For all of you who just found Historical NFTs, welcome 👊
Here's a little thread to bring you up to speed with what the heck HNFTs are, and why many of us think they are a big deal.
First, go give @WRabbit1111 a follow and dive into his timeline and thesis, this is what I and the majority of HNFT collectors believe to varying degrees.
To be clear, this is just a thesis, and we could all be wrong. So NFA✌️
whiterabbit1111.medium.com/the-origin-digital-antiquities-market-nfts-1ea9b69c03f9
Now you'll notice the earliest points on the timeline are on different blockchains. Yes, NFTs existed before Ethereum 🤯
@myrarepepe, @SpellsofGenesis, @bitDomains2011, @Punycodes2011 are just a few of the more well know. But the rabbit hole is deep.
This brings us to Ethereum.
Ethereum and its smart contracts enabled the birth of the modern NFT that we all take for granted.
@LeonidasNFT timeline is the best we have which details the projects since Ethereum's birth in 2015.
twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1470397114169630726?s=20&t=P_lMK_2HRjXvAuHF_MT5Hw
Both of these timelines have changed a lot over the past year as people like myself have uncovered more of these old projects.
Just have a look at the changes between @LeonidasNFT first and the latest Ethereum timelines!
And it's not done yet, but for now, lets go back..
The start of the HNFT community was the week of March 6, 2021, when multiple old Ethereum NFT projects were rediscovered.
The most well know of those, @MyCurioCards, and @mooncatrescue are widely held by collectors who value HNFTs.
These two projects have a difference that's the source of much of the debate over the last few days around what makes an NFT valuable or even what's an HNFT.
I'm not going to get too deep into value, but you should understand the difference as you begin collecting HNFTs.
Let’s start with CurioCards.
It's a project with multiple contracts that were deployed beginning in April 2017. When the contracts were deployed, all NFTs were minted at the time and put into dispensers.
Some of those NFTs were sold in 2017, but the vast majority...
..sat untouched until that week in March 2021, when they were all claimed.
So when you buy a Curio, you are buying an NFT on a 2017 contract that was minted in 2017.
Now let’s talk about MoonCats.
The MoonCats contract was also deployed in 2017, and some MoonCats were minted in 2017.
MoonCats were also minted every year from 2017 to 2021, with the vast majority being minted in March 2021.
Interestingly this makes MoonCats one of the few NFT projects with mints in each of those years. Which is pretty cool 🔥
So when you buy a MoonCat, you're buying an NFT on a 2017 contract that was minted in a year between 2017 to 2021.
Do collector value the 2017 NFTs more than the 2021's?
Certainly.
But they are all considered HNFTs because of the contract date.
The timestamp of the mint is so important to collectors that we see a massive price difference even within the Curio Cards collection.
For example, the first card is Apple, and it has a current price on Opensea of 2.5 ETH
Minted just a few minutes later, card #2 is Nuts has a current floor price is 0.3 ETH on Opensea, despite having a smaller supply.
Is the timestamp the ONLY thing that accounts for this price difference?
No.
But it's certainly a big part of it.
Now to be clear, there's a small but vocal group of the HNFT community whose thesis is that the contract date is unimportant.
That the mint date of the NFT is the only thing that matters.
It’s a valid argument and one that while I don't agree with, I respect.
For the vast majority of the HNFT community, we value the work of artists, creators, and developers who released their smart contracts early in the history of NFTs.
Whether or not all the NFTs were minted at that time.