I have come across Idols NFT in a Telegram community that I follow.
Most other NFT projects and hours of grinding their Discord for whitelists and disappointment after the mint got me sick and I lost interest in NFTs. But I always liked the concept of NFTs. It makes you a part of the community.
Idols NFTs are quite different from other NFT projects.
Every other NFT project has a number of items in its collection. Like 10,000 NFTs in a collection. Project developers decide on a mint price like 0.1 ETH per NFT. So they get 10000x0.1 = 1000 ETH. And also they set royalties of 2.5% to 10% on secondary sales. So they get a commission every time an NFT in their collection gets traded.
And the NFT teams will get paid upfront and they promise to deliver the roadmap in the future. They may or may not keep their promise.
Idols NFT were launched on March 5, 2022. They had only 6,000 followers on Twitter. The mint price of IDOL NFT was 0.25 ETH. 9,000 NFTs were offered for public sale.
The proceeds from the sale which is 9000x0.25 = 2250 ETH won't go to the team and the team has launched their own NFT marketplace on which the secondary sales commissions were set to 7.5%. Even the secondary sales commissions won't go to the team.
The 2250 ETH goes to the treasury and all of it is staked in the LIDO pool. LIDO is a platform that provides liquidity for staked assets. LIDO provides 4% APR on staked ETH. The ETH staked in LIDO gives you stETH. The Idol treasury is programmed in such a way that the ETH stays there forever. The APR generated from the ETH in the treasury goes to the NFT holders. It may not be much but that is not all.
The project also has its own VIRTUE token. VIRTUE is emitted based on the bonding curve. stETH must to bonded into IDOL treasury to generate VIRTUE tokens. VIRTUE has a total supply of 100 million tokens. As more stETH is bonded, more VIRTUE tokens are emitted by the bonding curve.
VIRTUE must be staked to earn secondary sales commissions from the NFT trades on IDOLs marketplace or on Opensea. The secondary sales commissions will be distributed every day to the VIRTUE token stakers.
As more stETH is bonded, the Idol treasury grows and generates APR for NFT holders. The APR generated can be claimed by the NFT holders.
So the treasury ensures that every IDOL NFT is backed by some ETH which only increases with time. As the ETH in the treasury increases, the intrinsic value of every IDOL NFT increases and generates more yield for NFT holders. As more sales of IDOL NFTs happen, VIRTUE stakers are rewarded more.
This is a Virtuous Cycle. At the time of writing, the Idol treasury holds more than 2650 ETH, and each NFT is backed by 0.265 ETH. So even if the floor goes below this amount of ETH, you will earn the same APR for the backed amount. You're literally getting a discount to stake your ETH. And if the floor rises or the amount in the treasury increases, that is a win-win situation.
This is a different approach towards NFTs and adding DeFi elements makes it more interesting. The Crypto community is always interested in finding something new and different. This is kind of different and the unique elements these NFTs bring can be a game-changer for NFTs and Defi.
