Thread by @ExaltedFoks

I made 0.5 ETH (~$1750) market making NFTs w/ 2 hours of effort.

Heres an overview of market making and finding opportunities in the NFT ecosystem:

First, lets figure out what market making is. Market makers (MMs) provide liquidity on both the buy/sell side and profit off the spread between positions. Importantly, MMs are still expressing a position (net long or short), unlike arbitrageurs who remain neutral.

MMs rely on volume in order to make their spread. Without volume, MMs may become stuck in unfavorable positions. Please keep in mind that MMing in traditional (fungible) markets is best left to professionals with significant capital and refined strategies.

MMing in emerging markets, such as NFTs, have less competition and more information asymmetry. Finding opportunities, although difficult, can be very fruitful for minimal effort. Lets walk through an example of an opportunity I found.

After seeing some tweets from @0xtuba, I became interested in @urbit. After finding the projects NFT collection on Opensea, I was ready to ape a floor piece. I quickly found Tuba's profile through the activity tab and went snooping.

Tuba's activity seemed strange to me - shortly after buying the urbit ids, he was able to mint a new id. I became curious about how the collection was still minting for 0.025 ETH despite a 0.1 floor.

After some quick googling, I came across urbit.live/buy, which is the site to mint urbit ids. It was then that I realized people buying on Opensea likely were not aware they were available to mint for 0.025 ETH.

However, the volume at the time was low and I didn't want to baghold a bunch of NFTs. So I minted and listed one, hoping to see some activity on the collection before I made my move.

Luckily, I didn't have to wait long. Path mentioned urbits on UpOnly and brought attention to the project. After seeing volume pick up and the floor increase to ~0.12, I decided the activity was strong enough to start MMing.

https://twitter.com/ExaltedFoks/status/1446228219888345089

Here was the easy part: in batches of 1-2, I minted urbit ids for 0.025 + ~0.025 in gas (0.05 cost basis), and sold them just above floor price (~0.14 on average). I tried to pick urbit ids that were visually appealing based on what sold in the past.

I didn't flood the market with new ids, and instead only bought another id after a previous one had sold. That way, I could be confident I wouldn't be left bag holding too many if the floor or volume dropped.

Speaking of, the volume has recently dropped off and people have drilled the floor down to 0.06, meaning this is no longer a profitable play. Because I didn't buy a huge number at once, I'm only holding one urbit-id (which something I wanted anyways).

I also did something similar with Ready Player Cat NFTs recently - noticed a wallet bought the floor up to 0.24 while RPCs were available on nftx.io for ~0.14 + 0.03 in gas. Buy on one marketplace and sell on the other, it's as easy as that.

Again, I needed volume in order for this to work - the wallet was continuously buying the floor so I was confident I could sell my position off. Please keep in mind you might be left holding the bag when volume fades so keep your capital at risk low.

Other potential MM NFT opportunities are in ERC-1155 assets such as @ParallelNFT or @missingfrontier. With these assets you could imitate traditional MM strategies and set up ask/bids at the same time. The examples I gave above are quasi MMing since I took liquidity on one side.

This thread was obviously not to brag about making 0.5 ETH, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Instead, I wanted to explain my thought process about finding opportunities for profit.

All the examples I gave are no longer profitable. However, hopefully you have a frame of reference for evaluating and finding future opportunities.