Morning Minute | Digital Artists Embrace New Blockchains
TylerD's Market Summary
Plus it seems the BTC ETFs will be approved any day now, and another airdrop has been announced.
🖼 Artists Turn To Bitcoin and Solana
We are currently living in a multi-chain NFT world.
While Ethereum is still the leader and OG for NFTs, Solana and Bitcoin both have developed newer but thriving NFT ecosystems.
And artists are starting to take note.
What Happened?
In the past week, 4 major artists have dropped or announced projects on Bitcoin and Solana.
Not just any artists, some of the top artists in web3.
Opting for Bitcoin we saw ripcache and Jack Butcher.
On Solana, we saw Cath Simard and Arsonic.
A bit more about each below.
ripcache Drops The Orange "Swarm"
Artist ripcache surprised everyone on New Year's Day by doing a stealth drop.
On Bitcoin.
The collection is called "Swarm," it's a 1/1/64 set featuring his iconic cameras with reddish orange backgrounds, and it minted at 0.16 BTC.
It sold out within about 1 hour and instantly surged on secondary, reaching a high around 0.3 BTC (currently 0.26).
So minters won, and so did rip who made a tidy $460k in the process.
After the sale, he shared insight into the minting process, which included his staying up all night to inscribe each of the 64 pieces by hand.
He described the manic process and watching the various block processing times with escalating anxiety in the post, with this quote standing out (regarding the memepool and Bitcoin blocks)
"it was like watching a living breathing thing. and it's a drop i'll never forget."
Well ripcache's success was seemingly enough to inspire another artist to announce their Bitcoin project.
Jack Butcher Launches an Ordinal Project
It seems Jack has actually been planning a Bitcoin NFT collection for quite some time, and the recent Ordinals hype offered a great backdrop for his announcement.
Yesterday he shared his grand plans for Checks Ordinals.
The project will be an edition of 500 featuring Jack's iconic 64-check board - all in orange (of course).
Jack will launch the project on Feb 8, 2024, giving a max of 250 away for single checks collectors and creators. The plans for the other 250 editions are TBD.
He shared some very interesting background in his announcement, specifically that he raced to inscribe the collection back in Feb 2023 after gentle pushing from a friend. At the time, his inscriptions were 2.5% of the supply. Now they are < 0.001%.
He was early. And this one will be heavily anticipated ahead of that Feb 8 launch.
Now for a few artists who went a different route.
Cath Simard Drops First Edition on Solana
Cath Simard is one of the most successful photographers / photo-artist in all of web3.
She's in the top 30 all-time in SuperRare sales with $1.35M, which doesn't include any of her sales on OpenSea and other platforms.
And she was early to Solana.
On Jan 1, she dropped her "Day 1" edition on Exchange Art on Solana.
The piece, which features a gorgeous nature landscape with a canoe facing a lake with mountains and trees, was set up as an edition of 222 and priced at 3 SOL. You can read more about Cath and the background of this piece in this blog from Exchange (I highly recommend it).
It sold out nearly instantly, raising 666 SOL for Cath and leaving a trail of happy collectors (read testimonials on her X page).
While the background blog didn't go into detail on Cath's choice of using Solana, she did share this on X a few days ago, perhaps referencing the decision:
"Change isn’t a departure from authenticity, it is an alignment with it."
Her success with "Day 1" seemingly inspired another artist to give it a go on Solana.
Arsonic Drops New Set of Editions on Solana
Arsonic wears many hats.
He's a generative artist who's dropped on Art Blocks (Unigrids with Zeblocks), a Memes Card star (Sgt. Pepe creator, which holds #2 floor price for all 182 cards, which blossomed into Sgt. Pepe World), the co-founder of Flowty, and a collector.
And now he's adding a Solana hat.
Today at 10 am ET, he is launching "Seasonal Synthesis" on Exchange Art.
He describes the art style as "mesmerizing series of abstract artworks capturing the spirit and metamorphosis of the seasons with a symphony of shapes and hues."
There are 5 unique pieces, each an edition of 30 (so 150 in total), priced at 2.69 SOL each (with a bonus for collectors who complete sets of 5 unique pieces).
Arsonic previously helped a fellow artist Rodro in launching "Not Sgt Pepe" on Solana, and he seemed to draw some insight and inspiration from that mint.
Regarding his decision to mint on Solana after primarily focusing on ETH, Arsonic had this to say:
"Engaging in 'Not Sgt Pepe' and witnessing numerous ETH enthusiasts purchase their first SOL NFTs was eye-opening.
It led me to believe that introducing my art community to opportunities beyond ETH was essential.
As I expand to other chains, my belief is reinforced: the more people experiment with new chains, the better they grasp the intricacies of blockchain technology."
Pretty powerful statement.
Conclusion - What Does It All Mean?
A clear trend is happening in the digital art world - artists are going multi-chain.
Expect this to only accelerate in the near future.
The slowdown in the ETH NFT market (hurting the ETH art market even more), combined with the explosion of interest in NFTs on Bitcoin and Solana, is certainly a large driving force.
The action is elsewhere right now, and artists are realizing it.
For collectors who want to be ready and participate, it's time to start familiarizing yourselves with these blockchains, their native wallets, currencies, and exchanges.
Or risk missing out on some of the most exciting new art of 2024.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH trading volume fell to $24.6M on Thursday, with leaders mostly red
- Primera and Michelin 3xplorers led notable top movers, up 40% each; Checks - VV Originals jumped 14% to 0.35 ETH after Jack's Ordinals announcement
- Speaking of, two new single Checks were made on Thursday bringing the total to 46, spurred on by Jack Butcher's announcement of his Ordinals Checks going to single check owners/creators in February
- NodeMonkes led volume on Bitcoin once again, jumping 10% to 0.266 BTC floor (hit 0.3 at peak); Bitcoin Puppets were in 2nd with 66 BTC volume, tripling to a 0.018 BTC floor
- Tensorians led volume on SOL, jumping 11% to a 110 SOL floor; Mad Lads reached 185 (+3%) and Froganas fell 6% to 10.9
- A Lost Robby sold for 150 ETH on Thursday, one of the highest digital art sales in months
- Pixelmon shared new details about its $MON token and community presale, offering access and waitlist codes to Pixelmon and Golden Trainer NFT holders
- NFT Lending Protocol Arcade.xyz announced future plans, including going multi-chain, opening up their $ARCD token for transfer, partial repayments and more
- Logan Paul and CryptoZoo announced a buy-back program for Base Egg and Base Animal NFTs, offering original purchase price refunds to holders amounting to more than $2.3M with a Feb 8 deadline for claims
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors were green yesterday on hopes of BTC ETF approvals as soon as today; BTC +1.8% at $43,950; ETH +0.8% at $2,250; SOL +1.5% at $100.40
- TIA outperformed on the day, +14% to $16.30
- Arbitrum passed Ethereum in daily DEX volume, $1.8B to $1.4B
- A new airdrop was announced for $SAGA, rewarding cross-chain users of Cosmos, Celestia, Polygon and Avax (specifically those who used in Apr-Oct 2023)
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
- Pudgy Penguins (2,755 ETH, 10.6 ETH Floor)
- MAYC (2,433 ETH, 4.96 ETH)
- Azuki (2,353 ETH, 6.1 ETH)
- DeGods (1,085 ETH, 3.35 ETH)
- BAYC (790 ETH, 26.4 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
- Primera (40%, 3 ETH Floor)
- Michelin 3xplorers (39%, 0.29 ETH)
- Lazy Lions (35%, 0.17 ETH)
- Fluf World: Burrows (15%, 0.22 ETH)
- Checks - VV Originals (14%, 0.35 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is another slower day of new mints with just a few on the list.
The highlight is from Arsonic with his "Seasonal Synthesis" drop happening on Solana on Exchange, described in detail above. Expect big demand on that one today.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Seasonal Synthesis (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
- tokenfox - Rainscapes (12:00 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.
