Page One #51
Welcome to a Friday edition of Page One. I am incredibly excited to announced that this article will be inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain as an Ordinal (jk but those are the vibes this week).
We should be just about back on schedule next week, so look for our NFT recap around mid-week. We’ve also launched a Page One Twitter account we’ll be using to post article links - you can follow that here.
As always, thanks for reading, let me know what I missed on Twitter, and hit the button below to come hang out. See you next week for our $BLUR stimmy.
TLDR:
News and Notes:
a KID called BEAST breaks out after mint concludes
Checks continue their timeline occupation ahead of burn
Kanpai Pandas sign UFC champion Jon Jones
The Otherside teases Legends of Mara
PROOF announces passes will sunset after 3 years
SoRare NBA sets record with Unique Giannis sale
“We’re doing Ordinals” is this week’s most popular headline
Recent Launches:
Defy Mosaics are the next step in Lucréce’s colorful puzzle
Life in West America ventures through the uncanny valley
Loud Punx bring crypto VIPs to Rolling Loud
Pepe Checks see VVD turn ERC-1155s into memecoins
Reddit releases Super Bowl collectibles as wallets soar
Rug Radio’s Faces of Web 3 await reveal next week
Upcoming Launches:
Render’s Game is the next collection from Mount Vitruvius
Yuga prepares The Summoning as Dookey Dash closes
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News and Notes:
a KID called BEAST breaks out after mint concludes
With a visual style clearly aimed at the streetwear-loving sect of digital collectors, AKCB hopes to create a technology-infused lifestyle brand. Beasts are divided into 20 different groups that function as sub-communities; minters took a short quiz to determine which group they’d be placed in. AR is a major focus for the project and each Beast has its own 3D model which is viewable on OpenSea or in the hub on their website. While the project is certainly aimed at a specific niche of collectors, its rapid rise from ~0.4Ξ last week to where it currently sits at ~1.2Ξ caught plenty of attention.
Checks continue their timeline occupation ahead of burn
While market metas can come and go in as little as a week, Jack Butcher’s Checks have occupied the market’s collective mind for a bit over a month now. Their influence can be seen clearly in the hundreds of derivatives and more opaquely in projects like Lucréce’s Proceed with Caution. We’ll soon find out whether the symbols of faux verification are elevated to the artistic pantheon or relegated to meta meme folder, as the long-awaited burn is set to begin this Sunday, February 12th.
Schmrypto, the top holder of Checks with 508 tokens, has already voiced his intent to create the Black Check - which requires 4,096 Checks - through the formation of a DAO. While this could create huge demand, the market may simply lose interest - it’s anyone’s guess where things go once the burn begins.
Kanpai Pandas sign UFC champion Jon Jones
Before long, laypeople may look at the Panda logo and think, “I know them, that’s the brand all the fighters and poker players wear.” After months of collaborations with UFC fighters and card sharks the everyday follower may or may not know, the Pandas announced their big fish - household name Jon “Bones” Jones. The two-time Light Heavyweight Champion and UFC GOAT candidate will return to the octagon for the first time since 2020 as the main event at UFC 285 in March, this time with the Pandas as his official apparel brand. As far as partnerships between NFT projects and celebrities go, this is easily amongst the most impressive - and impactful, as it nearly guarantees the Pandas a bit of mainstream media shine ahead of JJ’s return.
The Otherside teases Legends of Mara
In December 2022, Yuga Labs announced the Second Trip - the second gameplay demo event for The Otherside - would take place in late March and include more gamification and higher energy than the First, which was largely a tech demo. On the 7th, they gave Otherdeed holders another event for their calendars - Otherside: The Legends of the Mara is a stand-alone 2D experience that will take place after the Second Trip. There aren’t any details about The Legends of the Mara and other announcements have been relatively sparse lately, but that didn’t prevent Otherdeeds from topping volume charts over the past seven days with over 10,000Ξ in volume.
PROOF announces passes will sunset after 3 years
In their most recent town hall, the PROOF team announced that PROOF Collective Passes will sunset on January 1, 2025. In practicality, this has a few direct implications: Grails will become a paid, public mint, PROOF podcasts will likely add advertisements, and access to research reports will likely require a monthly subscription. While disappointing to holders, the move makes sense from a business standpoint as PROOF attempts to transition, at least in some respects, from small club to respected media outlet. The announcement had an immediate impact on price, as PROOF passes fell over 40% since the disclosure on Tuesday the 7th.
SoRare NBA sets record with Unique Giannis sale
Launched alongside the start of the 2022 season in October, SoRare NBA saw their largest card sale yet earlier this week when Giannis Antetokounmpo’s “Unique” card went for 113.8Ξ. Unique is the highest card tier, with only one Unique-level card available for each player annually. Currently in their 33rd Game Week, SoRare NBA has steadily introduced new features throughout the season, such as custom competitions with unique requirements and rewards. Their free-to-play fantasy sports, which also include soccer (football, sorry Euros) and baseball, are commonly one of the most traded NFT collections in the entire space.
“We’re doing Ordinals” is this week’s most popular headline
We discussed Bitcoin’s new Ordinals protocol, which enables data of various kinds to be inscribed on single Satoshis, last week. Since then, the hype surrounding them has reached a fever pitch. While older (read: inscribed like two weeks ago) collections like Ordinal Punks have seen sales as high as 9.5 BTC (~131Ξ), a slew of Ethereum-native projects have made plans to create inscriptions. Existing collections creating Ordinals of some kind include Anonymice, ChainFaces Arena, and On-Chain Monkey, all of which saw substantial volume on announcement. Elsewhere, new Ethereum-based collections have sprung up and seen volume on the promise that they will be inscribing assets on Bitcoin and giving them to holders of related Ethereum NFTs.
Other Stuff Happened:
Canto ecosystem overview from Corporate Trash (Lucky Trader)
Clone X holders can now claim .SWOOSH IDs
EtherOrcs announces they halting new developments for the project
KILLABEARS prepare to start burning their open editions
Prometheans see their flame extinguished after nearly 3 months
Pudgy Penguins release Sotheby’s SBT and party with DeGods in Paris
Webaverse has $4M stolen in strange incident in Rome
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Recent Launches:
Defy Mosaics are the next step in Lucréce’s colorful puzzle
Lucréce released Proceed with Caution as an open edition a few weeks ago and, after dropping hints, rewarded those who collected a full set of colors with a Defy Mosaic. Each Mosaic is a unique generative piece containing Defys of various colors, with 10 “legendary” pieces that contain only one color. Lucréce says the collection pays homage to pop art of old, symbolizing the commodification of culture objects through the small differences in each piece. Whether or not the mosaic collection, which launched through Async Art, is the conclusion of the Proceed with Caution experiment is unclear.
Life in West America ventures through the uncanny valley
If you glance quickly at Life in West America, you might see a simple collection of photographs of 20th century America. The new collection from AI art platform BrainDrops and artist Roope Rainisto is described as a “post-photography project” and was generated using custom-trained Dreambooth AI models. Images full of nostalgic themes melt together to create a collection that sits somewhere between reality and a dream, depending where (and how closely) you look. After minting for 0.1Ξ on Wednesday, the collection found an instant audience and currently sits around 3Ξ.
Loud Punx bring crypto VIPs to Rolling Loud
Rolling Loud is the latest music festival to embrace NFTs. Loud Punx, their collection of generative avatars, provide holders with lifetime VIP access to Rolling Loud festivals across the globe. Other holder perks include exclusive merchandise and digital experiences and content. While other music festivals, such as Coachella and Tomorrowland, have dabbled in the realm of digital collectibles, Loud Punx is the largest collection so far with the most expansive benefits. It’ll be interesting to see how the collection fairs over time and whether or not Rolling Loud attendees outside of the NFT space have any interest in them.
Pepe Checks see VVD turn ERC-1155s into memecoins
Collector, curator and memer Vincent Van Dough joined the Checks derivative party last weekend with an open edition mint of Checks colored as the famous frog, Pepe. The mint, priced at $6.9, exceeded anyone’s expectations, selling over 230,000 pieces and netting VVD a cool $1.4M. Immediately after the mint closed, Jack Butcher changed the metadata for the original Checks to match the Pepe graphic on VVD’s edition. While the frog collector has since dropped some hints that a burn may be in the works, there are no officially announced plans for the collection yet.
The total supply of Pepe Checks looks outlandish in the NFT world and is easier to think of in terms of fungible coins. Many in The One have seen the project as the incarnation of John Patten’s prediction that an ERC-1155 token will become meme money sensation similar to DOGE or SHIB. Pepe Checks could certainly accomplish something of the sort, depending on where VVD takes the project from here.
Reddit releases Super Bowl collectibles as wallets soar
Things have been pretty quiet on the Reddit Avatar front since they got their moment in the sun last September. Their new collection of Super Bowl avatars provides an opportunity to check back in. Reddit users can claim one of the four NFL-themed avatars for free here. While there haven’t been as many outlandish Avatar sales in recent months, NFTstatistics provided some great insight into the numbers related to Reddit avatars in one of his daily videos this week. Unique Reddit wallets continue rising and currently sit just above 6M - an astounding number when you consider that only 2.3M Ethereum wallets have purchased an NFT on the largest marketplaces.
Rug Radio’s Faces of Web 3 await reveal next week
The avatar collection illustrated by Cory Van Lew concluded their mint on the 9th. While there were some issues with the expanded allowlist mint (which the team detailed in this blog post), the team is working with those effected to make things right. Faces of Web3 holders are now eligible to participate in Rug Radio’s listen-to-earn program and can opt in here. An exact reveal date has not yet been announced, but is expected some time next week.
Other Stuff Happened:
A Fundamental Dispute renders beautifully sketched on-chain landscape
Monsutā blends art with storytelling through interactive tokens
Upcoming Launches:
Render’s Game is the next collection from Mount Vitruvius
Best known for his Mind the Gap and Z-Huge collections, generative artist Anthony Hiley-Mann (better known as Mount Vitruvius) will release his first collection with Art Blocks on the 13th. With a title that pays homage to the 1985 science fiction novel Ender’s Game, MV describes Render’s Game as a collection “centered on self-reflection” and challenging his own creative processes. It’s one of the more anticipated Art Blocks collections of the past few months - judging from various test renders, deservedly so. You can experiment with the rendering algorithm on Sansa before the mint takes place early next week.
Yuga prepares The Summoning as Dookey Dash closes
The Dookey Dash sewers closed on Wednesday and Sewer Pass holders are preparing for the next phase of Yuga’s lengthy, interactive mint. According to Yuga’s summary blog post, 25,525 pass holders played nearly 7.5M Dookey Dash runs over 700,000 hours. After the sewers closed, the timeline on the MDVMM site was updated with a few things: scores are being reviewed until the 15th, then holders can “lick the toad” on the 22nd before The Summoning takes place on March 8th. Details around The Summoning are still very scarce, but we know (assume?) that Sewer Passes will be transformed into Mechs, which will then be revealed sometime in late March. Check out the site to get all the available info.
Sewer Pass: 2.6Ξ floor | 23,232 current supply | free mint | minted 1-18-23
Other Stuff Happening:
Other General Happenings:
Escher is a new editions marketplace from the Tessera gang
Hermes wins U.S. trademark trial over MetaBirkin NFTs - Reuters
The Sandbox partners with Saudi Arabia to work on metaverse projects
Mint or Skip is Giancarlo's new curated list of upcoming projects
OpenSea is now aggregating listings from projects using Seaport
OpenSea announces Private Beta program to test new features