What is an NFT Collection? Top 5 NFT Collections Revealed
NFT remains a crypto buzzword, despite NFT transactions falling massively from the phenomenal heights of 2021 when more than $2.5 billion in NFTs changed hands. However, despite the waning interest in NFTs, the technology has not gone away, and millions of dollars worth of NFT collections are traded daily.
What is an NFT Collection?
NFTs, non-fungible tokens, are unique digital assets that are indivisible, verifiable on a blockchain and cannot be duplicated or counterfeited. You can check out our in-depth non-fungible token explanation to learn more about NFTs.
NFT collections are created when artists collaborate to release a series of NFTs (issued and sold in digital forms such as videos, music and tweets). These elements are stored individually on the blockchain. And each unique digital art has metadata that includes the artist’s name, creation date, title, and other relevant information.
From pixelated gorillas to funny wolves, an NFT collection’s value depends on the art’s rarity and the artist’s popularity and creativity. The price of one NFT also increases as more people want to buy others in the collection.
These NFTs can be purchased using cryptocurrency and sold on the open market. There are several NFT marketplaces where you can buy and sell NFTs, and just like regular assets, their value follows the law of supply and demand.
Top examples of marketplaces you can buy these collections from are OpenSea, Rarible, and Nifty Gateway. OpenSea is the largest and most popular NFT marketplace.
5 Top NFT Collections Revealed
Do you want to enter the NFT industry? Here are the top 5 collections you should know about.
1. Bored Ape Yacht Club
Popularly known as BAYC, this project by Yuga Labs launched as a simple NFT collection before exploding into a massive community of 10,000 cartoon monkeys. Many would even call them NFT’s poster children. To further emphasize how much they had grown, as of April 2021, at the launch of BAYC, each Bored Ape NFT cost $190. As of March 2023, they cost around $80,000.
BAYC NFTs are mostly cloth-clad monkeys with weird expressions. Each profile picture is unique, some rarer than others, making the latter more expensive. Celebrities such as Eminem, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton and Neymar are said to have purchased an NFT from this famous collection.
Owning a Bored Ape NFT gives you access to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which features “The Bathroom”, a virtual doodle board where you can doodle, write and draw verbs.
2. CryptoPunks
With 10,000 unique 24×24 pixelated characters, CryptoPunks is among the oldest NFT collections. They were created by Canadians Matt Hall and John Watkinson, who work at Larva Labs. When the collection launched in June 2017, CryptoPunks was almost free for anyone with an Ethereum wallet. As of March 2023, CryptoPunk sold over $110,000 worth of NFTs.
The “punks” are pixelated images of male and female characters, but other not-so-human lifeforms exist, such as zombies, apes, and even aliens. The NFTs in this collection have attracted impressive price tags, with the most expensive punk ever sold, CryptoPunk #5822, going for $23.58 million.
CryptoPunk NFT sales have passed $1 billion and are still rising.
3. Azuki
Chiru Labs launched Azuki in Los Angeles by Chiru Labs on January 12, 2022. Zagabond was the project’s founder; the other three members went by pseudonyms – Location Tba, Hoshiboy and 14:00.Flow.
Azuki, the first anime-themed NFT collection, gave old dogs like BAYC and CryptoPunks a run for their money. Although not as expensive as some pioneer NFT collections, Azuki’s popularity is almost unmatched. The creators put 8,700 collectibles up for sale after launch and sold out in four minutes. Azuki’s “Golden Skateboard” NFTs also hold the record for the most expensive skateboards in history – digital and physical. The nine NFTs raised $2.5 million.
Buying an Azuki NFT gives you access to “The Garden”, a community of Azuki NFT owners, regular airdrops, live events and exclusive streetwear collaborations. And that’s not all. Azuki also offers its NFT owners non-exclusive rights for commercial use. This means you can print your NFT on items and sell them online.
4. Moonbirds
Launched on April 16, 2022, the Moonbirds collection is now one of the hottest NFTs. The PROOF collective, a private community of influential NFT owners, created the collection. MoonBird’s NFTs were minted at 2.5 ETH each, with a 5% royalty on each secondary sale paid to the creators. A week after minting, the floor price rose to around 36 ETH, valued at over $100,000.
Moonbird broke many records in the first week after launch. It generated $191 million in trading volume in the same week, surpassing the likes of Clone X and Azuki, which had $120 million and $122 million, respectively. Unlike Azuki, which took two weeks to reach a trading volume of $122 million, Moonbirds broke the record within hours.
Ownership of a Pixelated Owl Moonbird NFT brings you benefits. First, you will receive intellectual rights over your Moonbird NFTs. You will then gain access to an NFT-gated discord server, where you will be updated on incoming airdrops and community events. Moonbirds also offer “nesting” benefits to their owners.
Nesting involves “locking” the NFT in the wallet. And as the total nested time increases, your NFT will reach new levels, each with its own benefits.
5. Mutant Ape Yacht Club
BAYC launched Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) – new NFTs – to give back to community members. MAYC has 20,000 works of art, twice as many as BAYC has in its collection.
Yuga Labs created the MAYC pool on August 28, 2021. 10,000 MAYC NFTs were sold, with the rest randomly sent to Bored Ape owners. The public sale was a creep, as an exact launch time was not announced. However, many believe the secrecy surrounding the launch contributed to its success, with the 10,000 NFTs sold amounting to $96 million.
After a meager initial price of 3 ETH, MAYC reached an all-time high of $132,000 around April 2022.
There are two ways to become a member of the MAYC community. You can buy a MAYC NFT outright or buy a Bored Ape and inject it with a serum and turn it into a mutant.
A mutant is a jacked-up, edited version of a Bored Ape that maintains some of its original characteristics. And as for the serum, it’s a digital tube that is injected into the monkeys, converting them into mutant monkeys. Buying a serum and mutating a Bored Ape does not make you lose NFT. Instead, you will now own the original Bored Ape and a Mutant Ape!
What is your favorite NFT collection?
The prices of NFTs started to dive after the 2021 rush. This decline was primarily due to the price crash in cryptocurrency and the many scams and shady practices in the NFT market. As a result, the initial rush for NFTs, fueled by the fear of missing out on what appeared to be the next best thing, has plummeted.
But even with all these there are still successful NFT projects. Given crypto’s volatility, NFTs may be the next best thing again.
