In just 10 days, the trading volume of an NFT project exceeded 10,000 ETH during a bear market. What was this project that surprised many people? Let me share my personal experience of the stories of End of Sartoshi and Nakamigos.

In mid-June 2022, I learned that Sartoshi, the author of mfers, had left the project and handed it over to community governance. He launched one of the earliest timed Open Edition models, End of Sartoshi, which we consider to be the last work of Satoshi Nakamoto.

The minting price was 0.065 ETH, and 16,999 END tokens were minted. I found that the price of End of Sartoshi was lower than the issue price, so I immediately purchased nine tokens. At the time, it was the coldest phase of the bear market, with Ethereum priced at $1,206.94 USD, but Gwei was not cheap.

I had known about mfers for a long time but had not participated in minting or purchasing. Some old friends and I were in a WeChat group called "Digital Territory" (https://t.me/DoNewsDao), and many people were playing with it, especially my friend Chunhua Fan, who mentioned this CC0 project several times. At the time, we were considering sending NFTs to the old friends of DoNews based on mfers and discussing the creation of derivatives.

Actually, when I bought it, I didn't know that End of Sartoshi would never open the image. In my impression, Sartoshi was still a very influential artist, but I knew very little about why he left the community and the project governance, and he was even rumored to be a "scumbag."

I had a vague sense of its potential value and told a few friends to buy some. Although the floor price fluctuated greatly, I would buy a few more if the price dropped, and gradually accumulated over a hundred tokens. Eventually, I found that I had too many and couldn't handle them.

I thought I would stop buying at 200 tokens, but in fact, I continued to buy until 265 tokens. This number has always been the top 1 position in holdings. Seeing this number, you may feel familiar with it, right? It is actually a memorable number of a company I used to work for, 265.com, where I was the CTO. We sold the company to Google, and that was such a meaningful number.

Soon, I found that Sartoshi had really deleted his Twitter account with 180,000 followers and disappeared. His last work had become a kind of performance art. Although I couldn't fully understand it, if it were me, I might not be willing to lose 180,000 followers. Anyway, I could feel that this was a kind of courage.

After that, I didn't pay much attention to the price anymore. It was said that the lowest price had once dropped below 0.01 ETH. Regarding the fact that the image would never be opened, I once thought about contacting Sartoshi and asking him to set the TokenURL, and I would provide a set of images to "revive" this work. But I couldn't even find his Twitter account, let alone contacting him.

Nine months later, in a Nyolings WeChat group, some early mfers participants with mfers PFPs were also playing Nyolings. I knew they had a sizable position and asked about it. They all cursed Sartoshi as a scumbag and asked why I bothered buying the art since it would never be displayed. I had to use the classic quote: "Consider it as going to zero!"

Something amazing happened. About a week after we discussed this, the floor price of End to Sartoshi suddenly took off, but it still hadn't reached my average cost, so I didn't pay much attention. Shortly after, Sartoshi wrote an article under his mirror account, announcing his return on January 1, 2023, and mentioned that the final artwork would be used as an NFT PASS asset. The Twitter account sartoshi_rip was registered but hadn't posted anything yet.

At this point, End to Sartoshi, or EOS for short, (not to be confused with the EOS blockchain) took off. We know that the symbol for this NFT is actually END. At the lowest price, it had already increased more than ten times, and compared to my average cost, it had already made 2-3 times the profit.

After being suppressed for nine months and experiencing a near-total collapse and revival of the project, I sold 30 tokens twice to recover my costs. At this point, a friend came to me with 520 PLUR to exchange, and I exchanged a batch of PLUR with him for another 40 EOS. As a result, my holdings dropped to 165 tokens, but I was still at the top of the leaderboard.

After that, sartoshi_rip became active, first drawing two collaborations with other artists to release 300 pieces of art. However, the drawing mechanism was not very friendly, and I only won one drawing despite holding 165 tokens. I was disappointed not to win the second time. Although many people participated in the whitelist drawing, not even half of them participated in the minting, and it was opened to holders later.

EOS prices continued to be sluggish as the market remained bearish due to repeated crypto scandals. Recently, during what we call the "little spring", Sartoshi returned. Some people said he was short on money, while others said he smelled that the market was going to rebound.

After a long time of preheating, we gradually discovered the information behind the Nakamigos project. Firstly, the name "Sartoshi" is taken from Satoshi Nakamoto, and the name "Nakamigos" is taken from Nakamoto, with "Migos" meaning friends in Spanish, implying that they are Nakamoto's friends.

Another project I am deeply involved in, Tiny Dinos, has a close relationship with mfers, including the custom Tiny Dinos #7710 and various interactions between the Twitter account Nakamigos and Tiny Dinos.

According to the analysis of many members in the Chinese community, it is widely believed that Sartoshi and Nakamigos are the same team. Originally, they may have intended to launch the project directly under the name Nakamigos, but the cold start time period was slow and the cost was relatively high, so it was a good idea to use the diamond hands of End to Sartoshi to launch.

The announced snapshot time and the actual snapshot time were different. According to what was previously said, I should have at least 197 tokens, but in the end, only the whitelist of 165 tokens was mirrored. The launch was scheduled during the NFTLA period, but the project team announced the time based on US Eastern time zone. Based on recent activity, there are members of the project team in New York or Miami.

The technical provider of the project team is quite strong, but there was still a mistake made. After the project team minted 500 tokens, almost no one was able to mint normally when the time came. They were all told that they were not on the whitelist, but it was later discovered that the whitelist was incorrect. After the technical team was alerted, the problem was resolved.

I happened to be on a business trip in Los Angeles. Noon on the US East Coast is 9am on the US West Coast. I waited for the result of the minting and fortunately it was eventually resolved. I had planned to choose a number sequence like 888, but I didn't get the chance. I completed the minting based on the whitelist in one go.

On the first day, for the 4 hours that it was open, a total of 6854 tokens were minted, excluding the project team's 500 tokens, the EOS PASS whitelist, and the special channel whitelist. This is less than 40%. The pressure on the second day was quite high, and the Dutch auction model was used, starting from 1 ETH and decreasing to 0.01 ETH. However, it was intercepted by scientists, and based on the records, many scientists from China participated, but the majority were quickly eliminated.

The project team announced the team's website "Hifo Labs" (https://hifolabs.com), stating that team members have been involved in NFT and digital art projects for the past 5 years. The name suggests that it is targeted at Yuga Labs and Larva Labs. Some people don't understand the logic behind it. If you equate Hifo Labs and Larva Labs, and equate mfers and CryptoPunks, you should understand why Nakamigos is a 20K project. This is because MeeBits is also a 20K project.