#035: Moonbirds, BAYC x Superplastic, XCOPY
Welcome
Happy holidays everyone, and thanks for reading the 34th edition of the NFT Drops Newsletter. In this edition we break down pertinent NFT news from the past two weeks before taking a look at the freshly-minted Moonbirds.
Here we go!💧
NFT Drops Recap
Tribe Quokka is a self-proclaimed BAYC rival, lightheartedly jesting that the apes “fired the opening salvo”. The rivalry serves less as an instigation with the apes, and more of a warning that in the NFT world we truly are not all gonna make it (wnagmi). The tribe has a long term vision - they hope to preserve utility over the years and integrate a P2E metaverse game in 2023. After minting at .06 ETH, these NFTs have a floor of .335.
Shinsekai sold out at 0.15 ETH in early April after gaining an impressive social media following. The NFTs serve as membership to an NFT manga community, with their very own web3 manga, “Fukiyose”, coming soon. A clothing line, metaverse land plots, $SHIN tokens, and other branded products will all come in the future. The current floor is .52 ETH on OpenSea.
XCOPY returned to Nifty Gateway, dropping “MAX PAIN AND FRENS” for 1 ETH in a ten minute open edition. After mint, these NFTs hovered around their original price while being actively traded both on OpenSea and Nifty Gateway. Currently, the Nifty Gateway floor is just above $3,000 while the OS floor is .845 ETH. Keep in mind, XCOPY is a huge OG of NFT art. His average sale is just under $10,000, and his highest sale ever was $4,949,283 for “ALL TIME HIGH IN THE CITY” (pictured below). We wouldn’t be surprised to see these NFTs significantly appreciate over the next few months.
In broader industry news, early April gave us two significant technological NFT evolutions. First, MetaMask integrated Apple Pay into their platform, allowing users to buy crypto directly on MM using a debit or credit card. Second, OpenSea, the king of all NFT marketplaces, integrated Solana NFTs onto their platform. This action unlocks visibility and liquidity for previously under-traded Solana collections, and has the potential to steal significant market share from Solana marketplaces like Magic Eden.
Robert Hodgin dropped “Ancient Courses of Fictional Rivers” via Art Blocks Curated on March 29th. 1,000 1/1 works minted at .3 ETH, and as is the case with Art Blocks recently, the floor price quickly fell to half the mint price. Art Blocks has not been grabbing the attention of collectors recently, partly due to their decision to dilute the Curated collection with monthly drops. Nevertheless, the art is pretty cool. Check out the generative animations and buying opportunities here.
Arcade Land is an interesting take on metaverse gaming. The project incorporates both NFT avatars and NFT land plots, with the tagline: “Your avatar + your land = endless possibilities". The collection is being rapidly traded on OpenSea, with its local peak in trading volume occurring last week. Now, the collection is ranked 17th by volume with a floor price of .75 ETH
Fvckrender dropped “FVCK_AVATAR//”, a collection of 7.2K NFT avatars that carry multifaceted utility, on April 6. The collectibles, as with all fvkcrender drops, fit into the greater concept of the FVCKRENDERVERSE// - a virtual environment where you can explore the multiple worlds created by fvckrender. Right now, the avatars have a surprisingly low floor of .277 ETH.
Superplastic, a huge player in the physical collectible world, teamed up with Bored Ape Yacht Club for a release of five different 13-inch “SUPERBORED” art toys. Each model was available for 15 minutes as an open edition, but three of the five required ownership of previous BAYC/Superplastic NFTs in order to purchase.
Moonbirds
It was a pretty easy choice to spotlight Moonbirds in this edition of the newsletter, they just dropped yesterday (Saturday, April 16) and are posting unprecedented numbers:
That’s right, the Moonbirds smashed MAYC day 1 volume with ~ 55k ETH in secondary sales in their first 24 hours. That number is more than half of the Cool Cats, Doodles, and World of Women all time volume. It is also represents more sales in one day than VeeFriends, NFT Worlds, Pudgy Penguins, and mfers have done in their entire existence. Needless to say, this is a historic drop. No collection has ever debuted with such a bang, and this carries major implications for the future:
Now, for the Moonbirds origin story. Before Moonbirds, there was PROOF, a members-only organization of 1,000 prominent NFT artists and collectors founded by Kevin Rose. NFT ownership gates membership to PROOF Collective, as well as a private discord, podcast, in-person events, and “other collaborations created exclusively for PROOF Collective members.” (PROOF website).
Moonbirds were launched as “the official PROOF pfp” (despite their collective ownership of 100s of BAYC, CryptoPunk, etc. pfps), with tiered mint lists giving priority mint to PROOF members. Next, allowlist winners and finally waitlist members were given a shot at minting.
Claiming to be “no strangers to building with utility in mind”, PROOF designed Moonbirds with community and utility at the heart of the collection. Each Moonbird gates access to the PROOF discord and their gated Parliament channels, as well as Moonbird-related drops, upcoming PROOF drops, and IRL events.
Additionally, each Moonbird can accrue value by way of nesting, which is similar to staking. The NFTs unlock more special benefits (like access to drops, exposure to PROOF, and other rewards) the longer they are nested.
From here, the Moonbirds have a lot to prove. They set records for single-day sales, they already rival several cemented blue chips, and they have the power of PROOF backing them. Building off of the momentum of the drop, the team is working to fulfill their promise of utility by shipping outstanding products to their holders.
Let’s end it with Kevin Rose’s drop day message, where he breaks down the future of Moonbirds and shouts out all those who bought in:
That’s It!
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Author: https://twitter.com/jettflax
Thank you all for reading, see you in two weeks💧