The NFT space has seen a downturn in volume that few could have predicted at the beginning of the year, when these non-fungible pieces of code were all the rage - in fact, **according to a Bloomberg report, the NFT trading volume has collapsed a whopping 97% from its January peak, naturally thanks to the “crash” that crypto and other risky assets have experienced since. **Despite this, NFT projects launching on the most used chains have not slowed down, with of new ones coming out in the first 9 months of the year.

Traditionally, most NFT projects follow a classic “roadmap” to establish themselves:

• #1 - Create social media vehicles, most remarkably a twitter account and a Discord channel (which sometimes only opens a bit later on);

• #2 - Release some sneak peaks about the art and/or utility of the project;

• #3 - Start building a community of “Whitelisted” members, which are supposed to be a group of persons that is especially supportive of the project and that, as such, is rewarded with the possibility to mint a collection first, to mint more pieces or to mint at a lower price. This also generates a sense of “exclusivity” and the more these people mint, the less the general public will be able to mint.

These steps are what normally comes before mint day - but where most projects used a “grinding” system, which forced people to be very active chatters on Discord to “level up” inside their servers, or to complete lots of tasks, new projects have been choosing an alternative path. That’s our topic for today.

The end of Discord grinding…

We remember clearly that, in the beginning, NFT projects based their whitelist group off of the persons which participated the most on their Discord and those who won giveaways and raffles. This system had, however, strong cons:

• Whitelisted members were, quite often, people which had a lot of time versus people which had to work, take care of their family or, in short, had a life beyond Discord;

• Many persons looking to win a whitelist status resorted to using bots, which did their work for them, as most times all that was required was to be active in a Discord chat;

• Raffles were quite often crowded and, therefore, you would have to be extremely lucky to win WL for the projects you wanted to mint (this is especially true for Solana and Ethereum projects, which were more sought after)

At some point in time, people stopped caring and just started botting these systems.

Something had to change.

… and the dawn of OG Passes 💳

Tired of the old grinding system, projects started to venture into new forms of building their group of whitelisted members - and so, OG Passes were born.

But what are OG Passes? Well, we’ll try to give you a clear and complete definition below:

In the NFT space, an OG Pass may be defined as an NFT which provides the holders with exclusive or priority access to a set of features and benefits provided by an NFT project. These features or benefits may include i) priority in minting a collection, ii) lower price when minting a collection, iii) airdrops, iv) priority access to future collections or v) exclusive or first-hand access to a project’s utility, among many other.

As we can see, OG Passes actually can go beyond simple whitelist utility, and usually allow holders to benefit even more from a project.

We are more familiar with Cardano, but the Mallard Order’s Invitation Letters, Moai’s First Class Boat Tickets and Beatboyz’s Hallpass Thingies are all good examples of this OG Pass meta, just to name a few.

Projects started to create these OG Passes with the clear intent of generating an ever greater sense of exclusivity in the form of an NFT. While there are many ways of distributing these pieces, the following are the most common:

• Free airdrops based on twitter engagement and support for a project, normally handpicking members;

• Handpicking a number of persons, based on twitter engagement, and allowing them to mint the OG Pass for a set price;

• Giveaways and raffles of OG Passes;

The first conclusion should be immediate: OG Passes did not eliminate grinding - and that’s true, indeed. If you don’t engage a lot on Twitter, you will probably be left out.

Despite this, it is much more “flexible” and easier to interact with a project on a twitter basis than reaching absurd engagement levels on a Discord, which could sometimes mean spending lots of hours talking to everyone and sharing the room with a huge number of bots. Most will agree that OG Passes via Twitter engagement made it much easier and smoother for truly dedicated users to be rewarded with these pieces.

Moreover, when you hold an NFT that can essentially represent a number of future benefits within a project, or even just a whitelist, you are free to negotiate your position, so you can decide to hold it and benefit from it, sell it to someone else or just reap the benefits you want and sell it later.

In addition to all of this, it’s also important to note that most projects nowadays have both an OG Pass and a separate whitelist, therefore we may end with the following kind of tiers:

• OG Pass holders;

• Whitelisted members;

• General Public

As a result, it is possible, and even usual, for an OG Pass to be even more valuable than a simple whitelist, depending on the exact mint and benefits structuring of the respective project. Please keep in mind that, due to their nature, it is also true that the value of OG Passes is, in most circumstances, the result of pure and simple speculation (then again, in this space, what isn’t?).

Is the OG Pass meta good for me?

In our opinion, yes! Some of the reasons why we believe this can be summarized as follows:

• You will not have to grind like crazy, even if you still have to work for your bags;

• You are able to more accurately define your strategy, giving you a head start to see how the project develops until mint day and after mint day;

• Many OG Passes are free and airdropped, so you may be in a position where you can’t effectively lose anything;

• Many OG Passes collections have a small supply, therefore making it easier for them to reach higher valuations;

• You can freely trade your OG Passes on the market;

The above are the main advantages we see with the OG Pass meta. In short, you, as the holder, will be in a much better and privileged position by holding one of these - and that’s why most of them are worth it, even if all you want is a quick flip.

In addition to this, from the perspective of a project, it is also positive to build this kind of “special membership”. Why you ask? Because it will be able to maximize the creation of a sense of exclusivity (e.g. a club of very limited 100 holders with a huge set of benefits) and may earn royalties for all the trading that occurs on smart contract marketplaces - thus, further enhancing the project’s ability to raise funds at an earlier stage.

Considering the above, we consider the OG Pass meta to be very beneficial to both the holders and the respective projects.

I hold an OG Pass from a project I love! What is the best strategy to follow now?

First of all, the following does not constitute any kind of financial advice and is purely an opinion from someone who has traded his fair share of OG Passes.

Our two main strategies for holders of OG Passes are the following:

• HODL - If you love a project and, in your research, consider the benefits that an OG Pass assigns worth the shot, then you should hold it and mint the collection. After that, you can reassess if you want to keep the OG Pass, but be aware prices normally drop very sharply.

• SELL - if you have an OG Pass from a project that you don’t fully trust or that you feel won’t be worth it, then consider holding the pass until a few days prior to the mint. This is normally the best time to sell an OG Pass, since the hype and speculation is at the highest point.

When you are in doubt, but don’t consider holding, a common thing to keep in mind before choosing one of the above is making an easy question to yourself:

Will I be able to profit more from selling my OG Pass mint allocation than I would by just selling the pass now?

If the answer to the above is “no”, then you should probably sell your OG Pass and keep the profit. Nothing wrong in doing so, and you’ll “free some space” for someone who believes more in the project.

If the answer is “yes”, then you are probably invested in a project which is very valuable, and you should keep the OG Pass - by doing so, even if you sell all your mint allocation, you will always have access to the best benefits of a project (at least that’s usually how it works).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our modest opinion regarding trading OG Passes.

Do you think we’re seeing things wrong here? Do you have a different perspective that you would like to share?

Then by all means, feel free to quote us and ratio us on Twitter (and give us a follow while you’re at it😂)

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