This post was originally published here
Pontem is much more than Pontem Wallet and Liquidswap DEX: it’s also responsible for some of the most successful NFT projects on Aptos. Let’s look back at our main NFT milestones of the past months!
Pontem’s Space Pirates are the first-ever Mint-to-Earn NFT collection on Aptos. Not only was the mint free — every whitelisted users who minted a Pirate received 1 APT as a reward. Pirates were designed completely in-house, by the way — Pontem has really talented graphic designers on the team.
To get whitelisted, users had to have interacted with Liquidswap between the Aptos mainnet genesis and October 30, 2022. After a snapshot, we had a list of 40,000+ whitelisted addresses and only 1,000 Space Pirates — so the competition during the mint was fierce. The whole collection was minted out on Topaz in seconds!
The excitement around the Pirates mint was huge, but what’s more important is the excitement *after* the mint. From day 1 and still until today, Pontem Space Pirates haven’t left the top 10 by trading volume on Topaz. The total volume is already over 55,000 APT, or more than $800k (and would be over $1 million at APT = $20).
Pirates’ floor price is currently the highest after Aptomingos: 35 APT. It’s very rare to see such consistent interest in an expensive collection.
Pontem was the first to launch a DEX on Aptos (Liquidswap), and in January 2023 we became the first to launch a liquidity mining program with NFT boosts: Hydroponic Farms. If you have a Space Pirate, you can deposit it in the farm to earn 50% more rewards.
So far, we have two active farms: USDC/APT and USDC/WETH. In the future, we plan to allow projects to start their own farms and decide which NFT collections can be used for APY boosts. Liquidswap’s codebase already provides for this.
Also, all Pirate holders were automatically whitelisted for the Dark Ages NFT mint (see below), and we might do the same for our upcoming collections. So definitely hold on to your Pirate, deposit it in a farm, and make it work for you.
Space Pirates are among the most valuable NFTs in the Aptos ecosystem. So when we want to reward someone for a job really well done, we give them a Pirate. In the past few months, we have bought around 10 Pirates off the secondary market and distributed them to community members who provided very valuable services or won contests.
We also partnered up with some of the biggest NFT projects on Aptos, including Aptomingos and Bruh Bears. Some of their NFTs wore pirate eye patches. We also held a bingo contest with Aptos Monkeys where users could win a Pirate as well as a Monkey.
Our second NFT collection is a dedication to all those who have grinded through the dark crypto winter. It features 1,000 medieval characters with fun twists — and was drawn by one of Pontem’s talented graphic designers, Ilya.
Dark Ages is the second Mint-to-Earn NFT collection on Aptos: every minter received 0.5 APT. To get whitelisted, you needed to either 1) own a Space Pirate (those staked in Hydroponic Farms were included), 2) be a farmer in Hydroponic Farms, or 3) hold a pirate NFT from collaborating collections (BruhBears, Aptomingos, and Aptos Monkeys — all with eye patch properties).
There was also a secondary whitelist for all Liquidswap users who had swapped over 100 APT in the preceding 30 days or whose 0x address had been on the first mint’s WL.
Dark Ages is trading in the top 10 on Topaz. This makes Pontem the only project with two NFT collections in the top 10. We are already working on fresh utility cases for Dark Ages, so stay tuned.
This February, we’ll hold a joint campaign with Port3, a platform for building Web3 identities. Their SoQuest platform is a hub for community quests where you can win rewards for completing simple tasks. In Pontem’s campaign, your reward will be Pontem Tickets.
Pontem Tickets work a bit like raffle tickets, but with much more varied utility. As a first experiment, we’ll hold a Dark Ages NFT raffle, but in the future you’ll be able to get various other rewards as well.
To get a Pontem Ticket, you’ll need to connect to SoQuest and complete all the tasks: follow Pontem’s socials and engage with Liquidswap (swap, add liquidity, join a farm). We’ll publish all the details in the coming days.
As for Pirate Swords… well, they are swords for Space Pirates, they look really cool, and they will have utility of their own. The rest will be revealed very soon.
Oh, and we are also planning a joint collection with Aptos Monkeys… But shhh. Follow the updates.
We’d love your feedback on the NFT retro map and our upcoming NFT plans. Join Pontem on Telegram, Twitter, or Discord and post your comments — they help us become better every day!