New Year, New Me
In this New Year’s edition, we would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2023. The last 12 months have flown by, and though every year seems to be this way, it still manages to take us by surprise.
The NFT space has seen some ups and downs - this microcosm we exist in is not quite so far removed from the perils of the real world as we might like. And as we move toward ‘mass-adoption’...we’re early though, right?
Things have been a little rough this year for many of us, but we are an optimistic bunch, and in the long run, the future of web3 appears bright. It's our job to look out for one another, be kind, and make this space a place people want to be. We might see setbacks, but we’re all gonna make it in the end.
Here’s to 2023 - the year of the Ghost.
Hello GM.co
GM. Hope everyone’s had a good end to 2022, and we welcome you to an exciting 2023.
The Grey Market's (GM.co) launch is on the horizon, and as a company, we’re entering crunch time, as we double down to tie the knots, tighten the screws, and gear up for the Grey Market-the first of its kind, a social e-commerce platform where you use crypto to buy physical goods!
If you’re still unclear on what GM.co is about, we recommend that you read the last few issues of the PxN Papers, to gain better insight and key information on what to expect when it launches.
This week, we are working with merchants to sort through their desired launch offerings, finalizing contracts, and setting up merchant storefronts. First and foremost, we want to ensure that the sellers we’ve spoken with over Q4, 2022 are onboarded smoothly onto GM.co before we continue to develop and grow the supply side of our platform up to and through launch.
All online marketplaces that have succeeded, focused their full efforts on either growing supply (offerings) or driving demand–80% which chose to focus on supply. As a web3 project, we have the advantage of having both a company and a public community, and thus, we will be two-pronged in our approach.
PxN’s business development team will focus its efforts on growing what the platform offers, aka. growing supply. Our key pillars for this will be direct sales to convince sellers to be receptive to crypto payments, having a referral program to which up to a third of other platforms’ growth has been historically attributed, and providing temporary waivers on listing fees, during the product-testing phase, to drive listings.
The PxN community will work on product-testing, alongside the entire PxN team–to revise the platform–and work on demand growth (driving new user interest) through word-of-mouth marketing–the statistically strongest lever for many businesses’ user growth.
Some examples include OpenTable, which was driven 100% by word of mouth, and AirBnb, which was driven over various periods by 50-70% word of mouth. We will be reinvesting all paid platform fees into driving supply growth and early-stage organic growth as much as possible before making an intentional paid marketing push. This will happen in steps.
In the first month after GM.co goes live, we’re looking to:
- Facilitate the smooth buying & selling of goods on the platform.
- Fix any bugs found and build the next set of desirable platform features.
- Grow product offerings.
- Prepare the platform for Peer-to-peer (P2P) transacting.
The first month will not be about jetting ahead like a maverick at dangerously high speeds. Instead, month 1 will be about maneuvering confidently and intentionally through what was previously considered un-flyable territory, just to make it to the base of the mountain, we are then set to climb.
What we hope to achieve in the first month:
- The platform launches/goes live.
- The first physical good(s) purchased from the platform. (Proof of concept)
- Gather useful, actionable analytics.
- Sellers are happy & feel serviced.
- Buyers receive the products they buy in good order.
- The PxN community and company working together to refine the product, bring on new sellers, & market GM.co via Word of Mouth (WoM) to the rest of web3 & crypto communities.
Once we make it through this canyon that requires balancing intentionality with urgency, we’ll have the groundwork laid to aggressively expand to enabling Peer-to-Peer transactions and make the deliberate marketing push for growth.
As listings flood in during this phase, that’s when it’s prudent to instate listing fees, as the challenge behind listings shifts from quantity over to quality.
For anyone interested in becoming a GM.co seller, please reach out to Wonderhands on Twitter or send an e-mail to patrick@phantom.sh.
Significant questions regarding GM.co can be answered by Pants, Dex, Rei, X4, Megsie, Wonderhands, or JXOctave. General questions may be addressed to anyone working at PxN.
Market Matters
With a slow week at the end of 2022 and the markets quieting down and taking a breather for the holidays, let’s take a moment to look back and recap on last year and consider what it could mean for us in 2023.
2022 was the year of many significant economic and technological developments, especially within the realm of web3 and NFT digital assets. The crypto market and NFT space had a surge in popularity during the end of 2021 and into the beginning of 2022.
This bullish sentiment led to the emergence of many successful projects as investors were seeking alternative ways to diversify their portfolios.
I believe one of the best key takeaways from 2022, was the growth within the NFT digital asset market. They became increasingly popular in representing decentralized digital ownership through artwork and collectibles, while birthing a space for new and existing businesses to grow, showcasing endless new and potential future use cases.
The crypto and NFT spaces come with their own challenges, being a risky class of investment that faced regulatory challenges and bad actors such as FTX and other exchanges that caused multiple collapses and market volatility, leading to many investors in the space suffering significant financial losses.
With the widespread impact of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe, it caused almost every market to experience explosive growth, resulting in many stocks, cryptos, and other assets becoming significantly overvalued.
Meanwhile, as the fears of the global pandemic continued to slow down, the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine began disrupting global trade and inciting fear of the prospect of another world war.
All of this led to the eventual spike in inflation, which may also be partially attributed to the trillions of dollars in stimulus relief sent to individuals, businesses, local states, healthcare, and other programs during these troubling and uncertain times.
As things progressed and the value of the dollar’s purchasing power continued to drop, the FED stepped in to implement monetary policy in an attempt to fight inflation and slow the growth of the economy by increasing the federal funds rate, aka interest rates where they sat near 0% for years.
It was clear to the FED they needed to get more aggressive with their monetary policy after seeing market data and reports and took a more hawkish stance. They began with their first hike of 25bps in March of 2022, the first hike since December of 2018, followed by a 50bps hike in May 2022.
While the FED continued to monitor the markets and economy, they began aggressively attacking inflation by hiking rates at 75bps between June and November. As things began to cool down in the economy toward the end of the year, they finished their 2022 rate hikes with a decreased 50bps hike because sometimes too much policy intervention can be a bad thing and lead to a recession.
Although the year rounded out with a lower rate hike than the previous four months prior, the FED is still monitoring every bit of market, and economic data it can to continue the fight against inflation until the job is complete in their eyes.
In the crypto space specifically, the year ended with a reminder of the importance of keeping funds out of centralized exchanges, as we aren’t always aware of the specifics behind their actions or the extent of their financial exposures.
Gainz's Two Cents
This new year still presents many economic challenges and uncertainties for investors moving forward. While many of the markets had either rebounded or somewhat stabilized toward the end of 2022, investors may still not be comfortable with the current valuations of many investments with the lingering possibility of a recession coming this year.
As always, it is important to diversify portfolios and make informed decisions in order to mitigate risk, as the likelihood of more downside is likely. The FED's future monetary policy and inflation trends will continue to play a significant role in all market's performance as it did during 2022.
A key thing to look for is the easing of inflationary pressures that are significant enough for the FED to slow down and ultimately stop raising interest rates and begin easing their policy. We expect inflation to continue its downward trend with the slowing of global demand in many sectors, which should allow the policy to pivot to slower rate hikes that investors seek.
Despite all of the challenges in 2022, and the potential ones to come in 2023, markets are always forward-thinking and cyclical in nature, so the next economic upswing is visible on the horizon. However, it seems like we still need to reach a larger capitulation phase of investor sell-offs before we see a rebound.
Although it is uncertain when we will, or if we already have hit a rock bottom in the markets, it's always important to have a long-term investment strategy in place next to your short-term strategy in order to weather the storm of any more potential market downturns.
With all that said, here at PxN, we look forward to continuing to provide as much value as possible within these weekly updates. We hope you continue to stick around for the many things we have planned for this year and the future years to come.
Happy new year, NFA, DYOR, stay safe, and see you in the next issue!
- What a year 2022 has been and what better way to end off the year than with Whiteboxes containing Blvck Paris drip and apple watches. We're sure the Whiteboxes in 2023 will be just as exciting.
- To celebrate the end of the year, we had a cosy Fireside Chat and Karoake session with the Ghost Fam.
- The year is not complete without our usual Mental Health Mondays (MHM). We had a special guest, 0xtherapist to share her knowledge with the Ghostfam. We hope to reach out to many people in 2023 so we can bring more positivity to the space.
We Forge On
Here’s a short summary of our key progress for the 8 months of 2022:
May
- Minted our genesis NFT collection, PXN:Ghost Division. Received unwarranted backlash for a small number of the artworks that paid tribute to notable anime characters. 19 artworks were revised, and the holders were given 10Eth each for the inconvenience.
- Grey Market’s alpha platform was released. The Grey Market is our crypto payment, social shopping platform. The features available in the alpha were PFP display, basic chat & DM features, and product listing ability.
The alpha version was made available to holders to help stress test the platform. Shortly after, it was placed under maintenance as we added more features and improvements. We now call the Grey Market, GM.co.
June
- We ran a poll whereby some of our holders felt that the brightness for the NFTs was a little too dark for their preference. Brightening for the artwork was completed and pushed on-chain by mid-June.
July
- When PxN minted, there was a technical issue with Opensea’s floor price button that led users to a fake collection. Some users looking to buy into PxN were led to the wrong page and eventually scammed of their Ethereum.
As of mid-July, we have verified the Etherscan transactions for the affected wallets and issued restitution to users who opened a ticket. - The PxN papers was officially launched in mid-July, with the aim to keep our holders, and anyone interested informed on the project’s progress and provide news and insights into the web3 space.
As we grow recently, the PxN papers has branched out to having a podcast channel with an audio version of the publication as well as interviews with other project founders and hot takes on the web3 space.
August
- In mid-August, we officially launched our Soft Staking site, called The Grid. It was a place for unlisted Ghost NFTs to earn $PXN tokens, our ecosystem’s core utility token. Holders do not have to send their NFTs to a separate contract for staking.
This was the first glimpse into what the PxN 1.0 experience would be like.
September
- In mid-September, Rei’s JPEG juice, a consumable multiplier that increases token generation, was released. We dropped 3 consumables, each of different rarities depending on how long a holder has held their Ghost.
As we rolled along, more occasion-themed consumables were released, and more will be created in the future.
October
- Fast forward to early October, we officially launched Whiteboxes on The Grid. They contained physical items, $PXN tokens, consumables, and the occasional allow-list spot for other projects. Items in the Whiteboxes are randomised weekly.
To date, we have given away items such as Macbooks, Nintendo switches, Gucci wallets, Blvck Paris apparel and our favourite, air-fryers.
November
- So far, we have officially announced two brand partners that will be listed on GM.co when it launches. Namely Blvck Paris and Ukiss Hardware wallets. Look forward to more partnership announcements soon.
December
- GM.co was officially announced in mid-December. This is the start of an exciting journey, as we forge ahead with our vision.
2022 was filled with ups and downs, but as they say, tough times don’t last, but tough people do. With the support of our community, we can accomplish our vision to revolutionize web3 commerce.
We Run Shit Here.