Drip or Drown: Coming back to NFTs in 2024

2021 was a wild ride. Bitcoin rose to 68k, everyone was going crazy for NFTs and I was riding that wave like a pro surfer (or at least, I thought I was). New colorful projects with great road maps and real-world utility emerged daily, people got rich and the space seemed like it would expand forever.

But then the whole thing started to feel like one giant meme. Derivative apes, pixelated whatever-the-hecks... It was all starting to blur together and floor prices fell quicker than collections got minted. I began to lose money and got wet pants, so I bailed before losing it all in 2022.

Two years have passed now and my curiosity got the best of me so I got back into the space and found out about DRiP, and it's got me thinking maybe, just maybe, NFTs aren't dead after all.

Many people in the NFT space had to learn the hard way that making money overnight is not something that happens every day. Sure, Bored Ape Yacht Club or Crypto Punks made a lot of people rich but far more projects got hyped just to turn out as a rug pull or just another derivative of a hyped collection. Those Smoke Heads NFTs on Solana for example? Man, what a trip. The artwork was sick, all those hazy faces with glowing eyes, and they were spinning this whole story about a 'revolutionary' smoking community. The hype was off the charts.

People were dropping serious money on those pixelated puffers, thinking they'd stumbled onto the next Bored Ape Yacht Club. Then, poof – the floor collapsed. The creators cashed out, leaving a trail of burned investors and a bunch of overpriced JPEGs. That's pump and dump in a nutshell: artificial hype, inflated prices, and a rug pull that leaves you holding the bag (or in this case, the bong).

Coming back to web3 and NFTs in 2024 feels like the space has matured a lot. Sure, shillers and pump & dumps still exist, but platforms like DRiP seem to fill a gap that I was missing in the past.

platforms like DRiP seem to fill a gap that I was missing in the past.

While some NFT platforms primarily cater to traders and speculators, DRiP cultivates a community of collectors by offering free weekly NFT drops and fostering long-term engagement through features like personalized galleries and curated collections. DRiP incentivizes collectors to hold onto their NFTs rather than quickly selling them, rewarding those who actively participate in the platform's ecosystem. This approach fosters a sense of community and shared growth, setting DRiP apart from the often speculative nature of other NFT platforms.

Of course, even with all this cool stuff, DRiP isn't some magical utopia. It's got its own set of hurdles to jump. First off, it lives and dies by its community. If people lose interest and stop collecting, the whole thing kinda falls apart. And let's be real, the NFT world is moving fast. What's hot today might be yesterday's news tomorrow. Plus, there's the whole crypto regulation thing looming overhead. Governments are still figuring out what to do with all this decentralized tech, and that could throw a wrench in the works. Sounds easy, the only challenge for DRiP is to keep the community engaged, adapt to the ever-changing NFT landscape, and navigate the regulatory maze. No pressure, right?

While I’m still figuring out what happened to all the projects I looked into back in 2021, it feels great to see what the NFT community has come up with since then. I’m stoked to be back and to share my thoughts about web3 and NFTs.