The thriving NFT landscape 🌄
Metaversal is one Bankless newsletter for weekly levels on NFTs, virtual worlds and collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
Today, if you want a bird’s eye view of the NFT space, you need to have at least a dozen different blockchains on your radar.
There is the king of the land, Ethereum. The L2 OGs like Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, ImmutableX and Starkware. Axie Infinity’s GameFi hub Ronin. The BNB, Solana and Tezos stages. Flow with the Doodles crossover. And newer ecosystems like those emerging around Bitcoin Ordinals and Canto mints.
Not long ago, this NFT landscape was not so broad. It is very interesting to see what NFTs are like huge drivers of activity and interest not just on Ethereum anymore, but on many chains.
These blossoming cultural frontiers of digital media present many new opportunities for pioneers like us, that’s for sure. Be curious and always be diligent as you explore these new frontiers, and in the meantime, have a great weekend!
-WMP
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It was another week of growth for the cumulative market capitalization of the NFT space, which was up 2% to 9.11 million ETH on the week. Lately, it’s been “just up” for this statistic, but only time will tell how long this week-over-week green streak will last. With the way things are going in the NFT scene right now, it looks like the uptrend could definitely continue for the foreseeable future.
It’s been another dominant volume week for Yuga Labs projects, no surprise there. And Jack Butcher’s Checks has also continued to tear, further cementing the collection’s place as one of the biggest NFT stories so far in 2023. One project that we haven’t seen in the top 5 recently that just had a strong showing was Doodles, which runs high on new Dooplicator’s buzz.
With the $BLUR airdrop now just days away, OpenSea and Blur continue to be neck and neck in the NFT trading volume wars. When the airborne dust settles, all eyes will be on who can take a decisive lead again. The rest of the ranking looks unchanged since last week, with the exception of cryptoart platform Foundation, which just managed Sudoswap to move to 8th place.
In last week’s recap I noted how the three big NFT buys that week totaled over Ξ1,160 in sales. Fast forward to today, and the biggest NFT buys of this week the total amounted to almost Ξ2000! These huge transactions are just the latest indications that things are heating up at the top of the NFT economy right now.
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Sound introduced Curator rewards.
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Tessera unveiled Eschera curated marketplace for art publications.
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VerticalCrypto Arta curatorial house, entered into collaboration with Art Blocks Engine.
Priced at Ξ0.001 for approved participants, Chungos was essentially a free coin that took place at the end of last month. Since then, the PFP collection held its art reveal, facilitated for over Ξ1000 in trade volume, and has seen the floor rise as high as Ξ0.2 already. All the way to the top there is a huge price increase of almost 20,000% since coin!
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Life in the American West — Created on Braindrops this week, this iconic AI art series by artist Roope Rainisto has seen the floor explode as people flock to collect the sad works
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Verified — a fun mint open for a week or two that lets you turn your NFTs into ‘Checks’ style pieces on chain
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Wizard’s hat – Noun DAO to vote on making its second open edition for “The Wizard’s Hat”, a film of Noun stories team; learn more about Substantiv DAO’s previous release here
1. Chain left on pros/cons and misunderstandings of Ordinal’s Bitcoin NFTs:
2. Panda Jackson on how Jack Butcher’s Checks has greatly benefited from Blur bypassing OpenSea’s blocklist:
3. ClearHat on how Yuga Labs’ Dookey Dash game appears to have been heavily botted:
NFTkek is a cool NFT analysis platform I just came across. You paste in the address of the NFT collection you want to analyze, and then NFTkek pulls up a bunch of key statistics and informative, colorful graphs on that collection. Here’s a sample thread digging into the aforementioned Chungo’s NFTs to illustrate:
Have you ever seen a new NFT project with increasing stats and want to monkey in accordingly? Be careful and always pay attention to your due diligence steps, as on the surface the statistics of an NFT project can be deceiving. Cyphr points out one such scam project that merely inflated its own statistics to lure unsuspecting potential collectors into malicious transactions:
Here artist and Mathcastles co-creator 113 fun looks at how primitive Bitcoin NFT trading is right now. Needless to say, there is definitely a long way to go UX-wise:
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal– a bankless newsletter focused on the rise of NFTs in the crypto-economy. He has also recently contributed content to Bankless, JPG and more!
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Mediation. From time to time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you purchase through one of these links. In addition, the Bankless writers have crypto assets. See our investment information here.
