Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
And you miss 100% of the learning opps from mints you don’t make.
My personal mintography extends back to 2019, and I’ve gotten countless invaluable experiences and connections from just getting my hands dirty and experimenting with making my own NFTs all along the way.
I encourage this same abundance attitude for you, too. “Just mint it.”
Besides it being a great way to learn, minting your own NFTs allows you to creatively express yourself, sharpen your web3 skills, build a fanbase, and potentially generate income.
So yes, just mint it. Have a try, learn, repeat. In the meantime thanks for reading everyone, and I hope you have a great weekend. For now let’s get you caught up on the latest general NFT intrigues✌️
-WMP
🙏 Sponsor: Kraken — the most trusted and secure crypto exchange in the world✨
For another week in a row the cumulative market cap of the NFT space has risen, this time up to 8.94 million ETH for a week-over-week climb of 3.6%. As top cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH have been experiencing fresh gusts of buy pressure lately, so too have more than a few NFT collections both new and old been fielding considerable activity inflows.
While collections in the Bored Ape ecosystem proper have dominated the weekly volume charts for the past month, this week had a bit more variety with CryptoPunks, Checks, and a KID called BEAST coming in as the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th most-traded collections respectively. The big stunner has been Checks, which cost the equivalent of $8 to mint last month and has now seen its floor price surge to well over Ξ1 ETH a pop.
For the second week in a row OpenSea has maintained a significant trading volume lead over Blur, whose $BLUR token launch is now less than a fortnight away. Is anticipation of the long-awaited airdrop running out of steam, or should we expect Blur to receive a second wind once its native token is live? Only time will tell!
There have been more monster BAYC and ‘Punk sales in recent days per usual at the top of the NFT economy. Considered together the three transactions below amounted to over Ξ1,160, suggesting that demand for top-shelf NFTs is doing just fine right now.
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NFTfi (the specific lending protocol, not the general category) facilitated a 40,000 USDC loan against 32 goblintown.wtf NFTs.
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Sudoswap launched $SUDO governance.
With the Canto NFT ecosystem on the rise, some new collections on the young appchain have been getting some serious love. Launched on Jan. 31st by accomplished glitch and collage artist Sgt. Slaughtermelon, Cantographs is one such collection — the hypnotic series minted for 125 $CANTO each and within a single day the floor price climbed to over 3,300 $CANTO a pop.
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Grados — villain avatars for the upcoming gradis web3 platformer game, minting closes today
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Runes — an NFT trading card game created by the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult community, premium, standard, and free minting started on Polygon on Feb. 1st
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Mint or Skip — not a mint per se but a literal mint tracker, this will be a list of upcoming NFT drops curated by Giancarlo Chaux that’s serialized every Monday
1. Panda Jackson on how Blur bypassed OpenSea’s blocklist:
2. Leonidas.og on a potential “Historical NFT” starter pack:
3. olimpio on MetaMask competitors that don’t have tokens yet:
Interested in launching your own NFT DAO with Nouns Builder? If so, you ought to check out Nouns Connect, a new service that helps you easily connect your DAO to other apps:
An NFT minted on Ethereum will live on Ethereum forever, while an NFT minted to a private database will undoubtedly be lost to time at some point. Some people found this out the hard way this week as Rally shuttered its “sidechain” for good, taking anything minted there down with it. This episode is just the latest stark reminder that just because something’s branded an NFT doesn’t mean it’s digitally durable:
Bitcoin’s decreasing block subsidy could be an existential threat to the OG blockchain, but surging revenues from new “Ordinals” Bitcoin NFTs has people wondering if Bitcoin accidentally just stumbled upon the start of a solution:
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.
