Around the Blockchain | Move-to-Earn NFT Launches on Avalanche

Another week, another recap. New and innovative projects continue to come to the market, as a constant reminder that we are still, at the risk of sounding cliché, early. Even when bears rear their heads, just remember to stay medium bored and continue to build for the long term.

Cryptocurrencies Slide Further

This was a down bad kind of week. After already experiencing more down than up weeks so far this year, on the heels of the Fed announcing another rate hike, most L1 tokens dropped even further, some going so far as to erase a year worth of gains. Cardano ($ADA), as per CoinMarketCap, is now down almost 75 percent from its all-time high in early September 2021, and at under $0.75 (as of this writing) is at its lowest point in over a year. =

Additional losses were taken by Solana ($SOL, $78.43) and Avalanche ($AVAX, $54.49), too, both of which hit their all-time highs back in November but are now staring at their lowest points since August of 2021.

What Happened in Flow NFTs? 

On Tuesday, the official FLOW Twitter account posted and pinned a new tweet, teasing something new on the blockchain:

On Friday the official account responded to some comments on the above tweet with another hint and a link to “FLOATs." FLOATs, meaning Flow Attendance, are special commemorative NFTs provided by creators for attendees to certain events like a Twitter Space or YouTube Livestream. FLOATs can be viewed similarly to POAPs, NFTs as "proof of attendance."

Otherwise, NBA Top Shot, still the dominant force on FLOW, released the first playoff packs for the 2022 postseason. The $19 packs sold out extremely quickly, whereas the trade ticket queue took a little longer. Many purchasers appeared to not have enough tickets for the second queue, though, where collectors were able to snag multiple packs by buying and hopping back into the end of the queue. The platform also announced a new roadmap for the WNBA season.

Any and all Star Wars fans are aware that this past Wednesday marked the unofficial Star Wars Day, known as May the Fourth. What is less well-known is that Flovatar conducted a themed auction for a charity that day. Ending at $3,333 in stablecoins, the full amount was donated to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in support of Mental Health Awareness Month. The winner, of course, received a unique NFT, a Robotic Sith Lord from Flovatar.

Solana NFT News

Communi3, a well-funded, VC-backed project touting itself as “a technology platform designed to revolutionize the way organizations manage their communities,” minted its collection of 5,001 Mad Scientist NFTs on Wednesday. Not only did the mint sell out within minutes, but it also quickly set Solana records on OpenSea. As of this writing, the floor on OpenSea sits at 28.75 SOL, the total volume traded is over 160,000 SOL, and the project sits behind only OkayBears for both total and 7-day volume. 

Flappyz, a pixelated bird NFT collection that portrays itself as the first Solana-based P2E game on mobile, went live on Friday with the minting of the remainder of its 10,000 total pieces. Prior to Friday, only the first 1,000 “genesis” NFTs had been sold. Although that collection sold out within hours and holds a floor (as of this writing) of 2.4 SOL on Magic Eden, currently more than 2,500 of the new Flappyz remain unminted at a price of 1 SOL. The main reason for the discrepancy seems to be clear. According to the Flappyz Litepaper, genesis Flappyz, and only these 1,000 NFTs, earn the native $FLPZ token.

This Week in Avalanche NFTs

Thor-Financial, one of the most popular node projects on Avalanche, went live with their public “Gods of Asgard” NFT mint on Friday. Following the same theme as the nodes, Gods of Asgard is an upcoming P2E game expected to launch on May 31, 2022. Not too much is known about the actual gameplay yet, other than the alpha video the team tweeted last Sunday:

At this point, most everyone has heard of play-to-earn. But what about Move-to-Earn? The idea behind M2E is simple: own the requisite NFT or node, use a connected app or device to track movement, and earn the project’s token - which can then be sold or used. Although several projects already exist on other chains, StepApp is the first such Avalanche-based project. On Friday the project launched the staking of its native $FITFI token (currently only available on select CEXes) and quickly moved into a top-5 spot for contract usage on Avalanche. According to the team, more than 10 million tokens were staked within minutes of the contract launch. 

Other Blockchain News

On Friday, DraftKings announced the release of an NFT-based fantasy football game. Reignmakers provides another alternative to DraftKing’s traditional daily fantasy sports project, although a lot of details remain to be announced. Packs will come in different prices and rarity levels, which will be dropping all throughout the summer.