The 20x Leader has Emerged, Sonic NFT "Corner Drift"?

Last week, we introduced the Hyperliquid NFT Marketplace (related article). It can be said that the recent market performance of Hyperliquid NFT was mainly driven by the foreign NFT player community, at least not showing obvious signs of Hyperliquid's official intervention.

The Sonic NFT Marketplace, introduced this time, is almost the opposite of Hyperliquid. Sonic NFT can be described as a very unique NFT ecosystem.

The Uniqueness of Sonic NFT

- The NFT player community has almost ignored the Sonic NFT ecosystem. This may be related to Sonic's background, as it is a chain led by DeFi OG Andre Cronje, focused on DeFi, formerly known as Fantom and now rebranded as Sonic. Players involved in Sonic NFT are more from the DeFi player community and those already active in Sonic (Fantom).

- Top-down signals are evident. For example, the current flagship of Sonic NFT, Derps, has a significant number of Sonic's official personnel using it as their Twitter profile picture. Currently, under Sonic's Twitter handle verification, there are 16 verified accounts, with 9 accounts displaying Derps avatars, and even Andre Cronje himself uses a Derps avatar.

- Primarily "equity-type" NFTs. The projects with high trading volume are almost entirely due to the "shovel" effect and mostly come from project teams with actual products, often linked to utility such as token airdrops and token presale rights.

How to Participate?

Compared to Hyperliquid, preparing to participate in Sonic NFT is straightforward. You can directly purchase $S on major CEXs, then bridge to the Sonic chain, and proceed to trade on Paintswap.

Sonic NFT Project Introduction

Derps

Undoubtedly the Sonic NFT flagship, with a total supply of 2000. Many Sonic team members have already used this project as their Twitter profile picture.

The current floor price is 2000 $S, approximately $1100, with a market cap just over $2 million. It is worth mentioning that this project has a token called $DERP, currently valued at around $6 million, and the gap between the NFT price and the token price is not significant. Derps NFT holders can claim $DERP daily, and the daily claim amount does not accumulate, making this mechanism quite interesting. The tokenomics of $DERP are as follows:

- Total supply of 420,696,696 tokens

- 30% allocated to initial liquidity

- 30% for Derp NFT holders, claimable daily

- 20% allocated to the treasury for project development

- 10% allocated for "bribing" various DEXs, which can be understood as marketing funds to enhance $DERP liquidity

- 10% allocated to the team, locked until December 25, 2025

Simply categorizing Derps as a "cultural community-oriented" project is not entirely accurate, as it also features some DeFi gameplay based on $DERP. For example, you can use $DERP to mint ERC-1155-like NFTs to increase $DERP yield, or you can feed your Derps NFT with $DERP to receive Beprs NFTs. The Beprs NFT is a series of 69420 NFTs (initial max supply of 10000, increasing over time), and the team plans to build a game around the Berps NFT in the future.

However, currently, the most attractive aspect of Derps is undoubtedly the "Golden Shovel" effect. Previously, Derps NFT holders received the first major airdrop of $SHADOW, which is a DEX on the Sonic chain, with each Derps NFT receiving approximately 2000U worth of $SHADOW. The OG series of Derps, Derpe Dewdz (with only a total of 100, currently priced at around 5 times the Derps floor price), received approximately 8500U worth of $SHADOW. With many Sonic team members using this project as their Twitter profile picture, players undoubtedly have higher expectations for the Derps' future "Golden Shovel" effect.

SwapX xNFT

An NFT series launched on Sonic's DEX, with a total supply of 2989. The current floor price is 5800 $S, approximately $3300.

This is not a PFP project, but a "utility-type" NFT. Holders can stake this NFT to receive dividends from the SwapX platform and may also qualify for token presales of some Sonic projects.

Lazy Bears

An NFT series issued by Sonic's Token Launchpad, with a total supply of 2244. The current floor price is 274 $S, approximately $156.

The hype around this can be attributed to two main reasons in my opinion: one is the anticipation of its potential future token launch, and the other is the spillover effect of Derps' influence. This is a Free Mint project, and everyone wants to try their luck.

Beardies

The official NFT project of the Sonic NFT marketplace Paintswap, with a total supply of 2048. The current floor price is 1670 $S, approximately $950.

This NFT series allows holders to receive 3% of Paintswap's daily transaction fee income as dividends. Additionally, there's a project called Colorful Coal, which was an airdrop to Beardies holders by the official team, and it also provides 1% of Paintswap's daily transaction fee income as dividends.

METRONIX

An official NFT series issued by Metropolis, Sonic's DEX, with a total supply of 777. The current floor price is 1120 $S, approximately $640.

This series will receive an airdrop of the Metropolis native token $METRO.

Umans

A purely artistic series that took the narrative of the first NFT series on Sonic. With a total supply of 998, the current floor price is 179 $S, approximately 100 US dollars.

Conclusion

As we can see, the current popular projects on Sonic are mainly "equity-type" NFTs, and most of them have a relatively small supply. The future development of these projects will largely depend on the project teams behind them and the entire Sonic ecosystem's ability to reach new heights. A small supply means that when the market is bullish, prices can skyrocket, but during bearish market conditions or if the project and ecosystem fail to develop well, they can also suffer from a lack of price support and liquidity.

Therefore, the most certain Sonic NFT at the moment is probably Derps, as it is unlikely that a competitor will challenge its leading position in the short term.