Weekly NFT Preview | NFT Market Momentum Is Building

It was mostly a quiet week for NFTs, as the week closed with the lowest volume numbers seen in 2022. The daily average OpenSea volume was a paltry $30.9M / day and just $216M on the week.

This means May is set to close today with just $2.5B in revenue on the month after a firestorm start when the first five days of May combined for $1.28B in revenue on the back of the Otherdeeds launch.

But market sentiment seems to be shifting bullish again.

NFT Market Data and Analysis

This is partially driven by the recent crypto recovery, as BTC closed the last seven days up 9 percent to $31.7K. While ETH is even on the week at $1,977, it's up approximately 10 percent from the local bottoms.

The bullish NFT sentiment seems to be mostly driven by the recent success of some big-name free mint projects, though.

Three of the top five projects on the weekly leaderboard were free mints.

Goblintown took the NFT world by storm after their now infamous Twitter spaces (three hours of hundreds of people just making grunting noises) catapulted the project floor all the way to 3.4 ETH at the time of writing, with 10K ETH trading volume on the week.

AInightbirds (previously AImoonbirds) was fourth on the board with 4,500 ETH traded and holding a 0.19 ETH floor after changing their name when Kevin Rose asked.

And rounding out the top five is rektguy from OSF and Mando (Degenz founders), which saw multiple all-time high sales over the weekend and holds a 0.85 ETH floor at the time of writing.

The top end of the NFT board did not have the same success on the week as the free mints, as just 7 of the top 25 NFT projects by floor price were in the green on the week and just 10 of the top 50.

Most of the top sets were down anywhere from 1-10 percent. But while all that red is certainly a bit bearish, listings were down or steady for 36 of the top 50 NFT projects, which can be a leading indicator that projects are ready to make a move up.

This week will certainly be telling, if funds begin to rotate and concentrate back within the top end sets or if the free mint meta continues and focus is on the low cap sector.

There were some winners of the week, and we always need to shout out the winners, especially in these bear markets.

NFT Winners and Losers 

Notable winners included:

• Goblintown up 450% to 3.4 ETH floor
• Killabears up 165% to 0.93 ETH floor
• rektguy up 160% to 0.84 ETH floor
• mfers up 17% to 1.69 ETH floor
• Cool Cats up 15% to 3.99 ETH floor
• Nouns up 14% to 98 ETH floor
• Chimpers up 12% to 2.69 ETH floor

Some notable losers on the week included:

• GENE_SIS down 54% post-reveal to 0.29 ETH
• Degen Toonz down 30% after portals to 1.98 ETH
• Murakami Flowers down 24% to 2.9 ETH
• PXN down 22% to 0.88 ETH in its continued slide

While the focus of the week was certainly on the new and free mint projects (and their derivatives), a new trend seems to be emerging in the NFT space - the influencer-led private group pass.

This week saw 2 major players launch these private groups, as Gmoney launched Admit One as a free mint for those who had attended some of his prior events and has since skyrocketed to 19 ETH floor at high (now 12.7 ETH). Then famed collector Artifaction teamed up with artist Matt Szczur to launch Noble Cards, their spin on a private group which holds a 12 ETH floor. These individuals seem to be following in Kevin Rose's notable success with the Proof Collective, the first private group to pass a 100 ETH floor.

There is already growing chatter that this will be the next wave of NFT projects beyond PFPs that will define the next bull run. It's a bit early to make that call definitively, but certainly this sector has momentum, and the concept of NFTs as "digital country clubs" is certainly a very logical one. It will be very interesting to watch how these new private groups perform here in the coming weeks.

NFT Drops To Watch This Week 

On to this week ahead, it's definitely going to be another lighter week of new drops.

The primary drops to watch this week include:

• Art Blocks Playground and Factory
• Quirklings 
• Doppelgänger from Justin Aversano
• Hyped New Mints

Art Blocks Playground and Factory

There are three Art Blocks mints this week (listed below), all of which are greatly benefitting from some strong generative art tailwinds.

Each of the latest Factory and Curated drops from last week minted out and were instantly profitable on the secondary market. This is good news for the artists dropping their work this week, as there will be an influx of liquidity from traders in addition to the standard collectors.

A few other positive factors here - there is also no Curated drop this week, and these sets all have relatively low supply counts. The price points are fair but not cheap, especially for steganon's drop (his Autology holds just a 0.23 ETH floor). 

• Factory: "Daisies" by nsmagx, June 1st at 1:00 p.m. ET; 200 NFTs at 0.1 ETH each
• Playground: "Assorted Positivity" by steganon (the artist behind the Curated project "Autology"), June 2 at 3:00 p.m. ET; 400 NFTs dutch auction 2 ETH - 0.2 ETH
• Factory: "Divenire" by Emanuele Pasin, June 6 at 3:00 p.m. ET; 222 NFTs at 0.11 ETH

Quirklings

The Quirkies project is set to drop its expansion set this week on June 2 at 8:00 p.m. ET, as 10,000 Quirklings enter the ecosystem.

The team has allocated 5,000 NFTs for the existing Quirkies owners, with an additional 5,000 for public sale at a price of 0.2 ETH. 

The market has not liked these half-free, half-public sale expansion mints as of recently, with several big name project teams failing to mint out (Forgotten Runes Warriors, Lazy Cubs, etc.).

But Quirkies currently hold a 2.26 ETH floor and seem to have a fairly rabid community, so perhaps they can buck the recent trend. 

Doppelgänger from Justin Aversano

Justin Aversano has taken note of the free-mint meta and is following suit in his latest AI-photography art project Doppelgänger.

Aversano has collaborated with Kim Asendorf for this drop, who has a background in creating abstract art with code based on photography.

The collection will pull inspiration from Aversano's infamous Twin Flames collection, as each of these 1,000 pieces will be based on a set of twins, with the algorithm working on top of the base photos to add pixelated rectangles to transform the photos into more abstract art.

The NFTs will be available solely for holders of the Quantum Keys, with real-life minting June 3-5 and online June 6-7, with price free + gas.

Other photo artists have struggled to gain secondary success with the AI-photo project (i.e. Metascapes from Cath Simard), but given Justin Aversano's status and his Twin Flames floor (111 ETH), expect some real attention on this one.

Hyped New Mints

There are three other projects dropping this week (today!) that have amassed huge Twitter followings, well past the 100K mark. And while this seems to be table stakes for new drops recently, it's certainly notable and one factor to consider in potential success.

Each of the three is using mint prices in the 0.1-0.2 ETH range, which are much lower than the entry points seen a few weeks back, but also much more expensive than free. It will be telling of the current market health if these are able to mint out or not.

Senshi - May 31st: This collection of 5,555 anime 3d NFTs has amassed 145K followers on Twitter ahead of today's mint. The sale is in two parts, with 5,000 WL spots minting for 0.09 ETH and the remaining 455 for 0.12 ETH. The project has leveraged partnerships with several other recent big name drops (Skyverse, Godjira, Karafuru) as well as the top end sets (BAYC, Azuki, CloneX) for its WL, so the blue-chip ownership rate should be high out of the gate. Early previews of the art are a bit underwhelming and the project roadmap seems to be fairly standard (DAO, token launch, etc.), so it will be very interesting to watch if this one can leverage its WL to mint out.

Akumu Dragons - May 31st: This Solana-based project is looking to expand onto the ETH blockchain, to create a "cross-chain Web3 brand" per this latest blog post (link: https://medium.com/@akumudragonz/the-rise-of-akumu-dragonz-d67dcaaba91f). This collection of 10,000 pixelated dragons will be priced at 0.169 ETH, building on the existing 1,111 Solana-based Boryoku Dragonz.  The Boryokus hold a 175 Sol floor ($7980, or ~4 ETH), so the mint price is relatively reasonable compared to the OG project floor. The project roadmap includes staking, tokens, breeding, and more (again, items we have all seen before in spades). But with 157k followers on Twitter and their OG project floor, expect some real attention on this mint today.

Local Weather - May 31st: This collection of 18,888 NFTs tied to an IRL "mind and body hydration beverage" from cofounders Russel Wilson and AJ Vaynerchuk mints today for 0.1495 ETH. The co-founders seem to be leveraging the NFT drop to help build a community for the product, certainly a strong use case for NFTs, and plan to share utility with the NFT owners over time. The PFP project is mostly utility-based and offers IRL experiences and perks. Given the supply and price, this one could struggle to mint out, especially given AJ's other recent project releases (Vayner Sports Pass) which have struggled on secondary. But maybe Russell Wilson will be the x-factor to build some momentum for this project.

Overall this week will be a real test of where we are in this NFT bear market. Will money begin to rotate back to the top-end sets ahead of the next potential run? Or will the new project hot potato continue through this week?  If we can start to build real momentum here this week, then soon all eyes will focus on NFT NYC as a potential catalyst for the next bull cycle. 

One thing is certain - positive vibes are definitely back in NFT Twitter and the space is fun again, hopefully with most of the recent toxicity behind us. Good luck out there this week, and happy minting!