Porsche NFTs Shift into High Gear: A Tale of Mint Failure to Revving Success

Estimated Read Time: 7 mins

Hey friends,

As one of the world's top ten luxury car manufacturers with potentially the most iconic sports car design in history, the nearly century-old German car connoisseur known as Porsche needs no introduction — but we do need to break down their introduction into Web3 after their first foray into NFTs left them spinning at the start line.

Join us for this Morning NFTea breakdown as we look into exactly how Porsche’s first-ever NFT collection was labeled as a failed mint; yet a few days later overcame this bump in the road and tripled in value compared to its mint price. What exactly happened??

Let's first introduce the NFT project through the words of the Porsche Director of Brand Management, Denix Keskin, who said:

So how did Porsche aim to engage their community? Through the company's first NFT collection of 7,500 customizable tokenized vehicles based on the legendary “timeless icon” Porsche 911 model.

These NFTs are based on virtual assets from Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, which give holders “access to a new world of Porsche where the rewards are real and special to you”. What this included was the prospect to uniquely personalize and shape your NFT car through different “routes” of Performance, Lifestyle, or Heritage, as well as utility through access to virtual and real-world experiences.

To further expand on what exactly lies on the road ahead, each Porsche NFT begins as a blank white Porsche 911 Carrera with a personalized license plate. Over the course of several months, holders can personalize their car by choosing between the three aforementioned possible “roads”; performance, heritage, or lifestyle.

3D artist Patrick Vogel was one of the involved designers who prepared each NFT as an Unreal Engine 3D asset that could be uniquely customized, as well as Belgian visual artist Vexx who helped with each phase’s designs, with Porsche saying “In creating the visual interpretation, we drew on Porsche heritage, typical Porsche elements, and modern lifestyle to put together an exciting set of possible layers in a creative journey”.

Nothing wrong so far with a household name creating exclusive token-gated utility for their community with personalizable digital cars. But it all fell apart when they announced a 0.911 ETH mint price (about $1450 USD at the time) which was extraordinarily high for a mint, leading to many mocking the launch as “tone deaf”.

Porsche held true at this price for the January 23rd launch, which two days later only saw 2363/7500 NFTs minted while secondary sales fell to 0.9 ETH. On the quite public failure that Porsche expected 7,500 holders of their $1450 virtual cars, the luxury brand only netted a “measly” $3.5 million in total. I guess it's lucky they said “Porsche isn’t going into the space for some economic reason”. After this failed mint, Porsche came forward to say:

This created quite a stir with people eager to FOMO in, even though the benefits of these uniquely customizable game engine cars were still not well understood. So how did we go from a lack of demand to seeing a 3 ETH floor with over 2500 ETH in volume in only a couple days?

No doubt, supply shock played an important role with the “exclusive” community consisting of only 1,500 holders; but I think the real kicker was the Twitter thread about the “concrete” utility holders would get. Porsche released this one day after closing the mint, which you can skim through below:

1. Behind-the-scenes access to the world of Porsche [starting: Feb 2023]. This will be eye-level conversations with Porsche insiders.

2. Co-Creation of Porsche’s future in Web3 [ongoing]. We will be utilising virtual co-creation workshops with the Porsche Core Team, deploy Discord polls for community decision making and steer PIONΞER contributions via your ideas.

3. Exclusive capsule collection with physical items [Q2 2023]

4. Porsche 911 evolving into a true rarity through four different customisation phases, leading to over 150k possible design variations. Every NFT will be unique.

5. Community vote on the best design and Porsche creating that car in real life [End of Q2 2023]

6. Opportunity to attend money-can’t-buy Porsche experiences [starting: March 2023]. This results in access to exclusive events that will offer real-life experiences with the Porsche products

7. Experience exciting track experiences in different cities around the globe or a special trip to the home of Porsche.

8. One private Airdrop designed by our partner artists [March 2023].

It’s worth noting that this Airdrop just went live 3 days ago (March 6th). They’re calling these airdrops the ‘Porsche Pioneers Luggage’ and they’ll be revealed on March 13th at their exhibition in Austin, Texas!

With the literal roadmap bringing clarity to the bigger picture, a 1-of-150k possible artist-inspired design unique to you with respective rarity levels, as well as access to “money-can’t-buy Porsche experiences [starting: March 2023]”, exclusive airdrops of capsule NFT collections and physical items, “track experiences in different cities”, all while being “eye-level” with Porsche insiders.

Pair this with the small 2,363 supply made from just 1,494 holders, and maybe it's not so hard to imagine a group of Web3 luxury car enthusiasts with a few bucks to spare willing to get involved with an iconic and assumingly trustworthy brand, even if it does currently cost them 2.5 ETH to do so or nearly 3x the “unpopular“ mint price.

Porsche has clarified these virtual assets should be seen as a “long-term investment” since this is “just the beginning of the PORSCHΞ adventure”. Either way, the Porsche 911 collection has been an extremely interesting project through the up and downs it experienced, this will no doubt be a case study for other legacy brands as Web3 continues to catch their eyes.

All and all you can't help but see the whole ordeal as a net positive for the NFT space. We just witnessed a century-old distinguished brand shift an NFT strategy into high gear, pushing the boundaries of 3D art and NFT utility and paving the way for a new type of enthusiast community never before possible in Web2. The potential of Web3 is very much there for the taking, and what an exciting time to tag along for the ride.

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DISCLAIMER:

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.