NFT Experience Deep-Dive | Learn to analyze!
This article will analyze the House of Warlords NFT Experience using the “Four Pillar Approach to NFTs (FPA)”. This will offer an insight as to how the FPA can be applied as a lens through which NFT Experiences can be inspected as well as highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the House of Warlords NFT Experience — for potential buyers and owners’ consideration.
What is the 4 Pillar Approach to NFTs?
The FPA establishes that the value of NFTs are stored in the four pillars of Development, Content, Marketing & Community — and that a multidisciplinary approach to Web3 experiences and projects provides a route to find investment and development opportunities among the thousands of assets being created and traded every day.
Pillar 1 : Development
As the FPA suggests, development creates utility value for NFTs. When it comes to House of Warlords there are numerous on-chain properties that allow for interaction with the asset outside of ownership and trading. Distinguishing House of Warlords into an NFT Experience, rather than an NFT Project. The following developed features exist for this NFT Experience:
Rarity Traits
The collection is created out of a variety of hand-drawn-traits that combine to make unique 1/1 NFTs with a rarity value due to the inherit rarity of certain traits within the context of the overall collection. Through Seppuku (Burning & Combining) the rarity of a single NFT can be increased by transferring rare traits from one NFT by burning it onto another, also adding an additional honour score to this newly ‘leveled up’ NFT(making it even more rare). This allows for a lot of variety in the aftermarket and valuation of rarity traits the further the complete collection reaches a 100% mint.
These factors contribute to value for short term ownership & interaction with the NFT, making it appealing to people that enjoy flipping NFTs. This does, however, contribute to more price volatility as rarity is dynamic, especially in the upper echelon of the price-hierarchy.
Burning | Seppuku
One of the most notable features of the House of Warlords NFT Experience is the encouragement and incentivization of Burning Assets. They do this by allowing the transferring of rarity traits from one NFT to another through a burn they call Seppuku (following the samurai theme established earlier). By incentivizing burning there is the immediate benefit of deflation that further contributes to price stability on the long term and even a price increase following principles of supply & demand.
In addition there is a 50% chance that, upon burning and transferring traits, a new NFT is obtained from a new and unique House. These secondary NFTs are more rare as they can only be obtained through a burn.
The burn mechanic is most appealing to whales / large collectors as they can increase the value of their collection through trait transferring and the chance to obtain new and rare NFTs from a new house. This will likely not be appealing for smaller collectors due to gas fees and chance being into play.
Staking | Conquest
House of Warlord NFTs have the ability to be staked. Each month the NFT is staked an amount of $OUL tokens is earned. The ability to stake assets provides the positive benefit of long-term price stability — as not only are assets being frozen, this is further encouraged and incentivized by offering a reward in the form of a token and an immediate use-case for the token provided.
Staking mechanics appeal to long term holders of both small and large collections. It entails less risk than burning due to gas and required rarity research.
$OUL Token
When Staking and Burning House of Warlords NFTs, $OUL tokens are obtained. These tokens can be used in the $OUL Collector: a secondary NFT shop with limited edition NFTs.
Rarity.tools & Warlord builder
A newly made feature on the House of Warlords website is the Warlord Builder. This feature allows one to create a warlord from scratch and hand-pick attributes to look at the total rarity score. This functions similar to the popular rarity.tools website that allows for insight into the rarity of a collection on OpenSea. House of Warlords now has a listing on rarity.tools as well as their own rarity checker.
Pillar 2 : Content
Following the first pillar of development we now look to the content value which provides identity value to an NFT. When it comes to House of Warlords there is the artwork of the NFT Assets as well as the overall theme applied to the experience as a whole.
The Artwork & Customization
The chosen artwork and art style for the House of Warlords NFT Experience is that of Samurai themed tattoo art created and hand-drawn by a talented artist “Punky”. Each NFT is comprised of randomly selected traits such as armor-pieces, helmets, physical traits and weapons.
Each trait contributes to the overall rarity value of the NFT through the rarity of traits and the collectability of the NFTs as art. On top of this, the individual NFTs can be customized to the owners demands.
Through the Burn (Seppuku) and included trait transfer it is possible to customize a warlord to one’s own taste, further contributing to a sense of pride of ownership which adds to the emotional and thereby financial investment of the NFT. Say a warlord is dressed in the finest weapons and armor pieces but misses the token samurai helmet, it is possible through purchasing other NFTs and burning them to transfer traits. Adding a sense of completeness and aesthetic satisfaction.
Pillar 3 : Marketing
Now that we’ve laid bare the leverage that House of Warlord holds in their development and content, it is time to analyze how the team has communicated this leverage to (potential) collectors through their social media marketing efforts.
The Samurai Theme
Outside of the art style used for the NFTs themselves, the samurai theme is found all throughout the NFT Experience. Instead of using the token web 3.0 terms such as “staking” and “burning” and denoting them as such — they add a creative spin to these features and how they all tie in together into the experience as a whole. This is evidence that the team behind the experience is highly competent in creating an overall well-rounded and themed experience that is not only enjoyable and immersive, but also easy to understand for people new to the space and new to a lot of these features.
Imagining your Warlord going on a conquest to return with souls of fallen foes, is easier to comprehend as a beginner than ”staking your asset and making it into an ERC20 Token Faucet.”
Social media Analysis
Part of the marketing analysis includes checking the social media platforms through which House of Warlords has gained most of its following. The methods of marketing are analyzed and checked for potential red flags. What we look for is if they have chosen organic growth or have cut corners. These red flags are often indicated by a lot of hype building through mass giveaways and encouraging follow for follow. Also we inspect the engagement rate on their messages compared to their total following count.
When looking at the Instagram it is evident that this is where a majority of their social media following has come from. Two notable things pop up: a low content count and a low engagement count. There are less than 30 posts with a <1% engagement rate on them. This can be considered a red flag and indicate synthetic growth.
Upon further analysis on Socialblade an interesting discrepancy presents itself, displaying a follower count at almost 10.000 followers 2 years ago when the project didn’t even exist yet. Ever since the total follower count has decreased.
Further investigation and an inquiry with the team behind House of Warlords has lead to confirmation that the Instagram account was previously owned by one of the team members and repurposed & renamed for use in the House of Warlords Brand Marketing.
This explains the engagement rate and the decreasing amount of followers over the last 2 years. The reason Instagram was abandoned over time was due to the prevailing relevancy of Twitter in NFT related marketing, providing a significant higher return of investment.
This occurrence has been previously exposed and was never covered up. The team was very transparent in high-lighting their experimentation with social media and acknowledge that the method used was not optimal. They confirm that organic growth is imperative in social media marketing, as the relevant metric of engagement more important than follower counts. They even disclosed that they have tried low volume experimentation with botting services with very negative results, leading them to choose organic growth henceforth.
I commend the team in their transparency and honesty in bringing answers to this found discrepancy on a very short notice.
Upon analysis of the twitter account of House of Warlords its evident that it is less popular than the Instagram account. Regardless we look at the integrity of the marketing methods used and look if their growth was organic or synthetic (botted). For this we use a tool like Followerwonk, which allows insights into a twitter accounts following. Looking mostly at the average tweets sent by their followers we can see that around 6% of the total twitter following has never tweeted before. These could be bots or simply accounts of people that use twitter to stay updated on projects and news. As this is a vast minority we can say with general assurance that this account has grown organically over time. The interaction per tweet is also good when looking at their follower count and active community on discord.
Dialectic Affiliation
Dialectic is a Swiss crypto investing firm that affiliates with high-potential projects and experiences in web 3.0 and provides funding and added value through their network. This added value is reflected in marketing strategizing as well as their community management and adds another layer of value to the House of Warlords Experience. It is one of many factors that has allowed this project to kick off and is a marker of longevity of the project. Ensuring stability of value and even an increase of value over time.
Pillar 4 : Community
As established in the FPA, the community pillar allows for longevity and stability to the value of an NFT asset as it entails gathering the crowd of collectors into an online community of people. House of Warlords has used Discord as their primary community platform where they perform a lot of engagement and host events for their community to enjoy, in conjunction with the interactive nature of the NFT Experience. This keeps things interesting and a lot of collectors have stuck around here. The community also perpetually grows as House of Warlords moves forward with more features and new releases that add to the existing experience.
The community team that runs the Discord is highly competent and the server has been set up professionally. A lot of mundane and otherwise bootlegged tasks have been automated with custom bots, which allows them to focus on engaging with new members, hosting events and helping out newcomers into the NFT space.
Engagement in the server has been gamified through a scoreboard that resets after a period of time, adding a seasonal competition of activity that sees a lot of members returning again and again to engage in the community they have made their home. Participation in community events and engagement is rewarded by a tracked score and access to rewards. This results in rewards and leaderboard score for the most active people on a week-by-week basis instead of who joined the project early on. It keeps engagement scores relevant to-date, giving newcomers a chance to see rewards for their engagement.
The proper application of online community management, platform optimization, creative gamification of engagement and star-moderators make House of Warlords a great community to be a part of. It is easy to integrate as a new member without feeling left out joining in ‘late’ and the project itself provides an easy way of understanding NFT basics for newcomers into the space through the samurai theme and resources available.
Summary
House of Warlords performs very well in all four pillars of value for NFTs and stands to maintain a high value over a long period of time. It has been made attractive for many types of NFT collectors, by design. Both long- and short term holders can benefit and enjoy the mechanics provided. Also low and high volume collections stand to benefit one way or another. The community that has gathered around the experience has a healthy culture and paired with the roadmap this project stands to grow significantly over the next year.
What’s next for House of Warlords?
As disclosed by the team on numerous occasions, the current iteration of House of Warlords is only the Version 1.0. They intend to add more to the existing experience and community that has grown around it. In the future we can look forward to the following hinted and advertised features and events for The House of Warlords NFT Experience:
> Future Game
> New Collection
> More Seasons of Seppuku
> Ongoing engagement & growth of the community
If you read this, thank you kindly for reading my article!
Thanks to the wonderful House of Warlords Community & Team for sitting with me as I set this analysis up. Consider following me as I intend to write more about NFT Fundamentals and commentary on the web 3.0 space. Follow me on twitter for daily updates at https://twitter.com/emperorpalpable
Writer note: Though I own an asset from this collection this has not influenced my critical approach. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate my theory on NFT Valuation called the Four Pillar Approach. The reason I have chosen House of Warlords is because I genuinely believe that it scores well and provides a good demonstration of the theory applied.
