Daily NFT News & Drops for July 29 | Lucky Trader

Lucky Trader covers the latest NFT news for Friday, July 29. Top stories include an Art Blocks Factory drop, the crypto surge, and a major XCopy sale. 

Top NFT Projects to Watch Today, July 29

The crypto markets are recently on fire, stemming from seemingly bullish confirmation of the 75 bps rise in Wednesday's FOMC meeting, the Fed's new softer stance on forward-facing raises, and some better-than-expected tech earnings. We may be in a recession, but the sky isn't falling. 

ETH ripped ~25 percent from local bottoms this week of $1,400, smashing through the $1,700 wall on Thursday before ranging above that threshold for most of the evening and overnight. The bearish vibes on NFT and Crypto Twitter are starting to crumble a bit, and some bull takes are emerging. 

This hasn't quite translated to NFT market success just yet, as floors continue to slowly fall this week. Though it has been a terrific week for the digital art market, highlighted by some big sales by XCOPY and Grant Yun. 

It is shaping up to be a relatively quiet Friday and weekend for new projects, but that does mean there will be some runway to move up for those that can capture the market's attention.

Let's get into it.

Top NFT Mints Today, July 29

Here are the two primary drops on the radar for today:

• Art Blocks Factory: Gels
• Esion

Art Blocks Factory: Gels

Today's Art Blocks drop is another science-inspired set, alluding to molecular biology and DNA from artists Jason Brown and Shawn Douglas.

From the project's website, "scientists "run a gel" to separate and visualize molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. These molecules appear as patterns of bands when photographed, and those patterns can be used to interpret the results of experiments." This gives some insight into what to expect from the artistic outputs, which have some nice variety and can be viewed here.

With just a 256 supply, this one is in the sweet spot for success. But tailwinds are bearish, with Wednesday's Curated being the worst-performing project on secondary in months, minting out at 2.2 ETH but holding just a 1.4 ETH floor on secondary. This likely means less flippers/traders will be minting today, which would likely be a good sign for this project. If this one makes it to the min price of 0.15 ETH, it should have some room for success. But if it mints out too high (0.3 or above), it likely becomes a forced hold.

ESION

Likely the most hyped drop of the day is ESION, set to start its paid mint at 10:00 p.m. ET tonight. This 10K supply anime PFP project leverages some darker vibes to bring its "dreamcatcher" theme to light.

The tagline from their project site reads "Everyone wants a sweet dream, but no one seems to fall asleep. We walk alone, fight alone and cry alone. With trembling fingers from a long night of work, we take out a cigarette and realize the moon was watching over us all along with her pretty face." This theme is very evident in the sample art on the site, which is notably darker than most other anime-style projects.

The project roadmap has five pillars, including a Cartoon, a Music label, Goods, a Game, and Noise, with those first four all underway or in exploration but with Noise remaining an open question. The project's team page boasts 18 employees, including five core members, two advisor and Lullabiers, along with  nine managers and staff - a very solid squad for a new project.

As for the sales mechanic, the team is opting for a 3-phase mint, starting with a public raffle of 3,007 supply at 0.12 ETH, followed by whitelist for 6,893 supply at 0.09 ETH, with all remaining supply to be sold in a public sale at 0.15 ETH. This primary sale is at a relatively higher price point than most recent launches, but with the free mint meta mostly fading and some recent success with paid mints, this one could see some success. The key will be the early price action following that first public raffle - if secondary can trend past 0.20 ETH or higher, this should be a slam dunk to mint out and potentially gain some attraction. 

NFT News and Announcements

Thursday was a slow day of news for the PFP NFT market, but not at all for digital art.

XCOPY stole the show with the auction of his "God is typing..." piece closing yesterday evening with a final price of 256.529 ETH ($443K). This was an important test of the top-end digital art market, which has been relatively quiet the past few months during the crypto market collapse. But artists seem to be perking back up with ETH on the rise and market participants feeling more wealthy, and XCOPY was one of the first major artists to capitalize. This sale was higher in ETH terms than his last two sales (165.29 and 222.2 ETH respectively), though well short of last summer's sales of 345.69, 469 and 336.529 ETH, with average USD prices over $1M. But this was still a very strong showing and shows there are still active buyers out there for the top-end artists, ready to move with just a day's notice (this was just a 24-hr auction with no advance notice).

Rising star artist Grant Yun has had an all-time week, setting his personal all-time-high on Wednesday when his grail piece "The Alien" sold to ProteinProsecco for a whopping 136.9 ETH ($211k). This smashed Grant's prior ATH which was in the low 40 ETH range, as his pieces have been steadily rising over the past 2 months but mostly selling in the 30s and recently low 40s. 

This new ATH momentum also spilled into Thursday, with Grant seeing two more secondary market sales as "87bwGBY.o8yw3" sold for 29.2 ETH and then "Sunday Sermon" sold for 40 ETH. These sales reset Grant's SuperRare floor to 60 ETH, up nearly 100 percent in just a few weeks, as he continues his march to an inevitable 100 ETH floor (and a pending Vitalik face tattoo).

The major news from the PFP sector was from Yuga Labs, which dropped this thread on Meebits as a total surprise. The thread explains how the team has been hard at work behind the scenes working on Meebits, with the primary announcement that they are raising the royalty fee to five percent to fund a team and building. Though they didn't specifically state what they're building exactly, the did share that "our vision for Meebits centers around embracing the currents already core to the community – play, DIY experimentation, tech minimalism, and interoperability – and dialing them way up." The market seemingly reacted kindly to the news, with Meebits up over 12 percent on the day.

Outside of that announcement, there was not a ton of other major news. Here is a quick round up of the rest of the main headlines from Thursday:

• Adidas announced that their delayed "Looks Comfy" hoodies were finally ready for shipping
• The CrypToadz community received its first ever funding round from NounsDAO Prop House, providing 10 ETH for community members to improve the ecosystem
• VeeFriends announced a seed investment by a16z for an undisclosed amount
• Soarer announced that its planned Android mobile app will be expected for beta testing in August 2022
• Cool Cats officially launched its "boss quests" in a stealth release on Thursday, allowing cats or pets to combat "the most dangerous denizens" of Cooltopia

NFT Market Action Data, July 29

Volume was low again Thursday, with no sets coming close to even 1,000 ETH traded - but there were a few happy surprises. 

Meebits were the first surprise, jumping over 12 percent and nearing a 5 ETH floor on the back of the Yuga announcement that they are actively building behind the scenes and raising the royalty fee (although the Punks market didn't flinch at all on this news and in fact fell 3% to a 69 ETH floor).

Then there were Azukis, back in the spotlight after AndrewKang fueled a 360-ETH sweep on the floor, temporarily raising the project back to double digits before it retraced to 9.8 ETH over night (up 12% on the day). The Azuki project has been eerily quiet since NFT NYC, and speculation is rising around what their next announcement will be (and when). 

There weren't too many other surprises from Thursday's action. Some additional winners included The Potatoz, up 10 percent to 0.86 ETH floor, Stickmen Toys up another 10 percent to 0.28 ETH floor and Ledger Genesis up 23 percent to 0.53 ETH floor.

Bad Influence was a top loser on the day, down 42 percent to 0.15 ETH floor along with mcgoblin.wtf which fell 12 percent to 1.5 ETH ahead of today's baiting feature going live (Goblins are holding at 2.65 ETH).

NFT Market Analysis

The crypto market rally has been fun and sentiments seem much higher than they were just a few days ago. With FOMC, GDP results and Q2 earnings mostly behind us now, it seems we may have clear skies in August and room to run. Many are raising their targets for ETH and BTC, which are now sitting at $1720 and $24k respectively. There is additional focus on that key ratio of BTC:ETH, which is around 13.9:1 right now but largely expected to decline into the upcoming Merge.

Altcoins have had a helluva week in the wake of BTC and ETH's surge, led by Ethereum Classic (up 60% on the week) and Bitcoin Cash (up 26%). NFT-related coins Axie and ApeCoin are up 17 and 7 percent respectively on the week as well.

The NFT market hasn't yet felt the impact of this new wealth effect, as ETH has been incredibly volatile this week. There is some growing sentiment that if ETH can stabilize at these new levels (or ideally at $2K or higher), the "wealth effect" will take back over and commence another NFT run. Of course no one knows, but it is a positive sign that floors have held up decently in the past few weeks even with their slow decline, and many are still up big on the 30 day view (with ETH up 60%).

It is shaping up to be another quiet Friday and weekend, so it will be another good chance to go outside and enjoy summer ahead of a hopeful bull run around the corner. Enjoy your weekend, stay safe out there to those minting, and as always, make sure to stay up to date with the latest news with the Lucky Trader newsfeed.