It takes sheer pluck to launch an NFT project in this market. Volumes are trash and collections have become incestuous, devolving into mostly thirst traps and monkey JPEG derivatives.
Against this backdrop, CapsuleNFT sought to do something truly innovative. What follows is a story of resilience in the face of rejection.
CapsuleNFT as “Crypto’s Tupperware”
CapsuleNFT enables traders, artists, collectors, and others to package (or “capsule”) any combination of NFTs or tokens into a single NFT. Think of it as a kind of “Tupperware for Crypto.”
As a proof-of-concept, the team created Dollar Store Kids (D$K), where each adorable kiddo came “capsuled” with one dollar (USDC). The D$K holder could sell, hodl, or redeem them for the USDC (and “burning” the NFT). If the demand for D$K goes to zero, each NFT always has a “buyer of last resort” — itself — for one dollar.
Playtime Begins
Upon their OpenSea listing on September 1, Dollar Store Kids were limited to a mint of 3,333. Thousands of NFT enthusiasts immediately obliged, minting D$K for 0.001 ETH. In less than 30 minutes, the project sold out even though each Ethereum address was allowed to mint only one D$K apiece. (No whitelist.)
D$K was something of a quiet phenomenon. Within a week, they were fetching a .05 ETH floor price after generating 220 ETH in trading volume (150 ETH from OpenSea).
Double-Secret Probation
Then… checking OpenSea for D$K suddenly brought visitors to an ominous 404 notice.
Upon inquiry, OpenSea’s response was cryptic, if not downright cynical. “We have delisted the collection … because it violates our Terms of Service.” Requests for clarification didn’t yield much more insight, but it appeared that attaching the USDC to the NFT, in the OpenSea view, transformed it into a “financial instrument” and, therefore, a delisting target.
The team was not convinced. In any event, delisting or not, the D$K NFTs continue to trade for around ~15x their dollar value elsewhere on decentralized exchanges.
From Delisting, A Discovery
“If something this simple — redeeming an NFT for a dollar — is this difficult to do with current marketplaces, then what if you have [NFTs as] loans, tokenized land, coupons, all these other things?” asked CEO and Co-founder Daniel Peter. “At some point exchanges are going to have to deal with them because they’re going to become commonplace. If D$Ks weren’t able to be listed on the largest centralized marketplace, then something needs to be built.”
We can already guess at one team that might be inspired to build such a marketplace.