New Metaversal Recap Format: Alpha Reads, the ENS Vision Boom and More

I’m revamping my weekly Friday news recaps.

No worries — you’ll still be able to track the biggest NFT happenings in this column per usual.

What’s changed is that these reorganized, new-look recaps will now go beyond just covering the news and will provide a range of notable info like alpha reads, mint opps, stats, tools, tips, and more.

I’m excited to start going wider and deeper with these roundups, so dive in below to see the first run of this new format, and feel free to give me feedback on it in the comments section at the bottom of this post!

As always thanks for reading everyone, and have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

🧠 The Big Picture:

The cumulative market cap of the NFT space is currently around 8.6 million ETH, or ~$13.4B USD. Unique NFT users and NFT sale counts continue to uptrend as an atmosphere of bullishness seems to be returning to the cryptoeconomy once more.

📊 This Week by the Numbers:

🔝 7D top collections by volume

Yuga Labs just launched its new Dookey Dash game, so it’s no surprise the associated Sewer Pass access NFTs have surged to the top of this week’s volume charts. Amid the buzz, Yuga’s MAYC, BAYC, and BAKC collections round out the top 4 projects in that order. Azuki, riding high on the Hilumia and Bilibili news, is currently the only non-Yuga project in the top 5.

🛒 7D NFT Marketplace Stats

At the moment it’s OpenSea’s and Blur’s world, and we’re all just living in it. The volume stats between the two leading NFT marketplaces continue to be fairly neck and neck ahead of the $BLUR airdrop, which is now slated to go live on Feb. 14th, 2022.

🛍️ 3 Biggest Buys This Week

CryptoPunks and BAYC remain the crème de la crème in the PFP world, so we’ve had yet another week where most of the largest NFT transactions therein were for ‘Punks and Apes. Expect more of the same for the foreseeable future as Yuga Labs, which stewards both collections, keeps pushing forward.

📰 General News

ENS Vision, a specialized ENS hub and marketplace, is dominating ENS sales lately.
Nouns Comic! is now available for preordering.
Rarible launched its community NFT marketplace builder tool on Polygon.
Tessera introduced a Nouns tribute mechanism to its Nounlets product.
Tarun Chitra and colleagues published a paper on how to improve the Gradual Dutch Auction model employed by Art Gobblers.

🏆Digital Collectibles

Hoodie CryptoPunks are seeing an uptick in sales this month.

🎨 Cryptoart & Music

Catalog unveiled its Cycle 3 contributing curators.
6529 Collections held its latest Meme Card drops: “GM to the PM” by Michael Sidofsky and “We The Creators” by Oveck.
XCOPY classic “N” resold for Ξ206.9 on SuperRare.

🎮 Decentralized Gaming

Axie Infinity kicked off the Season 2 Epic Era for Axie Origins.

🌐 Virtual Worlds

Decentraland published 2023 Manifesto: Year of the Creators, a post on its plans for the year.
Pranksy, the legendary NFT trader, purchased 50 Worldwide Webb parcels.

NFTfi

Uniswap started its gas rebate program by refunding Ξ0.01 to anyone who purchased an NFT on Uniswap between Nov. 30th and Dec. 14th last year.

🎆 Fresh Mint Spotlight: Checks

Launched on Jan. 3rd, 2023, as a timed open edition by Jack Butcher, the Checks have since exploded in popularity and inspired dozens of derivatives. With a starting mint price of Ξ0.0066 and a current valuation of Ξ0.268 in secondary markets, these NFTs have shown that rapid ~4,000% increases in floor prices aren’t just a remnant of the 2021 bull market but are, indeed, still very possible in the here and now.

https://twitter.com/ourZORA/status/1616112702572875777?s=20&embedable=true

🔭 Other New Mints to Watch:

Before You Exist Everywhere by Amber Vittoria — an unlimited open edition for Ξ0.008 a piece, could be a cool 1st mint for NFT newcomers
BAYC Sewer Pass — a free claim started this week for BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC holders that provides access to Yuga Labs’s Dookey Dash gaming challenge; the passes are tradeable so keep an eye on secondary markets
Rug Radio PFPs — designed by artist Cory Van Lew, the new PFPs for the Rug Radio ecosystem are slated to start minting on Feb. 6th

🙇 3 insightful threads weekly to level up your NFT knowledge

0xKepler on NFT gaming investments beyond ERC20s and NFTs:

https://twitter.com/0xKepler/status/1615365589920546817?s=20&embedable=true

crisgarner.eth on PROOF Collective’s new Grails Season III mechanics:

https://twitter.com/crisgarner/status/1614759392540327943?s=20&embedable=true

Jack Inabinet on the Polygon NFT + biz dev boom:

https://twitter.com/JackInabinet/status/1616215565303173136?s=20&embedable=true

✨ My NFT tool of the week: Agora

A suite for Nouns DAO governance participants, Agora streamlines the Nouns voting process. The project recently introduced a delegation auction system, so you can bid on the temporary right to vote with a Noun without having to purchase a Noun outright. If you’re interested in Nounish governance, keep an eye on Agora!

https://twitter.com/nounsagora/status/1614698889931821057?s=20&embedable=true

💥 You might have ETH you forgot about!

Did you happen to try Fractional and PartyBid when I first wrote about them for Bankless back in 2021? If so, you might be like me and other NFTers who lost track of the fact that we had ETH we could claim from these projects’ vaults. You can use this Dune dashboard created by 0xRob to see if your address has any ETH ready to claim. I personally recovered almost Ξ1 this way!

https://twitter.com/rob_0x/status/1615382683760136193?s=20&embedable=true

**😜 The recently released Game of Thrones NFT art? Let’s just say it’s not great...**

Accordingly, Alan Carroll offered this meme interpretation of how the art got off the drawing board:

https://twitter.com/alancarroII/status/1613300930212167682?s=20&embedable=true

Weekly action steps

🆕 Review The State of Ethereum Report - Q4 2022 in Bankless
🌱 Watch The Gitcoin Alpha Round on Green Pill
🙇 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week:
- ✧ Bid for BLUR
- ✧ A New Way to Launch NFTs
- ✧ How to Become a DeFiLlama Pro

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!

Also published here.