Morning Minute | Generative Physicals Delight in NFT Debut
TylerD's Market Summary
A new type of phygital NFT caught the market by storm on Wednesday. Read on for more, plus catch up on the latest in SocialFI and web3 news.
🏎 Snowfro Delights with /// Mint
Snowfro (Art Blocks founder, Squiggles creator) was the most anticipated artist in the Velocity Series Season 1.
And his drop did not disappoint.
Now his "///" may become a pivotal moment in NFT history and and a major provenance event.
What Happened?
Snowfro's /// was his first-ever generative physical mint (with a digital and physical component).
How it works is each NFT will come with a unique embroidery-ready file "constructed one stitch at a time at the algorithmic level."
The owner can apply that file to embroider anything they like, and the mint also comes with one embroidered Oracle Red Bull Racing Hat.
The NFTs themselves are Snowfro's artistic reinterpretations of each embroidery file.
There were 2,000 available, first for Velocity Series Pass holders and then a public Dutch auction for the remainder.
Market Reaction
The full 1,000 available for Velocity Pass holders did not completely mint in the 1-hour window allotted, and the remainder sold out in a Dutch auction for ~0.3 ETH.
The floor then violently moved up through the afternoon, 3x'ing at peak to 0.9 ETH. It settled this morning at 0.72 ETH on 720 ETH volume - pretty massive for this market.
Rares have been selling well already, with 2 sales at 5 ETH and 12 at 3 ETH or higher.
As for the Velocity Series Pass, it fell 40% on the day to 0.8 ETH, falling from 1.26 ETH pre-mint. But that's still a win for those who minted and held.
Why It Matters
Beyond price action, now one of the most notable artists in the generative art movement has moved into generative physicals.
He won't be the only one.
But is the market ready/hungry for generative physicals?
In his announcement, Snowfro noted how he's focused on creating "1of1ofX physical goods with cost parity to producing identical items."
That's the key - cost parity.
There won't be a widespread market for generative physicals that are exorbitantly more expensive than their widely available peer products.
But if costs are in line, the generative twist could be enough to garner some larger appeal.
It will be a fun trend to watch play out. And once again, Snowfro is leading the way...
🎁 Arcade Adds to Airdrop SZN
NFT lending protocol Arcade.xyz made a major step towards its decentralized future yesterday.
Arcade officially launched its DAO and governance token ARCD, with a live claimable token for users.
The Details
The core details of this announcement include:
- Arcade is launching Arcade V3 which will be immutable and governed by the ArcadeDAO
- The DAO will manage the Arcade Treasury, support new collections, govern critical protocol functions and will be in charge of evolving for the future
- ARCD is the governance token required for DAO participation
- The ARCD "airdrop" (token claim) is live, targeting over 6,000 users though with significant geographic restrictions
- More token distributions are planned, with details coming soon
As for the tokenomics:
- Total supply is 100M tokens, on Ethereum
- Token split is 32.9% for early backers, 25.5% for treasury, 16.6% for team and advisors, 10% for foundation, 9% for rewards and 6% for airdrop
A key aspect of this launch - the ARCD token is not transferable yet.
It will require a formal proposal from the DAO to make that change, and will be the DAO's decision to make the token tradeable, thus requiring token holder participation from the start.
Notable crypto personality and founder 0xFoobar commented on the decision to make the airdrop nontransferable, calling it a "a very useful primitive." He went on to explain why, stating:
"1) it forces governance to be onchain. can't beat around the bush. onchain powers require onchain governance
2) eliminates a ton of forced selling and false tax bases"
It will be interesting to see if more protocols and DAOs follow similar airdrop/DAO launches going forward.
Read the full announcement here.
👥 Friend Tech Trend Tracker
The Friend Tech TVL rebounded on the day as buyers finally flipped sellers for the first time in a week.
Here are some of the core Friend Tech metrics for 10/26 and their day-over-day change:
- Return users: 4,679 -> 3,001 (-36%)
- Daily Buy volume: $1.47M -> $1.14M (-22%)
- Total Volume: $9.23M -> $1.82M (-80%)
- TVL: $39.5M -> $41.15 (+4%)
- Highest key: CBB0FE 5.22 -> 5.33 (+2%)
*TVL in ETH terms 22,141 -> 22,520 (+1.7%)
It was a quieter day in Friend Tech - a welcome quiet.
Sellers were finally exhausted and buyers outpaced them $1.14M to $680k, leading to a green day.
Expect more quiet and chop/slow grind up into this week's points drop.
In other SocialFI news:
- New Bitcoin City TVL continued its downtrend, falling another 7% to $3.1M while the notorious Vombatus accrued nearly 35%+ of the TVL himself
- StarsArena TVL jumped 12% on the day to $1.26M (though AVAX drove a lot of that) as sentiment seems to be slowly rebounding
- Tomo TVL held steady at $1.21M
- New streaming-based SocialFI app TurnUp went live to the public late yesterday evening, with the team planning their 2nd trivia event at 9 am ET this morning as a method to showoff their streaming capabilities
- Chain chat made its debut on Arbitrum as well, a new SocialFI tied to Zapper and with Zapper wallet integration
New players continue to enter SocialFi - now we will see which ones are able to gain real momentum.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- Trading volume came in at $12M (6,570 ETH) on Wednesday, with the leaderboard seeing green again
- AOI Engine led top movers following the success of the Snowfro mint, up 80%; MAYC and DeGods both jumped 6%
- The Memeland Fire Sale round opened up, selling over $10M in its first 24 hours, though all proceeds over $6.969M will be refunded to waitlisters
- Yuga Labs updated the HV-MTL Game Guide section detailing how a HV’s Power Score is calculated, adding information on a snapshot for ApeCoin rewards and more
- Forgotten Runes Wizards dropped a new teaser for its upcoming MMORPG "The Runiverse" which is closer to launching
- DraftKings Reignmakers delayed its new "Air it Out" packs last night due to a drop issue, now scheduled for tonight at 6 pm ET; packs include new players like Puka Nacua and Alvin Kamara who weren't previously available
- NBA Top Shot ran a new promo offering $10,000 in site credit for a Predictive Flash Challenge, where Moment owners could pick the three players that finish with the most points, rebounds, and assists to be rewarded
- Parallel's Manifest pack mint opened, adding several new cards in an expansion
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- The crypto market ticked up on Wednesday while equities fell; BTC +0.2% at $34,311; ETH +2.6% at $1,833; SOL +0.7% at $32.23
- AVAX had a big day, popping 8.25% to $11.24, much to the delight of Stars Arena users
- Rainbow Wallet once again teased its upcoming airdrop, stating "True believers are always rewarded" in a post reminding users to update its app and extension
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- BAYC (1,760 ETH, 26.88 ETH Floor)
- AOI Engine (716 ETH, 0.05 ETH)
- Captainz (585 ETH, 3.84 ETH)
- MAYC (514 ETH, 5.19 ETH)
- DeGods (371 ETH, 3.44 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- AOI Engine (83%, 0.05 ETH Floor)
- Ninja Squad (60%, 0.12 ETH)
- Pixelated Llama (34%, 0.17 ETH)
- Rug Radio Genesis (31%, 0.13 ETH)
- HV-MTL (22%, 0.27 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Events
Today is another busy day, mostly focused in the art sector.
CryptoPunk owners are able to purchase prints from Avant Art, while the public can buy prints featuring all 10,000.
Proof is doing a drop with Pace Gallery, and Robert Hodgin is the Art Blocks artist today for reGEN.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- CryptoPunks x Avant Art - prints (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Proof x Pace - Notes from a Neutron Star (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Art Blocks x Robert Hodgin "Recollection" (1:00 p.m. ET)
- ChainVirus - Broken Algorithms (2:00 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.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.
