Morning Minute | A New $NFT Airdrop?

TylerD's Market Summary

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📝 Magic Eden and Non-Fungible DAO Introduce $NFT

The market place wars continue to heat up, across blockchains. And now, a new airdrop is at stake.

Magic Eden has been consistently building and delivering across the bear market. They made a splash on BTC, becoming the primary go-to marketplace for traders in that ecosystem.

But during that time, they lost market share on Solana to the Blur-like Tensor (promising its own airdrop). In the last year, ME's share went from 98% to 50% down to as low as 25% before rebounding to 60-65% these past few weeks.

Now a series of big announcements has them poised to re-take control of Solana, and perhaps more chains.

What Happened?

Magic Eden has 2 major announcements on Monday:

• The introduction of the Non-Fungible DAO, a decentralized org to drive adoption of NFT protocols using ME's smart contracts (and dropping the $NFT token)
• They dropped a teaser video showing cross-chain support for BTC, ETH, Polygon and Solana 

The former was the primary news, but a quick note on the latter - the expectations are for Magic Eden to introduce a wallet that supports all those blockchains.

If they can enable swapping currencies and purchasing of NFTs easily across those primary NFT ecosystems - that will be a major win.

Now, for the juicy part - the Non-Fungible DAO.

TLDR:

• A new DAO with the mission to "develop and drive adoption" of decentralized NFT protocols
• The DAO owns and governs Magic Eden's smart contracts across the 4 major NFT blockchain ecosystems
• $NFT will be a governance token used to control and steer the DAO
• The $NFT token will be allocated to the NFT community and earned by those who use the DAO-governed protocols (i.e. Magic Eden)
• When? Coming "soon"

There's certainly a lot to unpack here.

Basically, Magic Eden is dropping a token through a DAO vs on its own (likely for regulatory issues).

The market is already speculating on which assets may earn more tokens, with NFTs like Magic Eden's "Magic Ticket" jumping 40%.

And those Magic Eden Gems are about to get a lot more demand as well.

Why It Matters

For Magic Eden, they are positioned to regain market share on Solana and gain share across blockchains with these announcements.

This is a big step forward for them.

For NFT traders, another potential juicy airdrop is in the pipeline.

Now we have Tensor, Frame, Blur/Blast and $NFT coming in H1 2024 (most likely).

That's some serious influx of capital into this NFT ecosystem.

Fun times ahead...

🟠 A Big Day for Ordinals

The Sotheby's "Natively Digital: An Ordinals Curated Sale" was meant to shine a light on the variety of NFTs in this early BTC NFT ecosystem.

Well that light has shined, and buyers showed up for the final day.

More than 15 BTC was spent on just the top 5 pieces and sales were strong top to bottom.

Some of the most notable and top sales (highlighted here from NFT Stats):

• Quantum Cats Genesis Cat: 6.3 BTC ($252k, 105 ETH)
• Des Lucrece "Benediction from Between Worlds": 2.25 BTC ($95k, 40 ETH)
• Shroomtoshi (Inscription 21): 2.3 BTC ($102k)
• Black Rare Sat: 3.9 BTC ($165k)
• Rare Sat: 2.7 BTC ($107,950)
• NodeMonke Honorary: 0.024 BTC ($9,525)

But that wasn't the only notable action on Bitcoin on the day.

A surprise airdrop called RSIC Metaprotocol landed in several BTC NFT traders' wallets and dominated market action on the day.

The 21,000 NFT collection tied to the Runes Protocol ran as high as 0.036 BTC at peak before settling at 0.026. Still a solid $1,000 stimmy to anyone who received it.

As for the RSIC NFTs, they are tied to Casey Rodarmor's upcoming Runes Protocol, meant to be the first protocol allowing fungible token trading on BTC.

The RSIC NFTs actually mine runes once activated, with a series of rules outlined in the whitepaper. 

So the expectation is these RSIC NFTs will eventually lead to a fungible token airdrop once the Runes protocol is live.

Important note for any holders - make sure to "activate" your NFT to start minting (instructions in the whitepaper).

Overall, an unexpected airdrop worth 4-figures tied to an exciting new protocol and with a game attached - definitely a fun surprise.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH trading volume jumped to $30.8M on Monday; leaders saw major green
• Valeria Genesis Lands, Skyborne Gems and Dooplicators led top movers on ETH, jumping 25-30%; Cool Cats and Meebits also saw double digit gains 
• Luca Netz dropped his 2nd teaser in 2 days, this time with a Pengu huffing "Soonium" - likely indicating an announcement is coming soon
• Wasabi introduced Wrapped CryptoPunks to their perps protocol, allowing users to go long or short the most valuable PFP on ETH
• RSIC dominated action on BTC with 77 BTC in trading volume on the day, with the floor settling at 0.027 BTC; NodeMonkes at 0.179, Puppets at 0.024
• Solana NFTs were mostly red again with Crypto Undeads falling 20% to 11 SOL, Sujiko Warriors -5% to 6.8 and Mad Lads -5% to 158
• Magic Ticket NFTs were the primary winner on Solana, jumping 48% to 4.2 SOL as traders speculated on their use in the potential Magic Eden airdrop
• Solana's leading NFT marketplace Tensor announced its "Price Lock" feature, allowing traders to buy / sell options on NFTs at certain price points
• 0N1 Force shared that it will bring its Anime to Bitcoin as the latest ETH NFT project to expand beyond Ethereum and drop Ordinals

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are down big again this morning; BTC -4.5% at $38,950; ETH -6.5% at $2,230; SOL -9% at $80
• Alt L1s were down more, with AVAX at $28 (-11%), INJ at $31 (-9%), and TIA at $14.44 (-10%)
• Hychain (previously NFT World) had their testnet go live on Monday, though the token fell 6% to a $435M market cap
• An Animoca Brands subsidiary "Darewise" is partnering with Animoca Brands Japan and Honda for vehicle gameplay in its upcoming AAA title, Life Beyond

🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)

• MAYC (1,661 ETH, 4.5 ETH Floor)
• Pudgy Penguins (1,277 ETH, 18.18 ETH)
• Azuki (1,034 ETH, 7.32 ETH)
• Doodles (823 ETH, 2.42 ETH)
• BAYC (796 ETH, 25.65 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Mintify Genesis (32%, 0.12 ETH Floor)
• Valeria Genesis Lands (29%, 0.63 ETH)
• Dooplicator (28%, 0.15 ETH)
• Skyborne - Nexian Gems (24%, 1.2 ETH)
• Cool Cats (19%, 1.3 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

The main focus today is once again on Bitcoin, where the Bitcoin Whales and Commoners are each doing drops.

The ecosystem is more liquid after the RCIS stimmy, so these are launching at a good time.

Otherwise, check out ripcache's new drop (he's been busy) and Batzdu x Shillr.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Skytopia - Mayor Pass (4:00 a.m. ET)
• Bitcoin Whales - Culture Pods (9:30 a.m. ET)
• Commoners (5:00 p.m. ET)
• ripcache - Neutral (6:00 p.m. ET)
• Batzdu x Shillr - Burn Artist #7 (6:00 p.m. ET)
• Transient Labs "Frozen in Time) (3:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.