Niche enthusiasts are overjoyed as Hyperliquid NFT surprisingly defies the odds and rises in value?

Since the middle of last year, NFTs have gradually departed from the "classical value standard." The value elements used to evaluate traditional PFP-type NFTs, such as image content, community, and narrative building around traditional brands, have largely failed. This trend peaked at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, with examples such as Kaito, which surged to 10+ ETH, projects like Stargaze that experienced significant growth within the Cosmos ecosystem, and controversial projects like MegaETH.

Many players refer to these "FTs disguised as NFTs" as "equity-type NFTs." The most direct manifestation is that these NFTs mostly come from projects about to launch tokens, using NFTs as a starting move to warm up the ecosystem, build community, or directly sell token allocations.

So, when I discovered that NFTs on Hyperliquid had some market activity and even a bit of "classical flavor," I was somewhat surprised...

Savage Growth in the Absence of an NFT Trading Market

The most anticipated Hyperliquid NFT trading market currently should be Drip.Trade (@drip__trade), which will go live on February 27. Although the product has not yet launched, the platform's token $JPEG was released a few days ago. At its peak, the market cap was close to $20 million, and it is currently around $7.5 million.

The airdrop recipients are currently the two hottest NFT projects on Hyperliquid, Wealthy Hypio Babies and K-16 a.k.a KARU, both of which are currently on the Base network and have not yet been bridged to HyperEVM.

So how do you trade projects already on HyperEVM? It is now through the Net Protocol, a tool created by OpenSea protocol engineer aspyn, which already supports some native Hyperliquid NFT trading.

This kind of savage growth situation makes me reminiscent of the runic era at the beginning of 2023, when I used Excel for off-exchange trading...

Furthermore, minting NFTs on Hyperliquid is as cumbersome as it was in the early days of Ordinals. To roughly describe the entire process, you first need to bridge USDC to the Arbitrum network:

After the deposit is confirmed, you buy $HYPE in the HYPE/USDC trading pair:

Once the purchase is successful, go back to the Portfolio page, click on Transfer to EVM in the position to move $HYPE to HyperEVM.

With $HYPE on HyperEVM, you can then use $HYPE to mint new projects.

Which NFT projects are currently in the top tier?

First and foremost is the Wealthy Hypio Babies (@HypioHL), with the current floor price of approximately 0.9 ETH, down from the ATH of 1+ ETH. However, given the overall market downturn, a pullback is to be expected.

Looking at the floor price trend, you'll notice that while Hypio's trajectory has generally been steadily upward, it also experienced a roughly one-month consolidation phase, before initiating a second surge to set new highs in mid of this month.

The Hypio community is indeed the strongest in the current Hyperliquid NFT projects, as evidenced by both price and volume. Additionally, holding Hypio has already yielded several airdrops, including $JPEG from the upcoming Hyperliquid NFT trading platform Drip.Trade, the impactful native meme on Hyperliquid $BUDDY, and Sentiment's AI Agent platform on Hyperliquid $SENT. Also in the pipeline are DeFAI Swarm on Hyperliquid $Neko and the short-term options platform on Hyperliquid Supurr (formerly Buffer Finance) $SPR.

The second project under Hypio is K-16 a.k.a KARU (@karu__16), which has a value proposition similar to Hypio.

However, KARU's price trajectory has not been as smooth as Hypio's. Despite quickly breaking through 0.1 ETH at the start, it experienced a significant drop within a week, only to then rise from the bottom to set a new high, proving its resilience.

The last one is TinyHyperCats, the first native NFT project on HyperEVM (@tinyhypercats). Being native, it currently requires trading on the aforementioned Net Protocol. The current floor price is 17$HYPE.

Which New Projects Are Worth Watching?

Hypers (@HypersOnHL)

This project was already mentioned in an NFT new project introduction article at the end of last year, and it was already very popular at that time. Now, it is finally about to be released. It will start minting on Drip.Trade on February 27th with a total supply of 8888 and a minting price of 2 - 2.5 $HYPE.

PiP (@PiPonHL)

Although it does not have a large fan base, its actual impact is greater than its number of fans. Currently, there is no more information available, just continuous content updates.

Catbal(@CatCabal_hl)

Situation similar to PiP, but with closer ties to other projects within the ecosystem, such as they also receive the $BUDDY airdrop.

Rekt Gang(@rekt_gang)

This project had some community collaborations with Hyperliquid 2 - 3 years ago, such as giveaways and hosting Spaces. They also run a Hyperliquid validation node. However, their goal is to be a community focused on exploring a multi-chain ecosystem, meaning they have had some NFT assets on other chains, which is something to take note of.

Conclusion

NFTs on Hyperliquid may experience a small price surge, mainly driven by the entry of foreign NFT players. As for why foreign NFT players choose to speculate on this chain, it may be because the price movement of $HYPE has stirred up their fond memories of past NFT diamond hands yielding generous returns, exemplified by Wealthy Hypio Babies, K-16 a.k.a KARU, and TinyHyperCats. The recent meme coin mini-surge in the AVAX network also carries a similar sentiment.

If the mini price surge on Hyperliquid continues, there will inevitably be more new projects that "appear overnight like a spring breeze." However, given the significant uncertainty in the overall market trend now, when minting new projects, it is still crucial to carefully evaluate the depth of community and partnership relationships and cherish the $HYPE in hand.