New Year, Old Shenanigans

Day 2 of this newsletter thing and I’ll be 100% honest with you: Substack sucks.

It’s not that the interface is bad (there’s a reason why so many newsletters exist here!), it’s just that… Twitter has beef with them.

And because most of my presence is based on Twitter (where the NFTers are!), that significantly reduces my ability to grow this newsletter.

But I’ll finish out the week here first, then switch over to Beehiiv next Monday while I get all that stuff set up.

That doesn’t impact you at all! Unless you haven’t subscribed yet.

Oh also, I got a new gym bag!

I’ve been going to the gym a lot more lately. This isn’t a “new year, new me” sort of thing where it’s a turn-of-the-calendar-year sudden change and you’re back to your old ways a week later. My new gym bag just helps me carry my gym clothes better with a separate shoe compartment and everything. I’ve actually been quietly making some changes since December — because habits don’t change overnight.

That’s going to be a recurring theme in today’s issue, about how even in a new calendar year nothing’s really changed other than the 4-digit ticker at the end.

Anyways. Back to NFT-land, where

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"There is no new thing under the sun." — Ecclesiastes 1:9

It’s been 2 days into the new calendar year, and we’ve gotten 2 airdrops already!

The first one: Less Fees & Gas ($LFG), with the second one being Dymension ($DYM).

Let’s take a closer look.

Less Fees & Gas

Clean, easy-to-use website with not terrible design (not amazing either) with a cliche but recognisable ticker.

The fun little wrinkle? You get to claim more LFG (a Solana-based token) according to how many gas fees that you’ve spent on Ethereum. Fits thematically, brings in high-spending users by giving them more coins. Makes a lot of sense.

The fun thing is that it truly does serve an onboarding purpose for Ethereum-native users! Why? Because the main DEXes that Solana memecoins are listed on, Jupiter & Orca, don’t exist on Ethereum.

For a lot of users, this was their first time swapping coins on a Solana DEX! Scary, I know. Using Orca’s interface as an example, you input the token address on the left and swap it to SOL on the right (no, it’s not my first time on this rodeo).

I was eligible for roughly 2.6M in LFG tokens, which I claimed 5 minutes after the airdrop was announced (yes, I like to live dangerously). I sold off 0.6M right off the bat (just in case it went to zero right away), then sold the other 2M for just over 1 SOL ($108 or so at that specific moment) when I was explaining the claim process to a few friends. The price then spiked by roughly 40% but…

Looking back, I think I did rather well. It’s been roughly 24 hours and while claims are still ongoing, the coin is already slowly dying.

Meanwhile…

Dymension

The interesting thing about Dymension (which “powers the internet of RollApps”) is that its eligibility is based off activity on multiple chains — rewarding Celestia TIA stakers, Ethereum Layer 2 users (especially rollup-based Arbitrum and Optimism), Cosmos users aaaand of course, Solana degens.

Another funny thing about this airdrop — the amount shown in the checker only represents the minimum amount you’re eligible to receive. If more people claim, you’ll get less; if less people claim, you’ll get a bigger piece of the pie.

Either way, my slice is gonna be pretty small. But I’m grateful to be involved!

Like previous airdrops in the past that want you to NOT spend your airdrop right away and maybe buy some more, the tactic used is “lock your bridged whitelisted tokens, we’ll reward you with more tokens later”.

As the subheading of this newsletter states: even though they’re new tokens, these airdrops are a page out of the old playbook.

Also today, inspiring the “New Year, Old Shenanigans” headline…

Steamboat Willie.

The character’s copyright ran out at the end of 2023, putting its IP usage in the public domain.

Obviously, NFT degens had to capitalise on it…

In the past 24 hours, the top 4 Trending NFT collections have all been Steamboat Willie-themed, with the “Steamboat Willie Public Domain” collection minting at 0.0015 ETH, then skyrocketing to 0.45 ETH floor price at its peak. It’s currently back at 0.10 ETH.

Folks, you know how this story ends (it all rugs and goes to zero). As fun as the pump upwards is, someone always gets burned. Hopefully that’s not you.