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Lucky Trader previews the week ahead in NFTs.
This article originally appeared on Lucky Trader: NFT Weekly Preview | y00ts Week Is Here
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Hope was emerging late last week, that the NFT market may have indeed bottomed. Grails were being bought left and right, PFP floors were up 10-20%, and sentiment on the timeline was turning slightly positive (at least for the 50 people left on NFT Twitter).
Then the Fed promised pain on Friday at Jackson Hole, the equity markets and crypto crashed, and that NFT positivity was replaced with uncertainty. This weekend tallied the lowest two-day trading volume for OpenSea of the year, with just $10.8mm traded Saturday and a slight rebound to $12mm on Sunday. With just three days left in the month, August is looking to be the lowest volume month since last July, and it will mark the 4th straight decrease in volume month-over-month for the NFT market.
Once again, not great.
But with those volume blues aside, it was still surprisingly a very green week for the top of the NFT board. Looking at the top projects by floor price, 23 of 30 were even or in green on the week, with most up in the 10-20 percent range. The monthly numbers are still very red, but the depth has decreased quite a bit and now most are down “just” 10-20 percent on the 30-day – not bad for the lowest volume stretch of the year.
Let’s take a deeper look at the top weekly movers.
The lead story, with some breaking news, is from DigiDaigaku and the Limit Break team. Founder Gabriel Leydon announced just this morning a $200M raise to build Web 3 MMO (massive, multi-player online) games, and the genesis NFT set for DigiDaigaku rocketed on the news. It sits at 16 ETH at the time of writing, up 250 percent on the day and over 700 percent on the week. These NFTs were minted for free just three weeks ago, and this serves as a major reminder of the opportunities that exist in the NFT space for those who stick around and pay attention.
Limit Break is excited to announce that we have raised TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS ($200,000,000) over two rounds to build Web 3 MMO games. These rounds were led by @joshbuckley, @paradigm, & @standardcrypto
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Besides the surging Digis, the Yuga ecosystem once again dominated the board in what was a really strong rebound week. The “BendDAO liquidation crisis” was clearly overblown, it did not tank the PFP market and the whole situation seems to be behind us. The BAYC floor even touched 80 ETH this weekend, before retracing a bit to 77 ETH this morning at the time of writing. MAYC and Otherdeeds had nice weeks as well, each up 17 percent to 14.5 ETH and 1.8 ETH respectively.
There was likely some anticipation of an announcement tied either to the Eminem and Snoop performance at the VMA’s (which did introduce MTV’s audience to the metaverse last night, to mixed reviews) or the one-year anniversary of the MAYC launch, but alas no announcement came. This week’s Yuga action will be telling and likely a leading signal for the rest of the market – if it can keep moving up, especially with no real news, it’s a great sign.
CryptoPunks have been very quiet against this BAYC leg up, with the gap widening to 10 ETH now between the two floors after a brief re-flippening a week ago. Punks currently sit at 67.5 ETH, up just 2% on the week and with just 27 weekly sales.
Now on to some better news.
Azuki’s ripped on a week full of news (funny how that works in the NFT space), as an airdrop teaser was released along with Adrian Cheng announcing 101 buys (as rumors of a potentially big investment swirled). Azuki jumped 40 percent on the week, from lows below 6 ETH up to 8.3 ETH this morning. This seemingly reignited the mid-tier PFP market in their wake, with Doodles up 15 percent to 7.8 ETH and CloneX up 18 percent to 7.2 ETH.
Now the mid-tier PFP focus shifts to Moonbirds, ahead of a major Future Proof event tomorrow (covered in detail below). The birbs were up 17% on the week to 14.3, though dwarfed by the Oddities which surged 40 percent to 1.7 ETH.
One other winner on the week is from the generative art sector, as Squiggles have rebounded ~20 percent on the week to an 11 ETH floor. This has been a very nice surge and much needed for the Art Blocks space, which has seen liquidity dry up and floors fall hard over the past few weeks. Perhaps the Cheaper ETH will once again lead to a resurgence in generative art popularity.
A few notable losers on the week were led by the Pudgy Penguins, which fell 22 percent after their recent run-up and sit at 2.9 ETH this morning. Given their tie-ins with Crypto Twitter, and the volatility in the crypto markets, this should not be a huge surprise but still disappointing in a week of mostly green for the rest of the major PFPs. Isekai Meta was the other big loser on the week, down 56 percent to 0.18 ETH.
So it is an interesting backdrop for this new week of NFT project launches and airdrops. On one hand, there are some bullish tailwinds led by the PFP sector and the surging DigiDaigakus. On the other, crypto markets and equity markets are dipping hard, Europe can’t keep its lights on, and weekly volume is at the lowest levels in a year.
This week should be a real test of the resiliency of the NFT market, its ability to respond to positive news, and how much liquidity is on the sidelines ready to jump in. And there will be some major liquidity attractors this week, in what could be the single biggest week of the summer for NFTs.
On deck for this week, we have a major event (and potential token drop), the most anticipated Solana mint of all time, and a massive airdrop coming from the hottest new ecosystem in NFTs.
Let’s break down each one in more detail.
The long-awaited IRL event for the Proof Collective and Moonbirds communities happens Tuesday, August 30th, as Kevin Rose and the team gather in LA for their much-anticipated conference. A Future Proof preview happened in the Proof discord a few weeks back to widespread acclaim, as the team previewed their vision for each foundation of the Proof and Moonbirds ecosystem. The event this week should go into further detail on each one, including some much-anticipated previews of Project Highrise.
But the biggest anticipation is around what may or may not be airdropped during the event, as Kevin and the team have hinted STRONGLY that all Moonbirds should be in their nest on the 30. Leading speculation is that there will be a token announcement at the event, as the team has basically said this is a bad market to drop a new NFT set in (i.e. Moonbirds 2 or Ravens). There was also an image of a revolving gold coin floating around the Proof discord a few weeks back, so this seems to have some real weight to it.
The question is – how would a token be airdropped? All at once, released on a daily basis, some other mechanism? My gut is that a token would be earned by Moonbird owners via nesting and accrued on a daily/periodic basis. Proof owners may get a set allotment, but maybe not as they were already given two Moonbirds. It seems doubtful that Oddities would get in on the tokenomics, but there will be something big for the Oddities announced at Future Proof, rest assured.
With the Moonbirds floor up about 25 percent from local lows at 15 ETH, this could very well be a make-it-or-break-it week for this PFP set. If the market rejects the news this week, MB’s are likely relegated to the mid-tier PFP range of 7-8 ETH floor price; but if the news is positive, they certainly could return to recent levels in the 20-30 ETH range. We will certainly know more by the end of this week.
The second FP event will expand on this vision, incorporating the entire @proof_xyz ecosystem – Collective, Moonbirds, Oddities, Highrise, & more. Viewers can expect sneak peaks into Highrise, a community-centric platform that seeks to connect artists, collectors, and community.
The most anticipated Solana NFT drop of all time comes this week on Friday, as the second collection from Frank Degods “y00ts” is released. Frank has built a cult following in the Solana NFT ecosystem which is now spilling over into the ETH world. His OG project DeGods eclipsed a 500 SOL floor over the weekend (~10 ETH), as it became a top-5 PFP set, and has been absolutely surging over the past few weeks.
Not only that, but the native token $DUST has also been on a rampage, up over 100 percent in the past week against a terrible crypto backdrop. It sits at $3.25 this morning and is likely only going to go up ahead of the y00ts mint as each is set to cost 375 $DUST.
For a full deep dive into what y00ts is all about, see this preview article. But as a quick recap, it is a 15,000-character PFP set that aims to experiment with new licensing strategies. They will launch a “y00ts store” as a marketplace for PFP holders to upgrade/customize individual traits of their characters, with the artists that design those traits receiving royalties. To be eligible for the y00ts store, holders will have to stake their NFTs for 30 days to receive the “ⓨ token”.
What has drawn the most attention to y00ts has been their innovative application process, which includes a series of questions and requires applicants to describe how they could contribute to this ecosystem. Winning applicants then get cool screenshots which have been shared all over Twitter, and have certainly raised the reach of this new project as celebs, athletes, and ETH NFT influencers have been sharing them.
From a market perspective, this mint is quickly getting expensive as the price of $DUST increases. As of today, the mint would be $1,200 or ~0.8 ETH / 40 SOL. With the Degods trading at 500 SOL or 10 ETH though, this will be an attractive entry that most won’t hesitate to pay. The early sentiment seems to place the 15,000 y00ts floor at around a 5:1 ratio, similar to BAYC:MAYC, which would put the floor at the 2 ETH / 100 SOL range. But since this isn’t necessarily the Degods companion, there may not be a ratio cap on this project and some are hoping it can meet or exceed the Degods floor.
Regardless of price speculation, this drop has put Solana NFTs in the forefront and could very well be the major onboarding event needed for that NFT ecosystem to take off. A bullish drop and weekend of trading could also bring some much-needed life into the overall NFT ecosystem, which is much needed. But maybe unfortunately for the y00ts, it will not be the only big drop on Friday.
In any other week, y00ts would have been the headliner, but that spot may have been usurped this morning by the surging DigiDaigaku ecosystem on the back of their $200M raise. This anime PFP set from the Limit Break team was just named the “genesis” set last week, paving the way for the next set to drop this Friday in this gaming ecosystem’s first expansion.
Limit Break founder Gabriel Leydon sold his prior company Machine Zone for ~$600M, as big-name free games Game of War, Mobile Strike, and Final Fantasy XV generated over $4.5B in revenues from 2014-2018. Now his sights are turned on the crypto/NFT gaming space, where he plans to replace free-to-play with free-to-own, as all of the Limit Break NFTs will be given away for free.
Not much is known about this airdrop of what the new set will entail, but with the genesis NFT at a 16 ETH floor, there will be serious demand. Based on what we do know, there will be just another 2k NFTs coming, as the airdrop is 1:1 for genesis NFT owners. Assuming a 5:1 ratio and using the current floor of 16 ETH, this would put the airdrop in the 3 ETH range, but given how little is known there’s no real reason to use those assumptions.
As of now, the Limit Break valuation is way out of whack with the market cap of its NFTs. The current mc is only ~$50M (2K NFTs x 16 ETH), leaving some to speculate there is still a lot of room to run.
Price speculation aside, one thing is for sure – Friday is going to be a huge day for the NFT space.
AIR DROP ANNOUNCEMENT ✈️
– AIR DROP FRIDAY 9/2 afternoon PST
– SNAPSHOT FRIDAY 9/2 (exact block of snapshot announced Thursday 9/1)
– Holders will receive 1 air drop per @DigiDaigaku
More details on the nature of the air drop and major company announcement early next week
The macro backdrop is as fragile as ever, but the NFT bubble is surprisingly holding up okay. With three major events and new projects coming this week, this will be the most important week for NFTs since The Otherside mint. If these hyped projects and events can finally attract some liquidity from the sidelines, it could very well serve as the spark for an NFT run (though most likely it would not occur til post-merge). But if this week falls flat and volume is once again at yearly lows, it probably signals max pain for the coming weeks and months.
With that said, not many other spaces offer up 7-20x opportunities in just a few weeks (DigiDaigaku) potential returns, and clearly more real founders and teams are entering the NFT space. The key for traders is to stay present, somewhat liquid, and ready when these opportunities present themselves.
The best way to stay ready is with the Lucky Trader team and newsfeed, bringing you the most relevant breaking news and highlights across the NFT ecosystem on a daily basis. Good luck this week, and as always, stay safe out there!
Two paths from here — crash or rebound with cheap ETH.
Disclaimer: The author or members of the Lucky Trader staff may own NFTs discussed in this post. Furthermore, the information contained on this website or the Lucky Trader mobile application is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice.
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