A Guide To Swedish Animator Markus Magnusson’s Invisible Friends NFT

Invisible Friends is one of the projects that will come to define the first half of 2022 in NFTs. The hugely popular animated NFTs from creator Markus Magnusson struck an instant chord with NFT fans long before they went on sale. Three months later, let’s break down some of the magic behind the Invisible Friends NFT collection.

What is the Invisible Friends NFT collection?

Invisible Friends is a collection of 5,000 animated illustrated characters created by the Swedish animator Markus Magnusson. The collection was easily one of the most hyped NFT drops ever leading up to its launch.

As its name suggests, Invisible Friends features characters with no visible anatomy, with a variety of stylish outfits, wacky accessories, and many more epic traits. Another element of these NFTs is that they are all animated by default. Indeed, each NFT is essentially a loop of an Invisible Friends character in a walking motion.

One of the interesting things about Invisible Friends from the beginning was its connection to other NFT projects. Namely, the Slim Hoods and Mood Rollers collection. To clarify, Invisible Friends is part of The Random Character Collective. This group of projects centers around three different animators (Magnusson, Slim Hoods’ James Curran, and Mood Rollers’ Lucas Zanotto) and their projects.

How much is an Invisible Friends NFT?

While the excitement for the Invisible Friends release dominated the NFT space early this year, the drop wasn’t without hiccups.

For example, one of the first times that Invisible Friends faced some criticisms was when it announced its 0.25 ETH (around $700 at that time) mint price. Some members of the NFT community thought that the mint price was too steep.

On the other hand, many people thought that the price was more than fair given the hype behind the project. Given where the floor price has been since mint, the mint price now seems like an incredible bargain.

How can you get an Invisible Friends NFT today?

Invisible Friends NFTs are only available now on the secondary market. You can pick one up on several platforms, mainly OpenSea and LooksRare. Although they certainly won’t come cheap.

To illustrate, the Invisible Friends floor price sits at 5.29 ETH at the time of writing. That’s just under $11,000 at the current ETH price. And as much as that is, this is actually a bit of a decrease for the project which saw secondary prices skyrocket as high as 12 ETH pre-reveal, and then fluctuate around the 5-7ETH range after that.

Despite being half the size of many of its peer generative NFT project peers, Invisible Friends has amassed about 41K ETH in secondary trade volume on OpenSea. That’s good enough to rank in the top 50 all-time collections by that metric.

Invisible Friends #1125 holds the title for the most expensive NFT out of the collection, selling for an amazing 200 ETH on March 3rd. As shown above, this is one of the absolute rarest NFTs in the whole collection. It features a “Chalk Outline” friend walking in the rain through a crime scene.

In addition, there are another three ultra-rare Invisible Friends (#1001, #2165, #4672) that all sold for 110 ETH right around the time of reveal.

How long did Invisible Friends take to sell out?

Invisible Friends minted on February 23rd, predictably selling out soon after going live. As previously mentioned, it had the usual cycle of soaring floor prices pre-reveal followed by a sharp decrease and correction post-reveal. While this was a predictable outcome, many people expressed frustration with the hype around the project. Some even went as far as saying that the attention the project garnered was overall “bad for the NFT space“.

One of the other things that Invisible Friends received both praise and criticism for was its approach to mint. To explain, given its relatively low collection size and massive demand, Invisible Friends decided to sell its NFTs exclusively to people on an allowlist.

The project’s unique “presale” approach

There were a few ways people could have secured a spot on the presale list. One of the major allowances was for holders of either a Slim Hoods or Mood Rollers NFT. As a matter of fact, there was a spike and crash in these projects’ floor prices as a result of people buying up and then dumping the NFTs to get on the presale list.

Outside of that, people could win spots through giveaways and competitions, an allowlist spot raffle for people who bought Invisible Friends merch, and good ol’ fashioned grinding in Discord.

There was some discourse specifically around some art contests that Invisible Friends hosted for presale spots. In essence, some took issue with the project having such extensive requirements for people to receive and retain spots. At the present time, with the benefit of hindsight, one could indeed make the argument Invisible Friends set a trend of NFT projects using whitelist spots as a way of drumming up free marketing and hype.

Considering how much attention was on Invisible Friends early in the year, it’s not surprising that there was so much scrutiny on the project’s mint. In any case, the way Invisible Friends handled its sale clearly worked, and set the project up with a very strong foundation to build on.

The future for Markus Magnusson’s NFT ecosystem

All things considered, Invisible Friends’ status as a top NFT project at the moment is undeniable. Even as the NFT market as a whole has seen some decline throughout this first half of the year, Invisible Friends has shown some staying power.

It even announced details for a marquee partnership with the streetwear brand Kith recently, making good on an early promise to its community. Certainly, it has fared far better than many super hyped projects that have come before it.

Some other exciting points on its roadmap for this year are programming at NFT NYC, a wrapping mechanism for holders to access 3D versions of their NFT, and physical toys.

Garbage Friends: The next project in the IF universe

As for Markus Magnusson, the animator already started teasing his next collection soon after Invisible Friends launched. The Garbage Friends NFT project first appeared on Twitter at the height of Invisible Friends mania. Significantly, Magnusson made it clear that he and his team would not make any decisions on the project. Moreover, he wouldn’t even confirm that it was a project, until after Invisible Friends launched.

Although precious few details came out at that time, we now know slightly more about Garbage Friends. According to the Invisible Friends website, the project will drop in Q4 of this year. What’s more, there will be one Garbage Friend for each Invisible Friend, as well as an unspecified number for nonholders.

While it seems that this new collection will not cost anything (besides gas fees perhaps) for Invisible Friends holders, it isn’t your average companion drop. As explained on the website,

“These trashy friends are everything our Invisible Friends aren’t. That is smelly, dirty and nihilistic. They still belong to the same universe, how? Stay tuned!”