This week in NFTs.
Week 2, 2022 - OG NFT project revived?! OpenSea's new competitor. Doodles. Phanta Bear. And more!
This was yet another crazy week! In fact, it’s beginning to feel like every week is crazy heh. Crypto and NFT do not disappoint.
BTC dipped below $42,000 and the boat for ETH came back for many when it touched $3,000. Projects, new and old (which we’ll touch upon) are flipping, or close doing so, BAYC.
Elsewhere in the metaverse, NFT volumes and games are rising, but everything else in crypto is pretty much still taking a beating. Other than a select few projects, prices on OpenSea took a breather but are currently consolidating and many NFTs in Solana are looking at new ATHs.
For this newsletter, you might have noticed that I’ve included a ‘quote of the week’ (Overheard in the Metaverse) and ‘podcast of the week’ sections to sum up all the madness that goes on in the metaverse. I hope you enjoy these.
Phew, so many changes, so many things. Let’s begin!
What have you been up to this week?
Overheard in the Metaverse
If you've always been people-minded and culture-oriented, you were Web1-Web2 in body, but Web3 in spirit. You were built for this next chapter. Let's. Go.
Headlines in the Metaverse
A Doodle here, there, and everywhere!
Doodles was one of those projects which I looked at, longingly, for hours on OpenSea, followed on Twitter, watched videos about… and never bought - when it was 1 ETH xD
In the past week where NFTs on Ethereum was trying to take a breather after smashing through the roof, Doodles managed to break through the 10 ETH barrier with the floor has been holding that line for the past week.
Stoking the flames of Doodle-mania was Pranksy buying a Doodle-ape (6914) for a whopping 296.69 ETH and Steve Aoki aping into the project as well with his purchase of an alien Doodle.
Here’s kid Aoki showing off his Doodle during a concert
OpenSea Competitor, LooksRare Launches
It feels like airdrop szn with $ENS, $SOS, $GAS.
Then for a short time in the metaverse this week, $LOOKS was the only thing I saw on my Twitter feed. What better way to launch a new marketplace by doing an airdrop to users of their competitor platform, OpenSea? Best if you name it after an oft-used phrase in the metaverse! If you had traded a total of 3 ETH or more during 16 Jun 21 and 16 Dec 21, you would have received a $LOOKS airdrop.
The kicker was that that launch happened amidst one of OpenSea’s numerous outages!
To many, this new marketplace felt like a long time coming and a worth competition amid criticisms of OS’s high fees and unreliability even after many rounds of VC funding.
The Phanta Bear Madness
Jay Chou is arguably Mandopop’s biggest star. With an Instagram following of 6.9m followers, and a launch of his own NFT collection called Phanta Bears, it’s not hard to see how a project like this can get overheated really really quick.
The popularity of the project has seen crazy volumes traded over the week and is sitting at number 2, just behind BAYC in terms of OpenSea traded volume. Mint began on 1st Jan at 0.26 ETH, and it skyrocketed up to more than 8 ETH in the past week. Prices have since dropped by more than half, but it’s looking at a healthy consolidation right now.
At peak mania, it has seen celebrities such as Jean-Claude Van Damm and Edison Chen jumping into the fray, buying up the NFTs.
A Project Revived From the Past
When it comes to OG NFT projects, we’ve all heard about CryptoPunks and to some degree Rare Pepes. However, earlier this week, there was a renewed interest in CryptoSkulls - a project that was first launched in 2019. This interest sent the project skyrocketing to the top of OpenSea’s sales volume, beating out BAYC for the top spot!
Some of you may ask, how OG is this project? CryptoSkulls is arguably the second-ever 10k PFP collection after CryptoPunks.
As such, the discovery of an OG project at such low price points certainly made it a dream for many who’s looking into getting themselves one.
Some of the current collectors of CryptoSkulls include GaryVee, Steve Aoki, fvckrender, gmoney & Leonidas. Seems like sweet alpha if the price drops, though it has since run up quite significantly.
Podcast of the Week
This week’s podcast features Overpriced JPEGs with GET protocol.
GET protocol is one of the earliest blockchain event ticketing platforms in the space. In the interview, they discuss the reasons why blockchain ticketing is the future, why it isn’t mainstream yet, how they intend to be the web3 bridge for the events industry, and so much more.