The NFT Revolution Has Arrived

Dear Bankless Nation,

NFTs are starting to pull in new eyes from within and without the cryptoeconomy. That’s no surprise with all the innovation currently taking place around these novel media legos!

Indeed, unprecedented experiments like Metapurse’s tokenized B.20 bundle are trailblazing the way to new creative horizons for artists and collectors alike, and more people are taking notice accordingly.

We can’t know exactly what the future holds, of course. But we’ve seen enough in short order to know that NFTs are going be at the heart of an absolute explosion of cultural innovations in the years ahead, and the fun has only just begun.

Get ready, then. We’ve arrived early to our front row seats of the 21st century’s first great creative revolution, and it’s time to make the most of it!

- WMP

🏆 Digital Collectibles

• Let’s roundup this week’s notable CryptoPunks activity: we saw a 39 ETH sale for Punk 3107, a 33.99 ETH sale for Punk 3016, a 30 ETH sale for Punk 7261, a 30 ETH sale for Punk 8146, a 16 ETH sale for Punk 4639, and much more!

• In one swoop, prolific NFT trader Pranksy purchased +1,700 collectibles from the on-chain avatars project Avastars. Pranksy also just co-launched new NFT loot box project NFTBoxes.

🎨 Cryptoart

• Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland is releasing his first cryptoart drop through Nifty Gateway on Tuesday, Jan. 19.

• YAM Finance co-creator Trent Elmore published an insightful write-up this week on the artist Pak’s recent drop of “The Title” series on NiftyGateway. Elmore places the conceptual work as an NFT-powered, neo-avant-garde exploration of digital ownership.
• Cryptoart platform SuperRare just released the latest installment in its New Artists series. The post spotlights SuperRare’s newest crop of talented creators, so don’t miss this one if you’re in the hunt for rising cryptoart stars!
• Programmable art platform Async Art published its first community update for 2021, where project co-founder Lisa Liang unveiled a new Async Art Tab Extension. The tool lets users easily showcase Async NFTs directly in their browsers.
• Uniswap creator Hayden Adams has the world’s finest collection of Uniswap-themed cryptoart 😊

🕹️ Blockchain Games

• Fantasy ⚽ game Sorare just welcomed popular Argentine football club River Plate to its ranks with a run of first-edition River Plate cards.
• NFT-based RPG Neon District is launching its first game campaign, the Neon Pizza Party, on Jan. 19th. To commemorate the rollout, the Neon District team has released 50 NFT loot boxes via the new OpenSea Collection Manager system.
• Even with acutely highly Ethereum gas prices recently, Axie Infinity has seen its battle app’s daily active users (DAUs) stay steady near ~16,500. The game’s soon-to-be released Ronin sidechain should help this number explode that much further.

🌐 Virtual Worlds

• Metapurse is tokenizing a massive collection of NFTs, the B.20 bundle, which is centered around 20 signature 1/1 Beeple works the group collected for $2.2 million on Nifty Gateway last year. As part of the effort, Metapurse is building virtual museums for the B.20 pieces in Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Somnium Space. 

  

• This week’s WIP Meetup in Cryptovoxels, which featured speakers from Layer1, Graph Protocol, and CryptoKitties, was followed up by a CryptoKitties-themed event in nft42’s ongoing Metalympics games. 

• Cryptovoxels just launched an Events Board on its homepage and kicked off listings for the new Milan district.

🛒 NFT Marketplaces

• OpenSea co-founder and CEO Alex Atallah noted that more than 630,000 Ethereum wallets have created ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFTs to date ...

💎 DeFi x NFTs

• NFT index fund protocol NFTX saw its community vote to approve moving “current & future liquidity toward Sushiswap.”
• Cent.co maestro and WIP meetup founder matthew.cent.eth published his “2021 Crypto NFT Predictions.” Therein, the seasoned NFT veteran predicted that a prominent crypto exchange like Coinbase or Binance would acquire a major NFT marketplace by the end of 2021.

Action Steps

• Read “NFT subculture” by Denis Nazarov on Mirror.