key takeaways
- NFTs have taken a beating in a bearish market, with floor prices tanking and trading volume drying up.
- Skeptics have argued that the technology is “dead,” but there are strong reasons to believe that the market is alive and well.
- Recent highlights in the space include Eminem and Snoop Dogg’s Bored Ape-themed VMA performance and DigiDigaku’s rally to 17 ETH.
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As the crypto winter ends, NFTs continue to suffer. Floor prices for the most sought-after collections are down more than 50% from their highs in ETH and dollar terms, while trading volumes have plummeted in OpenSea and other markets. Many projects have completely disappeared. But while space may be suffering, several developments in recent weeks point to signs of life. Between Eminem and Snoop Dogg morphing into boring apps at the VMAs, hitting a free mint on the 17 ETH floor, and the world’s largest social media firm ramping up its digital collectibles functionality, the NFT space feels a lot more vibrant than its heroes. Is.
5) Puddy Penguin Revival
One of the standout animal avatar collections from Krypto’s first “NFT Summer,” Puddy Penguin had a spectacular rise before falling from grace. After internal disputes, it was sold for 750 ETH to entrepreneur and investor Luca Netz in April, but struggled to gain momentum amid declining sentiment in the crypto market. However, Ethereum’s favorite flightless birds have A miraculous return in recent weeks, proving that there is still an appetite for community-driven NFT “PFP” collections.
The enthusiasm for Pudi Penguin reached its lowest point in months when the floor price hit a local low of around 0.85 ETH on June 13th. The floor has posted a significant recovery in recent weeks, Helped by major crypto personalities like Polygon’s Mudit Gupta and Nansen CEO Alex Swanevic, who continued to “wear” their Puddy Penguin NXT as their Twitter avatar despite the decline.
Trading volume for Puddy Penguin soared on exchanges, and the project gained momentum as announced that it has appointed an advisory board that includes Svanevik, Pentoshi and other ardent Penguin supporters. Penguin Fever peaked the next day with the sale of leftist Puddy Penguin #6873, which sold for 400 ETH (approximately $650,000) on 22 August. These events fueled a sense of bullishness for the project. while tThat adorable avatar has cooled off from its local high, a floor price Penguin would still set buyers back more than $5,000 at current prices.
4) ENS trading volumes remain high
crypto briefing covered the explosion in Ethereum Name Service (ENS) trading in April, when the League of NFT Digits speculated on three- and four-digit ENS domain names, causing wild price spikes. Although the market has not recorded any more record-breaking ENS trading days, the interest in the .eth domain continues to grow.
According to data from Scarce.Guide, ENS domain secondary sales now routinely exceed 1,000 per day. DUNE data compiled by ENS developer Makoto Inoue shows that registrations and renewals have been steadily increasing, with an average of over 10,000 daily registrations over the past week.
Where trading and registration volumes go, prices follow. The four-digit ENS domain, colloquially known as the “10k club”, has almost tripled in terms of ETH since April. The cheapest four-digit domain currently sets buyers back around 1.43 ETH ($2,259), while the more exclusive three-digit domain now sits on floor 31 ETH. High-profile sales of rare domains also regularly generate buzz on Twitter. Over the past month, opensea.eth has sold around 100 ETH and suilend.eth for 75 ETH.
Whether you’re sitting on your pile of rare ENS domains or staring sideways in disbelief, there’s no denying that .eth names are garnering a lot of attention.
3) Meta expands NFTs to Facebook
Despite the ailing cryptocurrency market and its impact on non-fungible commodities, 2022 has been a good year for NFT adoption on Web2 social media. In January, Twitter’s hexagonal NFT profile pictures gained widespread adoption despite the social media giant charging a monthly fee for the feature.
Not to be outdone, Meta has since launched its own NFT integration, starting with an Instagram rollout in 100 countries earlier this month, and expanding to Facebook just yesterday. While details are still scarce, the social media giant is believed to allow users to connect to a blockchain similar to its Instagram integration, which currently supports Ethereum, Polygon and Flow NFTs.
In itself, using your NFTs as profile pictures on dated social media sites is extremely rare, but it shows the direction companies like Meta and Twitter are headed. Additionally, allowing NFTs on social media is a great opportunity to uncover a new segment. From the Internet to NFTs—and eventually crypto.
When news of social media NFT integrations often leads to online crowds rallying against the entire space, it may seem counterintuitive to celebrate what Meta calls “digital collectibles.” But there’s no such thing as bad publicity—and if adoption continues, even skeptics may soon change their tune.
2) Eminem and Snoop Dogg perform as bored apes at the VMAs
Two of the world’s biggest rap stars, Eminem and Snoop Dogg, have done much to garner mainstream NFT exposure in recent months, most recently at last Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards to show their support for the technology. performance is used.
Another event that exposed a massive audience to NFT was Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards performance by rap superstars Eminem and Snoop Dogg. If you’ve been following the two this year, you’ve probably noticed that they’ve become very enthusiastic promoters of a certain NFT collection: Bored Ape Yacht Club.
A longtime NFT enthusiast, Snoop bought app #6723 in December 2021 and now keeps it in a wallet called deathronft with blue chip NFTs from collections such as CloneX, FLUF World and World of Women. Following Snoop’s purchase, Eminem purchased App #9055 on New Year’s Eve.
For their VMA performance, Snoop and Eminem performed their recent release “From the D2 the LBC”, backed by their fully animated bored ape avatars. Yug Labs, the company behind boring ape yacht club NFT, partnered with the duo to provide animations that resemble the opening gameplay teasers for the company’s upcoming Otherside Metaverse.
The response to the rapper’s performance of Bored Ape was certainly mixed. The general consensus among crypto natives seems to be that the performance was grim and poorly animated. In the r/Eminem subreddit, the criticism continued. One user who posted gilbertgrep13 said, “This NFT crap he’s doing, he’s straight ass.” However, others, such as Delphi Labs general counsel Gabriel Shapiro, had more positive things to say. “Okay, this might be surprising from a BAYC perma-bear but did the Eminem Snoop Dogg thing sound great?” He said Monday’s tweet.
Regardless of how the performance was received or the public perception of bored app NFTs, the fact that it happened sets an interesting precedent. Perhaps we will see more NFTs making their way into mass media in the future, which may be quicker to adopt.
1) DigiDaigaku Launches as Free Mint, reaches floor 17 ETH
The last update on our list is also arguably the most unexpected. After months of falling prices, junk free mints and collecting jokes about the NFT bear market, one project has defied the odds and recreated the shopping frenzy that has been unseen in the NFT market for months.
DigiDaigaku, a free Mint project that many hardcore NFT enthusiasts overlooked when it launched on August 10, hit a minimum price of 17 ETH on Monday, seemingly out of nowhere. Interest in turbocharged anime girl avatars was sparked after NFT Djons revealed that Limit Break, the company behind DigiDigaku, raised $200 million for the project last year from an all-star cast of backers including Paradigm, FTX, Coinbase Ventures and Mino Games. . ,
DigiDaigaku is the first game to pioneer Limit Break’s “free-to-own” game model, but further details have yet to be released (apparently, company CEO Gabriel Ledon wants to keep things under wraps for now). Huh). Of course, speculators have had a field day to push the price up while the details surrounding the project are unknown. Those who saw the potential of DigiDaigaku early were able to load on NFTs for around 0.5 ETH, getting back gains of up to 3,330% if they managed to top sell.
A relatively unknown gaming project like DigiDaigaku is entering the market and outpacing other NFT mainstays such as CloneX, Doodles, and Pudgy Penguins, showing that there is still life left in the highly speculative market. The NFT may have been dormant over the past few months, but for anyone taking a closer look, it’s clear that space is far from dead.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.