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

Dear Bankless Nation,

Nowadays if you want to keep a bird’s-eye view on the NFT space, you have to have at least a dozen different blockchains on your radar. 

There’s the king of the hill, Ethereum. The L2 OGs like Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, ImmutableX, and Starkware. Axie Infinity’s GameFi hub Ronin. The BNB, Solana, and Tezos scenes. Flow with its Doodles crossover. And newer ecosystems like the ones popping up around Bitcoin Ordinals and Canto mints. 

Not long ago, this NFT landscape wasn’t so wide. It’s really interesting to see how NFTs are huge drivers of activity and interest not just on Ethereum anymore, but on many chains. 

These blooming cultural frontiers of digital media pose many new opportunities for pioneers like us, that’s for sure. Stay curious and always be diligent as you explore these new frontiers, and in the meantime have a great weekend!

-WMP

🙏 Sponsor: Kraken — the most trusted and secure crypto exchange in the world ✨

🧠 The big picture

It was another growth week for the cumulative market cap of the NFT space, which enjoyed a climb of 2% to 9.11 million ETH on the week. Lately it’s been “up only” for this stat, though only time will tell how long this week-over-week green streak will last. With the way things are going in the NFT scene right now, it seems the uptrend could definitely continue for the foreseeable future. 

📊 This week by the numbers:

It’s been another dominant volume week for Yuga Labs projects, no surprise there. And Jack Butcher’s Checks have also continued to rip, further cementing the collection’s place as one of the biggest NFT stories so far in 2023. A project that we haven’t seen in the top 5 recently that just had a strong showing was Doodles, which is riding high on fresh Dooplicators buzz.  

🔝 7D top collections by volume

🛒 7D NFT marketplace stats

With the $BLUR airdrop now just days away, OpenSea and Blur continue to be neck and neck in the NFT trading volume wars. As the airdrop dust settles, all eyes will be on who can take a decisive lead once more. The rest of the standings look unchanged since last week with the exception of cryptoart platform Foundation, which just edged out Sudoswap to move into 8th place.

🛍️ 3 biggest buys this week

In last week’s recap, I noted how the three big NFT buys of that week collectively amounted to over Ξ1,160 worth of sales. Fast forward to today, and the biggest NFT buys of this week collectively amounted to nearly Ξ2,000! These huge transactions are just the latest indications that things are heating up at the top of the NFT economy right now. 

📰 General news

• Bueno, an NFT creator suite, is rolling out an editions tool called Bueno Drops. 

• Homes by Roofstock saw one of its Alabama residences sell via an NFT purchase for 180,000 USDC. 

• RabbitHole introduced the Quest Protocol.

• ZackXBT teamed up with YouTuber Coffeezilla for an exposé on mixed martial artist turned sketchy NFT promoter Dillon Danis. 

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Cool Cats holders were airdropped Fracture NFTs, which provide access to a gamified story-telling experience. 

• Finiliar introduced Finiliar Studios.

• Wylie Aronow, co-founder of Yuga Labs, published a definitive rebuttal of BAYC conspiracy theories. 

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Sound introduced Curator Rewards.

• Tessera unveiled Escher, a curated marketplace for fine art editions.

• VerticalCrypto Art, a curatorial house, entered into a partnership with Art Blocks Engine.  

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Gachamon is coming, learn how the battler game will work.

• Illuvium announced that Illuvium: Beyond, a customizable NFT adventure game, will kick off in one month. 

• LEVELS.art arrived, a new decentralized arcade with mini-games created by cryptoartists. 

• Mongraal, a Fortnite esports player, finished 1st in Yuga Labs’s Dookey Dash competition.

• Pirate Nation introduced The Rogue’s Galleon.

🌐 Virtual worlds

• The Sandbox and Saudi Arabia agreed to collaborate on a series of metaverse projects. 

• Webaverse revealed its team was hit with an advanced crypto theft last year. 

🪙 NFTfi

• DeFiLlama unveiled an aggregator for NFT loans.

• NiftyApes introduced rollover loans.

• Spice Finance, an NFT lending liquidity aggregator, entered into a partnership with Revest.

🎆 Mint spotlight: Chungos

With a Ξ0.001 price for allowlisted participants, Chungos was essentially a free mint that took place at the end of last month. Since then the PFP collection held its art reveal, facilitated over Ξ1000 in trade volume, and has seen its floor rise as high as Ξ0.2 already. Trough to peak, that’s a whopping price climb of nearly 20,000% since mint! 

CHUNGOS | SOLD OUT! @ChungosNFT

🗿REVEAL IS LIVE! 🗿 ITS CHUNGO TIME opensea.io/collection/chu…

12:27 AM ∙ Feb 4, 2023

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255Likes60Retweets

🔭 Mint watch:

• Life in West America — minted out on Braindrops this week, this iconic AI art series by artist Roope Rainisto has seen its floor explode as people have flocked to collect the trippy works

• Verified — a fun mint open for another week or two that lets you turn your NFTs into onchain “Checks” style pieces

• The Wizard’s Hat — Nouns DAO is set to vote on doing its second open edition mint for “The Wizard’s Hat,” a film by the Nouns Stories team; learn more about Nouns DAO’s previous edition drop here 

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

1. Chainleft on the pros/cons and misunderstandings of Ordinals Bitcoin NFTs:

Chainleft @ChainLeftist

Everyone’s doing a thread on the ordinals, so I guess the person who’s been talking about it 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 ‘𝟐𝟐 should also do one. There are a lot of misunderstandings, so I’ll try to correct them and list all pros & cons of what you’ve been hearing. 👇

9:01 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2023

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116Likes33Retweets

2. Panda Jackson on how Jack Butcher’s Checks has bigly benefited from Blur bypassing OpenSea’s blocklist:

Panda Jackson @pandajackson42

Unlock the secret of Checks Discover how Checks maximized royalty earnings & learn from @jackbutcher‘s victory in the battle between Blur and OpenSea A thread🧵👇

3:52 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2023

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3. ClearHat on how Yuga Labs’s Dookey Dash game seems to have been heavily botted:

ClearHat @xClearHat

It appears that #DookeyDash was widely botted and unfortunately @BoredApeYC/@yugalabs is to blame. (1/43)

1:10 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

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1,490Likes346Retweets

✨ My NFT tool of the week: NFTkek

NFTkek is a cool NFT analytics platform I just came across. You paste in the address of the NFT collection you want to analyze, and then NFTkek brings up a bunch of key stats and informative, colorful graphs on that collection. Here’s an example thread digging into the aforementioned Chungos NFTs to illustrate:

NFTkek @NFTkek_

We decide to revisit @ChungosNFT and realized the health score have grow to a more bullish stats Is CHUNGOS really a thing? Let’s see what changes from mint time until now. 1/

9:33 AM ∙ Feb 5, 2023

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117Likes52Retweets

💥 Looks can be deceiving!

Do you ever see a new NFT project with surging stats and want to ape in accordingly? Well be careful and always mind your due diligence steps, since on the surface an NFT project’s stats can be deceiving. Cyphr points out one such scam project that was just inflating its own stats to lure unsuspecting, would-be collectors to malicious transactions:  

ℭ𝔶𝔭𝔥𝔯.Ξ𝔱𝔥 @CyphrETH

.@opensea, this needs to stop. Number 2 trending collection right now is a drainer that is pumping it’s own volume with the same wallet literally SELLING TO ITSELF on Matic There needs to be improved tracking of this type of on-chain behavior to remove this stuff immediately.

11:03 AM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

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31Likes6Retweets

😜 OTC Bitcoin NFT trades are so hot right now…

Here artist and Mathcastles co-creator 113 pokes fun at how primitive Bitcoin NFT trading is right now. Needless to say, there’s definitely a long way to go UX-wise:

113 ♖♖♖ @0x113d

new opensea competitor lookin sharp

9:27 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

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842Likes115Retweets

Action steps

• 🆕 Read 5 Things I Learned at StarkWare Sessions and The State of Optimism in Bankless

• 🌱 Watch Decentralized Dharma and Decentralized Neocortex on Green Pill 

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

  • ✧ Bitcoin NFTs … Again

  • ✧ This Is Nouns 101

  • ✧ A Beginner’s Guide to Canto

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.