NFTs in a nutshell: A weekly review
As we enter the back half of 2022, the NFT market is next to the broader crypto market: heading down Bear St., with no real signs of diversion in sight yet. Daily sales volumes have declined, Solana’s low gas taxes and emerging societies are positioning themselves as a major threat, and OpenSea’s challenges continue – down a co-founder and up on suspicious flags on large collectibles.
It sets up an interesting story for the rest of the year, and it’s hard to imagine things getting too much worse than what we’ve seen so far this year. Let’s take a moment to review all of last week’s activity and action around NFTs.
This week’s non-fungible token news
OpenSea co-founder resigns
OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah announced his resignation from the platform this week, and shared on Twitter that he is leaving OpenSea to “focus on new ventures.” Atallah will remain on the board of OpenSea, but expressed in a blog post his desire to shift back to his “primary passion: to build something from zero to one.”
3ACs NFT Holdings
The downfall of Three Arrows Capital, the massive crypto hedge fund, over the past few months has not been a quiet affair in the entire crypto community. This week, a new Dune Analytics dashboard outlines what are believed to be a number of Ethereum-based NFTs in 3AC’s wallet, including a dozen CryptoPunks, ArtBlocksCurated worth about $ 2.5 million and a number of ArtBlocks, Autoglyphs, Chromie Squiggles and Mutant Monkeys and a Lonely Bored Monkey.
Yuga Labs with ‘The Otherside’ Metaverse Test Run
We’re about a week away from the expected release of Yuga Lab’s formal Otherside Metaverse, but this past week we were able to get a sneak peek when strain tests began to roll out. The Otherside has served as the primary extension of the developer’s flagship NFT, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which included ‘The Otherside’ metaverse land NFTs and now an incoming ‘video game’ -like metaverse for BAYC holders to practically connect . Audiovisual effects on last week’s load tests seemed to go with minor issues, but some users reported not being able to access the platform, which was limited to 3,000 users.
What did everyone think of the second test today, smooth? Better without fog? #OthersideMeta #Metavers pic.twitter.com/J5qln4IsCc
– Herman Narula (@HermanNarula) July 9, 2022
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Polygon (MATIC) will be the blockchain of choice for Reddit's latest project, Collectible Avatars. Short-term charts have boded well for MATIC despite mid-term pains through this year's bear market. | Source: MATIC-USD on TradingView.com
Bagners and bots
“Bagners” has been the latest discussion in the city among those who look at the most meme-festable collections. It spread like wildfire, and there has been speculation about its true origin. Some have said that it started with a simple spelling mistake in a group chat, others said it came from someone who bought the ENS domain ‘bagner.eth’ by accident (instead of ‘banger.eth’).
In any case, it quickly got hot and it went to free mint within days of spreading. The coin was tapped and sold out in seconds, and turned to the resale market where the results have been mild. At the time of publication, the Bagner floor is around 0.04 ETH. Critics have argued that it felt too inorganic and “influencer pump and dump” -like. In any case, with the free coin results, it seems that we are hitting an NFT market that feels like reselling sneakers with a higher degree of difficulty in detecting gemstones.
Reddit & Polygon’s new NFT marketplace
Reddit has not been a stranger and blockchain engagement. It has been one of the leading social media platforms and companies that have engaged in space, and it is back again with a new NFT collection, entitled Collectible Avatars. The collection will feature unique items from independent artists, and Reddit chose to contact the Polygon blockchain due to “low-cost transactions and sustainability commitments”. A new ‘Collectible Avatars’ subreddit has been created and the avatars can be expected to roll out in the coming weeks.
OpenSea blacklists accidentally large NFTs
NFTs worth nearly $ 30 million – a total of around 24,000 ETH, including a number of BAYC, MAYC, Azukis, Doodles and more – are marked as “suspicious” and blacklisted on the NFT market’s largest marketplace, OpenSea, according to a widely reported Dune Analytics dashboard. At the forefront are Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which have a total of almost 270 flagged NFTs.
OpenSea critics have argued that the marketplace does not thoroughly review flagged submissions enough, and others have said that OpenSea’s broader security processes are simply not up to standard.
Related reading | Regulator control over cryptocurrency lender Voyager intensifies
Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com
The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.
