Page One #30
Last week offered a few entertaining episodes but overall things still feel incredibly boring relative to Q1 (but hey, anything beats the foreign language domain squatting competitions being had the week before). While there’s nothing huge on my radar this week, there should be a few bigger projects coming out by the end of the month.
As always, thanks for reading, subscribe above, hit the button below to come hang out and let me know what I missed on Twitter.
TLDR:
Art Blocks continue their bear market revival
Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, BAKC all rise before First Trip
Bored & Dangerous began minting July 11
Gossamer World expands with Academy mint
Grifters rise, bringing volume to other XCOPY collections
Immortal Player Character is rediscovered 4 years later
Kingship makes Apes into major-label musicians
The Otherside holds load tests before First Trip on Saturday
The Potatoz is the appetizer before MEMELAND
The Saudis briefly meme #MAXBIDDING into reality
World of Women airdrops Capacitors
WZRDS roll out staking game with a burning twist
News and Notes:
Art Blocks continue their bear market revival
The AB bull market mentioned a few weeks ago in P1 #27 has shown no signs of stopping. Chromie Squiggles have risen to a floor price of 13Ξ while other favorites like Screens and Anticyclone have seen steady sales and floor increases. New mints, like yesterday’s Total Strangers, are finding success in a difficult market. Top of the line pieces are moving, too - Fidenza #631 sold last night for 459.7Ξ. In it for the art.
Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, BAKC all rise before First Trip
If you didn’t already know there was a Yuga announcement coming up, you could probably guess so from recent sales. The Apes have just about reclaimed 100Ξ (while a gold Ape sold for 869.69Ξ on Friday) floor while CryptoPunks have doubled since their early June lows and now sit at almost 80Ξ. Late on the 9th, there was a run on BAKC, pushing the floor up about 2Ξ to 8Ξ. Even Meebits are seeing volume. The rush of sales before The Otherside’s First Trip could be the result of rumors trickling out - we might see what kind of benefits (if any) holders of each collection get in The Otherside come Saturday.
Grifters rise, bringing volume to other XCOPY collections
The psuedo-avatar collection from crypto’s favorite flash artist has risen swiftly over the past few weeks. Available for less than 10Ξ three weeks ago, the floor reached nearly 30Ξ over the weekend. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for their rise, but it certainly has brought some attention back to other XCOPY pieces including the MAX PAIN open edition, which has moved from 0.7Ξ to ~1Ξ over the past week.
The Otherside holds load tests before First Trip on Saturday
Otherdeed holders were invited to participate in two separate load tests last week ahead of the first game demo this weekend. Designed to put their servers under a realistic amount of stress, the load tests saw over 2,500 concurrent users jumping and dancing around an empty space, creating a visual similar to a Fortnite pre-game lobby. The tests ran quite smoothly and created a good bit of overreaction, both positive and negative. While Yuga hasn’t announced exactly what to expect from the first Otherside game demo taking place on the 16th, we can probably expect something rather similar, but with environments and maybe some activities. Read more about the load tests and what to expect this weekend here.
World of Women airdrops Capacitors
Following the formula used by many top projects, WoW holders received a mysterious, unrevealed NFT called a Capacitor. Whether or not WoWG holders receive a capacitor is yet to be seen - they tweeted the delivery had been thwarted. WoW remains one of the most active communities out there. They recently offset their historical carbon emissions and announced a WoW Galaxy-themed Monopoly board game will release soon.
WZRDS roll out staking game with a burning twist
Early last week, WZRDS introduced their staking feature, sending each wizard into the forest to collect mushrooms. Those who did not stake were labeled COWZRDS and on Monday night, they learned they had made a potentially costly choice. Staked WZRDS could now voluntarily burn tokens that are listed for sale. This caused a stir amongst the holders while simultaneously shooting the floor price to new heights and listings to new lows. Losing a WZRD doesn’t come without opportunity, though, as the former holder receives a skull - it’s purpose unknown - for each WZRD lost. Although it caused some controversy and the radically high floor price means little (nearly all sales in the past few hours have been accepted offers), they’ve created an interesting new iteration of previously-seen staking games.
Recent Launches:
Bored & Dangerous began minting July 11
The first novel from the Yacht Club Valet began minting yesterday with the public Dutch auction. The auction reached the lower limit of 0.2Ξ before the window for holders and Write List members opened. Their mint period runs until around 6PM EST on Wednesday. B&D features over 50 Apes who were licensed to Tally Labs by their owners. Each book can be staked for governance tokens or burned for an Azur Root. The roots will be redeemed for Azurian avatars at a later date. While some may not be interested in reading a novel about Bored Apes, all should take note of what Jenkins is building - a community-created universe that creates an identity for each Ape in it.
0.27Ξ floor | 20,826 total supply | 0.2Ξ DA / 0.15Ξ WL | minted 7-11-22
Gossamer World expands with Academy mint
BRON Studios has been releasing more information about their multi-media universe slowly over the past few weeks. Their ecosystem now consists of the moths and the warriors, which have yet to sell out. Holders who have one of each can claim a land parcel for free at some point in the future. Each warrior is rendered in Unreal Engine, serving as both a profile picture and an in-game avatar for the P2E MMORPG. They’ve also announced some of the cast for the TV show, notably including Forest Whitaker. Read a bit more about their plans in this thread.
Immortal Player Character is rediscovered 4 years later
First minted in early 2018, Immortal Player Character was amongst the first NFTs to integrate character statistics into each token. The collection sold out a few days ago and began trending, raising a host of questions around its origins. Each IPC has a variety of visual characteristics, like race, gender and height, and a number of attributes, like strength, dexterity and intelligence - OpenSea and other modern marketplaces don’t display the token art, but you can view them on the IPC website here. To learn more about IPC, check out this detailed Medium article.
The Saudis briefly meme #MAXBIDDING into reality
Playing off CT memes of Saudi princes saving the crypto market, The Saudis recruited a lineup of influencers, degenerates and max bidders before launching their free mint yesterday. The simple Saudi-themed Punk derivative doesn’t offer much outside the meme but apparently that’s enough, as they’ve topped weekend volume charts and have seen over 7,000Ξ of volume. Their public sale was instantly botted on Saturday night, causing the floor to slide down as the botter sold. That is, until the founders banned the botter from selling, leaving 217 NFTs off the market.
Upcoming Launches:
Kingship makes Apes into major-label musicians
First announced back in November, Universal Music Groups’s band of Bored Apes is about ready to debut. The Kingship Genesis Keycard will begin minting on Thursday at 12PM EST for those selected in the PREMINT raffle. 2,000 NFTs will be available on Thursday with a maximum of four mints per wallet, while 1,000 tokens go to community raffle winners. The remaining supply will mint on the 15th.
Details on what exactly Kingship is building are scarce, but are being supplied in pieces. Each keycard acts as one vote for “when and where to release music” and the project is already teasing a brand partnership. With backing from UMG, j1mmy.eth and more, it’s anyones guess what they’ve got in store.
The Potatoz is the appetizer before MEMELAND
9gagceo and team decided that before they launch MEMELAND, their upcoming project (that we still know very little about), they’d make another to give away for fun. The Potatoz is a collection of personified potatoes that grant some form of access to the MEMELAND ecosystem, potentially including a spot on their Memelist or some yield of their upcoming token, $MEME. While they haven’t announced what role the Potatoz will play in the new ecosystem, they certainly have one. The team has been running a number of PREMINT raffles for mint spots but have not yet announced a mint date, so follow them for an opportunity to get one and more details.
NFT Market Overview:
At the beginning of June, I shared some charts comparing LooksRare and X2Y2. After another month or so, the charts seem to show more of the same - X2Y2 has seemingly taken over the #2 spot.
X2Y2’s success is largely attributable to one factor: lower fees. While their standard marketplace fee is 2%, the same as LooksRare, X2Y2 maintained their discounted fee of 0.5% throughout the month of July. Whether you’re selling a Bored Ape for 100Ξ or 100 DoodleApeGoblins for 0.005Ξ, a 1.5% fee reduction can make a significant difference and traders have realized this. Plus, since most volume on secondary marketplaces is curated through aggregators like Gem and Genie, the features and UI of each particular marketplace plays less of a role in determining where a trader goes.
But even after two months of rapid growth, X2Y2 and LooksRare make only a small dent in OpenSea’s behemoth marketshare. Last week X2Y2 hit 20,000 traders - a new all-time high, yet only 10% of OS’s weekly user count of 200,000. Competing against a market-commanding rival is difficult, but the continued success of X2Y2 and LooksRare only spells good things for the NFT space at large.
Other Stuff Happened/ing
NFTs:
Clones are being cast for an upcoming secret project
Murakami.Flowers took a snapshot of holders on July 10th
Project 0xD38 pays homage to Pranksy’s wallet address
RTFKT airdrops NFT t-shirt and POAP to event attendees
Stranger Things is releasing NFTs on Candy on July 14
Wiiides are Punks that get wider with every transfer
Zed Run announces upcoming token airdrop for players
General News: