He who controls this power controls the whole NFT space

Over the past 24 months, I've been asking myself what it is that makes projects successful. A good team? A dedicated community? Great art? These are all important, yet they disappear in the shadow of another variable. (2/25)
Before we turn to this variable, let's look at three examples: Cool Cats, Hape and BAYC. What do these three projects have in common, you ask? Well, let's take a closer look. (3/25)
1.Cool
Cats Cool Cats had risen on the Olympus of the NFT space. In early 2022 they were one of, if I may say THE biggest competitors of BAYC. An undisputed bluechip. The floor price was at over 15 ETH. That equated to more than $45,000 USD at the time. (4/25)But then the team made some mistakes. Cool Cats' new project, Cooltopia, was delayed, then launched, had bugs, and was delayed again. For months. The world-class team became, in the public perception, a team that couldn't get anything right. That got in over its head. (5/25)
Over the next few weeks, the floor price slowly but surely dropped, then, with the release of the game, it briefly went up again before plummeting massively to below 2 ETH. Most holders had only waited for the release of the game to get their exit liquidity. (6/25)
The celebrated blue chip turned into a project with a team that the public perceived as "incompetent". Yet Cooltopia is up and running today. But the floor price never recovered. (7/25)

2.Hape
Hape was the most hyped mint of 2022. Tens of thousands of people competed for a place on the AL, the floor before the reveal stood at a whopping 9 ETH. The team was praised for the incredible design & their professionalism - the next blue chip was on its way. (8/25)
However, after the reveal, small flaws in the collection became apparent, which were publicly discussed by major accounts on Twitter. In the public perception, the talented team turned into a cashgrab team within a few days, that built a project solely based on hype. (9/25)
In the recent past, Hape has won an international award for its website and announced partnerships with major brands like Diesel. The floor price is still 95% down from the all time USD high tho and does not seem to recover. (10/25)

3.BAYC
BAYC is the undisputed number one in the NFT space today and has been for the past months, if not years. Total dominance has evolved into the saying "never fade Yuga" which you hear over and over again on NFT Twitter today. (11/25)
Yuga, the creators of BAYC, has delivered time and time again without question. Kennels, Mutants, Apecoin, etc. However, not everything went perfectly. The Otherside mint was a disaster at the time with millions of USD in wasted gas. (12/25)
Yuga's response to this situation wasn’t great either. They announced that they were considering moving Apecoin away from Ethereum to its own chain, which they later had to retract under public pressure. (13/25)
However, it didn't hurt Yuga one bit. A few discussions on Twitter, but nothing that could be called FUD. On the contrary, Yuga's dominance is stronger today than ever before. (14/25)
Okay, but what do all these examples have in common? I think it's obvious - all these projects made mistakes, some were bigger, some were smaller, however one variable distinguishes them, which I think is the most important one in the whole NFT space: Sentiment. (15/25)
Sentiment is what you might paraphrase as public perception. Perhaps even as PR. It is what is accepted as consensus in the broader NFT space, and especially on NFT Twitter. (16/25)
If the sentiment is in your favor, then you can hardly lose. The sentiment towards Yuga will always be positive. "Never fade Yuga" is true, but not only because of their execution, but also because of the ability of their community to control sentiment: (17/25)
Cool Cats and Hape both stumbled over their mistakes, but in retrospect they weren't so big as to explain such a decline. Mistakes can be ironed out. Sentiment cannot. (18/25)
Once sentiment is ruined, there's hardly any way back. The only project that comes to mind that has ever beaten sentiment is Azuki. Azuki has managed to change public perception from a "rug project" after the Zaga controversy to a bluechip with excellent execution. (19/25)
How did Azuki do it? In my opinion, the core community did not submit to the sentiment and instead of embracing it, re-shaped it. This is not easy, because sentiment in the NFT space is very rarely created by "normal" people. (20/25)

It is the big names in our space, the "NFT Influencers" that set the framework for sentiment in the NFT space. What they tweet, how they tweet, how they frame the conversation plays a significant role in the sentiment of the NFT space. (21/25)
A recent example is RTFKT. They also made mistakes with MNLTH, but just as with Cool Cats, they weren’t as big as they were made in the aftermath. But still the sentiment has changed. Big accounts have framed RTFKT as a greedy project on its way to total failure. (22/25)
And little by little, what the big names are saying and tweeting can also be found in the tweets of smaller accounts. And that's exactly how sentiment develops in real time. (23/25)
And that's not to defend the Cool Cats and Hapes of this world. For sentiment to change, it needs a catalyst. Cooltopia was one, the mistakes in Hape art and the MNLTH situation. There were mistakes. (24/25)
But it doesn't hurt to navigate the NFT space with open eyes, and to pay attention whenever you see too many people agreeing on something. Sentiment is not always right but it always wins. (25/25)