NFT Weekly | Muri Presale, NFTU Launches, and More
NFT bull market vibes are back! Daily volume is ticking back up (in the $70mm/day range), 17 of the top 20 PFP projects are back in the green on the 7 day, and we have some real tailwinds coming out of SXSW which has greatly improved market sentiment.
And oh yeah, we just had the biggest acquisition in NFT history, as Yuga Labs bought Larva Labs IP and inventory of Punks and Meebits in a deal that was revealed late Friday.
It was an eventful weekend to say the least.
This has created an interesting market for new projects to drop, and we are likely to see a pickup in new releases. Here is a list of some notable drops for the week ahead.
In Presale
Muri by Haus had an impressive public dutch auction presale yesterday, ahead of today's allow list mint (3 pm EST) and tomorrow's remaining public sale. The dutch auction of 2000 NFTs sold out in seconds in a gas war at the top price of 0.3 ETH, and the secondary market quickly surged to mid 0.6s before falling back around 0.5 ETH today.
This anime style project (which has Azuki-like vibes) is from a high caliber team, including founders from Apple and AWS, along with Disney artists. The roadmap starts with a token to be the center of this metaverse, earned by Muri holders (targeting Q1). From there, additional anime releases, physical models and a fashion line are planned.
There will be 5000 NFTs released in today's allow list sale (at 50% of the dutch auction price, so 0.15 ETH), and then the remaining 3000 will go to public sale on Tuesday at the final dutch auction price (so 0.3 ETH). This creates an interesting dynamic, as half of primary buyers will have a 0.15 cost basis while the other half will have a 0.3 ETH cost basis. If the secondary price remains above 0.3 ETH though, a gas war is the likely outcome on Tuesday.
Big Influencer/Artist Tie-ins
Three projects launching this week have some very notable partner and artist tie-ins - GM420 "Brick Breaker", NFTU and Neko Nation.
GM420 Labs
GM420 Labs is dropping 2500 on-chain generative levels of its Brick Breaker game as NFTs today.
Their mystery partner, recently revealed to be Gmoney, has greatly added to the hype, especially now that Gmoney's Ape Punk is be featured in the marketing.
This is very timely, as Punk owners received IP rights just on this past Friday, and thus this is being described as the "First game to be licensed by a punk."
Owners of the GM420 token are entitled to a free mint, and public sale details are expected later today.
NFTU
NFTU is one one of the first college sports NFTs, powered by Recur.
It has been touted by both Dave Portnoy and GaryVee, and thus could see a new potential group of market entrants. Two types of packs went on sale Monday in presale, premium cases for $24.99 and Common Cases for $9.99 - so NBA TopShot style pricing.
There will be 46,000 premium cases (with 5 NFTs each) released over 8 week and 90,000 common cases with 3 NFTs each. The public sale begins on the 15th at 11 AM EST.
Neko Nation
Launching Friday, Neko Nation is described as a "home to citizens and their nekos," and include three types of characters in their world - Catizens, Nekosinners and Nekomancers.
The team has announced collaborations with nine artists to create 1/1s, and this includes a collab with Seerlight, which has certainly added some weight to the project.
Most project details are fairly secretive and/or TBD, including mint price and supply, so be on the lookout for more detail as the week progresses.
Hyped Followings
While not the best metric to identify potential project success, Twitter following is certainly a starting point most minters look at when evaluating projects. These 3 have significant followings and thus will be ones to watch this week:
Skull Toons
Launching March 19, at 10 AM EST, is the latest 3D art project with skull themes from Neo-pop artist Teodoru Badiu.
This 7,777 supply project (mint price TBD) has over 111k followers on Twitter and thus will be a heavily watched mint this weekend. The roadmap includes plans to "summon Gavroche," host games, create a DAO and alludes to an airdrop of new NFTs from Teodoru.
The Ramen Shop,
Coming March 18, is a collection of 4600 3D animated ramen bowls (mint price 0.1 ETH; 2300 wL / 2300 public).
The team has leveraged phase 1 of its roadmap to build community, and has grown their twitter following to 55k+ (discord closed at 15k). The roadmap includes big future plans, including educational sessions and resources, a new project "Ramen Shop Friends", a metaverse and more utility.
SkyVerse
Potentially dropping this week (date just recently moved) is a metaverse project with 5k unique floating islands and includes plans for a utility token $SKY.
The project's twitter has amassed 106k followers, leveraging partnerships with several projects including Godjira, Sneaky Vampire Syndicate and about a dozen others. From the project whitepaper, 95% of primary sales proceeds will be locked in the SkyVault for future roadmap development. The mint is 0.1 ETH and 100% allow list.
That's it for this week. As always, please do full diligence when evaluating new projects and use best practice wallet security (i.e. minting from fresh wallets), as we saw a few exploits in the past week. Stay safe out there, and happy minting!
