Top News

• Azuki founder, Zagabond, concedes to rumors of abandoning past projects, which led to a 69% drop in the collection’s floor price over the past week.
• Boki mint on May 12 at 4 pm UTC.
• CPG’s collection, POP, launches on May 14 at 7 pm UTC.
• Instagram plans to begin testing NFT integrations this week.
  • A small subset of users in the United States will be able to display Ethereum and Polygon-based NFTs on the platform.
  • Solana and Flow-native NFTs will be integrated later.
• Coinbase’s NFT platform is off to a sluggish start since opening up to the public last week.
  • Since its beta launch on April 20, Coinbase NFT has registered $840k in volume from 2,265 transactions and 1,832 users.
• Following the chaotic launch of Otherdeed for Otherside, Yuga Labs have announced that they have completed the refund for failed minting transactions, totaling over 90.57 ETH.
  • The announcement was made on Twitter.
• OthersideMeta has released their first metaverse demo.
• Doodles announces that every doodle holder will be able to claim a dooplicator on May 12.

NFT Market Overview

Volume per week

Main observations for the week:

• While this week’s activity was not as vibrant as last week, the volume profile shows that there is still more interest in the NFT space compared to recent weeks.
• The general trend seems to be heading slightly upwards over time with higher peaks and periods of consolidation. On the other hand, the NFT market outlook is heavily dependent on the general crypto market conditions which are uncertain at best.
• Even though there has been significant volume this week, the floor prices of most NFT projects, including those in the blue-chip category, suffered losses this week.
• Contrary to sustained activity, the weekly transaction count is still in decline from prior weeks.

• All top 10 projects by market capitalization witnessed between 10% to 30% drawdown in floor price, except for Azuki, which declined 69%. Possible reasons for the decrease may include: 1) Otherdeed land sale drained investor capital and eliminated the potential for that capital to re-enter the market. More specifically, Yuga Labs raised ~$320m from the land sale and burned ~71K ETH, which could have been allocated elsewhere. Many investors were left disappointed after losing out to the gas war and suffering a dump in APE shortly after the sale. 2) The Azuki drama around its founder, Zagabond, resulted in many of the collection’s holders selling their NFT. The event may be a contributing factor to the negative sentiment around NFTs this week. 3) The general crypto and equities market outlook has left many investors uncertain and thus risked-off to safety.

OpenSea vs. LooksRare

With the recent market downturn, we’ve been seeing a downward decline in daily active users on both OpenSea and LooksRare over the past week. As expected, trading volume in terms of the number of transactions has been on a decline too.

Additionally, phase 3 of the LOOKS token emissions will go live on May 11th 8:51 pm UTC and will result in a 60% cut in LOOKS listing, trading, and staking rewards. With the recent success of incentivizing users to list their NFTs closer to floor prices, LooksRare will be allocating additional listing rewards for a month effectively resulting in a 20% cut. It will be interesting to monitor over the coming weeks to determine whether a reduction in reward emissions will result in a negative impact on users' stats and trading volume.

This Week's Highlights

Azuki

Azuki Holders Lose Confidence After Zagabond Releases Article About His Past

• As a result of the pseudonymous founder of Azuki NFT, Zagabond, confessing to previously abandoning three NFT projects that he created before Azuki, the floor price has dropped to 8.49 ETH at the time of writing from 25 ETH earlier this week.
• Zagabond appeared on Twitter Spaces, hosted by Andrew Yang, on Tuesday Morning to clarify and answer questions from Azuki holders and community members.
• Zagabond admitted to his involvement and role in creating Cryptophunks, Tendies, and Cryptozunks in a Mirror article. He has since issued a public apology on Twitter after pushback from the community.
• Twitter account Rug Pull Finder releases a statement on Twitter, highlighting the details of the event and proposing possible routes to move forward and hold community members accountable.

Details of Azuki’s market data in response to the news

• Since the announcement, the Azuki collection has seen a 1,329% increase in trading volume at its peak while the floor price steadily declined to 8.49 ETH. The number of transactions briefly spiked by 3,068% from May 8. In addition, the demand-supply dynamics indicate that there have generally been more listings than sales over the past week.

Observing smart money’s activity on Azuki

• The breakdown of different buyer classes from the surge in activity and volume shows that some smart money buyers picked up Azuki on May 10 and 11.
• In the past 24 hours, three different smart buyers purchased 49 ETH worth of Azuki's. Despite that, the 24H smart sells far exceed the smart buys. Seven smart sellers sold an aggregate of 272 ETH in volume.

Art Blocks

Art Blocks Trend

• All three Art Blocks curations experienced an increase in volume this past week. Art Blocks Curated, Playground, and Factory volumes rose by 115.27%, 646.78%, and 782.99%, respectively.
• Art Blocks Curated registered 5790.09 ETH in volume, whereas Art Blocks Playground saw 821.45 ETH and Art Blocks Factory saw 308.47 ETH in activity.
• Chromie Squiggle topped the chart this week out of all Art Blocks collections, but the floor price remained steady. Interestingly, other popular collections this week all saw an uptick in floor price.
• It remains to be seen whether the interest in Art Blocks and other generative art collections will sustain. If the volume is maintained, it could lead to another generative art bull market, similar to last year.

Smart Money Movements

Main observations:

• 56 smart money buyers bought into the PXN: Ghost Division collection, generating 1417 ETH in volume over the past 7D. Currently, there are only 417 PXN NFTs listed, with holders speculating on the reveal of their PFPs. Considering the amount of hype the project has generated pre-launch, it is surprising that the floor has been ranging at around 3.5 - 4.5 ETH in the last few days. Many holders are also speculating that the PXN collection could potentially be the “next Azuki”, considering the similar anime art style. Interestingly, holders of PXN are also holding a large weightage of Nanopass NFTs, Otherdeed for Otherside, Nametag, Parallel, and Bobu, the Bean farmer.

• To our surprise, we’ve seen plenty of smart money buyers in the Azuki and BEANZ collection, perhaps holders looking for short-term flipping opportunities right after the Twitter spaces with Zagabond hosted by Andrew Wang. Many holders that wanted a chance to ask questions were not allowed up on stage due to technical difficulties, leaving the audience with many unanswered questions and concerns regarding Azuki, and the 3 other projects that Zagabond was involved in. The floor price quickly dipped to as low as 5+ ETH post-Twitter spaces, and recovered to a current floor price of 9 ETH.
• Smart buys also flowed into Art of the Seasons NFT by artist DirtyRobot + RENGA Factory. The Art of Seasons is a complete collection of dynamic illustrations featuring Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

• The Ragnarok Meta collection experienced a 66% dip in floor price in the last 3D. Holders were extremely excited for the highly anticipated reveal, but some believed the artwork fell short of their expectations.
• Other notable mentions: Azuki, BEANZ Official, Meebits, etc. Understandably so, many Azuki holders are selling at a loss due to the whole debacle with Zagabond. Although their founder, Zagabond outright apologized for his mistakes in the past, it will take a while for the dust to finally settle and for holders to instil their trust in the team in the long-term.

Upcoming Project Highlights

Crypto Packaged Goods Pop

(Website) Pop consists of 2,777 generative ERC-721A NFTs with a full spectrum of rarity and 1/1 tokens. Proceeds from the collection will be allocated to bake in even more utility for both Genesis and Pop members and fund the development of splashy product drops.

• mint date: May 14, 2022
• category: Membership

Doomboo

(Twitter) Doomboo is launching a single player game. The P2E game will launch in Phase II of their roadmap. Additionally, there will be a BOO token where you can stake your DoomBoo or Zorgon to earn tokens daily.

• mint date: May 16, 2022 at 11am EST
• category: P2E game

Chain Runners XR

(Website) Chain Runners XR is the newest iteration of the Chain Runner universe. They are building a player token to be used across their different platforms and to merge the physical and digital world.

• mint date: May 17, 2022
• category: Metaverse

Akumu Dragonz

(Twitter) Akumu Dragonz is the second collection from their genesis collection on Solana, BoryokuDragonz.

• mint date: May 31, 2022
• category: PFP

Webaverse NFTs

(Twitter) Webaverse is building an open source OS for the Metaverse on the web which creators and communities can use to tell interoperable immersive stories (2D, 3D, VR): fun gameplay, interoperable, X-Platform, feature packed (AR, VR and AI), and with native web3 integrations. They are launching with Upstreet (Season 1) which is a sci fi experience in which stories/virtual worlds/game from different creators and communities become part of a larger story which progresses in seasons.

• mint date: TBA
• category: Land/metaverse

World Overlay

(Website)

World Overlay is a community-driven web3.0 virtual worlds platform, where we seek to truly empower the creation of immersive, high-quality user-generated virtual content, filled with social, gamification and ecommerce elements.

• mint date: TBA
• category: Metaverse/game

Ultiverse

(Twitter)

Ultiverse builds the social gaming metaverse, connecting the Web3 to an immersive, fully VR compatible virtual world, and finally creates a unique MetaFi.

• mint date: TBA
• category: Metaverse/game

Solana NFTs

NFT Market Overview

Solana’s total NFT market cap stands at $983m, with a 7D volume of $57.5m. The price of SOL has fallen over 45% in the past week, coupled with harsh macro environments - most projects’ floor prices and volumes have taken a hit.

Magic Eden has gathered over $53.8m in 7D volume, a huge share compared to other marketplaces. OpenSea and Solanart have gathered about $2.8m and $324k in 7D volume respectively. The number of active wallets shows a similar trend - with Magic Eden having a dominant share, while OpenSea edges out Solanart by a fraction.

Top 10 by 7D Volume

• Okay Bears continues to dominate the game in terms of volume - despite a dip in floor prices from an ATH of 180 SOL. The project saw tremendous success since its launch just 2 weeks ago, hitting 1m SOL in trade volume on Magic Eden in just 2 weeks
  • a record for Solana NFTs.
    • Notably, Bit Birdz floor price increased by over 400% when it was revealed to be associated with Okay Bear’s co-founder (@suby_sol). The project was launched in November last year but did not really gain traction prior to this revelation. It currently sits at a floor price of 4 SOL.
• Mous in da Hous launched last week and has managed to maintain a stable price at around 8-10 SOL.
  • Upcoming utility token (44TH) was announced yesterday, causing the floor price to rise by 16%
• Cets on Creck has experienced a 65% drawdown in floor price from its ATH of 100 SOL from around 2 weeks ago.
  • The collection peaked following the airdrop of a Cets Milk Bottle to all holders - which ran up in price to around 28 SOL just 2 days after the airdrop. It currently sits at a floor price of 7 SOL, mainly due to the fact that utility for the NFT has yet to be announced and its initial price action could be attributed to speculation and FOMO.

Top 10 Sales (24H)

Despite falling down the ranks in terms of 7D volume, DeGods (specifically, DeadGods) still remain in demand for rare NFT collectors. A total of 6 DeadGods were recorded among the Top 10 sales on Magic Eden in the past 24 hours.

DeGod holders are able to upgrade their NFT to a DeadGod using 1000 DUST (~$880). A DeadGod is able to generate 30 DUST per day, 3 times more than a DeGod. The utility of DUST includes raffles for exclusive WL spots and NFTs in the DeDAO Vault, as well as an upcoming mint in the works.

A bet on DeGods would be a bet on @frankdegods, who has led the project to achieve a ‘blue chip’ status over the past few months - flipping OG projects such as Solana Monkey Business and Degenerate Ape Academy in terms of floor price. Besides acquiring a Big3 basketball team (the first for a Solana NFT project), Frank has also made clarifications on the future of the project and how the different elements will come together to push the DeGods brand forward. With strong support from the community, it would be exciting to see the progress of the project in the next few months.

Other Notable Projects

Bloodmoon BOKU & Boryoku Baby Dragonz

Both collections have seen an increase in floor price and volume with the announcement of an upcoming mint on Ethereum - Akumu Dragonz. Akumu Dragonz is a 10,000 Ethereum NFT collection minting on 31st May, with a mint price of 0.169 ETH. The project is launched by the team at Boryoku Dragonz, a genesis collection on Solana with 1,111 NFTs.

Holders of Boryoku Dragonz were airdropped 2 Bloodmoon BOKUs, which serves as a guaranteed free mint pass to Akumu Dragonz on Ethereum. Meanwhile, holders of Boryoku Baby Dragonz will be able to redeem 1 Bloodmoon BOKU for 69 BOKU (~$135) starting from 16th May during a 48-hour window. Given that the floor price of a Bloodmoon BOKU is currently 34 SOL (~$1700), it is a significant discount for Boryoku Baby Dragonz holders - which could explain the rise in floor price on the NFT leading up to the Bloodmoon BOKU redemption day.

This will be a first in history - for a successful Solana NFT project to launch a collection on Ethereum, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Upcoming Projects Highlights

Nest Arcade

(Website/Twitter)

• A 4,444 NFT collection that can be used to access the Nest Arcade mini-verse to earn NEST/NESTA
• Launching May 12, 8pm UTC on Solanart; Mint price: 1.2 SOL (WL), 1.5 SOL (Public)

Trippy Kidz

(Website/Twitter)

• A 2,222 NFT collection, focused on creating a reputable brand in the NFT space to add value for its holders
• Launching May 13; Mint price: 2 SOL

Jikan Studios

(Twitter)

• Launching late-May (TBA) on Hydra Launchpad; Mint price: 1.5 SOL

Tools for further research

1. NFT aggregators

   • Gem

     • Gem recently launched on January 20.
     • Gem allows users to explore and collect NFTs across all the marketplaces on a single interface, giving you a birds-eye view of the market - ensuring you never miss out on a good deal.

   • Genie

     • Batch buy & list NFTs across all major marketplaces in a single transaction. Save time & gas.
     • Genie was technically the first NFT aggregator in the NFT space.

2. Due diligence for minting

   • Nansen’s guide here

3. Wallet management + tracking

   • NFTBank.ai
     • This platform is a leading platform for tracking your NFT inventory
   • Zapper
     • Zapper is a good tool for tracking an overview of your NFT portfolio

4. NFT Marketplaces

   • Opensea
   • LooksRare
   • Rarible
   • Mintable
   • Mintbase
   • Zora
   • SuperRare