Okay Bears — A future Blue-Chip brand that’s fine being “Okay”

One of the lone bright spots in the NFT market today, Okay Bears (“OKB”) have taken the NFT world and bear market by storm with a differentiated culture and crossover appeal. With less than 30 days since mint, Okay Bears lead many NFT leaderboards on volume, price increase, holder count, etc. Performance aside, the Okay Bears project has pushed a narrative that has caught on quickly in the current market environment that’s aggregated a community of Solana and Ethereum backers alike. Through their culture, community and roadmap, it’s clear that the project aims to build a Blue-Chip Web3 brand

Project Key Points

• Okay Bears are a 10,000 PFP collection on the Solana blockchain. The project minted on April 26, 2022 at 1.5 SOL and have seen a meteoric rise since then with a current floor price of 205 SOL (137x initial mint price)
• With strong community building, the project has seen many adopters from both the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems. The community has been adopted by holders of NFT Blue Chip projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cyberkongz and CryptoPunks
• The unique artwork not only differentiates the project from all other NFT PFP projects, but creates a collection-wide appeal, which is important in maintaining value across all pieces. Okay Bears brings many unique traits that both encompass current culture while creating a broad appeal
• As one of the best performing projects during this slow NFT market, Okay Bears have established themselves as the blue-chip project on Solana and one of the only Solana projects that can go toe-to-toe with Ethereum Blue Chip NFTs. A deadly combination of unique art, strong community branding and NFT market-wide appeal say this project has a shot at long term success

Project Overview

Okay Bears are led by co-founders Kais and Suby. The project launched at the end of April 2022 with a 10,000-piece PFP collection minted on the Solana blockchain for 1.5 SOL. The project brands itself as a culture shift with taglines like “WAGBO” (We are going to be ok) that have taken off on Twitter and Discord. The culture push and tagline couldn’t have launched at a better time. With markets down overall, the WAGBO movement has caught on with NFT holders on both Ethereum and Solana alike.

The culture shift is a theme throughout the lore and community. The team has a section on the site deemed “Manifesto”, which really sets the tone that’s seen throughout the community Discord, Twitter, spaces with the founders and any other medium that Okay Bear founders and community interact.

While on Solana, this project seems to have found a fit with most NFT holders on all platforms. In our experience, Solana NFTs haven’t been able to break into the Ethereum holder market effectively with a reputation of flipping and shorter-term projects and no serious contenders to rival blue chip projects on Ethereum. Okay Bears have proved to be that project that can break through

In our experience, Solana NFTs haven’t been able to break into the Ethereum holder market effectively. Typically holding a reputation as heavily flipped or simply short-lived projects with no serious contenders to rival Blue-Chip projects on Ethereum. Okay Bears have proved to be the project that can break through.

Collection

Size: 10,000 bears in the profile picture category

Artwork: Unique with many traits across the collection that create a collection-wide appeal. Some of our favorite and unique traits include:

• Fur: Coral, Robot, Blueprint, Lofi
• Eyes: Golden Glow, White Glow
• Clothes: Silk Robe, Denim Jacket, Hooded Cardigan
• Eyewear: Snow Goggles, Flying Goggles
• Hat: Sticky Note, Rubik’s Cube, Chullo
• Mouth: Eight Ball, Oou

Community

Community and culture are the biggest strengths of the OKB project, beyond the artwork. OKB have done an incredible job to push forward a culture for the community that sets the tone for members and bleeds through OKB interactions on all platforms. The Manifesto sets a precedent for the project and how the brand will be built.

The #WAGBO (We are going to be ok) movement has caught on with the slow market overall and has proven to be effective in projecting the OKB brand. Beyond the CyberKongz “!ooh” tagline and multitude of iterations, there hasn’t been a community pushed tagline that’s been nearly as successful as #WAGBO.

What’s been very interesting with the community development of OKB is the melding of both the Ethereum and Solana holders that have embraced the WAGBO culture. Prominent holders of OKB include Nate Rivers, Faze Banks, NBA player Tobias Harris, DFarmer and many more.

Utility

Okay Bears do not yield tokens like most NFT projects do today. It’s a refreshing approach in opposition of the current meta. Access to the discord is almost fully gated with chat rooms focused on the community and both the Solana and Ethereum NFT markets. There are frequent white list opportunities raffled away in the discord for Solana and Ethereum projects.

As a new project with a focus on the art, community and culture, it’s no surprise that the current utility is limited compared to the wave of ongoing native-token yielding collections. While limited, the roadmap provides numerous holder-only benefits that better fit the brand of Okay Bears

Roadmap

Okay Bears label their roadmap as a blueprint, providing a plan to move the culture and collection forward. This very much lends to the overall branding of a thoughtful and curated approach to building and projecting the OKB brand.

The blueprint is broken into sections including:

Bear Market — an ecosystem of web3, web2 and IRL sales channels for OKB holders including:

• Partnership with Magic Eden (leading Solana marketplace) with membership only-perks
• Shopify e-commerce platform for merch
• IRL pop up stores

Workshop — Brand growth through community engagement and public awareness projects

• Online brand-outreach campaigns
• IRL outdoor marketing campaigns

Gallery — resource to display OKB artwork

• OKB gallery for the 10k PFP collection
• OKB website space for curated fan art
• IRL pop up exhibitions
• The Park — Metaverse channels for holder only chats
• Focus on building and curating the Discord

Studio — Gain priority access to future opportunities

• Future collections
• Community Lo-Fi mixtapes
• Art and Folk Tales (lore)

Boutique — IRL merch, prints and collectibles

• Member-exclusive merchandise
• Limited edition collectibles
• Fashion, lifestyle and sports brand partnerships

Platform — Solana focused community projects

• Keynotes, conferences and meetups
• Community grants and copyright licensing

Debuting in the NFT bear market, Okay Bears have a strong opportunity to build a Blue-Chip brand through unique art, a flourishing community, strong brand ethos and the backing of multiple NFT communities.

Members of Ghost Capital own Okay Bear NFTs. No compensation was provided in writing this report. Nothing in this report should be construed as financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.