Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles

Dear Bankless Nation,

I’m revamping my weekly Friday news recaps.

No worries — you’ll still be able to track the biggest NFT happenings in this column per usual.

What’s changed is that these reorganized, new-look recaps will now go beyond just covering the news and will provide a range of notable info like alpha reads, mint opps, stats, tools, tips, and more.

I’m excited to start going wider and deeper with these roundups, so dive in below to see the first run of this new format and feel free to give me feedback on it in the comments section at the bottom of this post!

As always thanks for reading everyone, and have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

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🧠 The big picture:

The cumulative market cap of the NFT space is currently around 8.6 million ETH, or ~$13.4B USD. Unique NFT users and NFT sale counts continue to uptrend as an atmosphere of bullishness seems to be returning to the cryptoeconomy once more.

📊 This week by the numbers:

🔝 7D top collections by volume

Yuga Labs just launched its new Dookey Dash game, so it’s no surprise the associated Sewer Pass access NFTs have surged to the top of this week’s volume charts. Amid the buzz, Yuga’s MAYC, BAYC, and BAKC collections round out the top 4 projects in that order. Azuki, riding high on the Hilumia and Bilibili news, is currently the only non-Yuga project in the top 5.

🛒 7D NFT marketplace stats

At the moment it’s OpenSea’s and Blur’s world, and we’re all just living in it. The volume stats between the two leading NFT marketplaces continue to be fairly neck and neck ahead of the $BLUR airdrop, which is now slated to go live on Feb. 14th, 2022.

🛍️ 3 biggest buys this week

CryptoPunks and BAYC remain the crème de la crème in the PFP world, so we’ve had yet another week where most of the largest NFT transactions therein were for ‘Punks and Apes. Expect more of the same for the foreseeable future as Yuga Labs, which stewards both collections, keeps pushing forward.

📰 General news

• ENS Vision, a specialized ENS hub and marketplace, is dominating ENS sales lately.

• Nouns Comic! is now available for preordering.

• Rarible launched its community NFT marketplace builder tool on Polygon.

• Tessera introduced a Nouns tribute mechanism to its Nounlets product.

• Tarun Chitra and colleagues published a paper on how to improve the Gradual Dutch Auction model employed by Art Gobblers.

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Hoodie CryptoPunks are seeing an uptick in sales this month.

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Catalog unveiled its Cycle 3 contributing curators.

• 6529 Collections held its latest Meme Card drops: “GM to the PM” by Michael Sidofsky and “We The Creators” by Oveck.

• XCOPY classic “N” resold for Ξ206.9 on SuperRare.

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Axie Infinity kicked off the Season 2 Epic Era for Axie Origins.

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Decentraland published 2023 Manifesto: Year of the Creators, a post on its plans for the year.

• Pranksy, the legendary NFT trader, purchased 50 Worldwide Webb parcels.

🪙 NFTfi

• Uniswap started its gas rebate program by refunding Ξ0.01 to anyone who purchased an NFT on Uniswap between Nov. 30th and Dec. 14th last year.

🎆 Fresh mint spotlight: Checks

Launched on Jan. 3rd, 2023, as a timed open edition by Jack Butcher, the Checks have since exploded in popularity and inspired dozens of derivatives. With a starting mint price of Ξ0.0066 and a current valuation of Ξ0.268 in secondary markets, these NFTs have shown that rapid ~4,000% increases in floor prices aren’t just a remnant of the 2021 bull market but are, indeed, still very possible in the here and now.

🌜🌞🌛 @ourZORA

ᴀ ɴᴇᴡ ᴍᴇᴍᴇᴛɪᴄ ᴍᴏᴠᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ: Checks by @jackbutcher ✓ became a communal canvas ✓ sparked over 100 derivatives + conversations ✓ created a new onchain tradition ✓ 16,000 editions minted ✓ 3,300 collectors ✓ 2,800 ETH generated All from a single edition.

4:37 PM ∙ Jan 19, 2023

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152Likes25Retweets

🔭 Other new mints to watch:

• Before You Exist Everywhere by Amber Vittoria — an unlimited open edition for Ξ0.008 a piece, could be a cool 1st mint for NFT newcomers

• BAYC Sewer Pass — a free claim started this week for BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC holders that provides access to Yuga Labs’s Dookey Dash gaming challenge; the passes are tradeable so keep an eye on secondary markets

• Rug Radio PFPs — designed by artist Cory Van Lew, the new PFPs for the Rug Radio ecosystem are slated to start minting on Feb. 6th

🙇 3 insightful threads weekly to level up your NFT knowledge

1. 0xKepler on NFT gaming investments beyond ERC20s and NFTs:

0xKepler 🔭 | building in stealth @0xKepler

Investing in web3 gaming is difficult. Most games fail. Even if the game is successful, will it be a good investment too? But there are not just game tokens and NFTs as investment opportunities out there to profit from the rise of web3 gaming 🧵

3:09 PM ∙ Jan 17, 2023

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68Likes15Retweets

2. crisgarner.eth on PROOF Collective’s new Grails Season III mechanics:

crisgarner .eth | .lens 🦇🔊 @crisgarner

Grails Season III is here, and @proof_xyz is crushing it with new mechanics and surprises. This 🧵 provides more information about the mints and some alpha for the ones that can’t keep up with everything that’s happening and why it changes everything.

11:00 PM ∙ Jan 15, 2023

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105Likes24Retweets

3. Jack Inabinet on the Polygon NFT + biz dev boom:

Jack Inabinet @JackInabinet

❓Polygon Labs = Giga Chads❓ DeFi is down bad, with TVL 75% off of December 2021 highs. Polygon NFTs are hotter than ever. Today, we’re investigating 5 ways biz dev is helping to scale @0xPolygon for @BanklessHQ readers 👀 newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/how-is-polyg…

newsletter.banklesshq.comHow Is Polygon Doing It?It seems just about everyone is partnering with Polygon, we unpack why….

11:26 PM ∙ Jan 19, 2023

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28Likes10Retweets

✨ My NFT tool of the week: Agora

A suite for Nouns DAO governance participants, Agora streamlines the Nouns voting process. The project recently introduced a delegation auction system, so you can bid on the temporary right to vote with a Noun without having to purchase a Noun outright. If you’re interested in Nounish governance, keep an eye on Agora!

Agora ⌐◨-◨ @nounsagora

Less than 1 hour left to bid on this auction for 3 months of delegation! ⏱️⏱️⏱️ Current highest bid at 0.315 ETH by @worm_emoji‘s party nounsagora.com/voteauction

6:59 PM ∙ Jan 15, 2023

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6Likes1Retweet

💥 You might have ETH you forgot about!

Did you happen to try Fractional and PartyBid when I first wrote about them for Bankless back in 2021? If so, you might be like me and other NFTers who lost track of the fact that we had ETH we could claim from these projects’ vaults. You can use this Dune dashboard created by 0xRob to see if your address has any ETH ready to claim. I personally recovered almost Ξ1 this way!

0xRob @rob_0x

💡There’s 800+ ETH sitting in old Fractional (@tessera) vaults that people probably just forgot about.. If you fucked around with Fractional or PartyBid (@prtyDAO) in the past, it’s time to find out if you have some coins you can claim.

4:16 PM ∙ Jan 17, 2023

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67Likes14Retweets

😜 The recently released Game of Thrones NFT art? Let’s just say it’s not great…

Accordingly, Alan Carroll offered this meme interpretation of how the art got off the drawing board:

Alan Carroll @alancarroII

“Trust me, the community will LOVE this”

10:24 PM ∙ Jan 11, 2023

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243Likes19Retweets

Weekly action steps

• 🆕 Review The State of Ethereum Report – Q4 2022 in Bankless

• 🌱 Watch The Gitcoin Alpha Round on Green Pill 

• 🙇 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week: 

  • ✧ Bid for BLUR

  • ✧ A New Way to Launch NFTs

  • ✧ How to Become a DeFiLlama Pro

Author Bio

William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal — a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!

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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.