Ether was once considered the most promising project in 2023. A lot of people are waiting and looking forward to the day Ether will be launched and hope to create a new breeze in the NFT market. But since its launch, Ether has faced a lot of criticism and community rejection. So what is the reason behind Ether’s failure? Let’s find out with Weakhand in this article.
What is Ether?
Overview of Ether
Ether is a collection of 5,555 NFTs with anime-themed character images. The diversely designed collection includes 1123 different features, making each NFT unique and never duplicated with other NFTs.
Ether was launched on June 30, 2023, with some information about the allocation as follows:
- Total supply: 10,000 NFTs
- WL holders can mint Free and lock for 10 weeks or mint for 0.35 ETH.
- The Public Mint round for the community will be minted for 0.65 ETH and will take place on July 9, 2023.
If all the NFTs in the collection are sold, it is expected that Ether will generate nearly 13M USD in revenue. Many comparisons are made between Ether and Azuki or Valhalla, showing the community’s great expectations and desire for Ether to become the next Blue Chip collection in the NFT market.
Development team
The development team includes two famous members in the NFT market:
Ether development team
- Viii is known as a famous artist and has left many marks in the entertainment and gaming fields.
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Viii has been involved in the development of the famous RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis project and has collaborations with famous companies such as Sony, Nike and Epic Games, as well as partnerships with famous public figures .
- CV joins Ether as Co Founder and advisor to the Ether project.
- CV has two years of experience in the web3 market and has contributed to the success of The Valley – an invite-only community comprised of some of the brightest minds in the industry.
Why Did Ether Fail?
Ether’s recent events
WL Mint Facts: The WL mint event on June 30, 2023 took place very successfully and received a lot of attention from the community, the Ether price at that time reached an ATH of 1.4 ETH.
Change in total supply: Right after the WL mint event, on July 2, 2023 Ether suddenly announced a change in the total supply of the collection from 10,000 NFT to only 5,555 NFT.
Public Mint Stage: With the total supply reduced to 5,555 NFTs, only 3,678 NFTs will be sold during this period. Because before the Public Mint sale, the Ether price was only 0.63 ETH, lower than the Public Mint price, so only 198 NFTs were sold in this round.
Implement the Airdrop and auction the remaining NFTs: On July 12, 2023, Ether announced the launch of the Airdrop program. Each owner of 1 NFT Ether Capsule will be airdropped 1 NFT Ether Avatar, Snapshot was taken just before this announcement and the remaining NFTs (1405 NFTs) will be sold in Dutch auction for 0.45 ETH and will decrease every 0.05 ETH every 5 minutes until all NFTs are sold out. In addition, the team also increased the royalty fee from 5% to 7.5% to compensate those who first joined mint.
The reason behind the failure of Ether
Why did Ether fail?
Ether’s failure comes from many different causes, but in my opinion, these are some of the main reasons causing Ether’s failure this time:
- Timing of launch time: The launch of the collection comes at a time when Azuki Elementals is facing many waves of criticism from the community. Investor psychology at that time was very sensitive and was in a state of extreme confusion and fear. Therefore, it is easy to understand why Ether dropped from ATH 1.4 ETH to 0.7 ETH just 1 day later.
- Community building: Known for being a “luxury” project and receiving a lot of recognition before its launch. However, looking at Ether’s social networking platforms such as Twitter or Discord, we see that there is no connection between members of the community. Before announcing the launch, Ether’s Twitter had not posted any Tweets since December 22, 2022 while Discord also only had sparse announcements (one announcement every few months).
- Anonymous team: Although Viii is a famous figure and has participated in many successful projects in the NFT market, he has never appeared in public. Therefore, this is also a minus point of the project in building trust with the community.
- Inappropriate Tokenomics design: Right before the WL mint round took place, the development team changed the mint price from 1 ETH to 0.65 ETH and changed the total supply from 10,000 NFTs to 5,555 NFTs. Perhaps the team also realized that at this time, mint prices are too high and with such a large Public Mint supply, it is difficult to sell them all.
- The team’s handling is quite bad: Immediately after the Public Mint round, the team continued to open the next round in Dutch auction style with a starting price of 0.45 ETH, much lower than the WL price of 0.65 ETH. This shakes the confidence of Ether Capsule owners significantly and they just want to receive the airdrop and dump all their currently held NFTs.
summary
In general, from the community’s expectations of a project that could become a Blue Chip in the future, Ether is going in the opposite direction. The community’s opposition and rejection caused prices to drop continuously and in a repeating spiral. Ether’s failure is fully reflected in the price when Ether Capsule at the time of writing is 0.22 ETH and has dropped 83% compared to ATH. Hopefully the team will acknowledge failure and take the right direction to revive Ether in the near future.
