The NFT Frontier 🤠 – by William M. Peaster

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

Dear Bankless Nation,

Welcome to another edition of the Metaversal Weekly Roundup, where I dive into the latest happenings and trends in the ever-evolving NFT ecosystem. 

While my previous post got you caught up on the past few months of the NFT frontier, for this recap post I’ll specifically zoom in on the past week’s biggest happenings here per usual.  

Happy reading everyone, and here’s to staying ahead of the curve in the world of NFTs! Have a great weekend 🤝

-WMP

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This week felt pretty slow in the NFT ecosystem, at least relatively speaking, and that general uneventfulness was reflected in the market cap of NFTs, which declined from 8.6 million ETH to 8.57 million ETH ($15.63 billion USD) for a small 0.35% drop on the week. We’ll see if this is the start of a more prolonged NFT crab market! 🦀

For the second week in a row, Wrapped CryptoPunks topped the NFT space’s 7D volume charts with over 49k ETH worth of trades in that span. Per usual BAYC, MAYC, and Otherdeed plots were no surprise in the top 5, so the fresh face this week was Nakamigos, the mysterious Sartoshi-linked collection’s that exploded onto the scene on the heels of its March 23 public mint. 

With regard to weekly volume share, OpenSea climbed from 19% to 20% and Blur climbed from 69% to 73% over the past week. In contrast, OpenSea saw the amount of weekly trades it facilitated slightly grow while Blur saw its share of trades slightly shrink. In other words? The $BLUR wars status quo continues on for now. 

• RON staking is now live, and a series of new gaming studios announced they are building on Ronin, too.  

• Metaverse Fashion Week ran from March 28 through today, March 31, in Decentraland. 

Is the collection connected to Larva Labs, or Sartoshi of mfers acclaim? It’s not clear who’s behind Nakamigos yet, but that uncertainty didn’t stop the 20,000-strong pixel art PFP series from undergoing an incredible boom of trading activity over the past week. For example, Nakamigos surpassed BAYC in all-time trade stats within only four days of its March 23 mint, and at the time of writing the floor price was 0.26 ETH per avatar. Will these NFTs have staying power? Only time will tell for now, but their arrival has been nothing short of explosive! 

• Boomboxheads v2 — A 3D collection of interoperable VRM CC0 avatars for the metaverse, allowlist is accepting applications via Typeform now!

• The Lost Ghouls — A spinoff collection by the Based Ghouls project, this series will be released on Canto on a TBD date; track the Based Ghouls Twitter to stay up-to-date on further announcements. 

• DenDekaDen — A highly-anticipated PFP mint by Toei Animation; the collection’s upcoming mint phases are currently slated to take place between April 3-5. 

1. fluffbear on the DeGods Ethereum bridging event, starting today:

2. Pirate Nation on “Mirroring,” an innovative new scaling technique in web3 gaming:

3. Will Robinson on the possibility of making an onchain version of a game like Food Chain Magnate, great read:

Escher, a new curated platform for editioned fine art that I first wrote about earlier this month, just fully launched. If you’re interested in exploring aggregated NFT editions from iconic cryptoartists all in one place, Escher has you covered!

The ENS Name Wrapper mechanism is on the verge of launching, and it’s going to be a game changer for ENS domain holders. It’s not exactly a simple system to explain, but in short the tech will make it so you can “wrap” ENS subdomains or DNS domains into ERC1155 NFTs. This will pave the way to many new possibilities, e.g. readily airdropping subdomain NFTs to your DAO’s members or to your NFT collection’s holders. Keep your eye on these possibilities going forward!

In 10 years, we’ll all look back and see game assets as one of the most obvious use cases for NFTs. But there’s no question that there’s still a lot of animosity in many mainstream gaming circles toward non-fungible digital assets. Make it make sense please…

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.