NFT Weekly Preview | The Bulls Are Gone

Just last week this post was all about the bullish tailwinds in the NFT market - well those tailwinds have been quickly extinguished.

Leading what we thought maybe a mini-bull run was CryptoPunks, which did 17K ETH in volume two weeks ago and reached an 85 ETH floor. Well, that volume dipped back to ~3K ETH last week, down 85 percent, and the floor fell 17% back to 70 ETH. Art Blocks volume went south as well, as did the weekly mints which mostly underperformed. And the momentum held by Yuga after The Otherside demo has subsided, with the Otherdeeds floor back to 2.44 (-10 on the week) and BAYC back at 87 ETH floor.

Of the top 25 projects by floor price, just one was in the green on the week, with most down 10-20 percent on the week. What was a mostly green month has given up much of its gains, now with just 13 of those top 25 in green on the 30 day view.

This dip very well may be tied to volatility in the crypto markets and uncertainty overall in the macro environment ahead of a huge week this week. There are major tech company earnings due out today through Thursday, giving insight into the market health in Q2 and looking forward. Then we have FOMC on Wednesday and the next potential rate hike, largely expected to be 75 bps. And Thursday has the US GDP results, which will indicate a recession if they are in decline for the second straight quarter.

It seems traders are on the sidelines waiting for how these events are going to play out before making a move, and this is likely a contributor to the pure lack of buy volume in the NFT market right now. Overall liquidity dropped for the first time in 5 weeks after 4 straight weeks up, coming in at just ~93K ETH volume last week (down from ~120K the week before). This has killed the floors of most projects, with anyone looking to get out having to lower their prices far below prior floors to sniff a bid.

Let's look at the impact and some other drivers in more detail. For more on the latest in the NFT market, follow our project rankings page. 

NFT Weekly Market Action Recap

Maybe the top story of last week was the highly anticipated Moonbirds Oddities reveal and Moonbirds silver nest, which now can be safely called a letdown. The Oddities floor has fallen 60 percent to 1.2 ETH on reveal, with the art style widely disliked in early reactions and with no utility announcements, traders rushed to the exits. The Moonbirds silver nest (60 day staking from the Bronze nest) came with no formal announcement or airdrop, and the prize of a fanny pack and other merch was not enough to satisfy at least a portion of the holder base. The floor has dropped 33 percent in the past week to 18.5 ETH, after approaching 30 ETH in the past few weeks. Certainly a really tough week of price action for Kevin Rose's ecosystem.

The Yuga ecosystem was all in decline last week as well, as mentioned above. Punks led the dip down 17% to 70 ETH after their recent run. The trio of BAYC/MAYC/Otherdeeds each fell 7-10 percent to 87/15.8/2.44 ETH floors respectively, as there are now no milestones on the calendar to look forward to or any real guidance from the Yuga team on what holders should be expecting.

The mid-tier PFPs may have been hit the hardest (besides NFT Worlds), with CloneX, Azuki and Doodles each down ~20 percent to 8.8 / 10 / 9 ETH floors, the lowest since the capitulation event back in mid-June. Many are now left wondering what type of catalysts will be strong enough to revive this set of PFPs, or if they are doomed for slow decline in the near to mid-term future.

NFT Worlds was wrecked on the Minecraft announcement that they would not be allowing NFTs to interact in their game/environment, sending the NFT Worlds floor (which had always planned to build/integrate with Minecraft) down 62 percent on the week to 1.2 ETH (hitting as low at 0.6 ETH at bottom). The entire metaverse sector seems to have been hit by the news, even though the NFT Worlds team has promised to keep building and pivot from their Minecraft plans.

One bight spot on the week was the success of a few new joiners, The Potatoz and Isekai Meta. The Potatoz debuted on Thursday with a free mint, marching over the weekend to near a 1 ETH floor before retracing to the 0.70 ETH range on some really strong volume at 6K ETH. This "prequel" project from the Memeland team is their drop ahead of the highly anticipated Memeland Captains, and many are expecting utility tied to that project by holding Potatoz. The Potatoz project also has some interesting dynamics with staking coming, a potential token, and evolution of the images and metadata, changing rarity.

The Isekai project had a slower debut, but then some major whale action (i.e. Dingaling) led to a spike in volume, with the project floor running past 0.6 ETH up from the 0.3 ETH range, before falling back over the past few days to 0.48 ETH. The project traded 2K ETH on the week, enough for seventh place on the leaderboard and gained quite a bit of market attention in the process.

There were a few other winners, albeit briefly, in the low-cap sector, with projects like Etherjump moving up more than 500% on the week at high, Nickelodeon's Recur drop doing an 8x at peak and Casual Sloths also doing a 7-8X at peak. But the common theme in the low cap projects has been the brevity of the runs, with their peak windows lasting just hours before the floors fall quickly. The windows of profitability are not very long at all (and seem to be getting shorter). Still there were enough winners on the week to keep the free mints / low cost mint space alive for another week.

This all presents a very tricky backdrop for the week ahead in NFTs, which does appear to be on the quiet side. Here are the top projects on the radar this week:

• Ledger Market Genesis Pass
• Art Blocks Curated "Alan Ki Aankhen"
• Feature Launches for Chimpers, Goblins and OnChainMonkeys
• Hyped Paid and Free Mints 

Ledger Market Genesis Pass

Debuting yesterday but still available in its presale mint, blockchain, and Web3 security company Ledger's NFT launch is off to a hot start. The team has sold over 8,500 NFTs already at a 0.3 ETH mint price, and holds a 0.57 ETH floor on secondary. 

It seems the Ledger team has big plans to launch a Ledger Market to provide the "most secure platform for artists and brands to release their NFTs." Holders of the NFT will have first access (or even airdrops) of curated drops on this platform, free and/or first access to limited edition Ledger hardware, along with hints of more to come. 

With a huge lack of big name teams dropping new projects right now, the market has taken kindly to a strong team like Ledger dropping a project and thus it's seen over 900 ETH volume in the first 24 hours even before minting out. Many are likening this drop to PREMINT, which has had much success on secondary, and with a lack of new projects, this week expect this one to remain in focus for a while.

Art Blocks Curated "Alan Ki Aankhen"

The newest Curated project drops this Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. ET in what will be a new test for current hype levels of the Art Blocks brand. After a multi-week run of very successful mints, last week was the worst performing week, with an influx of traders/flippers leading to higher than average mint out prices and undercutting on secondary. The question is now - will these new entrants stick around for this week's drop or have they already headed for the exits?

Well Alan Ki Aankhen is one of the more intriguing drops in a while. This "exploration of other-worldly cityscapes" in the artist Fahad Karim's distance aesthetic style alludes to Alan Turing's famous artificial intelligence test, as the generative art project intentionally imitates the artist's style on traditional mediums. The visual elements provide imagery from Egypt, New York, and the moon, evidenced with preview images on the artist's page. Samples including the "ancient city", "eyes cape", "rooftops", "pencil city" and "water towers" give the viewer insight into the variability of the set and what to expect, along with details on the process that went into creating the project.

This feels like a project which may very well have mainstream appeal, as the latest "cityscape" style project "Ecumenopolis" by Josh Bagley built a cult following last summer in its race to a 20 ETH floor at peak. The artist has set the dutch auction to start at 10 ETH and exponentially decrease to 0.2 ETH. The last Curated drop Running Moon minted out near the top at 3 ETH (officially like 2.75 ETH), but with some bearish tailwinds in the market and a higher start price, this could likely go lower. This one could see 1.5-2 ETH if traders can "hold the line", and if so, it will likely be a strong performer on secondary. If it goes too high (3 ETH +), it becomes much riskier and likely a stay away for traders.

But this is definitely a fun and exciting drop and will likely be the primary attention point of the market tomorrow, and definitely primed for a liquidity spike.

Feature Launches for Goblins, Chimpers and OnChainMonkeys

While not offering new mints, these three major projects are dropping new features this week which all likely impact their specific markets. Let's take a look at each one briefly:

Goblins "Baiting": The Goblins team announces this new "bating" mechanic in what may be one of the most controversial features seen from a major project. Users who hold at least one of both a goblin NFT and a mcgoblin NFT will be able to participate in the baiting to gain a still unknown prize, but doing so will require burning of those NFTs. Sith the combines floor prices at 2.55 and 1.8 ETH respectively, this would be a 4+ ETH burn - a substantial risk for most NFT traders. This would also lead to smaller supplies on both in the future, as well as increased demand ahead of the baiting feature for owners of just one of the NFTs who want to participate. The market has already responded, with the floors up 8% and 13% respectively on the day. This will definitely be a storyline to watch as more information is released, into what many are calling the next "blue chip" PFP project.

Chimpers "Dojo": Launching today in the Chimpers ecosystem is the "Dojo", which will be a "simple and low-cost gasified staking system as well as a launch pad for the TBAC Series 2" story. Participants in the Dojo will be able to train, battle and go on adventures, with participation automatic for stagers who won't have to do anything manually to observe the play. XP and Bandanas will be earned through these activities and will show in the NFT metadata. Any kind of staking mechanism usually impacts NFT markets, for better or for worse, so prepare for some volatility once this launches later today. For more info check out the team's blog post.

OnChainMonkeys "Missions": The OCM team is launching "Missions" for its Karma Monkey NFT holders, as their own form of staking or nesting. All holders who do not transfer their NFTs for 45 days will be eligible to complete the mission and gain the "mission reward", though there is not yet information on what that reward may be. This will incentivize delisting of the NFTs, which is a tactic seen before in the NFT space and also with mixed results. We will see soon how this impacts the OCM ecosystem, where the Karma Monkeys currently sit at 0.37 ETH.

Hyped Paid and Free Mints 

As stated in the intro, while it was a rough week for most existing top NFT projects last week, some new joiners had some major success. There were multiple new free and paid mints that provided 4x-10x results for traders who time it perfectly, and that success will certainly provide enough runway for one more week of low-cap action (also called gambling). Here is the list of the new projects dropping this week with the biggest followings:

• Atomoverse on July 27 - 5,555 supply at 0.069 ETH; 65K on Twitter
• Identities on July 28 - 10K supply for FREE; 63K on Twitter
• Universe on July 28 - 4,444 supply at 0.01 ETH; 77K on Twitter
• Esion on July 29 - 10K supply from 0.09-0.15 ETH - 120K on Twitter 

Of these Esion seems to be the biggest, but that is not usually the best indicator of success for the low caps. The best method for monitoring these seems to be a general reaction to the art/reveal, who is minting (influencers/alpha groups), and whether they are able to maintain liquidity momentum past 100-200 ETH. These remain some of the best risk/reward spots in the NFT market and thus will stay relevant until the market stops giving them attention.

Conclusion

It is amazing how quickly the market and narratives can change. We went from mini-bull and feeling good back to bear and misery in lightning speed, fully reflected in market pricing, open interest and general sentiment. One silver lining through - if it can turn badly this quickly, it can turn back to "up only" just as quickly with the right catalysts. It still remains to be seen what those catalysts are, but certainly, no one expected the Punks to run from 45 ETH to 85 ETH which happened incredibly quickly, nor the Art Blocks resurgence. So it could certainly all turn back on again soon, perhaps once the large uncertainty of the macro events taking place this week is behind us.

As ETH has been dropping and with NFT prices dropping as well, there could be some really nice entry points coming in USD terms if ETH goes much lower, which savvy traders will be ready to jump on this time around. Perhaps that is our next catalyst for a rebound.

With a limited week of new drops and mostly chop or slow decline on the board, this is another good week to go out and enjoy summer. And as always, stay up to date on the breaking news with LuckyTrader.com, the new app, and the Lucky Trader newsfeed.