Why has the veteran NFT Milady become popular again?

Original Title: “Old Brand NFT Milady Makes a Comeback: After Funds Gather to Speculate on PEPE, the Floor Price Rises in Reverse”

Author: Nancy, PANews

"Value investing is a waste, go all in on PEPE and live in the palace." From being obscure to entering the top 100 by market cap, PEPE has written a myth of wealth while completely igniting the Meme market. A deep dive into the early "discoverers" of PEPE reveals that most are holders of Milady Maker. As an established PFP project, Milady once fell into a price trough due to the former CEO's issues with race and extremism, but has since been rediscovered in value. In the face of severe homogenization in the PFP NFT space, how did Milady turn its reputation around?

Driving PEPE's Surge, Milady's Price and Sales Soar in the Short Term

Recently, a crypto KOL named @xiaowuDD666 pointed out that the Meme craze, including PEPE, is actually driven by NFT funds speculating together, and that the earliest promoters on Twitter and on-chain addresses are all linked to Milady. Looking at the early addresses of PEPE, there are indeed many Milady holders. For example, an anonymous trader Dimethyltryptamine.eth, who purchased over 59 trillion PEPE for $263 and gained a thousandfold return, holds about 37 Milady. Moreover, one of the multi-signature wallets managing 6.9% of PEPE's total supply has its earliest ETH sourced from holding the Milady derivative project Remilio.

Many PEPE holders have also stated that they will use their profits to buy Milady, which has led to a recent surge in its NFT prices. According to OpenSea data, as of May 8, Milady's trading volume exceeded 33,000 ETH, with over 3,300 holding addresses and a floor price of 4.1 ETH, while the minting price was only 0.06 ETH. In the past 7 days, Milady's trading volume increased by 117%, and the floor price rose by about 47%.

According to data from NFTSACAN, most Milady holders are diamond hands, with over 77.1% holding for more than a month, and nearly one-third holding for over a year. Notable holders include Paradigm research partner Dave White, AAve founder Stani, former Three Arrows Capital founder Su Zhu, well-known KOL Ansem, and Pulsr founder Maxine Ryan.

In addition, several netizens revealed that besides PEPE, Meme coins like WOJAK and Mememe are also being pushed by the Milady community. There is indeed a Memecoin group in the Milady Discord, which is only open to holders.

Created by an Anonymous Team, Cult Culture Fits the Meme Core

As an NFT project born in 2021, Milady was launched by the anonymous online team Remilia Corporation, which is an anonymous digital art DAO of about 70 people. The organization's name comes from the character Remilia Scarlet in the fan work Touhou Project. All members of Remilia Corporation are anonymous, and they have not revealed their true identities to each other; they mainly operate through Twitter group DMs, and many members are art school graduates or dropouts.

Remilia's founder, Charlotte Fang, is a dropout and the core creator of Milady. She has revealed that Remilia focuses on deep transgressive online performances, comparing the content to William S. Burroughs' banned novel "Naked Lunch," and stated that the reason for joining NFTs is related to the indifference of crypto evangelists to political correctness.

"The internet spirit" is a concept advocated by Remilia, encompassing "performative identity" and "a priori release." This is a reverse ideology that uses memes and junk posts as a way to create a collective consciousness online. The purpose of launching Milady is to sell NFTs as themed profile pictures that people can use as Twitter avatars.

As a PFP project consisting of 10,000 NFTs, Milady's inspiration comes from the neochibi aesthetic inspired by Tokyo street fashion in the 2000s. In Japanese anime, chibi is an exaggerated cartooning technique used to refer to a childlike drawing style characterized by large heads and big eyes, which is well reflected in Milady's style. The Drip Score is a rating system used by Milady to assess the rarity and fashionability of each Milady NFT, ranging from D, C, B, A, S to SS, which is somewhat similar to the rating systems in Japanese electronic and card games.

Subculture street fashion of Tokyo in the 2000s

However, due to Charlotte Fang's scandal, Milady's reputation took a sharp downturn. In May 2022, DefiLlama founder 0xngmi released nearly 20 tweets and GitHub posts revealing that Charlotte Fang had close ties to a suicide cult organization based on 4chan and was a radical online extremist who had posted many racist extremist remarks and content supporting anorexic girls under the alias "Miya."

0xngmi wrote in a tweet that Miya participated in a suicide cult called "systemspace," which spread through 4chan and claimed that "everyone who registered on the site and committed suicide would enter a paradise world after death; a 17-year-old Canadian boy committed suicide for this reason."

Moreover, 0xngmi also claimed that Fang and other members of Remilia were part of the online suicide cult TSUKI Project in 2017. In response, Charlotte Fang admitted to being Miya and argued that she was never a true believer of the TSUKI Project, stating that she only posted in the group DM and on Twitter for fun, and emphasized that "Remilia's approach is different from the far-right platforms like 4chan or Gab. Miya is just a performance art piece; both Miya and another alias account named Sonya are ways for her to explore internet radicalism and accelerationist discourse."

Upon this revelation, the Milady community erupted, leading Charlotte Fang to choose to withdraw from the project, stating on Twitter, "I apologize for trying to hide my past account. Miya has no relation to Milady Maker and should remain that way, so I will withdraw from the team starting today. Undoubtedly, my true views have no room for hate; I despise abusers and manipulators. Spouting off everywhere is childish behavior, but I have never harmed a fly."

With the CEO's departure, many community members sold off their NFTs to express their stance, and Milady experienced a prolonged period of stagnation. So, in the rapidly evolving NFT market and under the test of a bear market, what has allowed Milady to gain the trust and affection of investors, besides its connection to Meme coins like PEPE, are several other reasons:

On one hand, in April 2022, the decentralized NFT market maker FloorDAO proposed to include Milady in its investment list, claiming it would sweep the project's floor price to 2 ETH, which significantly boosted the project's popularity. The trading volume from April to the end of May 2022 also reflected this increase.

On the other hand, Milady's cult culture is highly recognized. The English word "Cult" is difficult to find a perfect Chinese translation for; as a cultural phenomenon, it generally refers to a peculiar taste that only a few niche circles appreciate and become deeply obsessed with, which in turn makes this taste and its symbols representative of small circles. The most successful Cult cultures are not only bizarre in form but also have a loyal following, as the objects of their admiration are self-appreciating and speak a language that only those within the circle understand. The official description of this spirit is "Angelicism," which, unlike BAYC's overt rebellion, advocates using the subconscious/unconscious to resist authority. "Milady is a parasite; Angelicism is its host," one community member described it.

Additionally, Milady's high APY on NFT lending platform NFTX has attracted many DeFi players. NFTX data shows that as of May 8, Milady's APR reached 34.1%, with a TVL exceeding $3.91 million, ranking second in NFTX; a total of 1,588 Milady NFTs have been deposited, accounting for 16.7% of the market holdings (excluding the 500 held by the team).

Milady is not just a simple PFP project; it also offers various activities and utilities to make NFTs more narrative-driven and build community cohesion, including Milady VRtube, Milady Raves, Miladycore Bootlegs, and Milady Minecraft Metaverse. For example, Milady Rave collaborates with local underground bands in major cities like New York, London, and Tokyo, allowing holders to host parties in a warehouse rave format; Milady VRtube allows holders to create VRtube Avatars that can be used in streaming or video calls when connected to a holographic application with their wallets.

It is worth mentioning that Milady actively encourages "right-clicking" behavior and has supported derivative projects like Remilio; its launched Miladycore Bootlegs even sell designer knockoffs, which also gives it a Meme effect.

In a sense, Milady, with its inherent Meme effect, has built a genuine community and provided a sense of belonging to a specific audience, which may be the main reason for its reputation turnaround.