Bear with Us: What is Okay Bears NFT?

In both crypto and financial markets, bears are a symbol of declining market prices, negative investor sentiment and overall bad times.

So tell me anon: Who in their right mind would create NFTs (non-fungible tokens) with bears as their mascot? Isn’t that like creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for the project’s failure?

As it turns out, investors who stick around during crypto bear markets need some lovin’ too. Particularly those who can’t afford or aren't attracted to established NFT communities with 6-figure sticker prices like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).  

This, my frens, is the untapped market that Okay Bears (OKB) went after to become the #1 NFT collection on the Solana blockchain. And if this relative newcomer has the staying power of Bored Apes, then you’d be getting a bargain at these bear market prices (pun intended). 

But before you slam your paws on the buy button, let’s see if the Okay Bears collection actually has what it takes to become a blue-chip NFT project. And hey, even if it doesn’t stick around, just remember that #WeAllGonnaBeOkay.

Okay Bears is a profile picture (PFP) NFT collection built on the Solana blockchain, consisting of 10,000 algorithmically-generated bears. Each bear in the collection has a different background color, outfit and expression, with some of these traits being rarer than others. 

The Okay Bears project was founded by designer KAIS and engineer SUBY. The rest of the semi-doxxed team consists of developers, artists, and designers with real-world experience in aircraft engineering, character illustration for children’s books, full-stack development for eCommerce projects, digital art for game titles like Clash Royale and design for organizations like Unicef and Ford. 

By the time OKB’s mint date rolled around, the hype reached such a fever pitch that Okay Bears generated nearly $18 million in sales on day one. Not to mention, OKB became the first-ever Solana-based NFT project to outperform Ethereum-based projects in terms of daily trading volume. 

Now let’s take a peek underneath OKB’s furry exterior and see what exclusive perks community members get to enjoy.

Okay Bears has its sights set on becoming a global Web3 brand that rewards Bears holders with both metaverse and IRL experiences. To that end, the OKB website features an interactive blueprint that dives into the 7 different areas of their ambitious roadmap. 

Here’s a brief overview of what’s already here and what’s yet to come.

Access to art, merchandise and collectibles

The Boutique area is all about creating limited-edition swag, prints and collectibles in partnership with industry-leading brands like IKONICK. The Bear Market, in turn, builds online sales channels and IRL stores to sell these items through platforms like Magic Eden and Shopify.

As of today, Bears holders can already redeem a welcome pack that includes an OKB wristband.  And according to a recent presentation by KAIS at a Solana Keynote event, merchandise like hibernation blankets for winter and beach towels for summer and a-coming.

Lastly, The Studio is a platform that gives OKB holders access to perks like future NFTs, concept artworks featuring folk tales and Lo-Fi mixtapes. As of writing this, there's an Audius x Okay Bears remix contest going on with cash prizes for the top 3 winners.

Public awareness projects

The Workshop intends to market the Okay Bears project through grassroots community engagement, outdoor (buses, billboards, subways, and commercial videos) and metaverse advertising, plus corporate social responsibility (CSR) auctions on Solana.

The Gallery, on the other hand, will consist of online and offline spaces (i.e. pop-up exhibits) that display the Bears NFT collection, as well as champion OKB fan art that addresses hot topics and global causes.

Community gatherings and investments

The Park is Okay Bears’ Discord community, a digital space devoid of OGs, kings and peasants. A place for good vibes only and where everyone is just… okay. 

The Platform, though, is a series of initiatives (e.g. conferences, meetups) to advance the Solana NFT space. This includes an incubator called The Honeypot that invests in community initiatives and grants Okay Bears licensing options to startups.  

Key stats (as of 7/7/22):

• Mint price: 1.5 SOL on April 26th ($147.57)
• Current floor price: 115 SOL ($4.38k)
• All-time high floor price: 229 SOL on May 16, 2022 ($8.73k)
• Market cap: 1.25 million SOL ($45.75 million) 
• Total volume: 1.9M
• Owners: 5.2K 

Okay Bears is arguably the first blue-chip NFT project on Solana. As such, OKB is responsible for many firsts in the Solana ecosystem. For starters, it’s the first and only project so far to cross 1.88 million SOL in trading volume. Okay Bears is also the first and only Solana NFT collection to top the OpenSea charts.

At the time of writing, OKB has 140K Twitter followers, 93k Discord members and over 274k website visits per month (according to SimilarWeb). This is still a ways off from Bored Ape Yacht Club’s 976K Twitter followers, 207k Discord members and 895K monthly website visits. But the numbers do show that Okay Bears already has a massive community that’s only growing by the day.

So how did they pull this off? Two words: branding and guerilla marketing.

Branding and messaging

Okay Bears went from zero to industry-wide recognition in the span of just a couple of months, largely thanks to their branding. Their values, lo-fi art, use of hand signs 👌🏼and the #WeAreOkay and #WAGBO hashtags are all refreshingly on-brand. 

And unlike Bored Ape Yacht Club, which glorifies the crypto millionaires and OGs among a majority of plebs, Okay Bears (OKB) empowers common individuals by focusing on the middle ground, inclusion and good vibes. OKB even sets the tone in their poetic manifesto:

“Come unrefined, as long as you’re kind.

Progress takes patience, our needs are aligned.

So bear with the grind, kick-back and unwind

Good vibes and community, it’s one hell of a ride!”

Community engagement

But poetry alone doesn’t make for a successful NFT project. The Okay Bears team deployed several growth hacks to go viral on crypto Twitter. One notable hack included offering over 3 thousand white list spots to community members who tweeted OKB-branded photos like the one shown below.

Okay Bears is not only the most successful Solana NFT project to date, but it is also a breath of fresh air in the NFT space period. Much of its success is owed to the fact that it catered to an underserved crypto audience instead of the typical moonboys. 

But since the project is still so new, it’s hard to say if Okay Bears will stand the test of time like CryptoPunks have. The mere fact that Okay Bears has spawned a bunch of knock-off projects like Not Okay Bears and Okay Bears Yacht Club is a positive indicator, though. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

So if you’re looking to join an NFT community with blue-chip potential that won’t break your bank, then Okay Bears is a respectable choice. 

How to Buy Okay Bears NFTs

As of today, OpenSea and Magic Eden are the two main marketplaces for trading Okay Bears NFTs. OpenSea has the benefit of being the largest and easiest to use NFT marketplace, so I’d definitely stick with them as a beginner.

Next up: since Okay Bears are a Solana-based NFT project, you’ll need to download a Solana crypto wallet like Phantom and load it up with SOL. 

Last up is your choice of which OKB to buy. This really depends on the intentions behind your NFT purchase. If you’re looking to flip Okay Bears for a profit, then you should buy the rarest Okay Bears NFT you can afford.  

Okay Bears has a total of 170 traits divided into these categories:

• Fur
• Mouth
• Hat
• Eyewear
• Eyes
• Clothes
• Background

Purple, for instance, is the rarest background color (83/10k) while Honey is the rarest Mouth trait as only a single bear in the 10K collection has it. Many NFT collectors use rarity.tools to see the rarest tokens in a given collection.

But if you are buying Okay Bears for its utility, then you can simply buy the cheapest bear available since the rarity won’t affect your access to exclusive perks.