NFTuesday - Yuga Labs, Memeland, Open Editions, and more
PLUS: our new content plan for 2023
👋 Welcome to the 40th 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:
Invisible College content plan for 2023
Before we dive into our very first NFTuesday edition of The Syllabus, we want to quickly fill you in on our new approach to content at Invisible College.
You may recall us linking to a survey back in November. Well, we combed through the data and learned that people discover Invisible College in one of three ways:
Word of mouth
This newsletter
Twitter
While we can’t force you to tell your friends about us (but we appreciate it when you do!), we can double down on our writing and do more Twitter Spaces events.
So going forward, here’s what you can expect:
3 newsletter editions per week
NFTuesday: a deep dive into the world of NFTs
The Syllabus (mid-week): a nuanced take on web3 learning topics
DeFi Friday: a deep dive into the world of Decentralized Finance
4-5 Twitter Spaces events per week
Web3 Office Hours on Mondays at 1 pm PT
NFTuesday on (you guessed it) Tuesdays at 2 pm PT
Web3 Narratives on Wednesdays at 1 pm PT
DeFi Friday on Fridays at 11 am PT
And we’ll sometimes host guests for fireside chats on Thursdays
If you’re already subscribed to this newsletter, you don’t have to do anything to receive the new NFTuesday and DeFi Friday editions. If you’d like to opt-out of any of these newsletters, hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom. Make sure to follow the Invisible College Twitter account to join our Spaces chats.
You can see and RSVP all of our upcoming events here:
We’re excited to embark on this new, ramped-up content plan and share it with you all!
Without further ado, let’s dive into our very first NFTuesday edition!
The Numbers
Top Five Blockchains by Sales Volume:
Ethereum: $165.35M - ⬆️ 32.84%
Solana: $32.17M - ⬆️ 22.56%
ImmutableX: $3.45M - ⬆️ 11.35%
Cardano: $2.32M - ⬇️ 5.04%
BNB: $1.87M - ⬆️ 117.56%
Top Five Projects by Sales Volume:
BAYC: $16.57M - ⬆️ 9.31%
MAYC: $13.28M - ⬆️ 56.31%
Azuki: $12.87M - ⬆️ 188.89%
Memeland Captainz: $10.71M (new project)
BAKC: $9.36M - ⬆️ 75.50%
The News and Narratives
In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a large increase in sales across most of the Yuga Labs collections from Bored Ape Yacht Club to Bored Ape Kennel Club. It follows along with a general uptick in NFT sales on Ethereum. While numbers are still way down from their all-time highs, it’s still good to see a small bull run in the works.
Sales have been on an upward trend since December mostly thanks to the trading activity around the Trump Cards collection.
January narratives
When Yuga Labs does well, the market tends to do well. But it’s typically a “buy the rumor, sell the news”-type situation. This is all building up to the BAYC Jimmy the Ape Trial event on January 11th. This video teases something about it. What exactly that is, though, is anyone’s guess.
There are other upcoming potential catalysts this month too.
The Azuki mint anniversary is the next day on January 12th and there are rumors that they have something in the works. Doodles is supposed to be unveiling the Dooplicator utility this month with the Genesis Boxes set for reveal in February. Blur is launching its $BLUR token at the end of the month. There’s also the Moonbirds Mythics drop, but there’s no specific date set for that as of yet.
It remains to be seen if these types of events keep the bullish feeling going and draw new traders and collectors in or if they become giant liquidity sucks on an already much, much smaller market.
Open editions
A recent trend in the NFT space has been open edition collections. An open edition is when an artist opens up unlimited minting for a project, but only for a specific amount of time. Some remain open for months, while others—like I saw last week—might be open for only 69 seconds (nice).
Here’s an example of an open edition that’s currently open for minting, which is a drawing of a bunch of crypto Twitter personalities:
Open editions generally don’t tend to do well on the secondary market. Oftentimes, they’re offered by somewhat established artists who have done 1/1 pieces in the past and want to offer up a cheaper price point for more collectors. Here’s an interesting take on how to value an open edition:
Ultimately, collecting open editions to support an artist or just to have fun is probably the best approach. Any financial gains are a bonus.
Feel-good story
Two people dug deep into the blockchain and found the hidden Squiggle #9294 called “The Bat”:
Updates on Existing Projects
Memeland Captainz
Current floor price: 5.30 ETH
The long-awaited Memeland Captainz mint finally went down after being pushed back a couple of months.
The 1 ETH mint price caused some rolled eyes, but not nearly as much as the royalties. The collection has 9% royalties, which is effectively 11.5% since Blur and other aggregators are blocked and that means traders need to use OpenSea and their 2.5% platform fee. Many buyers and sellers have resorted to over-the-counter (OTC) selling, which doesn’t pay royalties and opens up holders to potential scams. Memeland even opened an OTC deals channel in their Discord, which begs the question: Why block aggregators at all then?
Artblocks Friendship Bracelets
Current floor price: 0.64 ETH
This collection continues to do well. It is an open-edition collection available to Artblocks holders. If you held any Artblocks piece as of October 31st, you could mint two NFTs. The mint ended earlier today at 1 pm ET. The floor price has increased from 0.55 ETH to 0.64 ETH as of writing. We’ll be keeping an eye on the collection to see how it performs now that the supply will be capped.
This author is definitely not at all upset that he sold too early 😭
Nouns
A Nouns-themed float was featured in the Rose Parade:
This was some welcomed good news from a community that has dealt with some internal DAO drama and taken some big hits in the bear market.
Upcoming Mint
The Order of Ink
Description: Genesis collection of tattoo NFTs from 14 trailblazing tattoo artists.
Mint Price: 0.1 ETH
Mint Date: End of January
Website: https://www.theorderofink.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/theorderofink
As always, none of this should be construed as financial advice. Please do your own research.
Chat about NFTs with us during our live NFTuesday event on Twitter Spaces later today at 2 pm PT 👇
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