Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, and more!
Dear Bankless Nation,
Last month, nearly 100 million NFTs were minted via +6 million transactions across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.
I know for my part, I was definitely minting dozens of NFTs all over the place throughout Coinbase’s Onchain Summer fest.
It was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of cool digital goodies, including a Parallel starter deck. And guess what? Ethereum wasn’t congested at all amid all these festivities unlike we’ve seen in past NFT surges.
We’ve entered the era of the “Max mint,” in other words. Now you can mint many NFTs very affordably on L2s, and more and more people are making the leap up as they’re adventuring on these new layers.
Personally, I’m very excited to see what further experiments this abundance meta will bring. In the meantime thanks as always for reading everyone, and have a great weekend.
For now let’s get you caught up on the past week ✌️
-WMP
🙏 Sponsor: Uniswap Labs — Better Prices, More Listings: NFTs on Uniswap✨
📊 The big picture
Over the past week, the floor-based market cap of the NFT space slightly shrunk from 8.55 million ETH to 8.52 million ETH for a 0.35% drop ⤵️
🔝 7D top collections by volume
🔒 You’re a free user and don’t have access to Airdrop Hunter
If you needed a reason to upgrade to a paid membership, this is it. A single airdrop can pay for an annual membership’s cost many times over!
📰 General news
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Farcaster is starting its V3 rollout next week.
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Firstmate, a DIY NFT storefront builder, raised $3.75M.
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Impact Theory, spearheaded by Tom Bilyeu, was charged by the SEC with conducting an unregistered security offering via its Founder Key NFTs.
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OpenSea unveiled an open standard for redeemable NFTs.
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OpenSea Pro added floor price changes to its homepage.
🏆 Digital collectibles
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Chimpers introduced its first physical figurine.
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ZenAcademy held its Denizens collection reveal.
🎨 Cryptoart & music
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Ira Greenberg’s Mappings series sold out on BrainDrops.
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NiftyApes introduced artistfinancing.xyz, a protocol designed to let cryptoartists provide seller financing directly.
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Snowfro minted some of the final Chromie Squiggles.
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SuperRare launched Curation Staking on the Rare Protocol.
🎮 Decentralized gaming
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Axie Infinity reintroduced Fortune Chests.
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OpenSea Pro added support for Parallel cards.
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Xai, an L3 chain on Arbitrum, launched the Xai Odyssey campaign centered around educational quests.
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Yuga Labs is launching an open beta for its Legends of the Mara game next month.
🌐 Virtual worlds
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Decentraland is running an Emote Contest with 20k MANA in prizes.
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oncyber added support for displaying Arbitrum NFTs.
🪙 NFTfi
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Astaria relaunched.
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NFTfi.com added support for borrowing against Sablier V2 money streams.
🎆 Mint spotlight: The Holograph x LayerZero mint
I’ve previously written on Holograph, a multichain NFT minting platform powered by LayerZero tech. This week the two projects kicked off a commemorative mint to celebrate their partnership, and since the release is free, and since both projects are token-less and may conduct airdrops later, this one’s an interesting low-stakes opportunity right now.
There’s over four days left on the mint, and you might also consider bridging your new NFTs to a different chain via Holograph to potentially up your eligibility. Knowledge and experience are its own rewards in crypto, but retro airdrops are always pretty cool too, right.
🙇 New insightful reads to level up your web3 knowledge!
1. cygaar on ERC6909 🧠
2. WASD on 5 MUD games to watch 🎮
3. WINTΞR on building BasePaint 🎨
✨ My NFT tool of the week: The FirstMate App
If you’re an NFT creative trying to navigate the uncertain royalties landscape, why not drop your own custom royalty-enforcing NFT marketplace and focus your efforts there? Now it’s particularly straightforward to do so thanks to FirstMate, which just launched its NFT Storefront Builder app in partnership with Manifold.
To access this resource, just sign into Manifold and then go to the “Apps” dashboard and press “Install” on the FirstMate option!
😜 Now SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s bringing his act to NFTs…
P.S. Weekend quests!
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🪙 Mint the Holograph x LayerZero NFT and the final Onchain Summer fest drop, Fini Base Wars (5 days left)
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👾 Check out Fren Pets, an experimental Tamagotchi-style game on Base (be cautious, if you try only play with what you can afford to lose)
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🆕 Read How Crypto Protocols Impact Our Psychology, Grayscale Beats the SEC, and It’s Time to Yield in Bankless
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🙇 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week:
Author bio
William M. Peaster is the creator of Metaversal — a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also a senior writer for the main Bankless newsletter.
A Bankless Citizen ⚑ turned $264 into $6,077 last year. A 22x ROI 🚀 in a bear market!
🙏Thanks to our sponsor
UNISWAP LABS
Trade NFTs across major marketplaces to find more listings at better prices. NFTs on Uniswap are open-source, trustless, and self-custodial. To celebrate NFTs on Uniswap, we are airdropping $5 million to certain historical Genie users. Start trading NFTs today on Uniswap.
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.