Fractal's Mysterious NFT Drop

The NFT space is moving fast and NFTs and marketplaces are popping up faster than a single person can keep up with. But every once in a while there's a notable announcement from a big name that we should pay attention to. The happened then Justin Kan announced a new NFT marketplace on Solana called Fractal. 

To learn about how to get started with Solana NFTs find my simple walk thru here. 

What is Fractal and what's the Fractal NFT? 

Fractal is an NFT marketplace that's built for gamers. You can visit the site here, but it's not fully operational yet. But you can see that games and the assets (NFTs) inside games are going to be front and center for those marketplace. 

I got involved in Fractal's Discord because I have been following Kan for a few years. He is a co-founder of Twitch and an influential person in the tech community. Because I was one of the first 100,000 to join the Discord server, I was airdropped this NFT. 

What exactly is the NFT and why are people paying between $10 and $1,000 for them? That's still a bit of a mystery. Here's what the Fractal site says. 

We could read a lot between the lines here, but if we look at the path of marketplaces like Magic Eden I think we will see Fractal become THE place for Solana games to mint their NFTs. And who gets a whitelist spot? Maybe Fractal holders will play a role. 

The in-person initiatives could be of interest as well, although they're not why I own the NFT. Game conferences are extremely popular and holding an exclusive NFT could lead to exclusive access in-person. 

There's also a power dynamic to the NFTs. You can see below that bigger Fractals are more "powerful", although we don't know exactly what that power is. 

The exact benefits of this NFT are a mystery, but that's part of the fun of owning NFTs and the entry point to this one is extremely low by NFT standards. 

Tokens please

What we shouldn't expect to see is an airdrop of tokens, which could be used as currency on the Fractal marketplace. The company didn't rule it out, but a token isn't planned right now. 

Going cross-chain

Here's where the marketplace and NFT get interesting. This is intended to be a multi-chain marketplace, potentially allowing games and NFTs to have value to more than one cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

Today, most NFTs and games are locked into a single crypto ecosystem, limiting their potential upside. I think multi-chain platforms will be increasingly important to the crypto world, particularly in gaming, and Fractal is trying to be a key to that transformation. 

Platform potential

Kan helped build Twitch to be a platform that became a standard for gamers looking to share and monetize their skills. Could Fractal be the same for games in the blockchain? 

One of the challenges in NFTs is finding projects and assessing how to participate or play, even if we're talking about a simple NFT project and not a full blown game. Even the early peaks we've seen at Fractal seem to indicate that it's interested in building an easy to use platform for gamers and developers. In essence, it could perform the discovery service for blockchain games/gamers that Google provided for the internet broadly. Imagine this: 

• Solana becomes a gamer and game developer hub because of its low cost transaction infrastructure, allowing innovation to flourish.

• Building on Solana's success, Fractal becomes the marketplace that connects game creators with gamers.

• NFTs sold in Fractal's marketplace attract even more creators who make avatars, weapons, furniture, or any number of digital goods for games. Fractal connects those creators with games and users on Fractal.

• The Fractal NFT becomes a path to early game access, providing both distribution and legitimacy for game developers.

Fractal has the potential to be a big platform in gaming on the blockchain. What I like most is that it's a niche marketplace being built on the right blockchain for gamers with the optionality to add other blockchains in the future. Strategically, Fractal has home run potential. 

Why hold a mysterious NFT? 

Not only did I get airdropped a Fractal NFT, I bought a few more on the secondary market. Remember, prices are under $10 for some, so this isn't a big investment, but there's a reason I'm a buyer. 

I am looking at this as an asymmetric bet in NFTs. Sure, the NFT may have zero value long-term and if that's the case I'm out around $100. But it could also unlock early access to valuable NFTs or future airdrops or some other access I'm not imagining yet. 

We've learned over the last year that being early in big projects is the key. If this NFT has the potential to unlock 100x the value I put into it it's worth it, even if the Fractal NFT has a 90% of going to zero. The key to success in NFTs is thinking in asymmetric bets and this is a low-risk asymmetric bet on a successful founder and a legitimate team. I'll make that bet any day of the week. 

Disclaimer: The NFT Project DOES NOT provide financial advice. All content is for informational purposes only. The NFT Project is not a registered investment, legal, or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. Trading any crypto-related asset is extremely risky and could result in significant capital losses. Travis Hoium does own all four Psychedelics Anonymous NFTs mentioned.