Current NFT projects market movement — key stats
NFT journey on Ethereum began (Yr 2015) much early than the birth of Cryptopunks. It was not until late 2017 when awareness about NFT started with the launch of Cryptokitties that made the public excited. The entire scope of Cryptokitties gameplay surrounds collecting, breeding, and auctioning kitties. Since then the NFT use cases have extended from collectibles to tokenization of real-world assets.
#What is an NFT:
Just like in the real world, no two assets can exhibit similar characteristics or value, similarly, each tokenized asset on the blockchain has unique characteristics. Since these digital assets are distinguishable from each other, they are not interchangeable and so are referred to as non-fungible tokens. Just like real assets that have a certificate of ownership, NFT tokens maintain ownership records and proof of authenticity on the blockchain.
#NFT Popularity in 2021:
Sales volumes have remained high after NFTs rose in popularity early this year.
- Monthly sales volumes on OpenSea reached a record high (i.e. $150 million) in June.,
- NFTs market surged to new highs in the second quarter, with $2.5 billion in sales so far, up from just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020.
NFT enthusiasts see them as collectibles with intrinsic value because of their personal liking, or speculation on rare traits of NFTs. The popularity of NFTs has not been hidden from celebrities like Celebrated musician Jay-Z changed his Twitter profile picture to that of a CryptoPunk, as he sets up his first NFT sale at auction house Sotheby’s.
#Top popular NFTs (by trading volume):
#1 — “Blockbuster”
CryptoPunks
CryptoPunks is a prime example of the current boom in the NFT market. CryptoPunks have become among the most sought-after NFTs on the market. Known as one of the earliest NFTs, the CryptoPunks project was launched in 2017 by Larva Labs. Originally, each CryptoPunk was offered for free, but many have sold recently for millions of dollars. Recently a Covid Alien CryptoPunk NFT was sold for over $11.7 million in the auction.
#Hit:
BAYC
An increasing number of social media accounts nowadays have changed their avatars to cartoons of apes like the following Celebrated Twitch user and gamer who goes by the name ‘OneBlockAway’ changing his profile picture to that of an Ape #9113.
And many more of my Twitter friends and followers with avatars of apes sporting glasses or shooting laser beams from their eyes. This group of newborn apes is chatting among themselves and supportive of each other. The avatars came from Bored Ape Yacht Club which had officially launched on April 30th, offering 10,000s of ape-themed non-fungible tokens each holding a unique trait.
Within a day, all 10,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs had sold out. The pricing now in the secondary market OpenSea is based on rarity or personal significance like on the picture above that has a clean or decent representation of ape — “similar to how I look when on the beach :)”.
#Rising:
Pudgy Penguin
Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 Cute Chubby Pudgy Penguins sliding around on the freezing ETH blockchain. It was sold in late July. The NFT is currently at the floor price of 1.35 ETH on OpenSea with a healthy trading volume of 10,800+ ETH since July, 22nd, 2021 and continues to grow.
The popularity of Pudgy Penguins rose after CoinGecko featured Pudgy Penguins in their recent tweet.
#New release and ‘Rising’:
VOX — Avatars That Defi
VOX are versatile companions who can be animated, 3D printed, used in augmented reality, and more. Build by Gala Games, every VOX will also generate future play-to-earn rewards by interacting in various ways with the Gala Games ecosystem.
The first series of 8888 VOX was sold out in less than 10 minutes on 10/Aug/2021 and is selling in the secondary market — OpenSea at an average price of more than 0.7 ETH and had a record trading volume of more than 3000 ETH in a single day. It’s safe to say that VOX will definitely take up the top spot soon. Given the experience of the team in building the Gala Games and metaverse, the community is excited for the future utility for VOX NFTs.
I believe that the metaverse will one day be a HUGE economy. “Metaverse” is the new meme of the internet’s future according to those who must know what’s coming.
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook is the metaverse in which it is “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage”.
#New Release
JunkYard Dogs
JunkYard Dogs is a generative project consisting of 8,008 unique avatar dog tokens displaying randomized traits. The goal of the project is game development and launching breeding, as well as preparing a sophisticated Metaverse ecosystem.
Eventually, JunkYard Dogs club members will be connected to the metaverse, extending senses of sight, sound, and touch, blending digital items into the physical world, or popping into fully immersive 3D environments whenever we want. The team set out the community launch of 1888 NFTs on 10/Aug/2021, followed by the main launch on 11/Aug/2021. In both schedules, the JYD NFT was sold out in less than 10 minutes. Soon after the community mint, the project enjoyed a healthy level of trading in the secondary market.
#Genres — “Unique”:
Ksoids — “3D AR-ready”
Though it is in the early stage of popularity, I picked this one due to its unique, one-of-a-kind concept. Motion designer and creative director Danil Krivoruchko crafted the first Ksoids in 2013. At the time Ksoids was a personal project that engaged his love for procedural design and wild animals. To his surprise, the Ksoids exploded in popularity, attracting attention from around the world and becoming one of the first generative 3D characters to find life online. Now eight years later, Danil has transformed 1,000 Ksoids into NFTs.
The team is building a unique set of 1000 Ksoids in a 3D AR-ready form. All Ksoids will have an animation loop related to the properties they have to deliver a fully rigged animated character. As far as I know, no one has ever done this before in NFT collectibles space (even Meebits provided only T-pose without any rigging work done).
Anyone familiar with the technical side of 3d animation would agree that making a rig working with 1000 characters with different body shapes/eye shapes/ leg length etc, is a big challenge. Basically, think of going from jpeg to a game-ready asset for Unity or UE.
#Upcoming:
Colonists (Colony.Online):
Colonists (Colony.Online) are an NFT collection of 25,000 unique, programmatically generated space animals that are redeemable for their in-game playable character and cosmetic items in the upcoming MMO on the blockchain. They come in 5 different species, with a hard-capped supply of 5,000 per species. Each species is dropped one by one and is only available to mint once the previously dropped species has sold out. The first 5,000 are dropping in early September 2021.
The game takes place on an alternate-reality Moon Colony, where a society of randomly generated space animals (called Colonists) have colonized the moon and turned it into their very own social playground for chic materialism, party lifestyle, and moon mining.
What is unique to Colonists is that if owners don’t like a specific trait, they can re-roll a singular trait on their Colonist for 0.0125 ETH and will be able to do this a maximum of 3 times per Colonist.
Each re-roll results in a singular trait of owners choosing to re-randomize, along with the specific metadata associated with that trait to change as well. Once you reach the maximum re-roll count, you (and any other future holders of your NFT) will no longer be able to do this.
To my knowledge, Colonists are the first team to introduce this feature into a generative project- and this makes us very excited to add a fresh layer of customization for your Colonists before we begin the full-swing development of our game.
#Closing thoughts:
NFTs have opened up blockchain technology to whole new avenues. By representing physical assets in the digital world, NFTs have the potential to be a vital part of not just the blockchain ecosystem, but the wider economy.
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