkeys was well over 300K APT, the highest on this chain so far.
Some projects like Aptos Wizards and Aptos Top Sharks did sell out, and the floor price went below the mint cost.
Unicornses had a very limited supply of 1000 NFTs, and this was one of the early projects to start building on Aptos. At the time of mint, even this didn’t sell out, firstly due to the 5 APT mint price, and second, there was not much promised in the roadmap and people opted out even though they spent a good time to get whitelisted. The floor right now sits at around 4 APT, below the mint price.
Aptos Koalas Army with a supply of 3333 Koalas had set a price of 2 APT for whitelisted users and 3 APT for the public, with the whitelist getting access to 1/3rd of the total supply. While the collection got sold out, the floor currently sits at just around 0.5 APT.
Aptos Ant Club had the same price as Koalas for both categories, but the supply was much higher, with a total of 6300 ants. Out of the available 3000 Ants for the whitelisted users, 1860 were sold. 1907 out of 3300 for the public were sold, and so the total supply was reduced to whatever was sold, i.e. 3777. The floor price currently sits at about 0.7 APT.
Retro Boys Club was another one with 4 APT and 5 APT prices for whitelist and public mints, and during the mint, there was an issue with the supply reduction and yet, an inflated supply. After the initial set number of 5555, given the reduced demand, the Retro Boys team decided to reduce the supply to 3333 and after Souffl3, the launchpad partner reduced it in the contract, some NFTs were still minted due to an issue on the chain, and the final supply ended up at 3503 instead of the planned 3333. But, whatever the case, the floor has gone down to 3.2 APT, again below the mint price.
Aptos Goblin was a hyped project. The community build-up was happening at a good pace and the chats were always active. But, some FUD from one of the moderators who was one of the ruggers from the Solana chain led to the price reduction for the mint, from 2.99 APT to 1 APT, and then even worse, led the project owner to cancel the mint itself and giving up. I don’t see only the FUD as a reason and that mint cancellation was rather a blessing in disguise given how things are going on with Aptos NFTs, right?
Zakura was another hyped NFT project on Aptos, and there was a total supply of 2222 NFTs, the mint price was 1.99 APT for the whitelist and 2.5 APT for the public minters. Just about 60 NFTs were minted after the clock ticked, and then the mint was closed given that there was no demand. Remember, this project too had its whitelist spots filled and wallets were collected, and people didn’t mint when it was open for minting. The project owner then mentions that every minter will be fully refunded and he will release this as a free mint, and the collection took less than 10 seconds to sell out at 0 APT.
Wormies was a 4444 collection with 1 APT as the mint price, and after the mint began, it struggled to sell even 1000 NFTs, and finally, the supply was reduced to 777 Wormies. The floor has fallen to less than 0.2 APT, and the total volume till now is less than 50 APT.
Aptos Glitch Labs was called one of the utility-based projects with some of the tools that will help the users as well as other projects. The total supply here was about 5000 NFTs and the mint price was set at 4 APT. While writing the story, the mint was still running and during half the day, 709 were minted out of which about 48 were minted at 2.5 APT when the team decided to reduce the price and take it back to the original cost. Interesting times, but this isn’t selling out either.
The Uglies – A total of 3333 Uglies to be minted, this project had some good plans in the roadmap but few hours into the mint, the total supply minted while writing this was only 300, not even 10% of the total supply. The mint price was 2 APT for OG, 2.5 APT for Whitelist, and 2.5 APT for Public. The floor sits under the WL mint price.
RUG ALERT – While some projects did rug already, Aptos Penguins did it with an announcement, followed by one of the founders coming back to tell that they will save the project, only to generate more sales on the secondary marketplace so that royalties are earned, and finally the Discord server was deleted.
This list won’t end here, but that’s enough evidence for you to see how things are going on with Aptos NFTs. What happened and why are there no mints even though there are people actively grinding to get whitelisted and spending their entire day filling up the chats on the Discord servers of these projects?
What happened to Aptos NFTs?
Aptos chain doesn’t have a lot of big investors, it is a bunch of people who spend time getting whitelisted and waiting till the end moment to see how things are going on with the secondary marketplace and if there is any activity on the charts. If not, they don’t mint and move on to the next one. Given how every penny is important for anyone, it is understandable too. We are still in the bear phase with every trader and investor taking cautious steps to preserve liquidity and not blindly spend it knowing this is one of the worst times of the past 12 months in the crypto markets.
Once we see things picking up and the top coins performing better, the money would then slowly move to newer chains to see how things go, and what is worthy of investments for better gains in the future. The actual good investors mint or purchase an NFT from a secondary marketplace, and set targets for its exit point, and keep it aside. The ones who grind and look at the floor price of the collection every hour is what create panic within the community, and Aptos has more of the latter currently. Lack of patience among the investors is what is leading to a sudden drop in floor price, and that is something the project teams cannot control.
But, there’s a fault that lies with the projects too. Little to no transparency from the projects. The biggest hyped projects don’t even have a roadmap of what to expect from them as potential investors. One cannot always invest saying that they are spending to get a profile picture. Some projects preponed the mint expecting that they’d be able to grab the attention of the early investors, but that didn’t happen as people ask obvious questions.
What’s the future of Aptos NFTs?
Solana had its fair share of lows and highs, but as a chain, it still struggles to offer a stable network. Ethereum still is right on top. Aptos is new, so will need that time to make itself a perfect replacement for Solana, but given how the network has been able to handle things well in the times of thousands of transactions being sent in a few seconds, Aptos does have what it needs to dethrone Solana from its place.
But what about the projects? Not many will survive. Some will fade away, with the projects benefitting from it since the mints are already done and the funds have reached their wallets. But a few will emerge stronger while working all the while when the transition happens from Solana to Aptos for the big investors. AptosMonkeys isn’t just a Monkeys profile picture collection. The team had shared a roadmap with a bunch of tools that are being developed and a couple already available for use and partnerships being discussed for the usage of those tools. While Bruh Bears has created hype on social media and the community is well built before the mint, it is said that behind the hype, there is a team working to deliver something good after the mint is completed. Aptomingos will sit right there on the top 5, being one of the OG collections. But, it surely will take time and the investors will have to show patience, or what takes months to build, can be destroyed within a day.
What’s a Blue-Chip here? Too early to call anything a Blue-Chip. But, I have my money on AptosMonkeys, Aptomingos, Bruh Bears, and Rekt Dogs to take it ahead and keep working until the new investors come in and the Aptos NFT ecosystem becomes a thing.
