Disclosure: I hold $PANDORA.

My Pandora Thesis

Many people look at the $PANDORA chart and think the 404 narrative is played out and that $PANDORA is dead. I think they are wrong. $PANDORA and 404s are probably the most exciting things to happen in the NFT market for a while. And I believe $PANDORA could be a huge winner, although certainly not the only one.

I am sure people are now reading this and asking why I am bullish when the chart has been down only for a few weeks. It is simple: my model for the 404 market is BRC20s. On a conceptual level, they are similar – 404s are an innovation that creates a new avenue of speculation and utility to an existing standard or chain, just like BRC20s. This development’s primary winner or beneficiary will probably be the first standard created unless it has game-breaking flaws. For Bitcoin inscriptions, the winning standard so far is BRC20s, and its first token is $ORDI. For 404s, I think the big blue-chip winner will be $PANDORA. Pandora boxes were the first 404 to market without breaking (so far).

I also see the same market dynamics in the 404 space as in the early BRC20 market. Soon after Domo released BRC20s, we saw an explosion in new standards, such as ORC20, BRC721, and Stamps. But, even though they offered some improvements, none captured market participants’ mindshare because they came after BRC20s. Additionally, Bitcoiners heavily debated whether inscriptions and BRC20s were good for Bitcoin – many saw them as a gimmick or scam at best. The same dynamics exist in the 404 market. DN404s provide improvements, ERC20721s are super clever, and SJ741s have solid lore. But ERC404s and Pandora came first. Also, just like BRC20s and $ORDI, the community around NFTs and Ethereum is hotly debating the concept of 404s. Some see it as a gimmick, some as flawed, and others as not a real innovation.

My hunch is that the $PANDORA chart will look like the $ORDIs chart. $ORDI initially hit a blow-off top at $20 before collapsing to $3.5. Many thought $ORDI and BRC20s were over, BRC20s a fad, and moved on to something else. However, the market needed time to digest that BRC20s were something of note, and soon, $ORDI exploded to around $80 per token. This is the path I expect $PANDORA to follow, although the timing could be much different.

Since $PANDORA’s blow-off-top at $30K, $PANDORA has mostly moved sideways in a broad range I call the ‘range-of-disinterest’ exactly like $ORDI did. Eventually, I think the market will realize that 404s and $PANDORA are actual innovations and return to them. If $PANDORA follows the same rough path as $ORDI, we could be looking at a billion-dollar project sooner than a lot of people probably think. That being said, take the above projection with a grain of salt. A lot could happen in the market that could dampen $PANDORA’s chances.

Other Catalysts

Beyond similarities to the BRC20 market, I think some specific $PANDORA catalysts exist:

• The team behind Pandora and ERC404s is still working on the standard; the release of ERC404 v2 pushes the envelope further.
• The team has submitted an official EIP (Proposed as ERC-7651).
  
• More CEX support for spot and perps seems likely ($PANDORA is already on Kucoin and Huobi).
• The team has plans for a specialized 404 DEX.
• I expect more airdrops for $PANDORA holders as teams experiment with the standard.
• Boxes open.

I should mention that this is solely my thesis around $PANDORA. I think $PANDORA and 404s, in general, are super exciting and will probably capture a lot of mindshare in the future. However, I could be wrong; the return to 404s could take longer, there is the potential that any broader market weakness will hurt its chances, and as a new technical approach, bugs could lead to exploits. Other dynamics at play with $PANDORA could also dampen its performance. The NFT market has a lot of projects splitting capital, Ethereum is expensive to use, and Pandora could suffer from its high per-unit cost. Regardless, however, I think 404s and Pandora boxes have a lot of upcoming catalysts, and few seem to be diving in and looking at this area at the moment.