I think there’s several key factors that contribute to what makes a NFT PFP collection successful, so I’ll talk briefly about some of the factors I’ve noticed.

The first and most obvious is one, is just the aesthetic. How does the actual NFT PFP look? Punks use some a retro pixel art style. BAYC uses a more modern comic book kind of style. Cool Cats look like they came out of a webtoon. I can’t prove it, but I believe that the aesthetics of these collections had a direct impact on the kind of communities that gathered around them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that BAYC which uses the most mainstream Western art style out of all of them was able to garner such a large normie Western fanbase compared to the rest.

A second big factor is novelty. Is this NFT collection doing anything new? Punks are the gold standard because they are the first successful NFT PFP collection, period. BGAN Punks are a clear Punk derivative, but use some cool tech to create something totally unique. BAYC kicked off the whole trend of animal PFPs. We quickly moved to things with more “emotion” in them, for lack of a better word. Penguins were cute and easily memeable. Cool Cats have a certain swag to them.

A third factor, and arguably the most important, is the community. Who are the holders of these NFT collections? Does the creator (the very first community member) have some sort of reputation? (Seerlight is a good example here.) Punks are held primarily by crypto-natives. 0xmons are held mostly by a specific anon side of CT, Owen fans. BAYC has the most mainstream celebrity holders, so they have the most mainstream community. They also did a ton of work in building their community: merch and IRL events. I believe their active efforts in building a community is what allowed them to flip Punks. Punks are a boomer artifact with zero utility in comparison. When you change your PFP to a NFT from one of these collections, you are advertising to the world that you belong to an exclusive club.

There’s probably a lot more factors to consider here, but these are the main ones I’ve noticed, and also I’m feeling lazy now so I’m just going to end this here.

-ct_zpy