One of my favorite trades of the past year has been focusing on Art Blocks Curated mints.

 

From the branding power of the Art Blocks name, dutch auction mint format, demand from whales, low supply (compared to PFP collections) & the lack of a roadmap needed for collections to moon.

 

There is always an opportunity to hit on a big mint when it comes to Curated drops. Because of this, I put together a breakdown of all 2022 Curated mints, including mint price, current floor, collection size & % of collection listed.

 

If you're new to Art Blocks, there are 4 tiers of project drops. AB Presents: projects that are recognized by the internal Art Blocks team. AB Explorations: wild ideas and commissioned experiments. AB Collaborations: partnerships like the ones with Pace Gallery. And finally, AB Curated: the highest tier of AB mints, approved by the AB. curation board

 

I prefer to focus on Curated as historically these collections offer the highest upside (Fidenza, Ringers, Elevated Deconstructions for ex. are all 60E+ floors).

 

 

Takeaways From The Data

If you just minted every Curated drop from 2022 at / near the bottom rung of each dutch auction your total mint cost would be approx 19.5 Eth + gas. Current floor of all Curated mints last year is 56 Eth.

 

What also jumps out is with 23 mints in the last year, only 5 are trading below mint price. Of those 5, 4 minted at near 2e or higher... which would seem to be the stay away range for an AB mint. If you're looking to be risk off, the 5th, Tide Predictor, I consider to be a bit of an outlier as it's one of the least appealing AB drops, featuring a series of strobing patterns. The polar opposite of passing the wall art test.

 

So we have a 78% hit rate, with 18/23 Curated drops trading above mint, with 3/23 providing a 10x or greater return.

 

Anticyclone

min. mint price: .75 eth

floor: 11 Eth

high sale: 182 Eth

Notable Holders: Flamingo DAO holds 32

 

Memories of Qilin

min. mint price: .75 Eth

floor: 7.85 Eth

high sale: 55 Eth

Notable Holders: Flamingo DAO holds 25, DC Investor holds 19

 

Fontana

min mint price: .46 Eth

floor: 9.7 Eth

high sale: 27.75 Eth

Notable Holders: Danny Seedphrase holds 29

 

Of these 3 none are animated, while art-wise they have more in common with top Curated pieces from past seasons such as Fidenza & Ringers.

 

Fontana by Harvey Rayner

 

Memories of Qilin by Emily Xie

 

Anticyclone by William Mapan

 

General AB Mint Strategy

 

One of the consistent trends with Art Blocks will be that when one mint performs above average, the next Curated will mint out at a higher than expected price point (for ex. Dipolar at 1.93 on 12-14). 

 

If you are trying to time the bottom of the dutch auction mint window, there are usually only a few seconds to decide before choosing whether to mint or not. My approach is I’ll decide before mint starts what price I’m comfortable paying & if it mints out too high, this helps me not to fomo in at the last second.

 

Also, the MVHQ voice chat is extremely helpful as someone is almost always calling out the pending transactions - so you know when its getting close to minting out.

 

Recently, AB Curated collections have shrunk from previous 1k size to 3-500 piece collections. You can always send your mint a bit early if you want to avoid the gas war, & the price has fallen into a range you’re comfortable minting at.

 

If you haven’t participated in a dutch auction before, I would recommend observing one before diving in, as well as getting familiar with setting your advanced gas in Metamask The new AB contract is more gas efficient, which leads to faster mint outs. So you’ll want to be prepared by sending competitive gas & priority fee, to avoid a tx fail.

 

One other data point that can be helpful, is researching the Curated artists twitter, to see which notable names are following the artist & may be planning to mint or buy secondary. While 78% over the past year is a good success rate, no AB mint is a sure thing. Historically we will see high volume right after mint, as people who minted to flip are listing competitively & it can take a few weeks for breakout collections to begin their run-up.