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

Dear Bankless Nation,

This week, the Truth Labs team surprise refreshed the metadata for all their collections, including goblintown, ahead of a mandatory contract migration event. 

The move shocked some in the NFT space who didn’t realize that the art of many NFTs can be modified at will by their creators. 

Of course, this is why in my recent Mint Condition guide to assessing the quality of NFTs I noted that totally onchain NFTs were the crème de la crème, as their metadata is immutable and directly stored on the blockchain, making them forever retrievable. 

This reality is what underpins what I call the “onchain premium,” i.e. onchain NFTs should be considered inherently more valuable than offchain-based NFTs because they have exponentially better long-term immutability and storage prospects. 

All in all, the Truth Labs episode is just the latest reminder to be mindful of what you mint and hold in general. For now, though, let’s just get you caught up on some of the top intrigues from the past week in NFTs.

Thanks for reading everyone, and have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

🙏 Thanks to our sponsor MetaMask Learn

👉 Add MetaMask Learn to your onboarding guides for your community ✨

🧠 The big picture

This week the market cap of NFTs declined from 8.64 million ETH to 8.44 million ETH for a 2.31% drop. Interestingly, in USD terms the NFT market cap rose from $16.07 billion to $17.61 billion in the same span for a 9.6% climb courtesy of ETH’s considerable price surge this week. 

📊 This week by the numbers:

For a month straight now, Wrapped CryptoPunks have topped the NFT market’s 7-day volume charts. Call it $BLUR farming, balance being returned to the Force, or whatever; in any case it’s always nice to see the OG PFP collection in pole position. Notably, Azuki made an explosive entrance to the top 5 most-traded collections this week upon the project’s big IPX x Chiru Labs news, and Nakamigos continued to exhibit staying power with a flurry of +5,500 7D trades. 

🔝 7D top collections by volume

🛒 7D NFT marketplace stats

OpenSea Pro is gaining ground! Over the past week, the new-and-improved NFT marketplace aggregator saw its marketshare of 7D NFT trades rise from 9.3% to 16.2%, while Blur’s marketshare of trades dropped from 41.3% to 35% over the same span. Accordingly, OpenSea Pro is eating right into Blur here, though Blur continues to dominate trading volume levels for now. 

📰 General news

• DeFiLlama added a new dashboard for NFT collections.

• LooksRare launched its V2 system.

• OpenSea Pro is undergoing a boom in daily active users.

🏆 Digital collectibles

• WAGDIE launched a metadata infection event.

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Sound is opening to all artists.

• Pplpleasr collaborated with the Bruce Lee estate on an open edition drop.

• XCOPY piece The Burning resold for 242 ETH.

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Illuvium published its official roadmap.

• PILLS, an onchain RPG worldbuilding project, got rekt but may be revived in a new form.

• zkCole created Divine Keys, a decentralized dungeons protocol.

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week saw its attendance drop to 26k visitors this year, down from 108k in 2022. 

• OnCyber launched support for custom VRM avatars.

🪙 NFTfi

• Aliquo announced $ASSET, a new NFT-based reserve asset experiment. 

• Caviar introduced its V2 testnet.

• NFTfi.com took a snapshot of its historical users.

• Uniswap’s mobile wallet is now available to download in the Apple App Store.

🎆 Mint spotlight: mint.fun !fundrop pass

mint.fun just introduced !fundrop, a rewards system for NFT users. On the platform you can mint a free !fundrop pass, which then allows you to earn !fun points for minting NFTs on mint.fun. These points can be used to access rare reward boxes during upcoming rewards waves, with the first one scheduled for May 15, 2023. The !fundrop leaderboard will play a big role in determining these future rewards, so keep this on your radar going forward! 

🔭 Mint watch:

• Moonbirds Mythics — Starting on April 17th, Moonbirds holders will be able to claim their Mythic Eggs for the upcoming Moonbirds Mythics expansion PFP collection. Once the collection is live, only 25 Mythics will be able to “hatch” per day, so it’ll be interesting to watch this release play out over time. 

• Social Contracts — A dynamic, open edition NFT drop by artist Burak Arikan in collab with JPG; per your wallet data, the NFTs reveal and predict onchain social networks among peer NFT collectors. They also evolve over time. The mint starts next week on April 19th and will run for 5 days (Disclosure: I love everything about this series, but note I am also a contributor to JPG! Only mint if you love too!)

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

1. Backseats on the design of the Art Blocks GenArt721CoreV3 smart contract 🎨

2. mikegood.eth on the size of top Nounish DAOs 🔝

3. tony on the future of metaverse NPCs 🤖

✨ My NFT tool of the week: Manifold Multiburn

Manifold has unveiled Multiburn, a new resource that allows creators to require the burning of multiple distinct tokens for redeeming new NFTs. For context, previously with Manifold you could only burn one specific token to mint another. The enhanced functionality should lead to all sorts of new creative experiments around the NFT ecosystem, so keep an eye out for these explorations.

💥 The AI x NFT crossroads is about to boom…

The rise of AI solutions in recent months like ChatGPT suggests every field of human activity is about to be revolutionized in various ways, and the NFT ecosystem is no exception here. The AI x NFT experiments will start off relatively simple like the “NFT chat” app shown below, though much more complex possibilities now lie just around the corner!

😜 Vibe shift…

With crypto markets heating up decisively once again, I wish a very merry gm to you all:

Action steps

• 🆕 Read Introducing the Bankless Token Hub and How Shapella Pushes Ethereum Forward in Bankless

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

  • ✧ Dynamic NFTs

  • ✧ How to Play Stealcam

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!

Subscribe to Bankless. $22 per mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Badge.

🙏 Together with 🦊 MetaMask Learn 🦊

MetaMask Learn is an educational resource to help people understand what web3 is, why it matters, and how to get started. While you may understand core concepts of this decentralized technology, many don’t—consider adding MetaMask Learn to your onboarding guides if you’re a dapp developer or NFT creator to give your community the welcome they deserve.

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.