NFT Brew #38

Your 10-minute overview of the NFT space as you enjoy a nice brew, sponsored by QUEEN ADA. To access the Premium Brew, become a CT793 member. Due to its length, the full version of the newsletter can only be read online.

News

Chilled Kongs Drama

Chilled Kongs, one of Cardano's largest NFT projects, experienced new levels of drama yesterday, causing a 33% drop in the collection's floor price. It all began when one of the largest collectors and the founder of Iceberglabs.ai listed all of his NFTs using the AI product his company is developing.

This comes just a couple of weeks before the highly anticipated Magic Shrooms drop later this month, making collectors nervous about the impact it will have on that event.

NMKR's Rogue Galaxies Shuts Down

Rogue Galaxies (RS) was the first project under NMKR's gaming subsidiary. NMKR is one of Cardano's largest companies and many people were therefore surprised to hear about the RS decision to shut down. The primary reason for the decision was the lack of funds, as their mint has not been as successful as they had hoped.

Not only did this anger many community members who had invested their money into the project, but it also started another round of debate on the definition of a "rugpull".

JPG Store Teases $JPG, Launches Features & Throws a Party

Cardano's largest NFT marketplace launched two major features this week. JPG Studio is their flagship minting tool, allowing creators to organize traits, automatically generate metadata, and mint on JPG Store.

They also introduced collection offers, a feature that has been heavily requested by the community. Although not the first (JamOnBread), having this feature on the most popular marketplace will add instant value to buyers and sellers.

In their latest tweet, they teased what appears to be an airdrop, referencing their previous $JPG teaser video.

Finally, they announced that they will be hosting a party with OREMOB, Alley Katz, Clay Nation, Chilled Kongs, and others at NFT.NYC in April.

Cardano Community Talks Governance & Voltaire

Governance is on the community's mind as Cardano's development approaches the era of Voltaire, set to launch in November. Charles hosted a space dedicated to the topic, which was attended by almost 18,000 people.

Although mostly positive and constructive, the discussion also turned critical as sections of the community raised their concerns over the direction Cardano is taking, accusing them of taking a centralized and undemocratic approach.

OREMOB Prepares for Encasing

OREMOB by Ore Ore Ore is one of Cardano's largest NFT projects, currently ranking 13th for all-time volume. This week, they took a snapshot of all NFT holders and will begin airdropping encasing mint access NFTs shortly to holder wallets.

The OREMOB team has set up a company called Encase that offers unique services to projects in the form of NFT encasing, gamification, and more.

The Ape Society Prepares to go Cross-Chain

The Ape Society, Cardano's largest NFT project by market cap, is preparing for their Citizens of The Ape Society (COTAS) cross-chain mint. They released their whitelist plan, listing the number of allocated spots they are giving out to holders and partner projects.

They also announced their first merch launch, the Poker Deck. Only Craftsmen and Artists (NFT categories within their main collection) will be able to create the Poker Deck NFT, which can then be burned for the physical merchandise.

Cardano NFT Volume Worries Community

The low volume in the Cardano NFT market has worried the community, especially when seeing the volume on other blockchains increase. A more detailed analysis of the current market conditions can be found in the market update section below.

Cardano Foundation Talks NFTs at Women of Cardano Event

The community celebrated International Women's Day this week and so did the Cardano Foundation with its Women of Cardano event. The event included a special panel of women from the Cardano NFT space, including Cardano Women, the Fairies, and others.

CNFTJungle.io Announces Cross-Chain App

The Ape Society aren't the only ones looking at other chains this week because Jungle announced that they will be adding Polygon, Solana, and Binance to their app. All holders of their NFTs will get access to cross-chain features that include sniping, analytics, and portfolio tracking.

Futurefest Looks to Host a Virtual Cardano Summit 2023 Event

Futurefest may be a serious candidate for hosting the virtual Cardano Summit 2023 Event after the idea took off on Twitter this week. The event, which is hosted by the Cardano Foundation, aims to bring the Cardano community together and is held in November.

The Mallard Order Wins Cardano NFT Twitter

The Mallard Order managed to outperform the new arrivals Goombles in terms of Twitter mentions last week.

Other Cardano NFT Project Updates

Many prominent Cardano NFT projects announced exciting updates last week.

The Goat Tribe launched its DNA Research Lab after some delays. The community has been excitedly sending in their goat NFTs with DNA kits to mint "ancestors", which can be found under that Goatia policy ID.

SpaceBudz, Cardano's first-ever 10k collection, continues its journey towards the V2 mint, where holders can use a custom bridge to update their SpaceBudz NFTs. Alessandro, SpaceBudz's founder and legendary Cardano NFT developer, put together a useful thread on the key differences between CIP-25 and CIP-68, but the SpaceBudz bridge utilizes CIP-68.

BIG announced partnerships with several Cardano NFT projects this week, including Jungle, Bravemint, and Astro. These partners will take over different aspects of BIG's services, including minting, lending, and custom nodes.

Mud Squad announced the mint date for their upcoming NFT collection only to abandon those plans due to community feedback. For now, the mint has been postponed.

Cardano Crocs Club is one of Cardano's largest NFT projects. They are currently preparing for the release of lands, which will give your NFTs staking boosts for their $C4 utility token.

Mutants, known for their staking and raffle platform, announced an upcoming mint called Mutants. Collectors will need 2 NFTs from previous collections + Mutant utility tokens to mint.

KWIC received the Pitch community innovation award from the Clay Nation team.

Fort Gotten announced another mint on March 30th. The announcement was followed by a significant website update and a sneak peek at their impressive customization platform.

Jesus 2 airdropped 150 beautifully crafted keys into holders' wallets this week. All lucky receivers were hand-picked and even though the plans and utility of the NFT are unclear, it injected a lot of excitement into the community.

Goofy Gophers had some setbacks this week including a minting delay and a Discord security breach.

Wolves of Rome, one of the most exciting NFT trading card games in development on Cardano, announced their own staking portal this week. This allows holders to earn their in-game currency, Glorium.

Metadams released a sneak peek of their upcoming game, set to be released on March 26th.

Ugly Bros announced a collaboration with the 2D artist Feri Pratama. The collaboration involves bringing his 2D designs to life via 3D modeling and metaverse compatibility.

They also posted a sneak peek of their game character selection UI, highlighting the integration with a Cardano wallet.

Prismatics & Fairies sold out their collections this week. Congratulations!

Wild Tangz announced Tangz Galaxies this week, a simple game developed in-house for NFT holders.

Cornucopias announced a partnership with VyFinance, a popular decentralized exchange on Cardano. Through this partnership, $COPI holders will be able to stake their tokens for rewards here.

Tavern Squad had several exciting updates this week, including a partnership with Virtua, one of Cardano's largest metaverse projects.

They also hit the 2M ADA trading volume mark this week - congrats!

Beyond Cardano

Amazon Announces NFT Marketplace

With one of the world's largest brands entering the space, this could have a significant impact on the mass adoption and/or reputation of NFTs.

Bitcoin Ordinals The Next Big Thing?

Over the last few weeks, Bitcoin Ordinals have been outperforming just about any other blockchain in trading volume.

Algorand Gets Hacked

Algorand users lost millions of dollars in a recent attack on MyAlgo, a popular Algorand wallet app. Algorand's CTO released a short video explaining the situation and advised all users to use a hardware wallet.

Ethereum: ERC-4337 & Why it Matters

ERC-4377 is Ethereum's latest update, bringing some major improvements to the blockchain's functionality. More specifically, it:

• Introduces a social recovery system, allowing the recovery of seed phrases

• Secures wallets without seed phrases (biometrics)

• Enables automated trading and spending limits

• Enables gasless transactions through "sponsored" gas fees.

Experts believe that this is a significant step towards lowering barriers of entry and replacing traditional bank accounts.

Kraken Planning to Open a Crypto Bank

The crypto exchange giant announced that it will launch an online bank, providing "comprehensive deposit-taking, custody and fiduciary services for digital assets".

Minting

These projects are personally curated by CardanoThor or other trusted NFT Vikings. However, this is not investment advice, and we always encourage you to do your own research. For CardanoThor's personal opinions and insights into how much he will mint, read the Premium Brew. *All times are shown in Eastern Time.

Currently Minting

Zeitaku Dragonz

Zeitaku Dragonz is a utility-focused project led by Cryptoganzo. Their original 2,222 NFT Dragonz mint sold out months ago, but the current Egg mint has a supply of 4,444 with around 700 NFTs minted so far.

BeezHive

BeezHive is a first-of-its-kind in the NFT space, offering NFT holders value in the form of honey. Their goal is to build over 1,000 beehives and distribute the proceeds to holders. This will be the first of many drops, aiming to reach 10,000 NFT supply as the project grows.

Around 340 of the 999 NFTs have been minted so far.

Aeoniumsky

Aeoniumsky, one of Cardano's most prolific fine artists, minted Block 19 on Friday night as a part of his Block collection. Those who registered their wallets were able to enter a raffle for the privilege to mint one of his pieces. As always, the drop was limited to 500 pieces and only cost 60 ADA.

Astro

Astro is a futuristic and alien-themed project that is attempting to deliver on all fronts: art quality, utility, and community. Their primary product/utility is Flux, a lending platform that will allow NFT holders to get instant loans using their NFTs as collateral.

They began their mint on Thursday but struggled to sell out the collection, surprising many. On Friday, the team announced that they will be pausing the mint at 1,250 NFTs and focusing on delivering Flux and onboarding new projects.

Cardano Art Collective Mega Drop

Cardano Art Collective is an initiative where Cardano NFT artists come together to create and mint digital art. This "Mega Drop" consists of 355 NFTs from 71 artists.

The mint is still live here, but approx. 250 pieces have been sold of the 370 available.

Upcoming Mints

Citizens of the Ape Society

Having just been announced on Friday, this quickly becomes the largest mint of the month and perhaps the year. As the biggest NFT project on Cardano, anything TAS does will generate excitement. The NFTs will be passports and act as membership tokens. This is their venture into other chains, although some of the details regarding the utility and future plans of this collection are still unclear.

📆 Date: March 16th💸 Price: $99📦 Supply: 10,000🐦 Twitter

Her Monsters Gang

Another highly anticipated mint is the Her Monsters Gang Monsters collection. This is their main collection and comes at the back of their Prio Squad and Apartment collections. Supply is 4,444 but they estimate that 1,256 will be available for public sale.

📆 Date: - March 17th: puzzle event- March 18th: WL- March 21: Public💸 Price: ₳185📦 Supply: 4,444🐦 Twitter

Goofy Gophers Mining Club

Goofy Gophers is the first and only NFT project on Cardano that provides value through a mining operation. Their original mint was only 995 NFTs and sold out months ago. This upcoming main sale consists of 7,888 NFTs and will expand the mining operation significantly. If you are interested in crypto mining but not willing or able to set up your own operation, this is a great opportunity to get involved in a decentralized way.

📆 Date: - March 10th, 3PM- March 11th, 3PM💸 Price: $130📦 Supply: 7,888🐦 Twitter

Brave Dogs Xperience

Brave Dogs is minting their Xperience passes next week. See the Play of the Week section in the premium brew for more detailed information on Brave Dogs. Only 333 passes will be created and they are only available via a whitelist. Holders of 2 Brave Dogs Genesis Tags will automatically qualify for a whitelist. The Xperience pass will give holders priority and utility in everything that BraveLabs creates.

📆 Date: March 15th💸 Price: ₳175📦 Supply: 333🐦 Twitter

Market Update

Cardano

As covered in the News section above, market sentiment of Cardano NFTs has been unusually negative for the past few weeks. The bear market seems to be taking a toll on Cardano NFT enthusiasts as the number of buyers continues to drop and is now consistently under 1,000 buyers on the 24H timeframe. Even the strongest Cardano NFT projects, such as Clay Nation, The Ape Society, SpaceBudz, and others have experienced a significant downward trend since the early January boom, or roughly -35% when looking at their floor price. This is represented in the graph below.

Volume: ₳3.7M (-23%) NFTs Sold: 17,734 (-9%)

However, this is not the first time the Cardano NFT market goes through this kind of cooling period. We experienced similar things in August/September of 22' and will undoubtedly experience them again. The NFT market is notoriously volatile and unpredictable, but if history is anything to go by, the market will see brighter days when we least expect it.

Top 10 Projects

Goombles was the only new project that made it into the Top 10 this week but it also experience the biggest drops in volume and floor price. Cornucopias had a 138% increase in volume while the floor price of Cabins by TAS increase the most (20%).

1️⃣ The Ape Society- Volume: ₳371K (+50%) - FP: ₳9,140 (+21%)2️⃣ Chilled Kongs - Volume: ₳214K (+157%) - FP: ₳900 (-31%)3️⃣ Goombles - Volume: ₳175K (-85%) - FP: ₳245 (+7%)4️⃣ Clay Nation - Volume: ₳146K (-45%) - FP: ₳2,970 (-4%) 5️⃣ SpaceBudz - Volume: 116K (-43%) - FP ₳3,450 (-5%) 6️⃣ Pavia - Volume: ₳109K (+4%) - FP: ₳160 (+23%)7️⃣ Alley Katz - Volume: ₳104K (-30%) - FP: ₳274 (-2%)8️⃣ Cabins by TAS - Volume: ₳92K (+12%) - FP: ₳735 (+13%)9️⃣ OREMOB - Volume: ₳82K (-28%) - FP: ₳799 (+3%)🔟 COPI Land - Volume: ₳101K (+1%) - FP: ₳155 (+3%)

Top Sales

No Earth Node sales this week, so we have a new project at the top:

1️⃣ PaviaPlus15Plus7: ₳25K2️⃣ Anton Wright (TAS): ₳20K3️⃣ SpaceBud9278: ₳15.5K4️⃣ Hortun Maddock (TAS): ₳15.5K5️⃣ Sherman Maddock (TAS): ₳14K6️⃣ Antonio Cataldi (TAS): ₳13.5K

Other Markets

While Cardano experiences an exceptionally difficult period, NFTs have been doing fairly well on most other chains. In fact, February was the largest month for NFTs since the collapse of Luna in early 2022. Could the arrival of Amazon into the NFT space help with mass adoption, awareness, and acceptance of NFTs?

The numbers (7D)

• Ethereum: $144M (-76%)

• Solana: $21M (+43%)

• Polygon: $9M (+85%)

• ImmutableX: $2.9M (-24%)

• Flow: $2M (+32%)

• Cardano: $1.8M (-16%)

• BNB: $1.2M (-26%)

Jerome Powell testified in front of a Senate committee yesterday and talked about the need for higher interest rates. Why should we care? Because higher interest rates has a direct impact on equities and the general economy by making it more expensive to borrow money. Predictably, the major stock exchanges reacted negatively and more pessimism continues to creep into the crypto markets.

Some of the most reliable recession indicators also don't look great, including the inverse yield curve (long-term interest rates are lower than short-term interest rates).

Weekly Dose of Charles

Tweet of the Week

Pic of the Week

Meme of the Week

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