Coinsights #8: The Fractal Hype
Welcome to the 6 new people that have joined us this week! If you’d like, come talk about today’s article in the Coinsights Discord and earn tokens while you’re at it!
Today, we’ll be covering a project quickly taking over the crypto world even before its official launch: Fractal.
What is Fractal?
Fractal is a project started by the co-founder of Twitch, Justin Kan. There’s no official product yet, but the website says that “Fractal is a marketplace for in-game assets and virtual worlds.”
We’re not 100% certain what this means, but it sounds like Fractal is a protocol that games can integrate with to easily create a marketplace of NFTs. Just like how Axie Infinity has its own marketplace, Fractal might provide the underlying infrastructure such that any game can do the same for their own NFTs. I’ll be curious to see if there’s some element of game interoperability here, almost like a Uniswap but for gaming NFTs.
Uniswap is a popular decentralized exchange which lets people swap one coin for another, just like how Coinbase lets you swap USD for BTC. Creating an exchange for gamers to do the same for NFTs is a logical next step and aligns with the interoperability principles of web3. However, I wonder how developers will adjust game mechanics based on how the cross-game marketplace behaves. They’ll have to walk a fine line between supporting interoperability to drive usage and making sure their game isn’t broken as a result.
The Hype is Real
If you haven’t yet, you should join the Fractal Discord and receive some airdropped NFTs. The server is already at 90k members after just a few days! Plus, the organizers are conducting a master class in hype building:
We want to build the best and biggest Fractal community so here's the plan: anyone from @fractal fam who invites 3 new fractals into this Discord will qualify for the airdrop.
Anyone who invites 10+ new fractals will earn the role @social snowflake 🦋. Social snowflakes will have special PFPs on this server, and enter into a raffle where the winner can hop on a 1:1, 60-min FaceTime with Justin Kan to talk about ANYTHING.
One RANDOM RETWEETER (must be following @fractalwagmi) WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS will be selected to receive an additional airdrop on Xmas eve! You guys managed to break Discord, now it's time to break Twitter! Change is coming.
In addition, Fractal has extraordinarily well done graphics (did you see that hype video?!), a strong meme game on multiple social platforms, and a famous founder. Finally, the organizers have made sure to include first time crypto users by partnering with the Phantom wallet to provide a custom walkthrough of how to get a Fractal NFT.
The strongest moat in web3 is the community, not the underlying tech or data. This makes hype building an essential skill in the web3 world, especially on Twitter. Check back in a week or so to see how Fractal is doing and if the earlier predictions were right!