Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
As magic internet tokenomics continues eating up the digital world, things are as interesting as ever in the NFT ecosystem, bull market or not.
A big part of the growing intrigue here stems from how the web3 frontier’s rapidly expanding right before us — appchains, omnichains, zkEVMs, L3s, oh my!
All that said, it’s as important as ever to stay informed on the big happenings at the NFT frontier because huge changes are happening all around us. Accordingly, let’s get you caught up on the main intrigues from the past week per usual, and thanks for reading everyone! 🤝
-WMP
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🧠 The big picture
This week, the NFT market cap experienced a decline, dropping from 9.6 million ETH to 8.6 million ETH ($15.78 billion USD), a 10.4% decrease over the past seven days. Lately, major cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH have been leading the charge in the cryptoeconomy amid broader market turbulence. Additionally, the buzz surrounding Arbitrum’s $ARB airdrop has captured recent attention, leaving NFTs out of the spotlight generally speaking for the time being.
📊 This week by the numbers:
The huge mover this week was CryptoPunks, or technically Wrapped CryptoPunks, the “wrapped” versions of the ‘Punks that are readily tradable on popular NFT secondary marketplaces. Their huge activity surge came as $BLUR farmers started to turn their attention to ‘Punks in recent days in very concentrated fashion.
🔝 7D top collections by volume
🛒 7D NFT marketplace stats
Over the course of last week, Blur’s NFT volume marketshare dropped from 77% to 72% and its trades marketshare dropped from 56% to 51%. We just saw more of the same this week, as the platform’s volume marketshare declined from 72% to 69% and its trades markeshare declined from 51% to 43% over the past seven days. Is the height of $BLUR farming over? That remains to be seen, but the possibility of OpenSea retaking the pole position is coming back into focus.
📰 General news
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Nouns DAO is getting private DAO voting via Aztec x Aragon.
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Reddit confirmed it’s building a Reddit Avatar Marketplace.
🏆 Digital collectibles
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Pudgy Penguins filed new trademark applications.
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Smolverse introduced dynamic traits, batch staking, and an optional on-chain migration for NFT holders, allowing users to personalize their Smols, save time and gas fees, and more.
🎨 Cryptoart & music
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Kevin McCoy came out on top of a legal dispute over Quantum, an NFT the artist first minted in 2014 and then resold at Sotheby’s in 2021.
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Sound unveiled a new mobile navigation UI and sound player.
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XCOPY’s 2018 work And how does that make you feel resold for 355 ETH to Curated.
🎮 Decentralized gaming
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app.axie now supports offers for Axies and Axie Land.
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Aavegotchi is set to launch Gotchichain, a dedicated gaming blockchain powered by Polygon Supernets, in early Q3 2023
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CCP Games secured $40M in financing led by Andreessen Horowitz to develop a new AAA game using NFT tech within the EVE Universe.
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Noun Esports is competing in DreamLeague Season 19.
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Pirate Nation is migrating to Arbitrum Nova.
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Treasure partnered with Helika, a web3 analytics platform, to provide comprehensive, customizable dashboards for game data integrations.
🌐 Virtual worlds
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Nifty Island published a sneak peak of Nifty Arena.
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Wagmi-san appears to be coming to Yuga Labs’s Otherside world.
🪙 NFTfi
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Arcade facilitated the first-ever Bitcoin NFT-backed loan.
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Cygaar, an acclaimed NFT dev, is joining the sudoswap team.
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Finiliar launched a liquidity pool on NFT AMM Caviar.
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Uniswap introduced the Mini Portfolio feature.
🎆 Mint spotlight: Stealcam
This isn’t a one-off drop, but rather a new social app on Arbitrum where you can “steal to reveal” other peoples’ hidden NFTs and easily mint your own hidden NFTs that can then be “stolen” by others. As you steal NFTs, known as “Memories” on Stealcam, their prices increase every time by 0.001 ETH plus 10% of the previous price, with the previous owner reimbursed for their initial payment, and the surplus split among the previous owner (45%), the creator (45%), and the protocol (10%). If you’re looking for new things to try on Arbitrum, this is a fun new app to tinker with.
Check out our new profile leaderboards to see whose been stealing your photos the most!
And don’t miss the other new social features we’ve added recently like👯♀️ following and 🐤 twitter links in profiles
🔭 Mint watch:
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Nouns Comic #1 Generative Cover — This “Themed Park Nouns” mint offers over 500 million possible permutations, created from 7,000 hand-drawn artworks; the cost is 0.003 ETH each and proceeds will be used to donate physical copies of the comic to youth hospitals in North America. There’s a little bit under a day left to mint at the time of writing!
<div class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/WilsonCusack/status/1638530879780708355","full_text":"This open edition from @ComicsDAO is maybe the highest quality Nouns deriv to date? They hand drew every Nouns trait! nnAnd for a great cause: all funds go to purchase and donate Nouns Comics! nnzora.co/collections/0x… ","username":"WilsonCusack","name":"wilson","date":"Wed Mar 22 13:19:38 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/Fr06y1fWYAMdn2p.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/lbVG4M3kz8","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":38,"like_count":53,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}”>
And for a great cause: all funds go to purchase and donate Nouns Comics!
🙇 3 insightful threads weekly to level up your NFT knowledge!
1. Coinbase on how to use its Creator Hub:
Explore a one-stop shop for all of our creator tools that make launching an NFT collection and building your community effortless. Learn more about the full range of tools available in the Creator Hub. 🧵👇
2. PleasrDAO on the rise of Uniblocks:
<div class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/PleasrDAO/status/1638858333506646020","full_text":"seriously, wownny'all came strong for 24 hours of Unisocks chaos:nn🤌 Unisocks NFT #69 sold to @ValidatorEth for 22ETHnn🤌 1370 Uniblocks™ were mintednn🤌 2 SOCKS were yeeted into oblivionnn🤌 3 pairs of Unisocks were flamethrowered LIVEnnand the chaos continuesnnwe do a lil 🧵 ","username":"PleasrDAO","name":"✨ PleasrDAO","date":"Thu Mar 23 11:00:49 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/bxfbbaibz4m62qinzpxh","link_url":"https://t.co/yXWDRl5oql","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":13,"like_count":55,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1638858171493277696/pu/vid/480×270/hF1Y6TJ5g3AWpX9q.mp4?tag=12","belowTheFold":true}”>
y’all came strong for 24 hours of Unisocks chaos:
🤌 Unisocks NFT #69 sold to @ValidatorEth for 22ETH
🤌 1370 Uniblocks™ were minted
🤌 2 SOCKS were yeeted into oblivion
🤌 3 pairs of Unisocks were flamethrowered LIVE
and the chaos continues
we do a lil 🧵
3. onion on the best resources for getting Nounish in the space:
There’s a ton of independent creative tooling being built in/for the Nouns ecosystem, and I wanted to compile a thread. If you’re interested in making art around Nouns but aren’t sure where to start, these tools might be helpful!
✨ My NFT tool of the week: Ledger Live x ClubNFT
Some of you may recall that I’ve previously written about how to backup your NFT metadata via ClubNFT. As of this week, ClubNFT is now listed in the “Discover” section of the Ledger Live app, and Ledger Market Pass Genesis holders are able to access free NFT pinning services for up to six months through the partnership. If you’re interested in shoring up your NFT collection for the long haul, the Ledger x ClubNFT combo is a great place to start.
<div class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/Ledger/status/1638948850114109445","full_text":"Ledger stands for digital asset security, that’s why we've integrated @club_nft into Ledger Live’s Discover section.nnFor 90% of NFTs, the images and metadata are saved off-chain or on private servers, which means potential exposure to losing the files underlying these NFTs. ","username":"Ledger","name":"Ledger","date":"Thu Mar 23 17:00:30 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/upxncglfacytjrlesg5k","link_url":"https://t.co/rvLHnn7o5c","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":36,"like_count":185,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1638948384814800905/pu/vid/640×360/bpbnNSD54l0aDW_a.mp4?tag=12","belowTheFold":true}”>
For 90% of NFTs, the images and metadata are saved off-chain or on private servers, which means potential exposure to losing the files underlying these NFTs.
💥 Are NFTs really collectibles…
Sure, some are. But which ones? That’s the question that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is now soliciting feedback from the public on with regard to how the watchdog approaches NFT taxation. There’s a two-month comment window that’s begun, and I must say it’s refreshing to see the agency approaching NFTs pragmatically and openly. The SEC, which is trying to crack down on crypto right now, should take notes.
Today the IRS issued guidance and requested comments regarding whether NFTs should be treated as “collectibles” for US federal tax purposes.
😜 Trying to explain the Unisocks burn…
PleasrDAO’s recent Unisocks burn event is one of the craziest, funniest things to happen in the NFT space in recent memory, but try explaining it to someone who’s not familiar with NFTs and you’ll likely come across sounding insane like this guy…
Action steps
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🆕 Read How Arbitrum Beats Optimism and Bitcoin Is Dominating in Bankless
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🙇 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week:
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!
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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.
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