Introduction

This week’s NFT recap covers various metrics from the macro to micro outlook of the NFT market.

• Social NFTs are leading the local bull run in the NFT market
• Apecoin launches their own token, similar projects follow a similar tide in terms of demand and volume traded in the past week
• Sectors like metaverse, gaming, art remain relatively stagnant, while PFPs are experiencing an upward trend
• More generally, the NFT bull run might resume, however, uncertain as to whether this wave is caused by the APE airdrop and BAYC holders attaining more liquidity in this period, or if this will spark new, genuine interest in the NFT market

Top News

• Apecoin launches APE token
  • Link here
• Someone borrowed 5 Bored Apes to claim $1.1 million of APE tokens using a flash loan
  • Link here
• Time Releases First-Ever Full Magazine Issue as an NFT
  • Link here
• Coinbase NFT marketplace to launch “soon”
  • Link here

NFT Market Overview

• Last, week in our NFT Weekly Recap Report #7, we mentioned that "there was a slight resurgence in the NFT market as seen in the NFT-500 Index points”.
• On March 15, 2022, Yuga Labs announced the APE coin launch and the acquisition of Meebits & CryptoPunk’s NFT IP. Since then, there has been a local bull run in the NFT market, accelerating floor sweep actions and bumping price movements. As seen in the NFT-500 (30D change), the NFT-500 index points have increased 1.28% in USD value over the last 30D.
• While sectors like gaming, metaverse, and art remained relatively stagnant over the week, the Blue-Chip and Social-100 sector was particularly interesting. Both of which experienced a massive entrance of volume and overall demand. Particularly in the Social-100 sector, we saw a 2x increase in index points, ranging from 1.8k on March 12 to about 2.4k currently.

• In the NFT-500 Index Activity, the floor of most collections (BAYC, CryptoPunks, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, CloneX, VeeFriends, Doodles, Meebits, WoW, Bored Ape Kennel Club)’s floor increased by >5% over the last 30D.
• More notably, World of Women’s floor increased by 32% in the last 30D and 50% over the last 7D. There has been incredible hype for women-focused NFT projects in the space, especially with the WoW Galaxy collection that is launching soon.

This Week's Highlights

• Overall volume (secondary + mint sales) is on a positive trajectory for the first time in 4 weeks.
• Total volume increased from 57,000 ETH in secondary sales to 92,227 ETH this week.
• Mint volume also increased hand-in-hand with secondary sales.

• BAYC, MAYC, CryptoPunks, and BAKC top the charts in volume traded (ETH).
• The APE token movement rallied a positive feedback loop in the volume traded of related collections. Observing Nansen’s latest “related NFT collection” features, we can see that BAKC, MAYC, Adidias: Metaverse are some of the NFT collections with the highest concentration of BAYC holders.

• MURI By Haus has a similar style to Azuki when it comes to the artwork. In terms of roadmap, MURI plans to launch its own token at the end of Q1, 2022. They plan to use the token as an in-game currency and holders will get access to purchase physical goods too.
• (B)APETAVERSE officially sold out 11 hours ago. (B)APETAVERSE is a collection by the original BAPE brand. This project aims to combine fashion and NFTs, and is made exclusively for BAPE fans. There will be exclusive access to BAPE goods and potentially a metaverse-like game in the future.
• Zombie Token Club is a collection by Shawn Yue, a Hong Kong actor. This collection received massive attention from other influencers and celebrities, especially friends of Shawn. In particular, Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Eric Chou have all mentioned this NFT project on their own social media platforms.

OpenSea and LooksRare Trading Volume

• Despite the increase in overall volume in the NFT market after 4 weeks, the daily active users on OpenSea are still ranging at lower volumes. The increase in overall volume is not reflected in the daily active users on OpenSea. Despite the rather steady-looking chart on the left, LooksRare experienced a surge in trading volume (as seen below), and an increase in daily active users.

• Adjusted for wash trading, BAYC, MAYC, V1 CryptoPunks, and Bored Ape Chemistry Club are the main contributors to LooksRare’s inflated trading volumes this week. It seems like most of the BAYC was moved to LooksRare instead, taking advantage of LooksRare's 2% trading fees, which is substantially lower than Opensea’s 2.5%.

Contract Activity

The 7D users per contract dashboard is a good indicator for identifying user activity between marketplaces and also discovering the latest innovative contracts in the NFT space.

This week we have:

• OpenSea: Marketplace
• ENS: ETH Registrar Controller
• SKULLTOONS Gavorche by Theodoru
• Gutter Punks Flyer - Doodles
• Gutter Punks Flyer - Meebits
• GutterPunks.co
• HAPEBADGE
• Gutter Punks Flyer - Azuki
• Nametag
• Gem: Single Collection Multi Buy
• AtemPassport

Based on this 7D contract activity, we can largely pinpoint how the smart money users and general users are interacting between marketplaces. Some top contenders to look out for is likely “Gutter Punks Flyer”, “HAPEBADGE”, “Nametag”, “Gem: Single Collection Multi Buy”, and “AtemPassport”.

Upon further observation, we looked into the Gutter Punks Flyer contract and found out that these were airdropped for free to the collection holders of Doodles, Meebits, Azuki, and BAYC.

Looking at the specific contract for Gutter Punks Flyers - Doodles, the top 3 related collections is Doodles, Pukenza, and Space Doodles, respectively. 65% of holders are from the official Doodles collection. Airdropping the flyers to renowned blue-chip projects could be a good method to gain traction when it comes to secondary demand, driving up floor price and volume traded. Although the purpose of airdropping these flyers is unclear, memetic value in the crypto space is highly underlooked.

Gem vs. Genie

TLDR: Gem and Genie are both similar products in terms of functionality and usage. Genie was around for much longer and spearheaded the NFT marketplace aggregator movement. Although Genie was around for longer, Gem has recently surpassed Genie’s daily new users in absolute.

Gem updates:

• Gem currently holds a larger market share in terms of its value accrual when it comes to NFT aggregators.
• Gem is going above and beyond with its floor sweep feature and introduced a new safety mode for floor sweeps.
  • Safety Mode uses Flashbots to prevent you from paying unnecessary fees and from other people front-running your purchases.
  • Link here

Genie updates:

• Genie, however, recently launched a revamped product with a new marketplace design, genie sweep feature, and up to 40% saving on gas fees.
• The question is whether users would be driven to make the switch from gem to genie with their new product revamp.

Useful Tools to Track Upcoming Mints

• Nansen's Mint Master Tool

• Rarity Tools
• ChaChang Daily NFT Tracker + Floor Tracker
• Ape O’ Clock

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