Mizzle’s NFT Tool Box: The Moonbears
Hello dGENS! In this week’s installment of Mizzle’s Toolbox I’d like to talk about a project that I got in a few months back called Moonbears.
It is a pfp collection/ private node provider. To best understand this project, we must first start understanding what a node is and how it is beneficial using one.
Let’s discuss this in further detail below.
What is a node?
So just what the heck is a private node? Before we get there let’s start with the nodes and the mempool. A node can be defined as any computer running the software needed to connect with the Ethereum network. Nodes connect with one another to send information back and forth to validate transactions and store data about the state of the blockchain.
Some of the most popular node providers are Infura, Alchemy, and Quicknode. Any time we perform an action on Ethereum, that transaction is sent to a mempool where it will be picked up by miner and validated on the blockchain. This transaction also requires something called gas. You can think of gas as a small fee that is required to do business on Ethereum. The mempool is where most transactions are submitted before being included in the public blockchain.
So now that we got a clear understanding of what’s going on here let’s see how this usually plays out. If there are a lot of users trying to submit a transaction on the network at the same time, then the average cost of doing business on Ethereum (aka gas) increases.
This happens often during hype mints. If a lot of people are all raising the gas price this is what is known as a gas war. This is important because advanced users or bots can analyze what’s going on in the mempool and front run transactions on the blockchain. This is where private nodes and something like Moonbears come into play.
What is Moonbears all about?
As mentioned above, the most popular node providers do a great job of ensuring the blockchain is synced up properly for all users. But the advanced features to gain an edge in the mempool require a hefty monthly fee. NFT projects like Moonbears offer utility by giving a private node to their holders.
Given the set number of holders in their collection, they can accurately gauge the resource consumption required. The project was released as an omni chain NFT. Users could mint this NFT from several different blockchains and still receive the same utility on ETH mainnet. Users can head over to https://moonbears.xyz/ and delegate which wallet will have access to their private node, the TrippyNode.
TrippyNode is currently running a cluster of network load-balanced nodes in North Virginia, a single node in Germany, and another in Singapore. These are all serviced using AWS Global Accelerator under the domain “moonbears.trippynode.xyz” (All this to say it’s the fastest node around).
So why does this all matter?
Think of the mempool as a crowded club. Let’s say you want to get drinks at the bar (aka mint). There’s a long line but you can pay more money to skip to the front of the line before the bartender runs out of drinks. Having a private node is like skipping the line and going through the back door to have your drinks sent to you faster.
The node that you are using to mint nfts can directly determine if your transaction will be successful or not. Many times, throughout the space the first reap the highest rewards. The team behind the bears is one of the best teams in the space. Khobi123 and trippyfish have created one of the better utility tools in the space.
And if that’s not enough for you, they have partnered with other great utility builders for their holders (some of which I will be reviewing later). The current price for a Moonbears is roughly 0.07 ETH (114ish dollars USD at the time of writing). Having more than 1 gets you access to special tools that their partners provide. For full disclosure, I do own 5 Moonbears to take advantage of the node for several of my wallets.
In conclusion, having a private node could be the difference in you securing the next big mint. This type of utility is essential and can make you a nice stack of ETH if done properly. With that being said, I rate this NFT project: Scale Tipper.
*Thank you to the sensei team for giving a high-level overview of nodes here: https://docs.nftsensei.xyz/education/private-nodes
Also thank you to the dark forest article here: https://pawelurbanek.com/ethereum-mempool-monitoring
Check out my other articles here.
