NFT Weekly Preview: SOL and y00ts Steal the Spotlight

y00ts week is finally here, in what may be a welcome distraction from the tumbleweeds blowing through ETH NFTs right now.

Labor Day weekend unsurprisingly tallied the two single lowest OpenSea volume days of the year, with 6,800 ETH ($10.5 million) traded per day. And with the Merge now less than 10 days away (currently estimated for Sep. 15), it seems doubtful there will be a surge in volume over the next few weeks as collectors and traders opt to simply hold ETH (or sell it) into this major event.

ETH has led the crypto markets over the last 24 hours, after a quiet weekend, reaching a BTC:ETH ratio of 12:1 as their prices sit at $19,800 and $1,650 respectively. Sentiment seems to be that ETH will continue to outperform at least through the Merge, if not beyond. It has fared very well in the face of equities dipping hard over the past week, and if the S&P can see some relief in the next few weeks, it may be even clearer skies for ETH to make a run, which is likely not a great recipe for NFT success.

But NFT floors have held up surprisingly well with a lack of volume. There is red on the weekly board, but it's mostly in the three to five percent range, and 15 of the top 35 NFT projects were in green or neutral on the week.

That pales in comparison to what's happening over on Solana (SOL), as y00ts have reinvigorated that ecosystem and several projects are seeing huge upswings in volume and floor price. It's begging the question: is y00ts going to be the driver to bring SOL NFTs mainstream? 

Before we answer that, let's dive in to the numbers from the past week.

NFT Weekly Market Analysis

Weekly ETH volume came in at 75,000 ETH across all marketplaces, up slightly over the past two weeks. Sudoswap continues to make a big splash, accounting for 4,500 ETH on the week (almost two times LooksRare and about 66 percent of X2Y2 volume).

The surprising leader of the week was ENS, which rocketed over the weekend and saw 2,500 ETH in total volume traded. Leading the way in the ENS space was the 10k club (4-digit numbers), which saw their floor reach 2.36 ETH, and the 999 club (3-digits), which are sitting at a whopping 35 ETH floor. Vitalik has been spending a good amount of time proposing options for long-term handling of these domains, which may have helped drive attention to this foundational ETH utility NFT set.

BAYC was next on the board, with 2,200 ETH traded on the week as the floor held steady at 76 ETH. Otherdeeds held at 1.78 ETH on the week, though MAYC fell five percent to 13.6 ETH.

The RTFKT ecosystem saw 3,000 ETH traded across their newly released wearables for CloneX and their PFPs, though the CloneX floor fell 15 percent on the week back to 6 ETH.

DigiDaigaku executed their airdrop on Friday, with the new set DigiDaigaku Spirits briefly reaching a 5 ETH floor before settling at 3.5 ETH, while the main set fell to 8.7 ETH. That puts the combined floor around the 12 ETH mark, down about 25 percent from local highs of 16 ETH.

Moonbirds and Oddities had a very rough week, as Future Proof came and went, and now there are no major hype events to look forward to really for the rest of the year. The event itself was very well done, full of announcements and new details on the team's vision, but the short-term nature of this NFT market just did not care. The MB's were down 17 percent on the week at 11.75 ETH and the Oddities fell even further, down 33 percent to a 1.28 ETH floor.

With all of that said, the major winner of the week has to be Frank Degod and y00ts. After three delays, y00ts finally minted last night around 10 p.m. ET, and saw 160,000 SOL volume in the first 12 hours. Assuming a SOL price of $33, that's over $5.2 million, or 3,200 ETH, making it the highest volume set of the past seven days. And it's been live for just 12 hours.

The floor is sitting at 150 SOL at time of writing (3 ETH), settling a bit after trading as high as 200 SOL range over night, and marking a solid five times return from mint price. The DeGods floor has fallen about the equivalent of the y00ts price, as it reached 600 SOL at peak and is now back to 420 SOL (8.4 ETH). That puts the DeGods/y00ts ratio at around 3.2:1, a solid debut for y00ts minters. Now, all eyes turn to the major reveal event (covered below) with a full week of trading in anticipation.

As for this week, expect y00ts and Solana to be the focus. There is not much happening on ETH this week, and it seems doubtful there will be many marquee drops as we get closer to the Merge. But there are a few drops to watch, some that may be major successes, mostly in the generative art realm.

Focus for this week:

• BRICK 
• Generative Art Drops
• y00ts Reveal

BRICK

Coming this Wednesday is the much anticipated BRICK mint, marking the debut project for the Ledger pass ecosystem.

This 10,000 NFT set of cartoon brick PFPs is an IRL (in-real-life) focused project, with the main purpose of creating a physical "music venue by night and a community-run creative space by day." Holders of the BRICK NFT will have voting rights over what to do with the venue, along with free entry to events, merchandise, and more. The BRICK team also plans to live-stream their concerts and classes in the metaverse, so holders across the globe can still partake.

The team is also incentivizing large-scale purchasing, as the number of NFTs held will lead to different tiers of physical Brick claiming for the actual venue. Additionally, each NFT will mean one vote, so whale holders will have more of a say.

This mint will be entirely allowlist, primarily for those who held Ledger passes, and it will be 0.15 ETH.

From a trading perspective, there does not seem to be much upside at that price point. For one, the Ledger pass has dipped from 0.6 ETH to 0.35 ETH over the past few weeks, meaning the market is not putting much of a premium on this mint at all. The IRL focus of the project also makes this one less attractive for those not in the Los Angeles area, even with metaverse streaming. 

With that said, this is a genesis project and those almost always command a premium and hold up well over time. If the Ledger ecosystem does well, BRICK should benefit and thus this may still be an interesting long-term play for those less worried about short term price action.

Generative Art Drops

This is a big week for art drops, as there is a new Art Blocks Curated, a new GM Studio mint and a major reveal for The Goda's Art Party project.

Art Blocks Curated "RASTER"

The newest Curated drop happens tomorrow when itsgalo drops "RASTER," using a new generative art concept he calls "pixel overpainting."

What the viewer sees in the outputs is "procedural brush strokes with low transparency slowly layer themselves over each other in a rhythmic loop until they achieve colorful equilibrium." The animation continues endlessly and creates a beautiful aesthetic.

It will be interesting if the aesthetics of this set are enough to make it a viable trade, especially in Art Blocks tailwinds are as bearish as they have been in months. Most new projects are failing to mint out or falling below mint price on secondary within hours of trading, and overall liquidity is very low outside of the marquee Curated sets. The low supply of 400 on this set is a positive, and could allow for some room to run pending who ends up minting this set (traders or holders). If this one can reach near min price of 0.25 ETH, it will likely be a solid trade. At 0.5 ETH or above, it becomes much more risky.

GM Studio "Catharsis"

The newest GM DAO drop is happening on Sep. 10, with "Catharsis" by Dario Lanza making its debut. The artist is employing a "long-structure" mechanism in this project, where the art style "spills" over across several outputs. This created opportunity for "an enormous variety of diptychs and triptychs" in the artist's words (diptychs=set of 2, triptychs=sets of 3), which is always a great sign for secondary trading. The artist also claims that this is the first evolutive algorithm on the blockchain, meaning the algorithm changes and mutates every time it runs.

This may well be the highest upside mint of the week at 0.15 ETH. Each of the prior GM DAO projects have seen their floors run to 1 ETH+, including the latest cult hit Factura which ran past 3 ETH at peak. At 999 supply, it is on the high side, but the "long structure" mechanism should help that as several collectors will try to create sets with this one. From a trading perspective, the mint here will be a smash with two to six times upside. On secondary, getting in at 0.4 ETH or below is likely a nice entry, with higher entries a bit riskier.

y00ts Reveal

With a slower week of ETH NFT drops, Solana will likely remain in the spotlight. y00ts founder Frank Degods has already promised that he is going to do a full-court press tour this week and going forward to get the word out on his new project, and attention should not be hard to come by. 

The y00ts t00bs are set to reveal this Friday, though the time is still TBD (and certainly subject to potential delay). The team has stated that the rarity of this set will be roughly 90 percent floors, nine percent elite, and one percent 1/1s, providing for a really strong rare lotto. With a recent rare DeadGod selling for 7,000 SOL, and with a lot of ETH whales now paying attention to y00ts, the upside for the rarest 1/1s is likely 5,000 SOL ($150,000). That type of rare lotto should keep the floor up this week, and early trading has shown strong buy pressure anywhere 130 SOL or below.

The primary risk to y00ts at this point is if enough ETH traders will want to move over and potentially "sell" their ETH for SOL with the Merge event so close. In any other time frame, this one would be a slam dunk to see a huge cross-over for ETH-natives, but this is not the best environment for that. Still, with the mint having five times'd already, everyone is paying attention.

The main wild card is if Frank can drop any big information or hints about the future plans for the project and/or utility. His Dust Labs team just announced a $7 million Venture Capital (VC) raise, which seems to be focused on providing utility for their native $DUST token. A raise announcement related to y00ts, or a reveal of his future plans for the set, may be enough to send this one to the next tier. 

One thing is already clear - this is the marquee project focus of the week, leading the volume board just 12 hours in, and it could easily pass the equivalent of 10,000 ETH volume on the week. And with what looks to be an open weekend of trading, it will likely dominate the weekend trade post-reveal and has the potential to carry into next week as well. And oh yeah - Frank's confidence is unwavering and very contagious.

Conclusion

NFT trading volume is at the lowest levels of the year, but sentiment seems to be relatively okay. Floors are down but not terribly, and some think they may have bottomed. It is definitely an uncertain time for ETH NFTs though, with the Merge looming over every NFT transaction as the decision to trade ETH for NFTs gets harder and harder by the day. 

This has been a great set up for SOL NFTs though, and Frank is taking full advantage of it with his seemingly endless amount of energy and go. y00ts have gone mainstream, bringing DeGods up with them, and will likely be the major focus of the NFT space this week. If Frank and team can manage some extended success, this may be the primary catalyst/onboarding event to lead ETH-natives over to the Solana ecosystem, which is already well on its way to capturing the crypto mobile space. 

y00ts having already five times'd from mint price is just another reminder of the opportunities that exist in this space. There have also been three mega-success opportunities on ETH in the past few weeks, as each of DigiDaigaku, Rafts, and Tribe Diamonds have 15 times'd from ~1 ETH to 15 ETH+ floors, for those who have found them early. So even in the midst of this brutal NFT bear market, there have been some incredible trades to be made.

The key is to stay ready and liquid to be able to move quickly. One of the best ways to stay ready is to stay on top of daily NFT news, and there's no better source than the @LuckyNFTNews feed. So make sure to follow, if you're not already.

And as always, stay safe out there this week and happy minting!