Several months back, I sent you an alert about an upcoming NFT project called ape16z.
NFTs, of course, are non-fungible tokens—one-off, one-of-a-kind cryptos that can represent ownership of all kinds of assets, from digital art to a share in a company or investment fund. Before reading this alert, I’d advise that you check out the two Frontier Fortunes NFT reports, if you haven’t already done so: How to Invest in NFTs and The Frontier Fortunes Guide to NFT Wallets.
Well, the ape16z project is soon to launch its NFT, likely in mid-November. Over the weekend, it opened an application process in which the ape16z team will hand-select the people who are whitelisted, or “apelisted” as the team calls it.
Those selected to be on the apelist will be able to mint the NFT at its launch price of 1.69 Solana, or about $55 at current prices, before the public is able to buy—assuming there are any NFTs left for the public to buy.
If you’re interested in minting an ape16z NFT, you can fill out the application here.
Note: I have talked to the team many times, and I have arranged it so that if you mention “Jeffo sent me” as part of your application, the ape16z overlords will look more kindly upon you. (“Jeffo” is how I’m known in the crypto world.)
To be clear, I cannot guarantee that you will be apelisted because, as with all NFT mints, there is global demand for what will be just 6,000 NFTs, only 5,000 of which will be available in the mint (the remainder is earmarked for the team, advisers, and early investors who have helped fund the project during its initial days). To fill out the application, you will need to click the blue “Apply in 45 Seconds” button, then connect your wallet through the “Connect SOL Wallet” button.
You will also need to connect a Twitter account as part of this process. This is a must because it’s the only way to stop automated bots from flooding the application pool. You will also be asked to connect a Discord account, though that part is not mandatory.
After that, you will be asked a few questions. As part of your answers, include “Jeffo sent me.”
What Does ape16z Do?
To refresh your memory…ape16z is an NFT project accelerator that operates on the Solana blockchain and which is building a new type of launchpad. (A launchpad is a platform where new NFTs projects go to mint their NFTs.)
The greatest flaw with existing launchpads is that they do little to stop “rugs” from happening. Rugs, short for “rug pulls,” occur when a project launches and the founders instantly abscond with the cash. The project was fake to begin with and was launched simply to steal money from NFT buyers.
To address this, existing launchpads have relied on a time-delay escrow account that prevents NFT project teams from accessing the mint funds for a day or, maybe, a week.
But so what?
If you’re a “rugger,” do you really care if you have to wait a day or a week before you grab all the money and vanish? Of course not.
Ape16z changes the game by imposing a “milestone-based escrow” system in which the ape16z team, in coordination with the NFT project team, establishes a roadmap that the project must follow and meet before any funds are released.
As each milestone is reached, a new tranche of cash is released from a so-called “multi-signature wallet,” which requires signoff by multiple people before money can be accessed. This means a team must actually show they’re working to build a project…and it means that no one person (a rugger) can just grab the money out of the wallet and flee. If the team ultimately does rug after some time, then the money that remains in the wallet is returned to the NFT holders.
Moreover, as part of the process, ape16z will take part of its payment in the form of NFTs. Most of those NFTs, in turn, will go into the treasury, which is controlled by the ape16z DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). That DAO is controlled by ape16z NFT owners, who have sole power to vote on how the treasury’s wealth is deployed.
In practical terms, that means NFT owners could vote to sell some of the NFTs and use that money to invest in new projects alongside the ape16z team, or it could vote to send some of the wealth back to NFT owners in the form of crypto distributions.
Either way, the net effect of this approach is twofold:
- The ape16z team and the ape16z NFT holders are in the same boat. The team will be looking to launch only the best projects it can find, since the team’s wealth is directly tied to the performance of the underlying projects.
- The treasury effectively becomes an NFT investment fund as the team launches each project, meaning each NFT basically becomes a share of an NFT fund that represents ownership of numerous underlying NFTs.
For context, Flamingo DAO launched as an NFT investment fund on the Ethereum network several years ago. The initial investment was 60 Ethereum, or about $23,000 at the time. That combined cash flowed into a broad collection of high-value NFTs such as Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, CyberKongz, and scores of others on the Ethereum blockchain. Today, the minimum investment needed to join Flamingo DAO is 3,000 ETH, or about $4.8 million.
I’m not saying the ape16z NFTs will turn into Flamingo DAO. But I am saying that Flamingo is a good example of how the value of an NFT investment fund can soar when it holds high-quality assets.
If ape16z’s team is choosing high-quality projects to incubate, accelerate and launch, then there’s good reason to believe the NFT’s value will rise in time to reflect the value of the NFTs held in the DAO.
The team expects it will mint its NFTs in mid-November, after it has filtered through all the applications it receives. I suggest paying attention to the ape16z Twitter account here, and the Discord announcements here in order to keep up with the project and to know when the mint date is announced.
Best of luck with your application.
