After what has been made out to be one of the longest hiatus’s we have ever seen a NFT project take from twitter, we have finally received the ever-elusive tweet from the Doodles’ team that has been keeping the NFT world on the edge of their seat.
The Announcement
Unfortunately, to say this was the groundbreaking announcement we have been waiting for would be a stretch at best. The rumors have been swirling about what they could be cooking up behind the scenes and what kind of announcement they were going to blow the NFT world away with after their forty-seven-day silence to the public.
This announcement has shown to be just as polarizing as their radio silence has been in the first place, and has seemingly caused more of a divide between the Doodle’s community itself and the rest of NFT twitter. Before we get into that let’s take a look at the announcement itself, and what it means for the project as a whole moving forward.
There are some great take aways from the announcement today, but before we dive into those it does feel like we need to address the elephant in the room with this announcement, and that is the fact that the key point of their announcement has already been announced almost three months ago at NFTNYC.
The way the market responded to this announcement seems to be best showcased in this tweet from KingBlackBored. While the announcement of the raise of $54 million in capital at a $704 million valuation is nothing to sleep on, it is an announcement that we have seen proven to not change the short-term outlook for the project, but it does set the Doodle’s team up nicely to accomplish Doodles’ long-term goal of being the most important Web3 native entertainment brand in the world.
While the Doodle’s team does appear to be using this money for a lot of great things, including increasing their team by three times over, from eleven employees to thirty employees, and filling many gaps in their core team. One of the biggest questions that still has yet to be answered is how will this help to drive value to the holders instead of just helping the brand themselves.
One of the reasons we have started to see these fund-raising rounds not move the needle for the holders as much as they used to is because the market has begun to realize, that as holders, they are taking on the biggest risk financially, whether in mint cost or secondary costs, but have the smallest upside currently outside of seeing their investment appreciate as far as the floor price goes.
Doodles Moving Forward
Doodles are fortunately in a good place to be able to change this moving forward with some of the things they have in the works, which is highlighted by this key announcement. It has flown under the radar that they have hired a Head of Brand Partnerships. The person filling this role is Brandon Rosenblatt, who comes to the position with 12 years of experience working with Fortune 500 brands and having incubated and launched several apparel brands.
Doodles are adding to their already stacked team and showing that they are not afraid to try many different routes to introduce what has grown to be known as Web3 to the masses and to on-board as many people as possible.
The most exciting thing to watch play out will be how the team is able to capitalize on their ventures into the music industry, which is something that could provide an excellent use case for music NFTs. Doodles began preparing for this publicly in June with the signing of singer Pharrell Williams as their chief brand officer.
While it has been rumored that he would be the bridge to the music industry, we have finally received some confirmation in this announcement. While the team kept most of the information close to their chest, they have finally laid out a slight timeline for themselves, announcing that the music NFT project will be released in the next six months in partnership with Columbia Records.
This is a very unique concept unlike any we have seen to date in the NFT space, and one that I am very excited for it. While details are scarce as far as the music project itself goes, CEO Julian Hoguin stated:
“That the song will get radio play and streaming exposure but will also have an underlaying adaptation experience for NFT holders.”
Julian Hoguin
Takeaways
It will be interesting to see how the NFT holders are able to leverage their NFTs as far as any commercial licensing deals go, which will mean more to the holders and allow them to continue to move the needle of innovation.
The other major takeaway from this announcement is the fact that they have also laid out a few details for the company’s gaming side, the often forgot about space doodles. Launching earlier this year as a wrapped NFT allowing you to change from your doodle to an animated space doodle, there has not been much else released on the details of what is to come.
The gaming spectrum is one that is viewed as maybe the easiest on-boarding tool that Web3 currently has. Doodles are looking at it this same way, and are planning on lowering the barrier of entry by allowing users to purchase the characters and animations in game with a credit card instead of requiring crypto.
While gaming is one of the highest risk sectors to successfully pull off, Doodle’s has put themselves into a great position by not making it their main focus, instead an extra incentive.
Overall, this announcement almost feels like it is just scratching the surface of what is to come. While it may not have been as earth shattering as many in the NFT space had hoped, it has shown that the team is setting themselves up not only for success in Web3 but also as one of the main players to be able to bridge the Web2 community in and on-board the masses.
The most important part is not what was announced but is what they are able to accomplish over the next six months. We are at a crucial impasse as an NFT market as a whole and Doodle’s have set themselves up to be on the forefront of the next generation of NFT consumers.
Their success could be a crucial factor in the success of the NFT market as a whole, so while this announcement was nothing more than expected it is nice that the silence has been broken and I am ready to finally see all of the major things hiding behind the scenes.
If you found this article helpful, check out my other work here.
