NFTuesday - Are Royalties About to Get A Break?
The latest NFT news from Limit Break, Azuki, Moonbirds, and more
👋 Welcome to the 43rd issue of The Syllabus from Invisible College—a newsletter that helps you navigate the fast-moving world of web3. To get it delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here:
The Weekly Numbers
Top Five Blockchains by Sales Volume:
Ethereum: $168.88M - ⬆️ 2.91%
Solana: $40.57M - ⬆️ 5.17%
ImmutableX: $2.75M - ⬇️ 20.53%
Cardano: $2.43M - ⬆️ 4.23%
BNB: $2.25M - ⬆️ 23.36%
Top Five Projects by Sales Volume:
MAYC: $21.06M - ⬆️ 59.78%
BAYC: $17.37M - ⬆️ 6.13%
BAKC: $12.61M - ⬆️ 35.33%
Azuki: $11.26M - ⬇️ 13.00%
Otherdeed: $6.77M - ⬆️ 32.27%
The News and Narratives
It seems as if the mini NFT market bull run has slowed ever since the Memeland Captainz mint, with numbers essentially flat on both Ethereum and Solana.
The Captainz floor price has been holding fairly steady around 5 ETH, with sales volume down over 60% on the week. It looks like most people are holding and waiting for the reveal (or the typical price pump leading up to the reveal). This also means there’s a lot of ETH just kind of waiting on the sidelines right now, which could be part of the reason for less trading on other collections.
Most other top collections, outside of Bored Ape-related projects, are down in sales volume too. We did see this Bored Ape sale top $600K (395 ETH) yesterday, a top-ten BAYC sale of the last six months:
Are royalties about to get a break?
Gabriel Leydon, the founder of Limit Break, announced a new programmable royalties smart contract that his team built. Or, to be more precise, their “opt-in programmable royalties (and more) through staking” smart contract as they referred to it in a Medium post. It’s an 11-minute read, and we know you’re busy, so here are some (but not all) of the high-level details on it.
It’s open-source so any other project can use it or tweak it to their preferences. It’s opt-in and backward-compatible, meaning it’s up to the individual token holder and the project can implement it on an already existing project. And since it works on the token level, it doesn’t have to play to the whims of the marketplaces regarding things like royalties.
The smart contract can do all this through a staking mechanism. Holders can stake their NFT to do things like reveal it, earn rewards, play a game, etc. There’s even talk of a minimum floor price parameter that could be included. While this is interesting, it still leaves the door open for traders to get around it—and therefore get around paying royalties.
For more on it, check out this helpful post from
:
InstaSales
CoinDesk recently published an article about how NFT artists are selling out projects in seconds. That’s not too shocking. The surprising part is that they’re doing it on Instagram. You can chalk this up to yet another win for the Polygon business development team. They’re crushing it.
Something interesting
Jake Gallen shares a deep-dive into NFT marketplace history and explains how OpenSea wasn’t the first, but eventually became the largest (for now):
Updates on Existing Projects
Bored Ape Yacht Club
Current floor price: 72.70 ETH
We now have more details on the Trial of Jimmy the Monkey announcement we mentioned in last week’s NFTuesday edition. And, wow, it’s, uh…something.
Today, BAYC and MAYC holders can free mint “Sewer Passes” that will be used in a game that launches tomorrow. The name of the game? Dookey Dash. It will be a survival-based run game where players control an Ape on a bike as they make their way through the sewers and try to collect points. The game will close on February 8th. The top scorer will win the key that was stuck in Jimmy’s butt (I can’t believe I just wrote that) at the end of the video teaser. They haven’t announced what the key unlocks as of yet.
The announcement received mixed reviews with some holders seemingly upset that they might have to do a bit of work to earn something instead of just receiving a free airdrop as they have in the past.
Punk9059 shared some excellent (non-financial) advice on Twitter about how you might consider playing this game as a trader:
Azuki
Current floor price: 15.65 ETH
On the one-year anniversary of the Azuki mint, they shared a metaverse-looking city called Hilumia.
The floor price took a bit of a hit that day, dropping from almost 17 ETH down to roughly where it stands now. That wasn’t entirely unexpected and fits the usual pattern you see when there’s expected news that drops. This news wasn’t exactly groundbreaking and served more as a hint of things to come since you can’t do much of anything in the virtual city yet.
Proof/Moonbirds
Current floor price: 8.55 ETH
There have been a number of interesting announcements from the Proof team of late.
On January 6th, founder Kevin Rose announced that Proof signed with United Talent Agency. They’re one of the largest talent agencies in the world with a laundry list of well-known clients they represent from actors to directors to musicians.
DraftKings Reignmakers introduced the Moonbirds Side Set. It’s honestly a bit confusing, but I think you had to win an auction of one of the NFL players’ cards in order to be eligible to win a Moonbird at the end of the NFL playoffs. Anyway, the details aren’t important since the auctions are over now. But the fact that Moonbirds are partnering with brands like DraftKings is noteworthy.
Lastly, 20 lucky Moonbirds holders (who also have their NFTs nested) won Grails Season III Mint Passes. This author was not one of the lucky 20, unfortunately. Grails is a popular project from Proof where they share 20 pieces from 20 artists without revealing who the individual artists are until the mint is closed. It’s a fun mechanism and always seems to attract top collectors. It’s also great for getting some great exposure for lesser-known artists in the space.
Letters Royale
Current floor price: 0.04 SOL
This is more of a fun art project and on-chain elimination game. It’s inexpensive to play, so I hopped in and I’m somehow still alive and in the running for the $10K prize, although I’m not getting my hopes up.
Overall, the project is quite slick, with a well-made web app and interactive map that shows the 1/1 art slowly unveiling. The project was free to mint over the course of several days. Now that the game is live, you can pay to knock out another player. It costs around $3.00 and 50% of those proceeds go to the pool and the other 50% go to the team and artist.
Upcoming Mints
Zero Point Studios
Description: A web3 entertainment studio focusing on IP creation through narrative-based content and immersive experiences in film and gaming.
Mint Price: 0.00 ETH
Mint Date: 1/17/23
Supply: 350
Website: https://zeropointstudios.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZeroPointXYZ
Night Run
Description: A conceptual art project which includes a motorcycle video game, an NFT project about imaginary AI-powered fashion houses, and a series of videos documenting the creation process.
Mint Price: 0.06 ETH
Mint Date: 1/27/23
Supply: 2048
Website: https://www.nightrun.art/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/night_runnn
As always, none of this should be construed as financial advice. Please do your own research.
See you next NFTuesday!
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