Overview of the NFT Lottery Tool Track: Challengers Emerge, How Does Premint "Defend Against Countermeasures"?

Author: Cookie, Rhythm BlockBeats

In less than two months, Premint will celebrate its first anniversary. In less than a year, over 2.5 million wallet addresses have been active on Premint, with total lottery participation exceeding 20 million. The success of Premint is evident even without data; many Discord Alpha groups have set up dedicated channels for Premint, organizing and publishing daily projects that are "worth a draw." Despite the NFT market being quiet, players continue to click on one lottery link after another from Premint. This strongly and directly proves Premint's king status in the NFT lottery field.

As long as you stand at the peak, being "besieged at the Bright Summit" is inevitable. Just as OpenSea faces challengers like Magic Eden, X2Y2, and LooksRare, more and more "NFT lottery tools" are emerging, challenging Premint in different ways. So, what are some eye-catching challengers that have appeared?

"Eye-catching Challengers": HeyMint, MintParty, and Alphabot

HeyMint: A "Toolkit" that Raises the Flag of "Free" and Breaks Down Technical Barriers for Creators

Using Premint to complete an "NFT lottery" requires paying 1 ETH to purchase a Creator Pass. Some people think this is a bit steep, as spending 1 ETH to manage whitelist addresses can be a significant burden for small projects lacking startup funds.

"Is there a free Premint available?" This sentiment is not uncommon.

HeyMint launched in mid-June, and its team comes from the NFT project Curious Addys' Trading Club, which aims to provide educational resources and practical tools for Web3 newcomers, currently boasting over 20,000 community members. The HeyMint team claims to have previously written code for NFT projects like World of Women Galaxy and ZenAcademy.

When discussing the differences between HeyMint and Premint, the HeyMint team candidly stated, "Right now, there’s not much difference, but we’re free!"

"What's the best part of HeyMint? We are 100% free!"

HeyMint takes pride in being "free," but they also know that "free" does not equate to a successful product. Therefore, they do not position themselves merely as an "NFT lottery tool," but rather as a "toolkit" that breaks down technical barriers for creators, broadening their product positioning without competing directly with Premint. In the future, they will launch a smart contract generator, allowing creators to start their own NFT projects without needing developers. Additionally, they will offer snapshot and airdrop distribution tools to help creators complete these tasks more easily.

Another noteworthy point is that HeyMint now supports NFT projects on Arbitrum and Optimism, which is rare among "NFT lottery tools." Currently, over 1,000 NFT creators and 20,000 NFT players have used HeyMint.

MintParty: Community Data Tracking, Building a "Cooperation Network"

Like HeyMint, MintParty is also free to use, having launched in early April, slightly earlier than HeyMint. The specifics of its team are unknown, but the founder @hungrydumpling_ is known to be a member of PitchDAO.

MintParty, like HeyMint, does not position itself merely as an "NFT lottery tool," but rather as an "NFT community management tool." In the future, they will provide "data tracking" for Twitter and Discord to assist in building NFT communities.

What’s more appealing is the "cooperation network" they are working to build. NFT projects that pass the review can enter the "cooperation network," where they can find desired partners and send collaboration invitations, reducing the time NFT projects spend searching for suitable partners. The idea of the "cooperation network" is somewhat related to the founder @hungrydumpling_ being a member of PitchDAO—PitchDAO was born because a group of NFT builders felt that there were too few people discussing NFTs at this year's ETH Denver and wanted to gather more NFT builders for mutual exchange and collaboration.

"Data Tracking" and "Cooperation Network"

MintParty also supports NFT projects on Polygon and Solana.

Alphabot: The "Premint" in Discord

Compared to the previous HeyMint and MintParty, Alphabot remains a simple "NFT lottery tool," focusing on "optimizing user experience." Its most attractive feature is that it brings "Premint" into Discord.

For NFT players, opening a webpage, connecting a wallet, and then participating in a lottery is still not convenient enough; Alphabot has further optimized this process. Users only need to complete account linking on its homepage, meet the Twitter-related participation requirements (such as following/retweeting), and then click a button in the Discord channel to participate in the lottery.

Holders in Discord have completed asset verification and been assigned exclusive roles. Based on this, project teams often no longer require their holders to sign again for asset verification, making operations more convenient for NFT players, especially when they are out and only have mobile devices without wallets.

All information regarding lottery participation conditions, end times, quota numbers, minting prices, etc., is complete, and reminders can also be set.

The team behind Alphabot is Ape List, an Alpha community aimed at BAYC, CryptoPunks, MAYC, BACK, and Meebits holders. Currently, using Alphabot is free for project teams, but they need to submit an application, and it will no longer be free at some point in the future.

"Defensive Counterattack": Premint's "Next Steps"

Entering Discord

On July 21, Premint announced the acquisition of the Discord verification bot Vulcan. Vulcan is used by blue-chip NFT projects like XCOPY, Doodles, Moonbirds, and RTFKT, with its main feature being that community members do not need to click a third-party link and use their wallets to complete verification; they only need to modify their OpenSea account profile to the given text.

Premint stated that it will launch a "Vulcan Discord lottery bot with Premint power" in the fall, which may be a counterattack against Alphabot. Additionally, Premint will further optimize Vulcan's verification experience by combining its platform data and will provide a migration tool to help Discord servers that want to use Vulcan instead of existing verification bots complete the switch with minimal impact.

Multi-chain Support

Support for Solana and Tezos NFT projects will be implemented in the fall.

Update on Lottery Participation Condition Settings

Support for setting new lottery participation conditions: following multiple Twitter accounts, liking/retweeting specified tweets, and whether to own the required POAP.

Bot Detection

Support for rechecking the ETH balance of wallet addresses participating in the lottery and detecting whether multiple wallets are using the same ID NFT to participate in the lottery.

Conclusion: New Challenges in the "Consolidation" Trend

Will Premint always be the king of "NFT lottery tools"?

It depends on whether "NFT lottery tools" will remain an independent track. Premint may continue to be the king, but it will no longer be the king of "NFT lottery tools"—because in the long run, this track will ultimately be "consolidated."

Premint pioneered the "NFT lottery tool" track, accumulating a large platform scale and broad user trust—this is also Premint's biggest advantage. For project teams, having the most NFT players "try their luck" here can enhance the project's exposure to some extent. NFT players often do not spend time researching the background of a new lottery tool, and it is not uncommon for them to be skeptical or even outright refuse to use a new lottery tool's signature requirements. This creates a problem for Premint's "challengers"—without scale, there is a lack of trust. Without trust, it is difficult to increase scale.

However, what "NFT lottery tools" solve is ultimately just one of the pain points in the startup phase of NFT projects; user trust can be built by addressing more pain points in that phase. The projects introduced earlier, although still just "NFT lottery tools" at this stage, ultimately aim to make "NFT lottery" one of the product's functions, breaking through with a larger product positioning, and allowing users to "easily" use the "NFT lottery" function after achieving scale, ultimately taking a share of Premint's cake.

With the acquisition of Vulcan, Premint can no longer simply be defined as an "NFT lottery tool"; it has become very similar to Whop, which can both verify assets and conduct lotteries. Whop defines itself as an "NFT community management tool."

Addressing more pain points beyond "NFT lottery" is the new challenge Premint faces in the "track consolidation" trend, and Premint has already taken the first step by acquiring Vulcan to enter Discord. This trend of "track consolidation" is what we hope to see—better and more convenient tools emerging to solve each pain point from the startup to the operational phase of NFT projects, allowing more creators to enter the world of NFTs due to continuously lowering barriers.