Top News

• LG to allow users to buy, sell, and display NFTs on their TVs
• NBA has partnered with Sorare to launch a fantasy basketball game
• GameStop announces partnership with FTX
• Chicago Bulls are collabing with 23 artists to recreate the Bulls logo as an NFT
• FIFA launches NFT platform on Algorand
• Fortnite Developer Epic Games’ Marketplace Lists First NFT Game
• New York’s Museum of Modern Art Considers Buying NFTs With Proceeds of $70M Auction
• Doodles raised $54m at $704 valuation

Raises

• Token Management Platform Magna Raises $15M Seed Round at $70M Valuation
• Goldsky raises $20M to bring real-time, on-chain data to crypto companies
• Crypto Options Trading Startup Synquote Raises $2.8M From Initialized, Polygon

NFT Market Overview

Volume per week

Users and Transactions per week

Main observations:

• Volume expressed in ETH for NFT sales continues to decline and has reached ATL YTD. The volume in September pales compared to volume in September last year.
• Transactions per week have increased steadily over the last few weeks, surpassing 850k.
  
  • The increase in transactions can be largely attributed to an increase in Mints. Transactions in Mints increased from 442k to 513k over last week
• Users per week drop over the last two weeks and are now below 250k.
• The Blue Chip-10 index continues to drop and is down 24% YTD measured in ETH terms and down 47% measured in USD terms.
  • CryptoPunks and Azuki have had the largest floor price increases in the last 7 days and are up 6.54% and 3.11% respectively.
    • CloneX, Meebits, Doodles and Mutant Ape Yacht Club all have suffered in floor prices in the last 7 days; -8.31%, -2.87%, -2.45%, and -1.87% respectively.

Marketplaces

LooksRare vs X2Y2 vs SudoSwap

Source: Nansen NFT Trends & Indexes, (as of 15 Sept, 2022)

• Sudoswap continues to outpace LooksRare in all metrics whether it be weekly volume, users per week or transactions per week. However, users per week have fallen off dramatically by 73% compared to 13,217 two weeks ago. The number of transactions have also dropped by 66% compared to 18,184 two weeks ago.

NFT Index Performance

Main observations

• All 6 Nansen NFT indexes have continued to fall even lower YTD in ETH terms. Surprisingly, the Art 20 index has only dropped by a minor -3.2% YTD compared to Blue-Chip-10 which has fallen by -24%
  • Game-50 index continues to be an outlier and is down -76% YTD in ETH terms.
• The Game-50 and Art-20 index is seeing a green week and are up 14.7% and 24.6% respectively

This Week’s Highlights

[Relatively slow week for on-chain NFT activity, not much coverage]

BAYC/Yuga Labs/APE

The APE token is having a token unlock on 17 Sep 2022. The unlock is 3.2% of the total $APE supply, and 10.29% of circulating supply. There will be 25m APE tokens (~140m) that will be unlocked to “Launch Contributors 1”. There are speculations that Animoca is likely one of the Launch Contributors and it will be interesting to watch how the token unlock will unfold.

One of the largest transactions for the APE token in the last 7 days was a transfer from 0x8cc (chart below) to 0x80 of 6.2m APE tokens (~31m USD). The wallet tagged as 0x80 currently has a balance of ~31m APE tokens, which is a large sum considering all else. Another notable transaction was on 15 Sep 2022, where a fresh wallet funded from FTX received 1m APE tokens (~$4.8m USD).

Doodles

Doodles announced their recent capital raise of $54m at $704m valuation. They mentioned in the raise announcement that they will be using the funding to acquire a team of engineers, creatives, marketers, and business executives, as well as to fund product development, proprietary technology, and experiences. These hires are expected to accomplish Doodles’ long-term goal of being one of the most important Web3 entertainment brands in the space.

RENGA/Black Box/The Art of Seasons

RENGA and Black Box picked up steam over the past 7 days. The floor prices of RENGA and Black Box have increased by 100+% and 213% respectively. The Art of Seasons is also experiencing a similar trajectory in volumes and floor prices due to interest in the subsequent collections. The collection features a highly unique artist, Dirty Robot Works. Although there are divided opinions about the art work and demand from the community, it is clear that the narrative is slowly building up surrounding the artist and the art.

Smart Money Movements

This week's minting activity by Smart Money consists of some notable projects. Some of these collections are ENS, Clone X's ForgedToken from their Forging SZN 1 drop, Metropolis World Passport, and Set In Merge, free NFTs that represent proof that the person was around during the historic Ethereum Merge event.

60 unique Smart Money wallets have been minting the Clone X ForgedToken, which are digital wearables, such as socks, hoodies, t-shirts, caps, and more, for the Clone X avatars. Smart Money balance changes in the past week confirm the interest around the ForgedToken wearable NFTs with luggis.eth accumulating over 301 NFTs from the collection and is now the current largest Smart Money holder.

In short, Clone X holders can buy digital and physical apparel from the collection inspired by the various Clone X DNA representatives. We tracked and notified Alpha community members of the activity regarding the minting contract deposits on our Alpha Radar on Friday, September 2nd.

As for Smart Buys, most notably, ENS domain registrations and trading continue to soar as it has been consistently doing so all quarter, with 11 different Smart Buyers buying 24 ETH in volume on the secondary market this past week.

In August alone, there were over 301k .eth registrations and 34k new domain name holders, while the protocol generated 2,744 ETH in monthly revenue, the third highest monthly revenue ever for the ENS DAO. Popular subsections of ENS domain names like the 100k, 10k, and 1k clubs have all seen positive price action. The 1k club's floor price currently sits at 33.95 ETH, while the 10k club and 100k club has floor prices of 2.26 ETH and 0.058 ETH, respectively.

The majority of Smart Money activity around ENS domains has been buying. In particular, 925.eth, the most prominent Smart Money holder of ENS domains by far with 2,571 NFTs, purchased 118 different .eth names this past week alone. In addition, from a longer-term perspective, the number of unique Smart Money wallets that own ENS domain names has been trending upwards over time.

Solana NFTs

NFT Market Overview

Main observations:

• Volume for Solana NFT sales have surged to near May/June highs in the past week, hitting 1.1m volume in SOL. Magic Eden over 90% of that volume, with 1.0m volume in SOL in the past week.
• Number of users has also increased to above 140k as users for mints and Magic Eden have both increased by around 25%.
• Transactions per week hit an ATH with mint volume increasing by more than 100% from the previous week and are now at around 498k. This is likely attributed to the t00bs mint which generated over 180k volume in SOL itself.

Top Projects by 7D Volume

• Overall, most liquidity was centered around newer projects while projects like DeGods have seen a decrease in volume following the t00bs mint.
• t00bs garnered over 90k in SOL volume in the last 7D. The project was extremely hyped as it was the long-awaited second collection from the DeGods team and the WL marketing generated a lot of FOMO on Twitter.
  • Even though the reveal has been delayed by the team, the price has stayed rather consistent at around 130 SOL - suggesting that most holders are still betting on Frank and the team to deliver.
• After having a significant run-up in price, ABC has managed to hold a floor price of around 50 SOL after HGESOL (founder of the project) teased utility for ABC holders in the upcoming AMM NFT Marketplace - Hadeswap.

• Solana Name Service had a decent run in the past week with hype centered around .sol domains with 2 to 5 digits. The highest sale recorded in the past week was for the domain 09.sol, which sold for 249 SOL.

  • The domains had been around for a while and it is unclear what exactly drove the price action surrounding it, similar to what happened with ENS a few months ago.

  This Week’s Highlights

ABC

ABC is a project created by HGE.SOL, a famous “whale” in the Solana NFT ecosystem which was minted and listed on Magic Eden at 1.23 SOL without much information surrounding it at the start. The project had moderate traction at the start but gained attention when tweeted about future utility with the NFT project being intertwined with Hadeswap - an AMM NFT marketplace that allows users to trade/swap NFTs using liquidity pools. The project then shot up from an average price of around 15 SOL to 60 SOL in just 2 days.

Looking at the individual transactions from the past week, it showed that many Smart Money buyers were buying near ATHs and buying above the average floor price. The top 5 holders for ABC hold 1,725 NFTs, which is a pretty significant percentage of the supply. These would be important wallets to look out for given that any action from these holders can affect the price action and sentiments significantly.

Overall, the project has pumped significantly and further price action will likely be determined by the updates on Hadeswap and HGESOL. Though, the ABC project has a strong community which could help in propelling the project further as well.

Tools for further research

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.
• Hyperspace (Solana)
  • Hyperspace allow users to explore and collect NFTs across all the marketplaces on a single interface
  • Hyperspace allows users to track floor prices and volumes of NFT projects

Due diligence for minting

• Nansen’s guide here

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
• Solsniper.xyz (Solana)
  • This platform allows you to track floor prices, volumes and an overview of your NFT portfolio

NFT Marketplaces

• Opensea
• LooksRare
• Rarible
• Mintable
• Mintbase
• Zora
• SuperRare
• Magic Eden (Solana)
• Solanart (Solana)
• Coral Cube (Solana)
• Yawww (Solana)