3 NFT Hotspots This Week

It's an exciting time for us NFT enjoyooors, as there are plenty of areas of intrigue to dive into and get hands-on with right now.

What should you be trying, then?

As things stand this week, I say Warpcast, OpenSea, and Monad. That's because each of these high-profile projects currently have NFT-centric opportunities ramping up that you should have on your radar.

Let's dig in and catch you up on the big ideas.

Warpcast Wallet

Farcaster is the Ethereum ecosystem's most popular decentralized social network, and it's got lots of tailwinds working in its favor presently, like the rise of Snapchain and the arrival of Frames V2.

Now, it's got another ace up its sleeve: Warpcast Wallet.

Warpcast is the flagship Farcaster app, and its builders have started rolling out a new embedded wallet to its mobile users.

The idea? Make in-feed UX slicker and ensure that most Farcaster users have funded wallets so they can more readily access Frames, NFT mints, and beyond.

There's no question that this is going to become one of the premier ways to interact with opportunities around the Farcaster ecosystem in the months ahead, so it's worth updating your Warpcast app and seeing if you've got early access to the new wallet system.

If so, fund it by depositing some ETH, and then you can start trading, playing, minting, etc. Afterwards, any NFTs you mint on Warpcast will appear in your wallet's "Collectibles" tab for easy management.

OS2 XP Update

Last week, NFT marketplace heavyweight OpenSea confirmed its $SEA token plans and rolled out the public beta of its madeover OS2 platform.

The token news unsurprisingly caused a stir, considering OpenSea's long history.

But there was also a potent wave of backlash on social media around OS2's XP system, with complaints that it was too much like Blur farming, i.e. most rewarding of the people who rapidly buy and sell NFTs back and forth to rack up points rather than genuine collectors.

OpenSea heard the feedback and made adjustments, with CEO Devin Finzer recently announcing a pause on XP rewards for listing and bidding while the team focuses on XP shipments, which are rewarded for certain achievements.

The last round of XP was distributed to people who bought an NFT on OS2, with bonus points included for holders of top-volume collections who had held for longer than 3 months.

I suspect we'll see more shipments like this that reward holder behaviors, so if there are any NFTs you've been eyeing for your personal collection, OS2's new update is an opportunity to up your $SEA eligibility.

If you're just casually interested in stacking some XP, focus on affordable projects that see lots of trading activity to maximize your chances. For example, consider Courtyard, the tokenized collectibles platform whose cards currently have a floor price of 0.0024 ETH on OS2.

Monad Tesnet

Now that Abstract and Berachain are live, one of the next big chains coming up is Monad, a high-performance, Ethereum-compatible L1. The good news? We can start surfing here today because the developers just released the Monad Testnet.

There's already a spate of NFT apps deployed on this test network, so it's a good time to begin getting your bearings on Monad.

To dive in, you can use a wallet that offers native support for the testnet, like Phantom, or you can manually add the testnet to your wallet at testnet.monad.xyz.

If you manually add the testnet to one of your existing wallets, check your balance to see if you were one of the +8.8 million Ethereum addresses that received an airdrop of $MON test tokens.

Otherwise, the testnet.monad.xyz platform offers a $MON faucet, and there are community faucets like Gaz.zip that you can alternatively try—in any case, once you have some $MON you can start paying for transactions on the network.

At this point, you'll be ready to start exploring apps and mints. For example:

• Lil Chogstars, an upcoming PFP collection on Monad, is hosting a commemorative open-edition drop where you can mint up to 10 NFTs for 0.004 $MON a pop.
• Monadverse, a storytelling project, is hosting a mint campaign where you can collect each chapter of its story as an NFT, and if you collect them all, you get access to perks from partners across the Monad ecosystem, e.g. allowlist spots for upcoming collections.
• Magic Eden, the multichain NFT marketplace, has a dedicated Monad hub where you can discover and mint from ongoing launchpad drops or use the Mint Terminal to create your own 1/1s or collections on the testnet.
• Fantasy Top, the social betting game that was first popularized on Blast, is hosting a Free to Play tournament tomorrow, Feb. 20th, on the Monad testnet; if you sign up today, you can dive in by claiming 15 starter cards and try your hand at winning some rare NFT prizes.