Characteristics of Doxxed NFT Projects and Their Realities
NFT space has been exponentially growing over the recent years. Opensea has achieved $20 billion in NFT sales in 2021, which is around 650 times more than 2020 sales of about 22 million.
An increase in demand has attracted not only buyers but scammers too. That shifted the majority interest to buying NFTs from doxxed creators.
A doxxed creator is a slang term for being documented. It means that doxxed creators have their personal information publicly available, like their real name, education, and career history.
Whether to be doxxed or not, this topic has been debated over the years. Some believe that NFT buyers need to know who is behind the project, while others embrace the anonymity of the web 3.0 decentralized ecosystem.
Many of us in the NFT space buy for the art, trade volume, hype, and other irrational reasons; therefore being doxxed or undoxxed does not matter to everyone.
But for the sake of deep diving into the concept, we will go through the characteristics of doxxed and undoxxed projects.
3 Characteristics of Doxxed NFT Projects
Doxxing is the quick way to make a project genuine and transparent. You will know whether you like the founder or not.
It can be a two-edged sword for the founder as an incompetent creator will most likely be dismissed and not given a chance, but it will also help filter the community and keep loyal project members.
1. Known Founder
Whether it is the founder or all the team members, buying from someone you know is an advantage, especially in a space where scams can be pulled off easily.
Having a known founder is just another advantage for the buyer in terms of their research and due diligence process in buying the NFT they want, unlike undoxxed teams where you can only check some information like their web 3.0 Twitter account, which they just created.
To name a few, below are some well-known founders in the NFT space. Being publicly available has stabilized the collection value during the good and bad times.
On the flip side, it is not necessarily key that a doxxed person has to be famous. The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik, was a young developer who made it in the cryptocurrency space. Looking at it back then, he was just a regular guy. But this person was brilliant and helped make Ethereum the second largest coin to date.
2. Less Potential of Rug Pull/Scams
With a space full of promises, unbelievable roadmaps, and much hype, many buyers fall victims to rug pulls, losing all their money in the process. The undoxxed founders can just shut everything down and move away with the money they raised.
When it comes to a doxxed team, it can be seen as dealing with a public company. It is hard for them just to take away the money and leave as there will surely be legal implications and maybe get haunted by the angry holders! 🙂
3. Expensive Mints (most of the time)
With such high demand for high-quality NFT projects, the doxxed teams are usually preferred. Well-known creators tend to have a large base of following through their social and other media channels.
The advantage they have attracts not only the existing buyers in the NFT space but introduce newcomers to this growing space, allowing them to ask for much higher entry prices for minting their project.
Does this mean you should never buy from Undoxxed Projects?
3 Characteristics of Undoxxed NFT Projects
Some believe that if the team is not doxxed, they will eventually lose their money and won’t make it. But in reality, buyers of CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club did actually moon and afforded their Lambo. They became so big they ended up having to be doxxed. We can’t judge the undoxxed founders just because they did not show their public identity. Until today, most successful NFT projects were created by undoxxed teams.
Then why do successfully undoxxed projects not show themselves?
1. Security
One of the critical reasons successful project creators do not disclose themselves is that they do not want to be a target of threats or get robbed. The freedom of NFT space is decentralized and complete control comes at a cost. There is a risk of losing it all if you have without protection from any central authority. For the above reasons, it’s logically safer to stay undoxxed, make money and live safe.
2. Because it Works
At the end of the day, whether they are doxxed or not, a hard-working creator with integrity will work towards the success of his project. A key example we can’t ignore is Bitcoin; the founder Satoshi Nakamoto is still undoxxed. Bitcoin is still the greatest asset in the whole decentralized ecosystem.
Some projects have done well during their undoxxed period. Goblin-town NFT has been performing well with their mysterious marketing, including their storytelling on their website and unconventional way of running spaces (with goblin noise).
GoblintownNFT project floor price went down from around 5eth to 3eth after the founders revealed themselves.
Final Thoughts
The success of an NFT project is not guaranteed whether the project is doxxed or not.
Buying from a doxxed creator has the benefits of not worrying that they will run away. But the downside is usually having to pay more to mint the NFT, if you have been given a chance to. How do you get that chance? Whitelisting will be for a future article.
Marshoush was apart of the original founding group of The Pulse. Instrumental in creating some of the first imagery and logo for the The Pulse.
