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

Dear Bankless Nation,

Time for the weekly Metaversal NFT roundup… and maybe also time for the current crypto winter to start thawing out for good?

We’ll see, though there’s no question vibes have improved, what with Ripple just besting the SEC and optimism flooding back in all around us.

Let’s hope this is a turning point toward more common sense approaches to crypto in the U.S.!

In the meantime thanks for reading as usual everyone, and have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

🦊 Thanks to MetaMask Portfolio 🦊

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📊 The big picture

Over the past week, the floor-based market cap of the NFT space grew from 7.43 million ETH to 7.51 million ETH for a modest 1% rise 📈 

🔝 7D top collections by volume

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📰 General news

• Google Play opened its doors to more types of NFT apps. 

• Holograph introduced a new primitive, Holographic NFTs.

• Nouns: A Movie opened up a casting call for CC0 assets.

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Ethereum Punks, the first Ethscriptions collection, was issued a takedown request by Yuga Labs. 

• Nouns DAO is considering a controversial proposal to bid 4,769 ETH on alien ‘Punk 7804.

• Punks OTC acquired 16 CryptoPunks from Beanie. 

• Sean Bonner released Burned Punks, a repository of info about CryptoPunks that have been burned to date. 

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Flamingo DAO purchased 5 Autoglyphs OTC from Larva Labs for an average price of 155 ETH each.

• Gallery now supports curating works from Zora Network.

• Highlight, an “open access” generative art platform, is launching on July 26th.

• Prohibition, a generative art platform built on Art Blocks Engine, is deploying on Arbitrum on July 18th.

• Sound is now officially open to all artists.

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Axie Infinity announced the Season 5 Buy-In Brawl.

• Gotchichain unveiled a new look for its $GHST token.

• Night Run, an experimental gaming and art project, is now live on Steam.

• Pirate Nation released visitable islands. 

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Decentraland is hosting its 4th Metaverse Art Week event. 

🪙 NFTfi

• Ajna Finance, a new decentralized lending protocol that accepts fungible and non-fungible tokens as collateral, launched this week.

• sudoswap introduced factionswap, a trustless exchange system built for Parallel Avatars. 

🎆 Mint spotlight: Prohibition’s Launch

In the previous section, I noted how generative art platform Prohibition is launching on Arbitrum next week. If you’re a fan of gen art and think more and more NFT activity is going to migrate to L2s over time, then you’ll want to have the first Prohibition releases on your radar. We already know of a handful so far, so be on the lookout for these drops (and more to be announced) over the coming days:

• Monospatial by Emily Edelman | Date: 7/18 | Supply: 100, Price: 0.05 ETH

• Beauty Supply Is Out of Du-Rags by Ed Balloon | Date: 7/19 | Supply: 333, Price: 0.09 ETH

• Necromancer by Andrew Mitchell | Date: 7/19 | Supply: 240, Price: 0.042 ETH

• Afterimage by Loren Bednar | Date: 7/21 | Supply: 100, Price: 0.25 ETH

• Magine by Jarl Rosenlykke | Date: 7/21 | Supply: 100, Price: 0.1 ETH

• Melt Into You by yungwknd | Date: 7/24 | Supply: 420, Price: 0.069 ETH

• The Distance In Between by FESQ | Date: 7/24 | Supply: 256, Price: 0.038 ETH

🙇 New insightful reads to level up your web3 knowledge!

1. Onion on the anatomy of Terraforms 🌐

2. Starknetics on comparing Starknet’s leading NFT marketplaces 🛒 

3. wale.swoosh on the Pluto mint on Polygon 😯

✨ My NFT tool of the week: Coinbase Wallet messaging

The Coinbase Wallet team just unveiled a new in-app, end-to-end encrypted messaging system powered by the XMTP Protocol, so now you can have private conversations with your friends and peers directly within your Coinbase Wallet. The functionality’s initially being rolled out to Lens protocol users but will be opened up to wider audiences over time. For example, now you can sign up to get Earnifi Claimables alerts sent straight to your wallet like so:

😜 Crypto projects now that it’s been determined Ripple didn’t sell unregistered securities to retail…

Action steps

• 🆕 Read Do VCs Still Care About Crypto? and What’s Next for Liquid Staking in Bankless

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

  • 🎨 Intro to Runtime Art

  • 🤔 Assessing Blur’s Impact

  • 🔄 Restaking on EigenLayer Mainnet

Author Bio

William M. Peaster is the creator of Metaversal — a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also a senior writer for the main Bankless newsletter.

A Bankless Citizen ⚑ turned $264 into $6,077 last year. A 22x ROI 🚀 in a bear market!

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The web3 ecosystem is an expansive world, full of endless opportunities for those curious enough to explore them! Head over to MetaMask Portfolio to get started, where you can view your assets in one place and discover other features such as Buy, Swap, Bridge, and Stake.

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.