NFT Brew #39

NFT & crypto news, mints, and more

Your weekly digest of the NFT & crypto space as you enjoy a nice brew. Sponsored by QUEEN ADA. To access the Premium Brew, become a CT793 member. For a better experience, read online.

News

Largest Mint on Cardano This Year?

The Ape Society dominates the Cardano headlines this week as they open up their Citizens of The Ape Society (COTAS) mint yesterday. Over the weekend, the community enjoyed a whitelist giveaway frenzy as the team distributed WL allocations to different partner projects. See the below thread for further details on the COTAS NFTs.

₳175K Sale

We stick with The Ape Society because one of their NFTs was purchased for a whopping ₳175,000 this week. This is the 3rd largest sale in the project's impressive history, the largest being ₳250K in December 2022.

Cardano DeFi Takes Off

Total Value Locked (TVL) reached new all-time highs last month on Cardano. The growth was the second largest among all chains in the Top 20 TVL charts, which Cardano now belongs to for the first time.

Minswap leads the way for exchanges, while Aada Finance records impressive growth (+345%) in the lending/borrowing category.

₳13M Needed for Upcoming Mints

The next few weeks in Cardano NFTs will be some of the busiest in history, with several major projects dropping large collections. In addition to the aforementioned COTAS mint, the following reputable projects will be minting:

  • 15th: Brave Dogs, Unphased, The Ape Society

  • 17th: Her Monsters Gang

  • 18th: Goofy Gophers Club

  • 22nd: Stag Alliance

  • 24th: Platypus Cyberpunks

  • 25th: Cybers

  • 30th: Fort Gotten

  • 31st: Chilled Kongs

  • April: Prime Kings & more

Will this spur a Cardano NFT market boom or leave promising projects in a tough situation, struggling to compete?

Cardano Whale is Back

One of Cardano's largest and most beloved influencers activated his Twitter account again after leaving for a few weeks.

NMKR Adds Solana & Ethereum Payment Options

Cardano's largest minting platform, NMKR, now allows users to pay with $SOL and $ETH when minting Cardano NFTs. This is a welcoming addition to their current Cardano wallets and credit card options.

A New Era for Art on Cardano?

A new marketplace, Newform, will launch today. Much like Artano, it is a marketplace that promises a focus on NFT artists and high-quality digital art.

The First Cardano Film Festival Opens

Nucast is currently hosting the first film festival on Cardano and possibly the first decentralized film festival in history. They announced ten films participating in the festival, and ticket holders have until the 18th to watch and vote on the films.

Ape Society Dominates Twitter

As usual, we look at the most mentions on Twitter among Cardano NFT projects. Last week, unsurprisingly, The Ape Society easily topped the list, followed by the Order of the Kraken and Brave Dogs.

Other Cardano NFT Project Updates

Many prominent Cardano NFT projects recently announced some updates:

Mallard Order announced the "Renaissance" this week, an event where artists and community members get an opportunity to win prizes and have their work featured.

Mutants, one of Cardano's largest NFT projects and a popular raffle platform, previewed the artwork for their upcoming Mutants mint.

Lending Pond, Cardano's first NFT lending platform, recently confirmed the launch of their V2 on March 30th.

Disco Solaris announced a second NFT collection called Moebius Pioneers. More details will be revealed soon, but they have promised an airdrop to holders of their OG collection.

Chilled Kongs had a much more positive week, revealing a sneak peek of their upcoming Magic Kongs collection artwork and teasing further updates on March 22nd.

Danketsu released their NFT farming platform: danketsuhustle.io

Aeoniumsky hinted at an airdrop for holders of all S01 Blocks. Only 5 drops remain in the collection, which consists of 24 Block NFTs.

ORE ORE ORE completed their Casey airdrop today, giving holders this NFT token that can be used to encase their OREMOB NFTs in the near future.

Derp Birds updated their profiles this week and added KWIC as a new staking partner. Today, they also announced a new logo.

JPG Store's collection offers feature seems to positively impact the Cardano NFT markets, illustrated by the Tweet below.

PlanetPalz released the BETA of their game: Reign of Titans.

Poetonic, one of Cardano's most respected artists, announced Season 5, Eolas, with a video trailer.

Anvil, one of Cardano's most prolific minting and staking development studios, celebrated its 1st anniversary this week.

Beyond Cardano

DeGods on Bitcoin

DeGods, one of the largest NFT projects in the world, announced that they are minting a collection on Bitcoin. The decision is causing some controversy, especially over what many consider to be a high price.

Doodles No Longer an NFT Project

According to a recent announcement from the team on Discord, one of the largest NFT projects on Ethereum no longer considers itself an NFT project.

Historically Large Bank Failures Shake the Markets

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the 2nd and 3rd largest bank failures in US history. This affected both the traditional and crypto markets as banking shares plunged across the board and major stablecoins $DAI and $USDC de-pegged to $0.9 over the weekend.

To make things worse, as this is written, speculation over the probability of Credit Suisse defaulting is dominating most news outlets.

Meta (Facebook) Abandons NFT Plans

Meta announced they are abandoning their plans to integrate NFTs into their platform. This comes out as they plan to lay off a further 10,000 employees in a second round of layoffs.

OpenAI Releases GPT-4

The world's most popular chatbot, ChatGPT, had a big upgrade this week called GPT-4. This next-generation model introduces performance and accuracy improvements along with new ways to interact.

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

These projects are either still minting or just recently sold out

COTAS (The Ape Society)

See the top story in the News section for more information.

Brave Dogs (Xperience Pass)

The Brave Dogs team just dropped their Xperience pass NFTs through a whitelist-only mint. At the time of writing, they have just sold out.

Unphased

Unphased is a collection of 2,777 post-apocalyptic pilgrims of the Unphased sanctum. At the time of writing, the team just decided to cancel the mint and refund everyone due to low demand.

Upcoming Mints

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. See my interview with the team on YouTube.

📆 Date: - March 17: puzzle event- March 18: 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 10, 3PM- March 11, 3PM💸 Price: $130📦 Supply: 7,888🐦 Twitter

Stag Alliance

One of the most highly anticipated mints of the year comes from Stag Alliance. The mint will be done in 3 phases, ranging from their pass holders to a hybrid public sale.

📆 Date: - March 22, 7AM (pass holders)- March 22, 3PM (WL)- March 23, 12PM (public)💸 Price: ₳200📦 Supply: 7,500🐦 Twitter

Market Update

Cardano

The price of ADA has been on a rollercoaster along with other cryptocurrencies this week, jumping from $0.30 to $0.37 and back down to current levels of $0.32. Looking at the Cardano NFT market, however, tells a different story.

Volume is up 4% for the week, and the number of trades is the same. In other words, not much has changed this week as volume continues to be lackluster.

Volume: ₳3.8M (+4%) NFTs Sold: 15k (-%) Buyers: 7,461 (-%)

"Pink Chip" index

"Pink Chip" index

Is the NFT space on Cardano done? Will we ever see previous highs in terms of volume? I think so, and here is why:

  1. Cardano is a top altcoin: It is one of the largest blockchains by market cap.

  2. DeFi is booming: A lot of liquidity is being used in the booming DeFi space on Cardano.

  3. Too many large mints: People are saving up their ADA and selling to save up for many of the large upcoming mints discussed above.

  4. Charles is on board: As long as Charles continues to value the NFT space, recently calling it the most vibrant part of the Cardano community, it has room to grow.

  5. Cross-chain: NFTs continue to enter into the public consciousness, and with the potential of more cross-chain activity, Cardano NFTs could benefit heavily.

  6. Still early: As we all know, Cardano is the tortoise that is in no rush to get to the goal line. The same can be said for the NFT space. There is still a lot of room for growth in terms of making the blockchain more NFT-friendly.

The big picture

The big picture

Top 10 Projects

Cornucopias Custom Domes and COTAS were the only new project on this week's Top 10. Chilled Kongs were the biggest gainers while Goombles were the biggest losers in terms of volume and floor price.

1️⃣ The Ape Society- Volume: ₳530K (+83%) - FP: ₳7,999 (-9%)2️⃣ COTAS (TAS) - Volume: ₳358K (-%) - FP: ₳365 (-%)3️⃣ Chilled Kongs - Volume: ₳309K (+334%) - FP: ₳1,159 (+37%)4️⃣ Clay Nation - Volume: ₳138K (-17%) - FP: ₳2,999 (+4%)5️⃣ Alley Katz - Volume: ₳105K (-5%) - FP: ₳248 (-1%) 6️⃣ SpaceBudz - Volume: ₳97K (-27%) - FP ₳3,359 (-3%) 7️⃣ COPI Land - Volume: ₳83K (-13%) - FP: ₳154 (-%)8️⃣ Goombles - Volume: ₳73K (-71%) - FP: ₳189 (-19%)9️⃣ Pavia - Volume: ₳66K (-25%) - FP: ₳162 (+16%)🔟 COPI Custom Domes - Volume: ₳63K (+101%) - FP: ₳415 (-1%)

Top Sales

Top Sales description

1️⃣ Salvatde Medici (TAS): ₳175K2️⃣ Marlow Monet (TAS): ₳35K3️⃣ Alfonso Maddock (TAS): ₳21K4️⃣ COPI Custom Dome: ₳20K5️⃣ Studs Chiesa (TAS): ₳12K

Other Markets

Please keep in mind that secondary market volume data does not always give a picture of the markets, as wash trading is a known practice in the NFT space, especially outside Cardano.

Despite the significant boost in cryptocurrency prices this week, Ethereum and Solana's secondary market volume declined approximately 14% last week. This compares to the USD increase of 14% on Cardano, which is back in a top 4 spot, and an impressive 87% increase on Ronin.

The numbers (7D)

  • Ethereum: $123M (-14%)

  • Solana: $17M (-14%)

  • Polygon: $8M (+6%)

  • Cardano: $2M (+14%)

  • BNB: $1.7M (+25%)

  • Flow: $1.2M (-39%)

  • Ronin: $0.9M (+87%)

  • ImmutableX: $0.7M (-82%)

Weekly Dose of Charles

Tweet of the Week

Pic of the Week

Meme of the Week

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