There are collections that mirror the NFTs market, and the "Ether" collection is clearly one of those collections, for better or worse.
No one knows exactly when the project was born, but the collection started making news in January 2022.
At the time, the Twitter account " @Ether " was bought up by several pseudonymous collectors. For a few months, nothing happened, at least officially. But unofficially, the Twitter accounts " CValley " and " Viii " put their networks to good use and created anticipation around the @Ether account and its manga-style visuals reminiscent of Azuki's universe.
In the spring of 2022, the @Ether account, under its new colours published its first tweet, and it was a hit: over 10,000 likes in just a few days. Despite the paucity of information about the collection, the interest was obvious. Again, nothing much happened for a few months, except on the project's Discord where allowlists were distributed.
It wasn't until 2023, that we discovered the project's real objective: to become a brand of luxury clothing and collectibles.
A difficult launch
The problem with a highly anticipated project is that expectations are very high and the slightest misstep can be costly, and that's a bit what happened with the Ether collection. First with the price of the mint: 1ETH with a supply of 10,000 NFT.
In the middle of the Bear Market, this was not very well received even though users who had obtained the sesame to be on the list had the choice: pay less (0.5 ETH) or get the NFT for free but have to wait 10 weeks after the mint to be able to use their NFT.
To make matters worse, a few days before Ether's mint, Azuki launched the mint from its Elementals collection, vamping for attention and some of the (low) liquidity available on the NFT market.
Forced to revise its plans downwards, the price of the mint rose to 0.35 ETH and the supply to 5555 NFT. Ether finally managed to raise 497 ETH ($928,739) out of the 17 Million it wanted.
An uncertain next step
The first collection (Ether Capsule) will be fully unlocked around 10 September 2023, making the entire supply available to buy and sell on the secondary market. Collectors will therefore have the choice of burning their NFT to claim their PFP, keeping the capsule or selling it.
As sales targets have not been met, the team has had to revise its plans by looking for new revenue streams: physical figurines have been announced as well as delivery delays in the expected manga. Mystery partnerships with luxury brands are underway, but nothing has yet been confirmed by said brands.
Cvalley has left the project, replaced by Saintweb3 who will handle business development. The future for the project is therefore uncertain, but with a reduced team and reduced objectives, the money raised through the mint as well as the royalties generated by the volume on the secondary market should enable Ether to follow its roadmap.
