Puma’s Entrance to New Tokyo | Speculation Alley

This is where it all began – on June 13th, 2022, the day Catblox Studio NFTs revealed. A group of 10KTF sleuths uncovered one still frame from Puma’s video showing off their new Slipstream collection trailer. At 26 seconds, a character is shown with a digital book with the 10KTF logo displayed. Thus, the tinfoil theories began.

Two weeks later, at NFT.NYC, Puma announced an official partnership with Wagmi-san and showed up in New Tokyo printing custom shirts with 10KTF IP and Puma branding.

After the NFT.NYC event, the next big Puma announcement was surrounding the Slipstream event in LA, which was open to Puma, but also gave exclusive VIP access to 10KTF holders. Just an extra perk to being a part of 10KTF. The slipstream event was held in July, and many OG’s were able to hang out and also mingle with 10KTF Shopkeepers in the Back Alley for some free swag.

Fast forward to August – Premint leaked a message early that indicated Puma was releasing a project, and I was all over it!

I immediately rushed into the 10KTF discord and asked @figge about Puma.

One day later @puma.eth announced the opening of their discord for their soon-to-launch project called Nitro. I jumped in the discord and tried to gather information as quickly as possible before the project got a bunch of people in the discord channels.

The first thing I noticed was the list of partners on the allowlist for Puma. There were many projects that were well known within Web3, such as Gutter Cat Gang, Cool Cats, Premint holders, Moonbirds, Pixel Vault and Cat Blox, just to name a few, that set up a Premint collaboration for each project to gain allowlist spots for the Nitro Token. Catblox holders got special treatment, receiving an automatic allowlist for each Catblox NFT they owned. All Nitro tokens were a FREE claim by Puma.

The interesting part about this is that in June, 10KTF was announced as a partner with Puma but was completely left off of the allowlist, which made me start to scratch my head and ask some questions. Wagmi-san is a man of honor, so before I get into the speculation, I wanted to share my findings from poking around Discord.

The first thing I wanted to know was how 10KTF holders were going to get rewarded by the partnership – especially since they weren’t on the allowlist. No one disses my boy Wagmi-san.

Now that we know Wagmi-san isn’t forgotten about, let’s begin to speculate on why 10KTF was left off the list.

Immediately, I started to think back to Gucci’s introduction onto the scene in Web3 and how WENEW was able to bring them into the story. It wasn’t over night, and that is for good reason. As many of us who were involved in the early days of 10KTF know, Gucci actually launched their first project with Superplastic – SuperGucci. In this project they, launched a collection spotlighting Guggimon embellished with aesthetics from Gucci’s collection Aria. This was bridging the gap between Web 2.0 and Web3, and is where Gucci officially emerged into the space. I highlight this history because it is important to realize that history often repeats itself.

After they dropped the SuperGucci collection, Gucci then opened up their own discord in late February to begin building an audience without the help of Wagmi-san; however, for the 10KTF community, a tweet of Wagmi-san’s camera with a specific, never-before-seen, wavy pattern leaked. Then, we got to work connecting the dots…

March 3rd a snapshot was taken.

Then on March 9th, Wagmi-san revealed who he had been working with, and 10KTF actually used world-renowned fashion designer Alessandro Michele’s likeness in their lore-based art.

It was after the partnership was announced that 10KTF began allowlisting the community. They raffled off allowlist spots to the community for the Gucci Grail Mint Pass and took a snapshot of all OGs for an airdrop. At the same time, all SuperGucci holders were promised an airdrop of the same Gucci Mint Pass, which was then burned and converted into what is known as Gucci Grails within the 10KTF ecosystem.

The same process we saw with Gucci is happening now with Puma, but just like CatBlox being included with Puma, SuperGucci holders were a part of the process before the NFT drop started. Interestingly enough, it was only known to SuperGucci holders that they were going to receive something – nothing was communicated to the 10KTF community. Although, there was plenty of alpha talking about a digital craftsman in the metaverse helping Alessandro Michele. So those looking for it could speculate something was coming. I feel these same hints and alpha are being sprinkled throughout the Puma experience now. The discord roles within Puma are a great starting point.

But digging deeper we know a few other things also. Adam Petrick stated several things early on in an interview with Vogue Businesses Maghan McDowell: 

“Puma, whose 2021 annual revenue of $7.7 billion lags Nike’s $44.5 billion revenue and Adidas’s $25 billion for the same period, still sees a space for them. ‘I’m certainly aware of [the competition],’ Petrick says. ‘Right now, our goals are to figure it out and try to be as authentic as possible and help people learn along the way. I’m aware that the competition is making major investments, and that’s not necessarily something we’ve done.’ For Puma, revenue streams are front-of-mind for any investment. There needs to be ‘a return in any territory that we explore because, at the end of the day, we are in the intellectual property business’. The ambition is to ‘learn and adapt while trying to be relevant, authentic and inclusive.’

With the 10KTF project, fans of the brand can expect personalisation and customisation elements — an emerging trend in digital sneakers and NFT collections. During the 10KTF event, Puma teased this by giving away co-branded Puma and 10KTF tees. ‘The metaverse, in general, is a great place for getting rid of the boundaries that the physical world creates to be able to think very progressively about design,’ Petrick says, ‘and younger people who are more amenable or flexible in their thinking about personal expression are going to grow up to be really progressive. They have an assumption that customisation is a part of the world that we live in because it’s been there from day one [for them].'”

-Maghan McDowell, Vogue Business 06/24/2022

To me, a major takeaway from this article (published in June) is the idea that the NFT.NYC event “teased” physical goods by giving away t-shirts. So I speculate there’s a lot more coming to 10KTF holders not only in the form of digital collectibles, but also in the form of physicals. This image below that was used as the thumbnail of this Vogue Business article as well as in 10KTF’s announcement of their partnership with Puma, you can see a Slipstream Puma sneaker present in Wagmi-san’s shop. If this isn’t an indication of what’s to come, I’m not sure how much more “alpha in plain sight” we need.

Now, the most recent alpha we received was once again from Adam Petrick, CMO of Puma, during his AMA with the community. He spoke about Wagmi-san directly and said, “Wagmi-san is particularly secretive. But what I can say, some cool things are coming very soon. 10KTF is a great community, and I think we’re able to do some really cool things together.”

So what does this all mean?

I think the easiest thing to do is take a look at the Puma roadmap. 

Nitro Tokens were minted for free by those who made the allowlist–once you had the token you were able to burn the token for a pass at a price of 0.2 ETH, with a total supply of 4,000.

On Sept. 13th Nitropass holders are once again able to burn their pass for two NFTs. Holders will receive the Materializer NFT, which will be used to redeem a physical limited-edition shoe that will be either the Nferno Shoe or the Nitro Shoe, each with a supply of 2,000. Holders will also receive the Nitro Puma NFT, which will allow the holder to continue to be a part of the Puma ecosystem. 

Now let’s go down Speculation Alley. Based on all of the information we have and what we have seen with 10KTF x Gucci, it is safe to assume these two brands will merge at some point to reward holders of 10KTF. With a supply of just 4,000 NFTs for a large brand like Puma, I expect 10KTF to be the primary way they will expand their reach and supply in web3.

As their premier partner, the redacted section of the roadmap is all about Wagmi-san, in my opinion. Reserved for more physicals, IRL events, and premier metaverse experiences.

I believe that the Nitro Puma NFT and 10KTF holders will be able to have a special claim that will bring Puma into New Tokyo and keep them there – immortalized in the collection of 10KTF forever. That claim, I believe, will at the least be Slipstream sneaker blanks – a 10KTF NFT that all parent projects of 10KTF will be able to utilize for crafting derivatives. In the image below from the Slipstream trailer, you can see planets circling the shoe.

Similar planets are also seen in the 10KTF collection on rare Hightops from the World of Women Galaxy collection.

Consider all the aforementioned connections along with Adam Petrick saying, “With the 10KTF project, fans of the brand can expect personalisation and customisation elements — an emerging trend in digital sneakers and NFT collections.” I think all the alpha has been hidden in plain sight.

In reviewing the Terms of Sale for Puma’s Blackstation, you come across lines 39-42 where they mention Sneaker World. Which allows the user to explore Puma’s metaverse portal. 

This will be users’ first glimpse at customization on a broader level. Think of individual customization of each shoe, similar to Nike ID but blending that with Web3. This is where you would need a brand that has curated all the projects with IP rights and brought their communities to one place–this is where WAGMI-San shines. 

Q4 for 10KTF holders and Puma is going to be wild. And in the words of Adam Petrick, “Wagmi-san is particularly secretive. But what I can say, some cool things are coming very soon.” I expect the physical claim site in 2023 to be where we get our fully-customized 10KTF Slipstream shoes as physicals. To see the second episode of Speculation Alley and watch us break everything down, click here.

Extra Alpha: 
The Puma smart contract was developed by WumboLabs, a Los Angeles-based Web3 company led by @bubbawumbo & @CirrusNFT on twitter.