Morning Drop - Issue #23
Your weekly issue of what’s minting, popping, and dropping - straight to your inbox every Saturday morning.
🥩 NFTs leak into meat-world.
Robotos Headed to TV
TIME Studios, the film/TV arm of the magazine, is developing an animated children’s show based on the well-known Robotos NFT collection.
The company has also hinted at further programming derived from NFT-based IP, of which there is now no shortage to choose from among the flood of PFP projects that have launched into the metaverse this year.
It seemed just a matter of time before an NFT project got scooped up for broader media distribution, and with many other media companies yet to jump into the pool, Robotos is the first of many collectables projects we predict to be primed for the big time.
TIME Doubles Down
Speaking of TIME, it was recently announced that it has signed an agreement with Galaxy Digital to provide education and coverage of the emergent metaverse era.
The new platform will host editorial content that highlights Web3 communities and companies, interview leaders in the field, and establish a TIME 100 companies list specifically for the metaverse.
The partnership provides benefits to both parties, which are looking to help define understandings of the Web3 ecosystem while establishing leadership positions within the larger metaverse movement.
Macy’s Thanksgiving NFT Parade
Once again we reach the time of the year when the family can gather around for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day…NFT sale? The major retailer and annual Turkey Day parade sponsor has dropped, yes you guessed it, parade NFTs.
Each piece in the collection represents a decade in the history of the parade, and bids for some of the pieces have already reached 6-digits. In addition, Macy’s has given away another 9,500 parade-themed pieces on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The 10-piece NFT auction features metaverse parade scenes which are being used to raise money for Make-A-Wish foundation. Both primary sales and royalty sales will go to the foundation. And the company has chosen to mint the NFTs on the Polygon chain to be more eco friendly. Neat.
Web3 Report
CityDAO
CityDAO is on a mission to build an IRL city utilizing on-chain governance, and use the power of community to shape the directions of it’s aspiring urban development projects. This effort represents a first-of-its-kind case study in digitizing physical assets, allowing for crowdfunded ownership of land and voting power for what can become the first blockchain-managed township.
In the Weeds
The group is beginning it’s venture by purchasing an IRL parcel of land in Wyoming, and has ambitions to buy more land throughout the US and the world.
Entry into the DAO has taken the form of a now sold out CityDAO Citizenship token, allowing for voting rights and special privileges within the DAO’s Discord channel.
There are many, many legal and administrative hurdles to clear on the journey of this story, so expect developments to progress slowly.
Bird’s Eye View
The project is far and away among the most ambitious we’ve seen among DAOs to date, with intricate planning required in relation to property law, urban planning/development, and strict governance protocols that will, proverbially, take a village of savvy professional work to realize.
CityDAO may also be seen as part of a vanguard movement that seeks to eventually move all real estate transactions to an on-chain model. In theory it’s a fantastic idea that will do away with a great deal of red-tape clutter. In reality, it is an idea that can take years, if not decades, to truly manifest in full.
The project also is leading the way in governance protocols that may, one day, translate into how more municipalities may become managed. It’s the type of radical visionary project that even has Vitalik Buterin on board. Probably nothing.
Wolf Game
Wolf Game took the NFT world by storm last week as a fully on-chain game that features an interesting dynamic in collecting, staking, and earning tokens that have been earning early users a pretty penny so far. The popularity of the game so far is primed to shed a spotlight on the genre within the NFT community.
In the Weeds
The intricately produced game takes some time to understand. Users mint sheep and wolves, which they can stake to earn the project’s token, $Wool. Staked sheep earn the most wool, while owners of wolves have the chance of literally stealing other users’ sheep.
The whitepaper for the game describes its dynamics as a “protocol-level risk”, and introduces interesting game theory that turns NFT ownership into a set of intricate decision-making.
Of course the ingrained staking mechanisms locks up the supply of the NFTs, creating incentivized scarcity that has rewarded early-adopters pretty massively.
Bird’s Eye View
Expect Wolf Game to be the first in a wave of new projects that combine elements of NFTs and DeFi, providing users with staking options to earn passive income from the NFTs they own. Wizards & Dragons, Kong Game, and Fox Game are two that appear to have imminent launch dates. We’re eager to parse the copycats from the innovators.
With the huge rewards that we’ve seen in Wolf Game so far, and the saturation of PFP projects we’ve witnessed in 2021, 2022 may see huge new inflows into on chain Play-to-Earn projects as becoming the new standard in NFT participation.
Of course nothing good can last forever, and Play-to-Earn gaming may become heavily throttled in the future once US regulatory rules take shape, and may come to view the model as falling under the purview of both gaming and securities law.
Since it matters...
Grayscale Predicts Massive Metaverse Growth
Grayscale, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, published a report predicting that the Metaverse is primed to become a trillion dollar industry.
The eye-popping prediction comes as the adoption rates of active metaverse wallets has increased 10-fold over the past 18 months, and has been reflected in the recent boom of Metaverse tokens such as $SAND and $MANA, the tokens for Sandbox and Decentraland, respectively.
Coupled with recent record sales of metaverse properties, investors seem to be keying in on virtual meeting spaces as the future of entertainment, work, and social activity.
Play-to-earn protocals will continue to incentivize adoption of virtual worlds as well, which may accelerate adoption within gaming communities alongside participants in 3rd world countries who can earn living wages via Web3 gaming rewards.
With Facebook, er…Meta’s 5-year timeline to bring it’s own branded virtual world to life, competition to front-run the social giant’s development will inevitably bring massive inflows of investments into the space, and in short order.
From games to casinos to music venues and co-working spaces there exist multiple potential revenue streams for metaverse builders. This isn’t to mention collectables in the form of avatars, clothing, and other virtual swag.
Grayscale’s report comes as no suprise given the firm’s offering of Decentraland Trust, which was launched in late February and has already ballooned nearly 950%.
There remain many questions to be answered surrounding just how widespread the adoption rates will be for Metaverse platforms, but at the moment early investors have gained fruitful returns on the promise of life in a virtual world
Feature: Chain Runners
With its cyber punk, 80s gaming aesthetic, Chain Runners has hit the ground running with strong sales and community engagement. Existing in the lore of a Mega City, the Runners are the occupants of an on-chain world that is steeped in nostalgia of retro sci-fi goodness.
Floor: .91 ETH Highest sale: 55.53 ETH Value Traded: 7.2k ETH
Issues: 10,000 Unique Wallets: 2900 Average Owned: 3.44
Fundamentally Speaking
Chain Runners is composed of 32 x 32 bit punk-inspired pixel characters with countless traits which were all determined on-chain at time of minting. There is not a roadmap for the project, at least not yet. However the Discord community has developed a rich culture of meme-making, lore-writing, and derivative art production. Participation by the community in expanding the world and IP of a PFP project is always a big plus in our book.
On the Radar
The project offers owners full, exclusive rights to use their characters in any way they see fit, and the code for the project is open source, giving the project an air of idealism in seeking a “pure” form of PFP collectable.
The developers are also busy building “Runnerhub”, which will be a lore center to enrichen the storytelling depth of the collection
The team is fairly mum about future plans to this point, but so far there have been some interesting derivative projects sprout up from the community, including a customization tool, theme music, a Cryo lab, and cool fan art.
Technically Speaking
Since its launch on November 5th, Chain Runners held steady just above mint price until beginning an impressive ascent on the 19th, moving from an average sales price of .22 ETH up to a dizzying 3.07 ETH in a matter of three days. The drastic rise did not sustain, but is currently buoyed at a floor of just under 1 ETH at time of writing. With 2.9k owners, distribution is skewed toward heavy ownership by relatively few, making the stability of the collection’s value uncertain and subject to slides if larger holders decide to liquidate. Given this, being just under a month old the project has built strong momentum.
Photographer of the Week
This week we don’t highlight one photographer, but a community of them in the new and quickly expanding platform, Obscura. Founded by photographers Alejandro Cartagena and Cooper Ray, Obscura is committed to supporting photographers in the NFT space through a series of grants, exhibition opportunities, and community initiatives that brings the ecosystem of NFT photography together.
On the grant side, Obscura offers mint passes to collectors, and uses the funds collected to give photographers money upfront to produce new work. It’s a model that both de-risks the photographers’ efforts and provides collectors a unique opportunity to collect new work below traditional market value. The granting initiatives have also extended to a program in which 100 photographers were granted $1000 each to make 5 portraits of others in the NFT community, a means of supporting the production of new work while forging closer ties within the community.
Much of Obscura’s core community is involved with other emerging photo fams, including RAWDAO, Assembly, and the newly formed Untitled DAO, and their Discord channel seems primed to become a central hub of all things photography within the Web3 space.
Also brewing...
‘NFT’ was named as the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year. Looks like we made it, y’all.
A piece of Axie Infinity Land was just sold off for a face-melting $2.5 million dollars, which is some mega metabucks.
While ConstitutionDAO failed in its effort to buy the actual constitution, members can take solace in the fact that the governance token, $PEOPLE, has rocketed 200% in 24 hours.
They’re making an Etherum movie?
A platform called Doconchain gives celebrities a hub for launching their cash-grab projects.
There’s a Tiger King NFT auction coming and Joe Exotic isn’t happy
Martha Stewart continues to be kinda cool, launches NFT collection of audio storytelling.
Paris Hilton, because we know you care, is all in on this thing.
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