NFT Mint Analysis: How Can We Discover Opportunities Ahead of Time?

The NFT mint stage is a mandatory part of most project offerings. There are a series of pre-mint warm-up or community events where people can get to know the collection better and become early partakers in the community. It is worth noting that NFT mint is also a way to generate big revenue at a small cost, because more often than not, the floor price of a good collection will grow several times or even dozens of times the mint price.

It is crucial to pay attention to mint-related metrics. On the one hand, the public attention a collection obtains during its mint period can serve as a guideline for its liquidity and price in the future. On the other hand, we can explore a generic growth pattern among collections as they progress from zero volume (during mint) to a higher level over time.

As such, we have conducted a data analysis of 4074 NFT collections with a trading volume of over 50 ETH. The purpose of this analysis is to offer our perspective on potential opportunities and trends for partakers and creators of NFTs.

The level of participation of whales and influencers

Generally speaking, trading volume is one of the most important factors in assessing a collection's popularity. What factors may influence trading volume? We define notable minters as Whales and/or Blue Chip holders. These minters have a big capital pool and a high social presence. Furthermore, NFTs are known to be heavily influenced by the attention economy. Data has further demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between notable minters and volume.

Drilling down into specific collections, we found that collections with the highest volumes of this year, including Art Gobblers, Renga, and BFF Friendship Bracelets, all rank high in terms of the number of notable minters.

Early floor price

The floor price after minting is also an important factor. When the floor price is higher, in most cases, the volume in the secondary market will be swept over by FOMO sentiments. Furthermore, data also shows a positive correlation between the 2H floor price and trading volume. Among all collections that we analyzed, the floor price of 65 of them reached 1 ETH within 2 hours of launch, of which 50% — 32 of them even reached 2 ETH.

Early number of minted NFTs & Unique Minters

There is a correlation between volume and the number of NFTs minted within the first 5 to 10 minutes, but it is not significant. Firstly, there are plenty of copycat projects whose sole purpose is to maximize profit in the secondary market. Once these projects' hype subsides, they will vanish, hence they cannot reach a high trading volume. Secondly, in order to determine the popularity of a collection, we need to take into account the number of minted NFTs with other indicators, such as unique minters. Many collections nowadays tend to offer their NFTs in batches instead of issuing their supplies all at once.

It should be noted that, when comparing to other collections, the number of NFTs minted in the first 5 to 10 mins is related to how fast the collection reaches 50 ETH in trading volume. This means that the more the number of early mints, the faster the collection reaches 50 ETH in trading volume.

Trading rate

To some extent, the rapid rise in trading volume is an indication of how buzzed a collection is at a given time. So, how long does it take for a collection to reach 20 ETH, 50 ETH, or even 100 ETH? What are the characteristics of a high-achieving collection?

As we can see from the figure below, the collections that have reached 20 ETH, 50 ETH, and 100 ETH share a similar growth trend in terms of trading volume. On top of that, volume peaked at the 1st and the 24th hours since mint. This is particularly true for the 24th hour time point as volume surged more than 10% in all the three circumstances.

Of all the data we collected, we discovered that 40% of these studied collections reached 20 ETH within a day, the other 25% reached 20 ETH within ten days. Last but not least, the remaining 35% reached the 20 ETH milestone after one month.

It is noteworthy that only 23% of these collections reached 100 ETH in trading volume within one hour of launch. Even after 30 days, only 68.2% of these collections managed to achieve 100 ETH. However, half of these collections hit 50 ETH within 15 days.

The trading volume of collections offered in the bear market is not top-tier, but there are still a few standouts. According to NFTGo.io, since September, Art Gobblers has topped the volume ranking. It is then followed by Renga, KPR, and QQL Mint Pass. Their volumes are 42889 ETH, 2146 ETH, 9235 ETH, and 7539 ETH, respectively. Moreover, a volume chasm is observed for new collections as there are only 40 collections with a volume of over 1000 ETH.

Under the current market environment, people tend to trade with caution, but they have also become better at identifying innovative projects from repetitive ones.