Page One #52
Welcome, friends, to another late Friday edition. As always, thanks for reading, let me know what I missed on Twitter, reach out to the P1 crew at contact@pageone.gg and hit the button below to come hang out.
TLDR:
News and Notes:
KPR issues passports to New Eden
LinksDAO votes to buy a Scottish golf course
Opepen Edition rises as Jack Butcher shifts focus
Sewer Pass scores validated as Toad Mode starts
0N1 Force acquired by former Binance and YGG execs
Recent Launches:
byteGANs are the latest creation from Van Arman’s robots
Castaways give Islands to everyone
Coinbase commemorate Base launch with free NFT
Ghost Boy comes to life 8 years after creation
Modern Muse makes generative Marilyn Monroes
Metropolis by mpkoz will finish minting via world tour
Upcoming Launches:
Momoguro brings animation and gaming expertise to NFTs
Notable Pepes go to those with Pepe Checks
News and Notes:
KPR issues passports to New Eden
In their largest update since release, KPR introduced Citizenship Profiles earlier this week. Collectors can earn different badges, marks and points for holding KPRs with particular traits or completing certain activities. Accumulating accolades will “unlock access to a variety of experiences and rewards,” which are yet to be revealed. Some limited-time badges are already available. While some have been frustrated with the project’s pace, there is unquestionable quality in their UI/UX design, which rivals the best in the space.
LinksDAO votes to buy a Scottish golf course
Mike Dudas and Jim Daily founded LinksDAO with a comically absurd goal: buying a golf course. 13 months later, their dream is well within reach. A proposal to submit a bid for the Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland passed this week with 89% approval. The 100-year old links course features 12 waterfront holes and a “guide price” of ~$900,000. According to the proposal, the group was previously focused on courses in the United States but found the Spey Bay listing to be too great of an opportunity to pass up. Their offer must be accepted and various due diligence processes would follow, but it’s an huge step for an organization that many wrote off as dreamers.
Opepen Edition rises as Jack Butcher shifts focus
The tweet above set off buying frenzies on Sunday night. Given that Checks have reached their finished state - migration and burning are live and immutable - the Value Visualizer has some time to think about what, if anything, to do with the ~16,000 free frog pictures inspired by Batdzu’s Geometric Pepes. Metadata changes left the square frog behind and spurred more buying - the collection has seen 22,000Ξ in traded volume over the past week, although a huge portion of that is Blur farming. He’s not yet revealed his plans, but has made a few hints - whatever comes next will be “completely different.”
0.57Ξ floor | 15,984 supply | Free mint | minted 1-8-23
Sewer Pass scores validated as Toad Mode starts
When Dookey Dash scores were verified and released last Friday, 18 year old pro gamer Mongraal found himself with the top prize - which he promptly listed for ~$3.5M. UPDAO, a DAO governing Pixel Vault’s inhabitants, has bid 690Ξ for the key.
The Sewers have reopened to welcome players to Toad Mode, an alternate game mode that gives with an N/A score a second chance to earn their participation in The Summoning. These passes will receive unranked Power Sources, which will have lower rarities than the bottom scores for the first Sewers run. Toad Mode ends March 1st and any Sewer Passes that still have an N/A score will become valueless. The Summoning will take place on March 8th.
0N1 Force acquired by former Binance and YGG execs
The Block reported Wednesday that a group of investors including former executives from Binance and Yield Guild Games led a community buyout of the project for an undisclosed amount. The collection has been a known acquisition target for some months - Non-Fungible Films publicly disclosed their offer back in October and evidently had competition. The new leadership group has their work set out for them, but “intends to deploy significant funds” towards growing the IP.
Other Stuff Happened:
Azuki expands their reach with Researchers in Residence
DeGods, Sappy Seals and others experiment with Ordinals
End of Sartoshi gets a metadata update and AL for Nakamigos
Parallel’s Closed Alpha will begin on February 28th
Pudgy Penguins partner with Retail Monster for toy distribution
PROOF of Conference was cancelled after ticket sales stagnate
Solana Monkey Business acquired by HadesSwap for an undisclosed amount
VeeFriends reveal Burn Island, a deflationary platform offering various rewards
Worldwide Webb receives $10M investment from Pantera Capital
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Recent Launches:
byteGANs are the latest creation from Van Arman’s robots
For more than 15 years, Pindar Van Arman has forced robots to think creatively. The artist and roboticist has employed a multitude of hardware and software in his work, which often highlights the differences between human and computational creativity. His latest collection, byteGANs, explores the same theme while building upon ideas introduced in previous works, such as bitGANs. His inclinations towards technology make him a seemingly natural digital artist, but he developed a reputation in art circles well before venturing into NFTs. This thread from Mooncat2878 provides some more background on the collection.
Castaways give Islands to everyone
When the island survival game airdropped their Islands II collection to Raft holders and giveaway winners earlier this week, they also released free (non-NFT) islands. The public islands are available for the cost of one compass and dramatically level the field for smaller players, allowing anyone to start building and farming their own resources (although they have fewer resources than the NFT Islands). Over 12,000 free islands have been claimed so far.
Other recent updates include island levels, a leaderboard-based prize system and in-game challenges, while tradable character skins and in-game resource markets are on the way. The team is delivering constant updates to a game that people actually have fun playing - a seemingly unheard of feat in blockchain gaming.
Coinbase commemorate Base launch with free NFT
On the 23rd, Coinbase revealed Base, an Ethereum L2 built on the OP Stack. Base, which will not have a token of its own, is live in testnet now. Coinbase hopes the new L2 will provide new and existing users with a trusted place to begin their on-chain journey, with hopes it can help “onboard 1B+ users into the cryptoeconomy.” To commemorate the launch, they released an NFT on Zora that is mintable for free until Sunday. Over 65,000 have been minted so far and despite having no stated purpose, low token IDs have sold for as much as 2.5Ξ.
Ghost Boy comes to life 8 years after creation
It’s hard not to compare Ghost Boy’s origin to founder Evan Luza’s first project, Cool Cats. Just like Clon and his Blue Cat, Luza has been doodling variations of Ghost Boy for years. A product and brand designer by trade, Luza also co-founded Alpha Labs, a product-focused Web3 venture studio. Devoid of a roadmap or Discord, Ghost Boy minted over the past weekend and climbed to 0.5Ξ before declining after reveal on Saturday. The collection saw over 5,000Ξ in volume (whatever that means nowadays).
Modern Muse makes generative Marilyn Monroes
We’ve seen plenty of celebrity estates collaborate digital artists, but Modern Muse is doing something a bit different. Their collection, which was cut from 3,333 tokens to 1,000 a few hours after the mint began, combines photos of Marilyn Monroe with on-chain generative art. Zeblocks - an artistic duo made up of Arsonic (of Sergeant Pepe fame) and Sebiastian - previously created generative art projects including the Art Blocks Curated collection Unigrids and the independently published Sensthesia. The reveal date has not yet been announced.
Metropolis by mpkoz will finish minting via world tour
The first collaboration between Art Blocks and Bright Moments, a digital art platform known for IRL minting experiences, sees Chimera artist Michael Kozlowski task minters with a trip across the globe. Each of the 500 pieces minted in Wednesday’s Dutch auction are half of a diptych that pays homage to one of five cities - New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City, or Los Angeles. The other half of each piece will be minted at exhibits in the corresponding city - pieces with the New York trait must be minted in New York, etc. These exhibits take place in early March and those who can’t attend can delegate minting to an attendee. Read the details on Bright Moment’s site.
Other Stuff Happened:
Kujira No Konton, a manga-focused collection, opened their mint
Renders Game from Mount Vitruvius minted last week
$SUDO token was made transferable after a proposal passed
Super Puma minted and they look like Chester Cheetah
Upcoming Launches:
Momoguro brings animation and gaming expertise to NFTs
A host of Emmy awards in VR animation and a team with a diverse set of experience make baobab studios’ first foray in the crypto space an easy entry on the up-next list. Founded in 2015 by former employees of Zynga, Dreamworks and Pixar, baobab has built a reputation as a leader in independent animation and have received investments from Comcast, Disney and Samsung. Alongside the Momoguro NFT collection, which tells a story of magical creatures who fuse together in endless combinations, baobab has been developing a metaverse game, a TV show, and physical collectibles. The team laid out all this info and more in a thread you can read here. Details surrounding the collection’s release are scarce, but it’s expected sometime in Q1 2023.
Notable Pepes go to those with Pepe Checks
It turns out this Pepe was indeed notable. After selling over 200,000 Pepe Checks in an open edition mint a few weeks ago, world-famous dank memer Vincent Van Dough has revealed his grand plan: to create more Notable Pepes. The new series of Pepe Cards pays homage to Rare Pepes and Fake Rares and will include OG Pepe artists returning to the meme lab.
Pepe Checks - technically the first Notable Pepe card - serve as the distribution mechanism. 5 Notable Pepes - each with varying supply and a different creator - will be released every Sunday, with Pepe Check holders receiving allowlist spots via raffle. Mints are planned for every Sunday at 4:20PM EST at a cost of 0.069Ξ, although these details could change over time - check the Notable Pepes Twitter and Telegram for the full breakdown on upcoming cards.
Market Overview:
The 10 days since the Blur airdrop have been some of the strangest days I have seen in the NFT market over the 18 months I’ve been here daily. Volume has skyrocketed while market share has shifted dramatically towards Blur, with the new kid taking as much as 80% of daily volume despite OpenSea’s attempt to match their pricing by cutting fees to 0% and making royalties optional.
TVL in Blur’s bidding pools increased almost 400% after the token released, from ~$36M to ~$120M at the time of writing. OSF and Mando dumped 71 Apes into bids without moving the floor on Tuesday night. Machi is doing material amounts of volume on his own, getting tokens dumped into their bids and subsequently dumping into other bids like a merry-go-round while deploying over 6,500Ξ into the market. 50% of total volume on Blur has been coming from less than 300 wallets. Starting just a few hours ago, the bid walls that have looked ever so strong over the past week have started to decay, leading many floors lower after a week of farming-related stagnation. We’ve had more daily volume lately than in many months, but it’s cyclical nature has made volume statistics less meaningful than ever.
Half the space says we’ve entered a new regime of deep liquidity and efficient markets. The other half bemoans the likely death of royalties as the end of NFTs as we know it. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, but it’s far too early to draw decisive conclusions. Whatever the case, it’s hard to see how this “deep liquidity” - which can be recycled across collections - persists in the long term, unless the 300 or so wallets fueling it somehow keep digging tokens out of the couch. While I don’t like to make predictions, it seems like chaos of one kind or another could be on the horizon sometime soon.
Other Stuff Happened/ing
Art Blocks is launching marketplace functions on their own site
Blur rewards loyalty, ignores stolen flags and founder reveals identity
Collabland airdrops token to users and NFT holders
Cozomo de Medici donates 22 NFTs, including zombie Punk, to LACMA
Dapper, Magic Eden, Polygon each announce substantial layoffs
Judge denies motion to dismiss case allegedly NBA Top Shots are securities
OpenSea goes 0% fee, optional royalties as Blur gains market share
Rarible now supports Tezos NFTs