Around the Blockchain (3/6/22): Debonair Degen Hawks and Heroes Chained
This week saw plenty of crypto and NFT volatility. Solana is building out innovative NFT projects that utilize DeFi tools and services to benefit holders. Flow continues to ramp up activities related to NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day. And new NFT releases are happening on Avalanche.
Here are all the details about all these important updates and the rest of this week's top news from around the blockchain.
The Fungible Tokens
This week saw a lot of volatility with no clear macro direction. Coins like $LUNA ($86.40, 18.19%), $FLOW ($5.78, 5.36%), and $SOL ($88.33, 1.44%) saw positive action and decent gains, as per coinmarketcap.com.
Other coins, such as $XTZ ($3.10, -7.85%) and $AVAX ($76.40, -1.61%), traded downward. And coins like $WAXP ($0.29, -0.5%) and $ADA ($0.86, -0.6%) traded relatively flat.
With so much variety in price action on different chains, it’s hard to have any clear takeaways. With the glaring exception of $LUNA (a little less than 15% away), most coins are far from their all-time highs.
This Week in Solana
Debonair Degen Hawks, an NFT offering built-in utility via automated DeFi services, sold out its entire supply of 7,500 NFTs at a price of 1.75 $SOL nearly instantly.
The NFT acts as a “passport” to the project’s HawkDAO and offers several benefits related to DeFi. Debonair Degen Hawk owners will be able to stake their NFTs, earn $HAWK based on the rarity of their asset, and gain access to “AI-driven trading signals," according to the company’s website.
Learn more about the powerful tools and potential earnings the Hawk NFTs offer by reading the project’s whitepaper.
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For anyone following the Dazed Ducks journey, the long-awaited staking feature is now live on the Dazed Duck’s website. This collection of 10,000 duck NFTs rewards holders by paying out a set percentage of all royalties earned on weekly basis in $SOL.
The new staking feature is another way to earn $SOL passively. What remains to be seen is whether stakers still earn the weekly holding rewards or which path will lead to greater earnings. The Dazed Duck floor, which at one point was above 10 $SOL, currently sits at 8.99 $SOL on Magic Eden.
Unlike the Dazed Ducks, which are more like actual ducks in design, Friendly Floatees is a collection of 3,600 NFTs resembling the classic rubber duck toy. Floatees, which minted on Wednesday via Magic Eden’s Launchpad for 0.72 $SOL, quickly sold out and the heads of the project donated 110 $SOL (in $USDT) to Ukraine’s relief efforts via Binance.
Benefits of holding a Floatee NFT include a deflationary supply for the Gen0 collection and the promise of future airdrops to holders. The Floatee NFT floor on Magic Eden currently sits at 0.31 $SOL.
This Week in Flow
As mentioned last week, the 1/1 NBA All Star Pass NFTs on NBA Top Shot are still ongoing. However, the benefit of hindsight now provides a window into what these passes might sell for at auction. Limited to being purchased via Dapper balance, that has not stopped all of the four teams whose auctions have been completed so far to surpass the $40,000 range, with the lowest final bid for the Phoenix Suns coming in at $41,000.
The highest winning bid so far has gone to the Golden State Warriors at the price of $58,500, whereas the first offering of the Los Angeles Lakers ended at $51,000. The auctions may already be starting to slow down, with the Sacramento Kings 1/1 Pass NFT auction set to end at 8 p.m. ET Sunday and currently sitting at a high bid of $36,300.
Of the other six NBA All Star Pass NFTs that are live, two (Washington Wizards and Memphis Grizzlies) have no bids, two (Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat) sit at the minimum starting bid of $10,000, and the others are not far removed from that, with the highest bid currently sitting at $10,100 for the Charlotte Hornets.
There is plenty of time left on each of those, and NBA Top Shot estimates the retail value of the perks at over $100,000, so it is potentially a good deal for the person who ends up winning these auctions.
In other NBA Top Shot news, this past week saw another round of Series 1 reserve packs sold for 350 trade tickets. Additionally, the company has opted to release new utility for trade tickets in the form of newer packs available for purchase with tickets.
This coming Wednesday, those with 25 (or more) trade tickets will be able to use them to purchase the next round of NBA All-Star Elite Packs. On Thursday, for 10 trade tickets users will be able to purchase NBA All-Star Standard Packs. Trading in moments for tickets is currently open.
In other Dapper news, NFL All Day released another round of standard and premium packs this past week. After last week’s sale of Week 13 packs, the site first dropped Week 14 packs on Wednesday, followed by the re-release of Week 17 packs on Thursday. At this point it is safe to assume that all 18 regular season weeks will have their own release, and that regular weekly drops will be the norm for the foreseeable future.
This Week in Avalanche
Last week’s article included a note about an upcoming game called Heroes Chained on the Avalanche blockchain. On Saturday, the project allowed 500 users to deposit 20 percent of the mint price for the MayinHara characters. In a unique drop method, these 500 depositors are essentially allowlisted to mint in the actual drop on Mar. 24.
A total of 10,000 MayinHara NFTs are expected to be minted, with the vast majority coming from a public mint. These characters will have several benefits and are expected to be some of the strongest characters in the game, as detailed here.
For anyone interested in passive income, there have been a lot of new opportunities promising just that via nodes. However, the Tavern’s approach has been somewhat different from the typical node project.
The Tavern this past week released their income-producing NFTs, called breweries, with a bonding curve pricing model in a public pre-sale. The initial 2,000 Breweries were sold for $100 USDC, with the supply decreasing and the price increasing at each level. As of this writing, the final level of $500 per brewery still has 189 available to mint.
Once the $MEAD token is released, the NFTs will turn on and begin producing 2 $MEAD daily, whereas new breweries will be purchasable at a cost of 100 $MEAD each.
Learn more about the upcoming token release, the NFTs, and the tokenomics by reading the Tavern’s whitepaper.
Other Blockchain News
Splinterlands, the popular play-to-earn trading card game built on the HIVE blockchain but traded on WAX, sold out its new limited-edition release card in one minute.
The Waka Spiritblade card was limited to 500 NFTs, and a second phase is planned for another 500 NFTs. Over 450 of the cards will be regular and sold for the equivalent of $1,500 in WAX, and just 20 gold foil cards for $7,000 in WAX. Currently, there are only three of these cards available on Atomic Hub at a floor price of 10,537.4 $WAXP.
