NFT Weekly Recap - June Week1

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.

Trading volume saw its first weekly increase since May. It went up by 9.06%. Daily volume was around 30,000 ETH throughout the week. Compared to the good old days, i.e., early February, it's nothing. But it's at least better than the two weeks prior.

The number of daily active traders increased by 11.13% last week. It even broke 60,000 on June 2nd. The trend is easy to spot in the chart above. As more and more people are joining the game or coming back, trading volume and floor prices will likely improve further.

In terms of floor price, the biggest winners are the meme projects. Goblintown continues to impress, breaking 7 ETH in the middle of the week before falling back to 6 ETH. The older projects delivered mixed results. BAYC and MAYC increased by 8.09% and 17.24%, respectively. Moonbirds, Azuki and Clone X's changes were all in the single-digits.

Source: flips.finance

Notable Events

OpenSea Head of Product Arrested and Indicted

As reported by The Block, Nate Chastain, OpenSea's former Head of Product, was arrested on June 1st in New York, New York. A grand jury has indicted Chastain on wire fraud and money laundering charges, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the indictment, Chastain was allegedly responsible for selecting which NFTs would be featured on the OpenSea homepage.

From about June 2021 to September 2021, Chastain used secret wallets to purchase NFTs that would be featured on OpenSea. He then sold those pieces for two to five times his initial purchase price shortly after the value pumped because of OpenSea homepage exposure.

At the time of writing, Cyber Trans Punk #43 is featured on the OpenSea homepage. Clicking on the image would take you directly to the page where you can purchase that piece. While Cyber Trans Punk only had 2 sales of 0.007 ETH each between March 22nd and June 3rd, its sales spiked since June 3rd, recording a trading volume of 5 ETH over 4 days, presumably because OpenSea directed more traffic from its homepage to the collection.

Source: OpenSea

Chastain's front-running and insider trading cannot be tolerated and must be punished. This is also not the first time the NFT space saw law enforcement involvement. The rug-pulling Frosties's two founders were charged with fraud and money laundering. Hopefully these events could warn those with wicked intentions and prevent them from taking advantage of under-informed participants in the future.

The Silent Rising of tokenproof

tokenproof introduces safe token-gating solutions, enabling users to prove ownership of NFTs without connecting or even carrying their wallet. NFT NYC is around the corner. And tokenproof is gaining momentum.

Based on released announcements, tokenproof is providing token-gating solutions to at least Bored Ape Yacht Club, Proof/Moonbirds, mfer, World of Women, Boss Beauties, Gutter Cat Gang, Tubby Cats, among others. A very impressive list of clients for a startup like tokenproof.

Source: Twitter@BoredApeYC

The tech behind tokenproof is simple. Users verify ownership of wallets/NFTs with tokenproof upon registration. Afterwards, users could verify using tokenproof only without the need to connect to their wallets anymore.

tokenproof is a direct response to hacks/scams happening in NFT veritification today. Based on current community feedback, it is quite easy to use and significantly limits the risks associated with verifying token ownership.

By collaborating with established communities for NFT NYC, tokenproof is building a deep moat, because people could be too lazy to register again with another service provider. Other NFT communities might be forced to use tokenproof as well, because a user might hold multiple NFTs in the same verified wallet. For example, when attending the Azuki event, beans might want to use tokenproof instead of having to connect their wallets to sign another message.

Tokenproof's opportunities lie beyond NFTs as well. For example, if the ApeDao arranges something in the future and requires 20 $APE to participate, tokenproof could very well help with that.

Other News

Some other news you might be interested in learning more:

• Project Galaxy announced the launch of GAL Chain, a BNB Application Sidechain (BAS).
• Illuvium launched IlluviDEX, the official Illuvium Marketplace.
• Quixotic, an Optimism NFT marketplace, announced that it now supports transactions in $OP.
• Ember Fund launched its Top NFT Index, allowing everyday investors to invest in blue chip NFT collections, which include Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, World of Women, and Doodles.

Closing Thoughts

The market is entering a delusional stage where some of the most popular projects are We Are All Going to Die and pieces of shit. Goblintown, the top-performing project in recent weeks, is also bear-market-themed. The NFT space definitely needs some more optimism.