Introduction

A question I see popping up over and over again is what entry-level NFT projects are out there for beginners who don’t have a lot of ETH to spend. Many of the projects I’ve written about have become out of reach for newcomers looking to build their portfolios. 

There are no guarantees with NFTs and this is not financial advice, but I wanted to break down Purrnelopes Country Club, because I think it’s worth looking at as a starter NFT project. 

Since I started writing this article on 9/8, the floor price (lowest price available of an asset) of this project has jumped from .32 ETH to .48 ETH. This may have just become out of reach for newcomers, but is worth a look at why people are putting value on it to help you create a list of attributes you’re seeking from a lower-entry NFT project. 

Disclosures: I own one asset in this project and purchased it for .15 ETH. 

There are a lot of things the creators of Purrnelopes Country Club have done right and I think it makes for a good case on what qualities to look for in projects that are in a more comfortable price range for first-timers. 

You can buy a Purrnelope Country Club asset by clicking here to go to the official Opensea.io listing for the project. 

What is Purrnelope’s Country Club?

Purrnelope’s Country Club is a collection of 10,000 assets featuring avatars of cats with different attributes: 

Source: Opensea.io 

Rarity can be based on different backgrounds, cat breeds, collars, color, eyes, glasses, hat, helm, and mouth, and purchasing a cat grants you access to the Purrnelope Country Club: 

Source: Purrnelopescountryclub.com

The project was founded by Carlini8 and three others, who have committed to ensuring the membership to the Country Club brings value, not takes it away. It’s not a metaverse. It’s not an actual Country Club. It’s a membership to a project asking you to put faith in its founders to deliver you value through your asset. 

This is what drew me to the project initially and raises a point that you must consider when buying an NFT project: there will be product launches that are purely cash grabs. Remember, a 10,000 asset collection, at a pre-sale price of .03 ETH is 300 ETH, or just over $1 million. And that’s the low-end of mint prices. 

Some mints go for much higher, around .08. The market is competitive and without dedicated founders guiding the ship, you may be wasting your money. 

Another pattern to be mindful of as a newcomer is that after a project mints, secondary sales typically peak immediately after. People who missed the pre-sale rush in to buy, driving the price up. It almost inevitably comes back down from a high (in the past two weeks I’ve seen this with The n Project, Cryptoadz, and Fatales). 

All projects benefit from initial hype, but the value comes after the hype dies down (which can happen quickly). 

Currently, Purrnelope Country Club is ranked 113th on Opensea.io for 7-day sales volume, which I see as a positive sign: 

Source: Opensea.io

There isn’t a lot of hype on the project, which means your risk of overpaying during a rush is lower. There are 2,300 owners and the project saw 253.19 in ETH sales volume (~$860,000) in 7 days. 

This means that there is a good base of owners, and strong sales volume, but not at the point where people are FOMOing in and creating potentially inflated prices. 

The founders have communicated that this project won’t be the next CryptoPunks and that it won’t be hype. This is a project steadily building value over time, which is a much healthier outlook for NFTs. 

We all want to see our projects immediately double in value. Given how fast some projects grow the average buyer now expects this. If they don’t see the returns, they move onto something else. 

This is what inherently makes NFT projects risky. The abundance of new supply means there are shiny new objects for people to chase. I’ve got caught in that myself. 

Don’t buy into the hype, buy into the steady growth. 

Purrnelope’s Country Club is a project I’ve seen steadily grow over the past few months. The founders regularly communicate their plans and have done a few things really well that bring value to holders. 

It’s important that you do your own research in any project you buy into, and that you never spend money you can’t afford to lose, but if you are just starting out and have under 1 ETH, look for projects that have similar qualities that I outline in the next section. 

As a reminder, I own 1 Purrnelope Country Club asset. It’s not very rare and would be valued at close to the floor price. I bought into this project to observe the founders so that I could learn ways in which projects bring value. 

This website is not about pumping projects I own. That would be dishonest to my readers. I do not expect Purrnelope Country Club to double overnight. I expect to continue holding on to it so I can see how the founders develop and evolve their vision. 

What Have The Creators Done Well for Their Community? 

A few months ago, the floor for this project was 0.15. About a week ago, it climbed to .3 and is now hovering around .4 — .5. This isn’t the exciting 10x-in-one-week-project. It is sustainable, learn about NFTs while minimizing risk project, and the founders seem to align with that vision. 

They have done a really good job at bringing value. So let’s take a detailed look at how they did that for Purrnelope’s Country Club: 

The project started with 4 FULL-TIME Team Members committed for 1 year 

I can’t repeat myself enough on this aspect. The founders committed to the project for 1 year, and once the project hits 4,000 holders, it is extended to 2 full years. 

Look for projects with committed founders. Carlini8 has over 7,200 followers on Twitter, this isn’t enormous, but it would be pretty public if the project wasn’t supported in the way the founders said they would do it. 

Their reputation is at stake to some degree, and this creates an incentive for them to stay committed and focused. 

The Lesson: Look for public-facing projects creators who are committed and incentivized to see the project do well. It takes A LOT of work to keep people engaged and compete with the thousands of other NFT projects out there. If the creators aren’t 100% committed to it, it’s hard to see the possibility of a project succeeding. 

They paid asset owners to feature their Cat as their profile picture in Discord and Twitter 

The founders allocated 5% of mint sales to pay users to feature their Purrnelope Country Club cat as a profile picture on Twitter or Discord (or both) and receive payment for that promotion: 

Source: Twitter

The first payment was paid out at 0.0369 ETH. The second payment was likely in a similar amount, totaling .07 ETH, which paid me back half the value I put into purchasing my asset (.15 ETH). 

When I saw this on the roadmap, I noticed it was unique. There have been some votes about doing the profile picture again, but I decided to keep my profile picture to continue supporting awareness for the project. 

200 ETH Community Wallet 

After Purrnelope’s Country Club sold out, the founders allocated 200 ETH to a community wallet with the use of the funds voted on by holders. The community wallet also gets 1.5% of all secondary sales, so as more people buy in, that wallet grows. 

This is where it gets interesting. 

Community Wallets can be used in a variety of ways — to purchase and fractionalize blue-chip NFT assets, to buy floor assets from the project, to continue the profile picture advertising program, and more. 

Creation of the KittyBank 

Holders of Purrnelope’s Country Club cats voted to put 200 ETH into a Kitty Bank wallet that would purchase blue-chip NFTs (VeeFriends, 2% of Zombie Punk, a CryptoPunk, an Avastar Founder, 25 Fvckrender Crystals, and more). 

The community also voted to fractionalize a Bored Ape for all community holders. 

Here’s the catch — in order to access the value in the Kitty Bank, you have to burn the token you hold. This is deflationary, meaning supply would shrink if the value of the KittyBank per token became larger than the floor. 

This is a really creative mechanism to incentivize people to hold their asset, or burn it, instead of selling at the floor. 

The total value of the KittyBank is about 800 ETH, which means that each cat could be redeemed for .08 ETH of shares in a collection of blue-chip NFT projects. 

Free Airdrops

If it disappoints you that you won’t get access to fractionalized assets without burning your cat, don’t fret. 

The founders are going to do 8 airdrops, once per month. These airdrops can be burned for a share in the KittyBank, but to receive the full value of shares for 1 asset, you’d need to hold for 8 months. 

These incentives help keep people invested and holding their assets while reducing available supply in the market. It also balances owning a new and developing project with owning some shares in blue-chip NFT projects. This mitigates risk. 

Creation of a Liquidity Pool Using NFTX

Lack of liquidity, even for a period of 24 hours, can kill the momentum of an NFT project. Many people jump from project to project hoping to hit on the next big thing, but transferring US dollars or other currency into Ethereum can take at least 5 days. 

What’s ends up happening (and I’ve personally done this) is people will sell their asset below the floor to get quick ETH to “catch” another project. If it doesn't sell, the owner may lower the price and it starts a chain reaction of a floor lowering event. 

The creators of Purrnelope’s Country Club have come up with a solution by creating a liquidity pool, which you can view here. 

Source: NFTX — Purrnelope’s Country Club Vault

How does a liquidity pool work? 

All credit goes to YouTuber Dangy Wing for creating this awesome explainer video that’s just under 6 minutes long and worth a watch. 

A liquidity pool allows you to convert Ethereum into a token, in this case, a Purr token. You can also convert your Purrnelope Country Club Cat into a Purr token, which can be converted into Ethereum. 

Now, instead of owners selling at or below the floor price to get quick Ethereum, they can convert their asset into a Purr token, and convert that token into Ethereum. 

There are a few different approaches with the liquidity pool — you can buy floor cats, liquidate for Ethereum or hold onto your Purr Token, which would allow you to buy back in if the price goes up. 

Currently, the Purrnelope Country Club value on NFTX is the most popular by volume, with 1,059 mint / redeems. 

Key Takeaways 

It’s clear that the project founders have plans in place to continually build values for holders of the asset they’ve created. They recognized momentum-killing problems (liquidity / mitigating risk) and have solved them through the creation of a liquidity pool and establishing a KittyBank. 

They frequently communicate updates on Twitter, in the Discord group, and on Medium.com. 

Some of these concepts may be confusing to people new in the NFT space (it was for me as well), but the Discord group is a great resource to ask questions and get more information about the various benefits of the project. 

Even if you aren’t ready to spend any money, I still recommend studying this project, joining the Discord group, and asking questions to better understand these benefits and why they are important. 

It’s a good entry point to advance your knowledge of NFTs that can help you better evaluate and identify projects you want to invest in.