Top News
- Limit Break airing $6.5 million Super Bowl commercial
- Ledger CEO’s Chief of Staff leaves the company to work on his own NFT project
- Udi Wertheimer and Bitcoin company Luxor mines largest Bitcoin block containing Taproot Wizard NFT
- SUDO launches, one month lockdrop begins and will end on 2 March
- Proposal for SUDO to be transferrable currently open for voting
NFT Market Overview
Initial activity from the start of the year has slowly stabilized, as volume still remains higher than at the end of last year on average. With increased interest in the overall market, several NFT collections have also taken off in the past weeks. Collections that have garnered significant volume in the past weeks include - Checks (VV Edition), a Kid called Beast, and Ordinals (Bitcoin NFTs). We’ll dive deeper into these collections below.
Let’s take a look at the overall trends in the past weeks:
Main Observations:
- Volume per week has declined slightly from the previous weeks, possibly in relation to greater trading activity on other chains such at Canto and Bitcoin NFTs which is driving liquidity away from Ethereum NFTs in general. Despite the decrease, 90D volume has been on a slight upward trend.
- The number of sales and wallets per week has increased slightly from the past week even with a slight decrease in volume. This signals that there are more active traders even with reduced activity.
- Interestingly, volume on X2Y2 has more than doubled in the last 2 days from an average of ~500 ETH in the past week. The marketplace recently announced halving its staking rewards, which will cut current emissions by over 66%. However, the amount of WETH paid to stakers remains the same, which has prompted many to believe that the X2Y2 token will have greater value accrual.
This Week’s Highlights
NFT Collections
Checks - VV
Checks are a Twitter checkmark-themed NFT collection created by Jack Butcher, designed to reiterate the concept of ownership on the blockchain by exemplifying the memetic value of a culturally significant status symbol. The public sale of the NFT was for $8, echoing Elon Musk’s decision on selling Twitter’s checkmark at a cost of $8/month. Beeple and Budweiser have also tweeted about the project, which probably contributed to the momentum.
This collection applies an interesting burn mechanism that will help to reduce the supply, similar to Damien Hirst’s The Currency collection. The original NFT edition starts with 80 checkmarks. Owners can burn two 80-check NFTs for a 40-check NFT. Burning two of the original 40-check NFTs can receive one 20-check NFT, and so on. This burning process is as follows: 80 → 40 → 20 → 10 → 5 → 4 → 1 → 0 check NFT. Of course, burning can stop at any stage if there is no interest in advancing to the next smallest edition. A limited Black God 0 check NFT can be minted by burning a 1 check NFT and currently the supply is kept at 3. The possible evolution of the NFT is shown below
The collection's current floor price is at 1.84 ETH, a whopping 35,500% increase from its starting price of $8. Overall, the collection is owned by 18 smart money wallets, with a significant number of holders also minting and buying the Checks - Pepe Edition on the secondary market. View it on Nansen's NFT God Mode here.
a Kid called Beast (AKCB)
AKCB is a 3D NFT collection that aims to bring about digital and physical experiences to holders as well as build up a brand and culture in music, fashion, and events. The project’s utility includes viewing NFTs in AR on Instagram and Tiktok, as well as access to Beastswap - the project’s own DEX for holders. Customizations of the 3D models are also in the works, and holders will get full access to the IP rights of their NFT. Real-world merch is also in progress, with mock-ups of physical figurines and accessories already available on Twitter. The recent collaboration with Wallet Guard will also provide security education for the holders.
The collection minted out on 15 Jan with a price of 0.077 ETH and has steadily increased since then. The floor price jumped by 72% in the past week, currently sitting at ~1 ETH. There has been a lack of Smart Money holders in the project, with a total of 4 Smart Money holders and an average size of 2 NFTs, and has not really increased. Notably, a wallet tagged as Smart NFT Sweeper cleared out most of its stack on the initial pump post-mint.
There has been an increase in the number of NFTs being listed at floor, which could be a sign that more holders are reducing exposure to the collection. This likely caused the floor price to decrease significantly in the past day. Even though the number of NFTs being listed is decreasing as well, the number of NFTs being listed at floor would be an indicator to pay attention to given that it will cause panic as the number gets larger.
Ordinals
The recent Ordinals NFTs on Bitcoin have a lot of excitement and debate from market participants. The Ordinals is a new protocol developed by Casey Rodarmor that enables NFTs to be stored on Bitcoin. Ordinals essentially refer to numbering each newly mined Bitcoins as a unique identifier for every Satoshi, which can be tracked as they are spent. This ordering does not require any changes to Bitcoin and does not affect Bitcoin fungibility.
These Ordinals or sequential Satoshis can be used to contain information such as images, text, videos, and games. These extra contents or data are also known as Inscriptions. Thus, this creates the so-called “digital artifacts” on Bitcoin or Bitcoin NFTs. Storing all Inscriptions fully on-chain also makes the content fully decentralized and immutable. This prevents the possibility of malicious attacks on centralized data solutions, as seen sometimes on Ethereum NFTs where the NFTs’ metadata were compromised. Despite the benefit of decentralization, critics highlight that it increases the average block size, and subsequently transaction fees, due to the extra block space used. More information about Ordinals and Inscriptions can be found in this doc.
Currently, well-known collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Moonbirds, and CyptoPunks have already been reproduced on Bitcoin. Since there is not an OpenSea for Bitcoin NFTs, all of the Bitcoin NFTs can only be traded OTC at the moment. This thread outlines some quick guides on how to get started with Ordinals Bitcoin NFT.
Others
Open Edition NFTs
Open Edition NFTs have been gaining traction. It utilizes the ERC-1155 standard and has been taking the market share of ERC-721 NFTs in the number of trades in the past weeks. The ERC-1155 is a multi-token standard that can manage a combination of multiple token types (fungible, non-fungible, etc.). The ability to combine both standards makes the token optimized for gaming. The token standard was pioneered by Enjin, a gaming platform. A key feature of the ERC-1155 is that it allows for batched token transfers with a single call, similar to how ERC-20 transfers work. This is an advantage over the ERC-721 as it allows users to save on significant gas fees. More information on the standard can be found here.
Manifold is one NFT marketplace that allows users to create their own open edition NFTs through the Apps tab on Manifold Studio. Besides that, notable collections that currently uses the ERC-1155 standard include RTFKT MNLTH and Adidas Originals. Given the added functionalities of the standard, it would be interesting to see if more projects will choose to adopt the ERC-1155 instead of ERC-721 moving forward. The growth of adoption will likely be exponential if the gaming industry takes off as well.
Upcoming Projects
Mocaverse is a membership NFT collection for Animoca Brands’ family of companies, projects, investments, shareholders, and partners. The collection will represent their values surrounding Web3 and digital property rights, as well as their ecosystem. The team recently announced the Mocalist winners from holders of the Realm tickets, possibly signalling that the mint will happen soon.
