There is a special list of requirements, based on experts opinions, called C.U.T.E. Most NFT collectibles, that follow this criteria are almost a 100% GEMs. What does every letter stand for? Let’s find out.
C is for community
The community is not only about quantity, but also about quality. The number of Discord and Twitter subscribers is easily faked nowadays, so the thing, that matters is how lively the community is. Pay attention to discussions, retweets, comments, etc. If the discussions, happening in the community are around hot topics and aren’t just offtops - everything is alright. Another indicator is the Discord’s online rate. Even though it differs, because of night and day time there is always an average, that shouldn’t be less, than 20% of users.
Azuki’s Discord has 18k+ members online all the time - that is how an interested community looks.
U is for utility
The project should be useful in the future. You don’t want the founders to sell out 10k NFT and to waste all the money earned on some expensive car or vacation. A detailed pre-release roadmap is obligatory with regular announcements and events, happening after the sale. Those could be collaborations, giveaways or even new token sales with privileges for previous series’ token holders.
Metakey’s Medium page, holding all the events, that have already or about to happen as an example.
T is for transparency
The token distribution should be equal between multiple users. If the token quantity is 5k NFTs - the ideal holder quantity is from 2k to 3k users. That way tokens don’t only land into the hands of whales, who can buy out a fourth of the collection and ruin the distribution balance. Right now there is a whole war happening around BAYC with a group of people, holding around 80 apes and not putting them up for sale, while the community is trying to bring back token flow through the net.
Karafuru project shows what a great distribution looks like with 5.6k tokens and 3.6k owners.
E is for empathy
The tokens should describe some feeling and be usable as a PFP. Imagine the token, you are about to buy as a PFP of some celebrity - will it look organically? According to the most hyped up collections, best character emotions are joy, sadness or boredom. However, right now even angry characters can sell out if they look cute. A red flag here would be some provocative tokens.
Once again, Karafuru is a great example with all their NFTs looking somewhat goofy, but expressing certain emotions at the same time.
A simple, yet useful list of filters to use, when searching for GEM.
