1. What are the Mimic Shhans NFTs?

Mimic Shhans is an Ethereum-based 10k PFP NFT (Personal Avatar NFT) project by shhans.eth (Twitter: @shhan1211). MMimic Shhans is a playful “mimicking black cat” in various costumes. Each Mimic Shhans has a distinct set of costumes, expressions, and accessories. The design of a small number of rare NFTs will also be linked with other well-known NFT projects, such as BAYC and Cryptopunks, Azuki. The initial mint price of Mimic Shhans was free and was available for purchase at OpenSea with the Gas cost only at the buyer’s own expense.

Mimic Shhans is based on the ERC-1155 standard. The project follows the CC0 agreement, which is the "no copyright reserved" option in the Creative Commons toolkit, meaning relinquishing all copyright and similar rights and dedicating those rights to the public domain, including the commercial use and secondary creation.

The Man behind the “Black Cats” NFTs

shhans.eth, is the creator of the ‘Shhan Universe’. He lives in Seoul with his Russian blue cat Niki and is said to have started it all for Niki. For reference. Shhan is the name that connects the initials of Shhan’s real name, Seunghun Han and means 山 (Mountain). Also in the Shhan Universe, as described by Shhan, is a mysterious creature in the form of a black cat. In 2020, Shann began to try to paint black cats, which is also the birth of the prototype of Mimic Shhans. The author himself has a relatively large-scale vision for the project, and hopes to spread Mimic Shhans to the world.

No Roadmap and No Project Team

Unlike many other NFT projects, there is no detailed roadmap about the project published and no centralized project operators. Instead, Mimic Shhans didn't have a centralized, recognized "project team" from the start. Shhan left the operation and roadmap open to the community to contribute. Meanwhile he is still an important part of the community. SHHAN is very active on Twitter, interacting efficiently with the followers. He liked and retweeted those related to Mimic Shhans, and is a super communication node. He also initiated the recreation of the Mimic Shhans and encouraged the community to be the creators in OpenSea, without getting any profit out of the recreation work. SHHAN’s homepage: https://linktr.ee/shhan1211

2. Mimic Shhans Coming to Prominence

Mimic Shhans NFTs have become a pretty popular topic in the Asian crypto community. The collection is considered now as a potential blue chip within the community. Up until the time of this writing, its overall sales volume sits at over 728 ETH, reaching its 3rd price spike after its launch, which is rarely seen in the current bear market.

Mimic Shhans has been listed on Opensea in April 2022, with an initial release of 10k avatars — each priced at $0 at that time. Since it was a free-mint project, buyers just needed the gas fee to mint a Mmic Shhans. But there was not much attention from the public and transaction volume was low at the beginning.

The first wave of Mimic Shhans' explosion occurred around 25 June, 2022, and the floor price reached 0.09 ETH.

On July 7, 2022, along with a series of decentralised and crazy community communication events, the floor price of the project soared from 0.09E to 0.18E within a few hours, and its 24h transaction volume also approached Goblintown.

The latest spike followed right after the 2nd spike, and by the time of writing, the floor price is around 0.24 ETH.

3. Why Are Mimic Shhans So Popular?

Foundemantal Value as a PFP

There are plenty of reasons why Mimic Shhans became a potential blue chip in the cryptocurrency community. Number one, in the eyes of most people, it’s art that can be accepted by large groups’s aesthetics. And It occupied an important niche within the field of NFTs – CATS - there were other animals but not an ironic cat. The Avatars are aesthetically pleasant, it just “resonates” with the audience, especially in Asia, where anime is a lot more popular.

The cat figure attracted the cat lovers and especially the women-targeted market. Among the holders and promoters of Mimic Shhans, the number of females is significantly higher than other NFT projects that have been spread in the community before. Comparing to some naturally feminist-oriented NFT project, there is no political standing points, intead, the cat figure naturally attracting the females. And these females, many of whom were KOLs, became the initial promoter of the mimic shhans.

Value of the community: speculation vs the value

Even though there was no overall market strategy of Mimic Shhans at the beginning, the community seems to be working pretty well. Considering the rationale to purchase the Mimic Shhans NFT, there are more people holding it due to the value of the community rather than take it as a speculation. Cat lovers, at the current stage, are one of the large groups in the community, who consider less financial returns, but more values of the art that built linkage to the cats as well as the values in the community. In addition, building connections to the KOLs by changing their social media profile photo is also another trend that is generated in the community. In return, it attracted more people joining the community.

Twitter: initial Channel and Community Followers

Since July 7, it was promoted that "You can increase Twitter followers by changing the avatar of the black cat (Mimic Shhans)" in the Chinese Community, which has aroused widespread resonance among the holders. Mimic Shhans holders then started a large-scale retweet and mutual following activities. In fact, even at the time of writing now, if you change to a Mimic Shhans avatar on Twitter, and send a Twitter with a Mimic Shhans picture and tag #mimicshhans (with a text or a second creation, which is better), there will still be a large number of Mimic Shhans communities members following you.

As a result, Twitter Space about black cats has been in an endless stream, and many community members have also carried out passionate discussions around Mimic Shhans. Then, even in other themed Twitter Spaces, a large number of black cat avatars can be seen among the participants.

Recreation of the Black cat

"Black cats are so cute, 10,000 pictures are far from enough to tell the story of Mimic Shhans." ——As a result, countless community members also joined the secondary creation of Mimic Shhans pictures, along with the Mimic Shhans related Memes, all kinds of interesting ideas are sprouting.

Opensea link for second creators: ​​https://opensea.io/collection/mscreators

Another example, community member wiger.eth came up with the idea of ​​making Mimic Shhans shirts, in order to spread the black cat's Memes to the real life.

4. Future Potentials

Mimic Shhans X Blue chip Project: more are ongoing

Mimic Shanns is still at an early stage given the current audience are mainly in Aisa and there were not many marketing events initiated. However, there are still large potentials for these black cats. Mimic Shhans X Blue chip Project: more are ongoing At the beginning of the design of Mimic Shhans, some rare models were linked with BAYC, CryptoPunk and Azuki. There are some promotions started to these two community members:

Web3 KOLs attention

Mimic Shanns has started spreading among the Web2 KOLs mainly. 7th July, StepN co-founder Yawn Rong also became the family member of the black cat, which can be related to the 2nd price Wave on the same day.

Project Risks

According to the analysis, the holdings of the TOP10 wallet addresses with Mimic Shhans are between 90 and 200 and the number of wallet addresses that owned more than 22 Mimic Shhans are up to 50. If the large position holders sell in NFTs in bulk, there is a risk of a sharp dive in the floor price, which in turn led to a collapse in the development of the project.

5. Where to Buy an Mimic Shhans NFT?

OpenSea is so far the only option to buy from the Mimic Shhans collection. Remember you need to connect your self-custody wallet like MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or other available options.