NFT artists, projects celebrate Ethereum merger with historical coins
- A user paid 36.8 ETH in gas fees to create the first PoS NFT on Ethereum
- The first NFT collection on PoS Ethereum is bullish on Ethereum’s dominance of the NFT market
The first transaction of an NFT minted on proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus was confirmed within four seconds of the Ethereum merger.
The official timestamp of the merge was 06:42 UTC Thursday in block 15537393. A user quickly paid 36.8 Ether (ETH), or $53,403.13 at the time, to buy an NFT with a panda face – symbolic of the merge – by blocking 15537394.
Another Twitter user got it to ask, “Is Panda the New Monkey?” referring to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. Others called it a “historic” and “epic” move.
Popular NFT artist Beeple ran with the panda imagery in his own rendition of a proof-of-stake illustration, depicting a giant cyborg panda.
He celebrated the merger with a second graphic of an Ethereum logo under construction.
While one niche NFT project, VanityBlocks, succeeded in tokenizing the final Ethereum proof-of-work block, another project claims to be the first NFT collection on PoS Ethereum.
Let the PoS NFTs flourish
Developed “in the pursuit of minimizing our impact on our environment,” Web3-native lifestyle brand Bloom is comprised of 3,003 anime-style avatars. The founders have dropped them all since the merger.
In a Twitter Spaces session on Thursday, the founders mentioned that they chose Ethereum to launch Bloom because of its market dominance.
“At the end of the day, where there is the most volume, where there is the most traffic and where the most economic value is – it’s all on Ethereum.”
With a floor price of 0.5, Bloom ranks among the top ten collections with the most trading volume in the last 24 hours on OpenSea, below Mutant Ape Yacht Club but above Otherdeed and Otherside Yuga Lab’s collections.
All week, but especially in the last 24 hours, another collection called RENGA has topped OpenSea’s volume chart. The RENGA project was launched pre-merger on September 2nd and has grown steadily as holders of RENGA Black Box NFTs burn tokens in exchange for a RENGA profile picture.
The Black Box collection has currently recorded a post-merger sales volume of nearly 900 ETH in the last 24 hours and has a market capitalization of 8,874 ETH or $12.6 million, according to NFTGo data.
It is yet to be determined how much more desirable NFTs on PoS might be; now that the network uses over 99% less energy, NFTs have also become greener.
Otherwise, the merger should have no effect on NFTs minted on Ethereum.
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Ornella Hernandez
Blockwork
Journalist
