NFT Weekly Recap - April Week3

Hello guys,

Hope you all had a great weekend. Welcome to this week's NFT market recap, covering basic stats and notable news with my observations. If there is anything else you'd like to see in the recap, please let me know. DMs are open.

Basic Stats

As usual, let's begin with numbers.

The market looked like it was going to zero until Moonbirds came out to save the day. Total OpenSea trading volume (as measured in ETH) decreased 19% on a weekly basis. The daily volume was only 30k ETH last Friday, which was similar to early March levels, when the NFT market was in deep bear.

The number of daily active traders also decreased by 6% last week. Even on Saturday and Sunday, when Moonbirds was generating insane volume, the trader count did not break 60k. As you can see from the line chart, while volume surged during the weekend, the number of traders remained relatively flat.

In terms of floor price, the biggest winner is obviously Moonbirds, which broke 20 ETH before falling back to 18.5 ETH. Azuki and Doodles both saw a healthy double-digit increase, while Cool Cats dropped more than 20% because of increasing royalties and questions around its utility. Another weekly winner is Gh0stly Gh0sts, which might actually be remembered as the first omni-chain NFT.

Source: flips.finance

Notable Events

Moonbirds by Proof Collective

Q: What is Moonbirds?

A: It's a bird that goes to the moon.

The hype around Moonbirds is real.

Within 48 hours of minting, Moonbirds is already No. 16 on the OpenSea all-time volume ranking. Moonbirds' total trading volume has surpassed that of many iconic NFT projects, such as World of Women, CrypToadz, CyberKongz, and Pudgy Penguins.

Source: OpenSea

In terms of project revenue, Moonbirds' achievement is even more impressive. It is now No. 2 on the project revenue leaderboard on flips.finance, because of its high mint price and royalties earned from large trading volume.

Source: flips.finance

Moonbirds is a 10k PFP collection by Proof Collective. The Proof Collective is an exclusive NFT community founded by Kevin Rose, an American venture capitalist.

The Proof Collective has been known for providing value and utility to its holders. For example, Proof launched the Grails collection, in which 20 artists made 20 unique pieces of art. Artists who participated included Gary Vaynerchuk, Larva Labs, Tyler Hobbs, and Gremplin.

The Proof Collective holders were able to mint one Grail per membership. The Grail by Larva Labs was the one with the hidden Meebits easter egg. It is now selling for over 50 ETH on Opensea.

The Proof Collective membership pass has increased from 1 ETH to over 90 ETH since last December, probably the best performing NFT assets during the period.

Moonbirds is also marketed as more than just an avatar. Utility is promised, including membership access to the Proof Collective discord. As a result, the market went crazy for Moonbirds, expecting Moonbirds to provide similar value as the genesis Proof membership pass.

Right now, it is not clear what kind of utility is expected other than discord access. Moonbirds holders will have priority access to Project Highrise, a metaverse project by the Proof.

Project Highrise is a focused and novel take on the metaverse.

But not many other details are shared.

Let's see if Moonbirds can live up to its expectations. The Proof certainly has amassed a huge war chest to accomplish almost anything.

Punk6529 and Open Metaverse

Was your Twitter timeline also chilling on a white rooftop during the weekend?

Source: Twitter @punk6529

As you now need to pay about 20 ETH (to buy a Moonbird) for future access to the Proof Collective's metaverse, you can enter punk6529's for free.

Punk6529's Open Metaverse ("OM") is a decentralized open metaverse powered by Oncyber. The goal is a horizontal, brand-neutral metaverse where anyone can build. No OM land will be sold. Everyone is welcome to participate. Actual work will be rewarded instead of artificial land scarcity.

A closed or branded metaverse has exactly the same problems as web2 platforms. Are we going to see beans in the apeverse? Probably not. Beans will have their own metaverse.

I have always been looking for crypto-native ways of showcasing NFTs and hanging out digitally. Compared to the countless branded metaverse projects in the space, OM stands out, due to its open-mindness and inclusivity. It's still in beta. But the vision is very promising. Even if it is just moderately successful, it will take the current NFT space to the next level.

Other News

Some other news you might be interested in learning more:

• Project Serum, together with Burnt Finance, announces the Serum Surfers Collection on Solana.
• Sotheby's New York announces Natively Digital 1.3: Generative Art, a collection of generative art in both physical and digital form.
• Cool Cats launches Cooltopia and increases collection royalty from 2.5% to 5%.
• Coinbase announces the production of an animated film trilogy featuring Bored Apes, the Degen Trilogy.
• Rarible Protocol has integrated Solana NFTs.

Ending

The market looked like it was going to zero until Moonbirds came out to save the day. But even when volume surged, trader count remained flat. This is different from the Azuki party hype, where trader count went up with volume.

Azuki went up because of new buyers getting into NFTs two weeks ago. Moonbirds went up because existing players sold other NFTs for Moonbirds, turning PFP into a zero-sum game. I am not entirely sure what this means for the long term, but I am not positive.