Some combinations in life just make sense. Peanut butter and chocolate. Peanut butter and banana. Really, peanut butter with anything is the real alpha here folks. So what does the perfect combination of a pixelated poop/mound of dirt picture with a once in a generation meme empire get you? Well if you guessed “The Potatoz NFT!” then you’d be correct!

 

Potatoz is the second entry into the Memeland ecosystem of NFTs, released by 9GAG CEO and team. For the non-boomers in the room, 9GAG is a social media platform specializing in memes and other user-generated content. Memeland is the overarching collection of all 9GAG related NFTs, many of which will be discussed here.

 

The first NFT released by 9GAG was “You The Real MVP” NFT which minted for roughly 5.3 ETH and three months later holds a floor of 29 ETH with a miniscule supply of 420.

 

Potatoz, on the other hand, minted one month ago for the low low price of free! The 9999 supply Potatoz were fully minted via allowlist, offered to partner communities, to MVP NFT holders, or to winners of a public raffle. The Potatoz had no public sale phase and any unminted taterz were minted to the 9GAG community wallet to be used for staking prizes and promotions.

 

Immediately post-mint Potatoz saw a floor price of around .6 ETH. Starting from a free mint, this was cause for celebration! After the full 9999 supply minted, price fluctuated between .5 ETH all the way to .8 ETH before settling somewhere in the middle pre-reveal. After the first stage of reveals, the taterz saw a dip all the way to the .4 ETH range before recovering quickly.

 

Holders of Potatoz and those following along knew that staking would be coming for the taterz. This caused a slow but natural rise in the floor price as the team and 9GAG CEO patiently doled out news to the public.

 

Before staking, Potatoz ran all the way to a 1.7 ETH floor. Now that staking has been live for a few weeks, the floor price has stabilized around 1.5 ETH, and considering crypto has also seen a near 20% pullback in that same period, that’s not too shabby for our starchy little friends.

 

The main driver thus far behind the Potatoz’ value and their price action has been their staking program, dubbed Grow-To-Win, which went live Thursday, Aug. 18. Currently there are 9449/9999, or 94.5% of all Potatoz staked with only 130 listed. To put it simply, the ponzi is strong with this one.

 

The mechanics behind the Potatoz staking are a bit more elaborate than staking games of the past. The staking prizes are awarded via a ticketed raffle system.

 

Potatoz must be staked for one continuous week in order to produce a single raffle ticket. However, if Potatoz remain staked after one week they will begin accumulating an additional raffle ticket for each consecutive week they remain staked.

 

So if you stake your Potatoz today, they will each generate one raffle ticket after one week, then they will generate two raffle tickets each after the next week and so on. This obviously rewards those who continue staking and punishes those looking to “time an exit” who miss and must restake.

 

The first two raffles took place Monday, Aug. 29 and Sep. 5 at 6 AM PST. Up for grabs in Draws #1 and #2 were a total of 50 Potatoz NFTs, and 4 You The Real MVP NFTs.That put the ETH value of the draws conservativ-ely at 191 ETH. Draw #3 includes even more Potatoz and MVPs with the added benefit of giving away 10 iPhone 14s, a phone that is yet unreleased to the public. Not half bad if you ask me.

 

9GAG CEO has promised that the rewards available through Grow-To-Win will be extremely valuable ranging from Potatoz and MVP NFTs seen in Draw #1, to Memelist allocations and other special unannounced prizes.

 

Memelists are allowlists for Memeland’s primary NFT collection, the Memeland Pirates. These will be the main collection of 9GAG and Memeland once they mint, meaning the Memelist spots are a hot commodity. There are thought to be roughly 4k-5k Memelist spots available to raffle.

 

9GAG CEO has also promised additional surprises. For example every fourth draw will include some grandiose prizes. The special prizes for Draw #4 include two lucky winners who will be chosen to receive a one year’s supply of McDonalds for free. If that’s not utility I don’t know what is, and frankly, I’m loving it.

 

The community wallet used for the staking prizes is set to give away over 130 MVP and 670 Potatoz NFTs. That value alone is estimated at 4500 ETH. That doesn’t include the Memelist and other prizes available as well. I think it’s fair to say that’s some decent EV.

 

As much as we know about the Potatoz and the value that their staking ponzi may hold, there is still a world of unknowns surrounding the project. Namely, how long will this whole schtick last?

 

9GAG CEO has not given a sort of timeframe or length outside of saying at the recent townhall to Google how long it takes a real potato to grow. A quick search shows the answer is 120 days, indicating we could really be in this for the long haul if true. It also means there could be another four months until the main collection, the Pirates, mint.

 

If the four month evaluation is true or near that, I’m sure pros and cons can be made for having such a long staking period before the main collection mints. On one hand it’s incredibly rare that staking projects of any type last that long, especially in the bearish market conditions we find ourselves in today.

 

On the other hand, some may see the longer time frame with Potatoz as the perfect place to park their ETH during a slower

 

bear market while they reap the rewards of patience. Additionally four months in the real world is seemingly lightyears in the crypto and NFT space. The market could look very different to the one that Potatoz find themselves in now and if they command a floor of 1.5 ETH during a bear, who knows what price they could see in a bull market.

 

There are also the elephants in the room regarding $memecoin, Petsland, and Stakeland. All three of these have registered and verified Twitter accounts. 9GAG CEO has even come out on record saying that these will be incorporated into the Meme-land ecosystem down the road.

 

When though is anybody’s guess.

 

Could Potatoz staking and the raffle system still be used for $memecoin or other allowlist spots to these projects? Again, I

got nothing but guesses, friend, but 9GAG CEO has stated Potatoz will retain utility even after this initial Memeland phase concludes.

 

Success in this space can be measured by a variety of factors from a collection’s floor price to its lifetime volume and even its unique holder count and everything in between. Perhaps chief among these is the Potatoz’ ability to

continually capture the attention of the space for longer than 24 hours. In all of these cases, Potatoz ticks the box. So when you give me a funny meme and a pixelated potato NFT, that sounds like one heck of a combo.