Long Live NFTs ✊

Dear Bankless Nation,

NFT skeptics were out in force this week, but that’s fine.

Let ‘em hate.

They’ve made a boogeyman out of open and durable digital items and those of us who explore them, but the march of progress will continue to pass them by.

In the meantime we’ll just keep learning, exploring, and building here. We’re explorers on the metaversal frontier, that’s what we do!

As always thanks for reading this weekly NFT news roundup, everyone. I hope you all have a great weekend, stay creative! ✌️

-WMP

📊 The big picture

Over the past week, the floor-based market cap of the NFT space declined from 7.99 million ETH to 7.53 million ETH for a 5.75% drop ⤵️

🔝 7D top collections by volume

📰 General news

• Magic Eden added support for compressed NFTs.
• Mint.fun added support for Mirror articles.
• Mirror launched an inbox feature.
• Orb, a Lens-based social app, raised $2.3M.
• OpenSea is ditching lazy minting.
• Phantom unveiled Shortcuts, curated NFT activities.
• Pob Studio published The NFT Metadata Cheatsheet.
• The Noun Square intro’d The Yellow Collective.

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Checks VV holders were airdropped Checks PFPs.
• Cool Cats launched its SideKX mint.
• ApeCoin DAO approved AIP-304, which will see the collective buy 11M $APE worth of Yuga Labs assets.

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Figure is relaunching Unshaded Rocks.
• Sound launched Sounds of the Week.

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• Aavegotchi unveiled its Game Center, a new hub for games around the Aavegotchi ecosystem.
• Axie Infinity is conducting its first Axie Game Jam and opening up Axie Grants to all Mavis Hub games.
• Lattice kicked off its Sky Strife playtest.
• Parallel activated Echo Replication, a way to create new in-game cards.
• Pirate Nation added support for custodial wallets.
• Proof of Play, the builders of Pirate Nation, raised $33M.

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Decentraland is accepting artist applications for Decentraland Music Festival ‘23.
• Yuga Labs entered into a series of metaverse-related partnerships.

🪙 NFTfi

• Astaria acquired MetaQuants, a NFTfi aggregator and analytics platform.
• FloorDAO is undergoing a partial fork.
• Protectorate Protocol intro’d Zaar, a liquidity layer for NFTs.
• Reservoir intro’d Memswap, a new protocol for decentralized market orders.

🎆 Mint spotlight: The Casino on Mars

Matt Huang, the co-founder of Paradigm, recently penned an insightful article titled "The Casino on Mars," which explores the crypto landscape as a new frontier akin to a planet being settled. The post was an instant hit and its featured artwork, created in collaboration with animator and storyboard artist Myke Chilian, has been minted as a commemorative NFT on Zora. The mint price is 0.02 ETH per, and proceeds from the mint go to Myke!

🙇 New insightful reads to level up your web3 knowledge!

1. Future Tape on onchain albums 💽

2. Holograph on real world assets 🌐

3. Accelxr on onchain generative media 📝

4. Jin on dogfooding in the metaverse ▶️

5. Jacob on the goodness of forks 🍴

6. WASD on onchain emergence 🎮

✨ My NFT tool of the week: Rainbow Extension

Rainbow’s one of the slickest wallets in crypto, so take note because the project just released its highly-anticipated browser extension. Available on Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Arc, it’s packed with features like the “Magic Menu” for on-the-fly commands and keyboard shortcuts. Whether you’re a veteran juggling multiple wallets or a rookie looking for an easy way to go onchain, the Rainbow Extension has you covered.

😜 Keep on keeping on, I see you fam…