Unlocking the Best Time to Mint Your NFT Collection

July 9th, 2024 Written By Aman Singh, Edited by ChatGPT

Image Created by Aman Singh using WIX AI on 09-12-2024

If you are a creative mind, NFT is the latest innovation that is will help you make a living in no distance time. This way, through the integration of decentralized blockchain technology, creators can fund their projects without the need to rely on middlemen who base themselves around centralized advertisement-based platforms. As has been observed before, this is an advantage because it allows creators to adapt in some ways, yet it is a disadvantage because certain parameters must be well set when designing an NFT release strategy, particularly the initial price parameters. All such issues are important in determining whether to make or mar the success of a project in the future.

So for creators to avoid a sinking ship, I decided to wade through some of this early water. To know if other factors or trends can be observed outside of the Anonymouse, I went through the top 150 NFT collections by daily trade volume in OpenSea, an NFT marketplace.

Pricing Your NFT Mint Right

One of the key initial choices that any NFT artist is going to have to make is how to determine the price of an NFT when it first goes on the market. Do it wrong and you compromise not only the potential monetary gain but also jeopardise the future of the very project itself.

This means that enough money will be received at the point of sale, though a high mint price will also tend to discourage potential buyers. At the same time, the price might be set too low and that means the company could lose a great amount of profit. Moreover, your primary investors—you know, the people who invested in your idea first—may notice less profit on secondary transfers, in which authors receive percentages on resales.

Based on the above analysis, I noticed that NFT collections with mint prices above 0.25 ETH (Ethereum) more often than not generated returns of less than 10X. Only two projects did so: Thus, Azuki Zen was the most expensive PFP collection, with an average mint price of 0.94 ETH, and Invisible Friends was the second, which was sold at a fixed price of 0.25 ETH.

Conversely, the collections with mint prices of around $0.05 – $0.1 ETH delivered far superior results. Projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and World of Women may be mentioned to be in this category and their success cannot be explained without considering the role played by pricing. Thus, while pricing is one of the easiest things that are within a creator’s reach, it may change the situation dramatically later on.

Timing your NFT mint just right can make all the difference. It's not just about launching — it's about understanding market momentum, knowing your audience, and setting your project up for long-term success.

Market Volume: Less is More?

Notably, several of the winning NFT projects garnered less than $5 million in the first minting round. This revealed a negative relationship between the primary sales revenue and long-term project success. In other words, the higher the number of issues that a project raised during its mint, the poorer its performance over time.

Why might that be? One could be the fact that the owners of such projects, who receive a lot of money in the first place, may well stop stimulating the further development of their projects. It’s somewhat similar to a young founder who sells the stock early—once the money is made, the motivation to work harder and expand the enterprise may be gone.

This factor does not only apply to primary markets but extends to secondary markets in which NFT resales occur. Most of the projects that have raised little in their initial mint have observed active trading on secondary markets. This means that while the primary market may be the key sale of the day, a project’s long-term survival is anchored on a healthy secondary market and an active community. Thus, the above-mentioned tendencies can be changed as the market develops, while several NFT projects comment that it is Where the general outlook is rather new.

Should You Cap Wallet Mints?

Yet another question concerns limiting the number of Mints allowed per a single wallet address. Does it increase performance that a single investor can only invest in a certain number of NFTs? Based on the data I analyzed, it was not necessary.

Popular cryptos such as Meebits, Doodles, and Cool Cats had an average of 5 to 10 minutes per address. This means that it is not disadvantageous to allow some number of mints per wallet as they do not make the worse project but are helpful in the promotion of the project in the early stage.

Key Takeaways for NFT Creators

While every project is unique, there are a few general trends from the data that creators can keep in mind:

Lower mint prices seem to offer higher returns for early supporters.

Successful secondary markets don’t necessarily depend on big primary sales.

A mint cap of 5-to-10 NFTs per wallet has been a sweet spot for some top collections.

Of course, the world of NFTs is still evolving, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Designing a successful NFT drop is more art than science, but hopefully, these insights can help guide creators as they make key decisions. For those who want to explore these trends further, I’ve published a dashboard on Dune Analytics, where you can look at metrics for any NFT collection by entering its contract address. This tool allows you to see how the data plays out in real time and in the context of your project.

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Sources:

• The End of Cloud Computing, discussed in Daren Matsuoka article, "The End of Cloud Computing," March 31, 2022.