Web 3.0 and the metaverse are building up lots of hype and expectations but it is important to keep in mind that almost every project or technology that is being developed right now won’t still exist in 10 years. Why? Even though the technology itself has a lot of value, the biggest part of web 3.0 still needs to be built. Only the best teams that add the greatest value will impose themselves in the long term like the GAFAM today (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft). Because it is decentralized technology, it is very likely that the technologies that will stay for a long time will be the one in which the majority of people believe in. Even though this is a realist vision for long term thinking, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t great projects waiting for you to invest in and make huge profits. The only question one should ask to himself would be: What’s the best way to evaluate an NFT project?

In this article we will approach every step required to have the best understanding of an NFT project and its potential value. Key steps to value a project:

1. The Project/Roadmap
2. The Team
3. The Discord, Social Networks, Influencers/Celebrities
4. Your Strategy

1. The project/Roadmap

The thinking process around a project will determine good investments from bad ones. Let’s start by answering the following questions:

• What’s the project about?
• What’s its purpose?

Those are very obvious questions, but it allows you to make a good and simple selection between a variety of NFTs projects. The ones with the most value will be those that have the best implementation/application in the web 3.0/metaverse. Some projects with real life applications will sound great, but we’ve found that if a project wants to do, for example, a huge mural, it doesn’t exactly correspond to what people of this market are looking for. We recommend looking into projects revolve around four specific thematics:

• Private Network/Finances
• Gaming
• Real Estate
• Specific projects where the team is very solid and has the longevity to continue for the next 10 years building the future and constantly sharing value with the community.

Once a project sounds good, study the roadmap meticulously:

• What are the key steps of the roadmap?
• Does the team have set specific deadlines?
• Will the project appear in one month or in one year?
• Are they recruiting a lot of people? How fast are they reaching goals?

If answered correctly, these simple questions should give a great overall vision about the potential of the project. One major point that will be discussed further is The Team, as knowing who is behind a project and their experience in the field is one of the best ways to value a project.

2. The Team

Almost, if not THE most important step to evaluate a project. Who is the team building it and what have they done in the past? A great roadmap and a great project is worthless if the team can’t meet the expectations. Investing in those projects with grand ambitions and regular teams is like investing in a football club that tells you it will win the Champions League. You won’t believe them unless they’re in the final or they reached the final last year. In web 3.0 it is very similar, instead of looking for the next funny cat that can go from 0.2 to 10 ETH just because it looks cool, it is way more valuable to take the time to research about the people that have the biggest impact on NFTs and have worked on some of  the greatest projects. Here are some questions to answer:

• Who are they?
• What do they believe in?
• What are their expectations around the metaverse/web 3.0?
• What are their next moves/projects?

Doing this type of research, trying to contact those people and understand their vision is the best way to make insane gains in this very new market. The hardest part of this game is to get in contact with the people that have clear information and vision about the market. They are the ones working on the greatest projects and meeting the biggest key players of this new sector on a daily basis have this type of vision.

So this sounds nice but how do we get in contact with these people and how do we find them?
Luckily, the answer is not that complicated. Let’s just research about the best projects released so far, their creators, and start digging from there. Soon, you’ll be playing on a such an other level that it will seem like a totally new game in which you can optimize your profits more than you would’ve ever thought.

This part is definitely not the most exciting and almost everyone skips this important step because it’s way easier to say “I like the design, that is meta and that’s why I’m buying it”. But in the long term, following this method allows you to gain real knowledge, expertise and build your very own network in a very promising industry. Apply this same research to the team of the project you are looking into. Once you review the team, their Linkedin, Twitter account and reach out to communicate with them, it will then be the perfect time to look at the social media of the project.

3. Discord, social networks, Influencers & Celebrities

The previous research gives the fundamentals to value a project and grow expertise in this sector. But like every product, even the greatest product of all time, it needs a buyer to be sold. This step consists of reviewing different social media platforms where the teams interact with their community and evaluate the engagement/hype around the project.
Let’s start with discord: All the projects that make their members “grinding” the discord by talking on channels so that they gain levels or giving whitelist spots if members invited more than x people are not recommended. The great teams, working on valuable projects are answering cautiously the following points to build a real community:

• Who is entering the discord?
• What’s the activity of the members?
• Is the community making requests?
• Are the members involved in the decision making?

A discord that is very picky when deciding who enters and that has 15k members is way more valuable than a 150k discord full of bots and people wasting their time talking into channels about nothing in particular trying to get WL. When it comes to discords, the name of the game is quality over quantity.

Instagram and Twitter: Some projects may not have many followers on every social media platform but it doesn’t mean the project isn’t great. Again remember to do the research on the team to complement this part of the analysis. The following questions can help decide if the team engages well with the community: shares updates about the project and has a real intention to be dedicated to it in the following years. Good questions to use as a framework could be:

• How often does the team post?
• What are the posts about? Teams doing too many rewards posts that give access to WL aren’t the most recommended ones.
• Does the team match the deadlines and how does the community react?
• How much engagement do they receive from the community and are they legitimate?

Influencers & Celebrities: It is recommended to have influencers/celebrities that support a project as they bring visibility to it. That being said, let’s set a big disclaimer here. A lot of influencers/celebrities will have no idea about metaverse/web 3.0 and are only here for the money. The team and its experience is way more valuable than some influencer doing a story about some cool jpeg from Dubai. There are influencers very involved in the NFTs world that can be trusted but as said before, keep the main focus on the project and the capacity of the team to achieve it.

Following each previous step and answering every question in this article allows one to get a real feeling about the potential of a project. From this point, it is possible to talk about an investment and not just speculate. Once this clear vision is established, the next important step is to answer this last question: What do I expect from this project?

4. The Strategy

Congratulations! You’ve done the hardest part of the job. Now it is all about managing your overall portfolio, and if you’re investing, defining conditions to both enter and exit the project. Remember that even though so many great projects are being built, just a few will stay long term. Selling your NFTs doesn’t mean losing faith in a project. It just means that at a specific time, you judge the overall hype too high compared to how the project is growing. At the end of the day it is important to know when to take profits!

As the last step of the thinking process, here are ultimate questions you should ask yourself before investing.

Financial Management:

• Have I followed every step mentioned in this article?
• How do I manage my crypto portfolio?
• What % of my portfolio do I attribute to metaverse/web 3.0/NFTS?

Strategy for the investment:

• Will I be minting the project or buying once released?
• Should I be selling my NFT(s) a bit after the launch to use the hype to make a profit as I believe in the project but am not sure that the team can handle such a challenge? (Flip)
• Is there a specific moment in the roadmap where the price could go crazy? (good opportunity to sell even though you can enter again if the price lower enough)
• Do I get any benefits from holding my NFTs for a long period of time?

Now you are more than ready to find the most valuable projects on the market and make millions, you’re welcome 😉

This is the end for this article, thanks for reading our guide on “How to value an NFT project and know if you should invest?”.

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