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

Dear Bankless Nation,

Just like with crypto, there have been many proclamations that NFTs are dead! over the years. We’ve seen more than a few such claims this week, too.

Various activity levels were down in recent days, yes, but it’s crazier than ever to totally write NFTs off as having their best moments behind them just because of one funky week. 

Of course, it’s not just the markets that can be volatile here, but also the sentiments — i.e. “we’re so back” during good weeks and “it’s so over” during bad weeks. 

Just remember to keep exploring the things you enjoy most around NFTs, and everything else will sort itself out over time. Also as always thanks for reading everyone, and have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

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🧠 The big picture

This week the market cap of NFTs declined from 8.44 million ETH to 8.04 million ETH for a drop of almost 5%. With memecoins like $PEPE ripping, last minute U.S. tax payment scrambles, and NFT floor prices down across the board, it’s been a red week for many of the big stats around NFTs. 

📊 This week by the numbers:

7D volume stats were way down this week for all major NFT collections. After Wrapped CryptoPunks topped these charts for the past month in a row, BAYC edged into the pole position once more this week upon a major wave of sell pressure that saw the floor price of Bored Apes hit sub-50 ETH for the first time in a long time. Outside of Yuga Labs collections, the other collections in the top 5 this week were Chiru Labs projects Azuki and BEANZ. 

🔝 7D top collections by volume

🛒 7D NFT marketplace stats

It’s been a two-way race here between Blur and OpenSea/OpenSea Pro for months now, so the new surprise oncomer to the showdown was LooksRare, which did 6% of the 7D volume in the NFT space this week. That’s not surprising considering that LooksRare, which first launched in January 2022, is riding the momentum of its new V2 platform release. 

📰 General news

• ERC-6220, a new token standard, has enabled forward-compatible equipables on nested NFTs. 

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Jack Butcher announced new metadata evolution plans for the Opepens project. 

• Moonbirds announced that Diamond Nested Moonbirds could start claiming Mythics eggs on the PROOF website.

• Moonbirds also announced Project Ascend, which enables collectors to earn TALONS tokens daily for holding Moonbirds.

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• OSF’s Red Light District is being auctioned by Sotheby’s (again).

• Manifold added support for $PEPE payments. 

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Sky Mavis open-sourced its Ronin documentation.

• Tales of Elleria experienced an exploit against its ELM token.

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Decentraland Foundation released its Q1 Quarterly Update. 

• Voxels is running a Create the Future contest, the winner of which will win a waterfront property on Chronos Island.

🪙 NFTfi

• Emblem Vault has integrated Arcade, an NFT loan platform, into its vault system. 

• Spice Finance introduced its Flagship Vault for aggregated NFT lending.

• Uniswap is burning beaucoup ETH right now. 

🎆 Mint spotlight: Shadow Wolves

Yesterday, Shadow Wolves NFTs were introduced into the Cool Cats Cooltopia ecosystem, offering collectors darker Viking-like personas with unique abilities and experiences. Shadow Wolves can be minted by burning a Cool Cats Fracture NFT, and the collection will have a maximum size of 11,575. The collection features legendary characters called The Elders and The Scholars, with the rarity tiers and traits of the final Shadow Wolf series determined by the Fracture’s traits. Minting is open until May 19, 2023, after which unused Fracture NFTs will lose their utility. Shadow Wolves are considered “Super Cool” membership NFTs and offer holders exclusive benefits such as early access to drops and releases, merchandise, IRL events, and partnership perks. 

🔭 Mint watch:

• Gitcoin Impact Report — The Gitcoin Impact Report NFT drop is a free open edition collectible celebrating the first-ever Impact Report that showcases years of Gitcoin fostering web3 communities, highlighting key facts, figures, and case studies on notable Gitcoin grantees like Coin Center, Optimism, and Uniswap.

• Rainbow Fini — For anyone who missed my Hot Mints piece yesterday, note that the cute Rainbow x Finiliar “Bow” collab is still available for 2 days. Mintable for 0.0042 ETH a pop, Bow is dynamic and gets happy when ETH gas is low and upset when ETH gas is high. 

🙇 3 insightful threads weekly to level up your NFT knowledge!

1. Andy on where Escher, a new platform for digital art editions, is heading.

2. Chainleft on why onchain art is so conceptually compelling.

3. NFTStatistics.eth on NFTs as momentum assets.

✨ My NFT tool of the week: DeepNFTValue

DeepNFTValue is a platform that uses advanced machine learning models to provide accurate valuations and data insights for various NFT collections. These models consider historical data and onchain information rather than just recent sales and floor prices so that you can more clearly see the bigger picture of the NFTs you’re analyzing!

💥 Reexamine your wallet security…

This week, Taylor Monahan wrote a thread on a mysterious “massive wallet draining operation” that had already claimed a trove of ETH and NFTs across some dozen or so chains. It appears to be a seed phrase leak of some sort, but no one’s quite sure how or where from yet. Needless to say, it’s a great time to revisit your approach to securing your crypto and NFTs. My recommendation? Use a layered approach: start with hardware wallets as your base, consolidate with a Safe vault, and then use safety tools like delegate.cash, revoke.cash, and Stelo for added protection.

😜 Shilled by the SEC…

Beeple’s new piece pokes fun at the current memecoin craze + how SEC Chairman Gary Gensler used to “shill Algorand” but now has come out against it…

Weekly action steps

• 🆕 Read Where Does Ethereum Go Next? and ETH Withdrawals One Week Later in Bankless

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

  • ✧ Hot Mints

  • ✧ Async Art Dynamic Blueprints

  • ✧ Tackling Multichain DeFi with Avocado

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.