[Thoughts #116] Ideamarket

PLUS: 🤑 Animoca's strategic investment in Cool Cats

Cool Cats 🤝 Animoca

Let’s start today’s piece with with one of the more interesting headlines of the day.

Cool Cats @coolcatsnft

We're so thrilled to announce our strategic partnership with @animocabrands! 🤝 animocabrands.com/cool-cats-grou…

Yat Siu @ysiu

4/ Our partnership will extend beyond games into all areas of the #openmetaverse by expanding utility and increasing interoperability & culture we couldn't be more excited to work together with the great team @coolcatsnft to help grow the space together! animocabrands.com/cool-cats-grou…

This is interesting for many reasons, besides the possibility that my Cool Cats bags are saved. Thank you Animoca 🙏

In the above tweets, the announcements position the news as a ‘strategic partnership’ while the official announcement from Animoca positions the news as a ‘strategic investment’.

Though the details of the strategic investment are not disclosed, it’s clear this is not your average partnership.

What does Animoca gain?

• Deeper access and partnership with an established NFT consumer brand with a high ceiling

• New and engaged audience that is the Cool Cats community

• Opportunity of acquiring Cool Cats down the road

What does Cool Cats gain?

• Strategic partner that can provide more than just capital in the form of operational expertise

• More credibility in the Web3 space

• Direct access and integration to Animoca’s owned and operated products and investment portfolio

There’s a few segments in the official announcement that help understand the above motives.

It’s not always about what you know, it’s about who you know.

As I said…it’s about who you know. Ken Cron is the Executive Chairman of Cool Cats and is an Advisor to Animoca’s Board of Directors 😉 I’m sure he helped this effort cross the finish line.

It’s also helpful to remember Ken Cron was a key player in the earlier days of Blizzard Entertainment.

Source

The last bit is this:

I don’t know how far along the deal was on September 1st, but the Cool Cats x GAMEE partnership may have been a test run to understand what a partnership integration and activation would look like with Cool Cats. It’s possible that if the numbers looked good, the deal would be signed.

To measure the impact of the test, Animoca would be able to identify Cool Cat holder engagement and activity within Arc8 (through connected wallets) and extrapolate that data to understand what a broader integration with the Animoca ecosystem might do for the business.

And the Animoca ecosystem is…how do I put it? Large.

There’s a lot of directions where this could go. Congrats to both teams!

And with this news, the Top 20 NFT brands chart gets updated, just a bit:

Thanks to LJW and Wilson for helping me better understand strategic investments! I’m not a VC guy (hit me up though VC’s ;)

Ideamarket

A couple weeks ago I had the idea (heh) of publicly asking if any Web3 companies wanted a TPan writeup. I did this on both Twitter and Farcaster.

I wish I could write about everyone that replied, but alas TPan brainpower is a limited resource.

And with that, I chose Ideamarket. Thanks to Mike Elias, who went over the product with me, and congrats to the team on their September 1st launch!

WTF is Ideamarket?

Post-to-earn knowledge graph💡📈 @ideamarket_io

Because 100 opinions you trust, Outweigh 1 institution you don’t. 🚀ideamarket.io🚀 Live now on @arbitrum. (REWARDS: Rate 10 posts, get 1000 $IMO. Ends midnight 9/7. Will filter for scammers.) 🔊

If I were to summarize it in one sentence: Put your opinions on the blockchain.

Remember all the times you made a bold claim to your friends and ended up being right?

Sure you can do the typical ‘I told you so’, but what if that opinion could be recorded? Ideamarket lets you do that.

Ideamarket can:

• Help identify who held early opinions about particular topics

• Understand sentiment around certain topics

• Provide insight to changing sentiment over time

As an example, I can post the opinion that “Apple will be bankrupt by the end of 2023” (spoiler alert: it won’t). Other users could share their opinion and rate the opinion.

But let’s say it’s getting closer to December 2023 and Apple made a series of unfortunate business decisions. The media highlights Apple’s troubles and everyone wakes up from their blue text bubble hypnosis and realizes that Android is simply better (this is fun to write as an Apple user).

Sentiment starts shifting over time.

Great example right? The main takeaway is I’m an idiot (I’d rate that opinion a 75).

Mike compares this to the world of Venture Capital, which makes sense. VC’s make a lot of bets, and sometimes ones that seem crazy.

However, if they hit a homerun like Facebook, Google, or Figma (getting acquired by Adobe for a cool $20 billy), all those ‘opinions’ that were wrong are forgotten. It’s a hits driven business, and that’s what Ideamarket is getting after, but with opinions.

Great, we now understand what Ideamarket is all about. But what’s up with this?

It costs 0.001 (1/1000th) ETH to post and it costs the same amount to rate an opinion. On top of that, Ideamarket has their own staking token, IMO (in my opinion, clever 😏).

The IMO staking is attached to a user and whenever that user posts or rates, it will be added to the ‘Hot’ total. The more IMO is staked from posting and interacting, the higher the post will be in the feed.

This follows the concept of “Put (a little bit of) your money where your mouth is.”

And that’s where there’s a twist 🙃

When a user posts, users can actually earn ETH based on how many users rate their post.

As an example, @shmoji made passive income from their opinion about pain and suffering.

Another user shares similar sentiment. Might as well make the opinions living rent-free in your head help with the monthly bills 🏡

Post-to-earn knowledge graph💡📈 @ideamarket_io

Arguing on the internet: Now worth your time!

So is the play here to make controversial posts? That’s definitely an approach. (Note: Ideamarket will remove anything extreme from the platform — violence, gore, anything illegal, etc. but it will stay on the blockchain itself)

Assuming Ideamarket continues to gain adoption, another approach is to make bets like a VC and have opinions that take a longer time horizon to unfold. As the future becomes clearer, users can search for opinions or users around specific topics or made early opinions and rate accordingly.

How do I get $IMO?

Ideamarket operates on Arbitrum, a Layer 2 blockchain built ‘on top’ of Ethereum.

TLDR: Arbitrum provides the security of Ethereum, but with lower gas fees and faster transaction times.

If you want to participate in Ideamarket, you need to follow a few steps. Fortunately the team created a simple guide.

Additionally, if you have any questions, please reach out to me or Mike (@HarmonyLion1). We got you!

Speaking of $IMO…

If you’re a TPan Premium Subscriber, I got the hookup.

Mike has graciously agreed to offer you 1000 IMO (worth ~$20 at the time of this writing) to help kickstart your Ideamarket journey.

We hope you try out the Ideamarket platform, and worst case hope IMO moons like Dogecoin.

Well, now you know why I asked for your wallet addresses and it’s NOT to scam 😂

For those that haven’t provided me your address yet, please do so! There will be more to come…😉

See you tomorrow folks!