DeGods: From A Failed NFT Project To #1 Project On Solana (Part I)
Acknowledge your mistakes and improve upon them. Rinse and repeat.
If you’ve been into NFTs and active on Twitter last few months, you’ve probably heard about the project called DeGods. If you think that it’s become popular due to its most recent project y00ts that went crazy viral, well, you’re half-right since it’s actually one of the oldest projects on Solana. Did you know that DeGods started more than a year ago?
• The first tweet by DeGods was on September 17, 2021. That’s actually when Magic Eden, the #1 Solana marketplace now, launched. This project is almost as old as the marketplace in which it was going to sell NFTs.
• Also, take a look at the traction of the tweet above. What a humble start it had compared to its massive community with 127,000 Twitter followers right now.
• They had a presale on September 23, 2021, and it was a mess. The presale was delayed by 12+ hours and they dropped the price to 2 SOL last minute. The tweet below is the rant about its failed presale 😅
• The promising part was the team’s response: “We’re disappointed in ourselves that it happened like this, but we’re going to make it better.“. Maybe it was the first sign that this project would become something special.
• DeGods got some initial traction from introducing the “paper hand b*tch tax” where sellers pay a 33.3% tax when selling DeGods below the current floor price. The money collected from the tax was used for purchasing the cheapest DeGods and burning them. This was a brilliant way to keep the floor price high and have supply deflation.
• The first cult member (@AussieNftGuy) created a viral video of eating chicken nuggets for DegodsNFT on Twitch. He also had a DeGods tattoo on his leg. Currently a community lead of DeGods, he was an integral part of DeGod’s initial success.
• The public minting date was on October 8th, 2021 with 3 SOLs each. Again, there was some noise around FUD, bots, and the team’s explanation around storing metadata on AWS S3.
• However, the team was super active on Twitter (like more than 10 tweets every day during the minting week) engaging with the community and explaining everything in a clear and transparent manner, which I believe is the No.1 reason DeGods is doing well to this day.
• They were sold out with more than 4,900 unique owners of the 10,000 NFT collection. An impressive achievement at that time.
• They were finally on the rise. The tweet about a DeGods X Island Boys collaboration went viral. The average price remained around 9 SOL (~$700) till February 2022 when it went above 50 SOL (~$4,000). This will be covered in part II.
That’s a wrap for the part I of how DeGods rose from a failed NFT project to the #1 project on SOL. Here’s the summary:
Failure was part of the journey. How they embraced it and improved upon it was the key to success.
Securing a few loyal fans, in the beginning, was much more helpful than having a number of paper hands. They actively exposed a new NFT project in front of the audience.
People loved that the DeGods team has been super active on Twitter making announcements, updates, and replies to their fans. I’m talking about almost 24/7 engagements with the community.
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Thank you so much :)