In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :)

I follow on-chain markets closely, having traded everything from alt L1s to protocol tokens to memecoins. But until recently, I didn’t find NFTs particularly worthwhile. From a risk-reward perspective, they felt like an inferior alternative to memecoins: similarly reflexive and lacking any intrinsic value but way more annoying to trade and hedge.

Remilia Corporation

This changed when I came across Remilia Corporation. In their own words, Remilia is a community of “Avant Net Art Extremists”. In plain English, Remilia is the team behind some of the most successful NFT collections ever. They’ve been collected by the biggest names in crypto, survived multiple cancellation attempts (since refuted), and even received a shoutout from Elon Musk. At the time of this post’s publication, Remilia’s art has a total market cap over $100M with substantial liquidity and turnover.

Charlotte Fang, Remilia CEO

While its numbers are indeed impressive, what really sold me on Remilia was the blog of its CEO, Charlotte Fang. Once I got past his unique style (to say the least), it quickly became clear to me that, on top of being a talented designer and niche internet celebrity, Charlotte is a markets aficionado.

From his notes on NFT royalties in the secondary market to his concise takedown of NounsDAO, Charlotte’s blog is chock-full of nontrivial insights on market dynamics and incentive alignment. I’m no expert on avant-garde art, but as a semi-retired derivatives trader (yes this is a Gainzy reference), I feel somewhat qualified to say that Charlotte’s economic commentary is spot on.

And it’s apparent that these insights bled into Remilia’s design process. Inspired by real-life collectible card markets, Remilia fully embraces the commercialization of their art; each of their collections have carefully planned scarcities, traits with uneven rarity distributions, and liquid secondary markets driven by their Terminally Online fanbase.

Cult-Posting as Performative Art

The last point is worth elaborating on. Remilia has an uncanny ability to spin up self-propagating online communities (read: viral cults), each with its own distinct aesthetic, leadership, and posting style. It’s impossible to assign a sticker price to, but their online presence is arguably the biggest driver of Remilia’s success to date and adds a another dimension to their already compelling art. This tweet sums it up well:

There’s a philosophical component to this as well, but that’s a story for another post. The rabbit hole of Remilia lore runs deep!

Once I was convinced of Remilia’s cultural relevance, I began trading their debut collection, Milady Maker, and observing its online community, mostly through Twitter and Discord. So far, this has been fun, informative, and (to my surprise) profitable. But it wasn’t until I came cross Bonkler, Remilia’s most ambitious project to date, that I felt compelled to get back into writing.

Bonkler: Nouns, but better

Simply put, Bonkler is Remilia’s take on NounsDAO. With a reserve of 27,000 ETH (roughly $50M at the time of publication) and a median sale price of 72 ETH, Nouns is one of the biggest NFT projects ever. And like many early NFT projects, it suffers from flawed economics. I mentioned earlier that Charlotte published an analysis of Nouns’ systematic shortcomings. Bonkler is Remilia’s answer to those critiques.

@codeboymadif published a thread that distills the inspiration and improvements Remilia made; I highly recommend reading it over.

Why I’m Paying Attention

1. There’s a ton of money flowing into the project. The settlement price for Bonkler #1 was 60 ETH (~$120k) in the middle of a crypto bear market. The median Bonkler goes for about 10 ETH. While these are already high, Nouns provides a reference point for Bonkler’s potential upside during a crypto bull run.

   1. Update: Last night, @eth_ben swept 10 Bonklers (25% of circulating supply for 225 ETH. Insane.

2. Remilia’s thought leadership has been prescient thus far. If a BonklerDAO forms down the line, I for one would be very interested in seeing how it handles governance and capital allocation; NounsDAO seems to be struggling with this.

3. A rarity meta is beginning to unfold, and it’s been pretty fun to follow along. There have already been large-scale bidding wars over rare traits, Bonkler #, and general aesthetics. Early market participants are making big bets at a high variance stage in Bonkler trading (rarities will become known as more Bonklers are revealed), and it’ll be interesting to see who the secondary market ends up rewarding.

4. There is additional game theory involved with Auctioncore NFTs, a Bonkler sub-collection that is yet to be released. All Bonkler bids, even those that lose the auction, are rewarded with Auctioncore NFTs. Rares go towards the highest bids. Even with only limited information, early bidders are working to farm Auctioncore.

Introducing the Bonkler Series

Over the coming months, I will be observing the daily Bonkler auctions, speaking with prominent collectors, and synthesizing my takeaways across a series of posts.

Areas of interest include:

• Bonkler bidder sentiment

• Notable auctions/events

• Rarity meta and how it’s expect to evolve

• Secondary market dynamics

• Bonkler sub-collection (Auctioncore NFTs)

• Potential BonklerDAO?

Will Bonkler be culturally relevant 1 year from now when the auctions wrap up? Maybe. Maybe not. But at this point, I know better than to fade Remilia :)

Thanks to Charlotte Fang and Remilia for sparking my interest in NFTs and inspiring me to get back into writing.