Morning Minute | Web3 IRL Hubs Are Coming

GM!

Take a minute to catch up on the latest in the Web3 space with today's NFT market analysis, top movers, and upcoming mints.

TylerD's Market Summary

Want to meet and work shoulder-to-shoulder with other Web3 builders? Soon you may have that chance, or at least the ability to support those builders. Also, should NFT projects buy back their NFTs?

🗽 Bob Loukas Launches Station3 NYC

Imagine 75,000 square feet of Manhattan office space beaming with web3 teams, innovators, and pioneers.

And Non-stop events, spanning Art, Photography, DeFi, NFTs, AI, demo days, hackathons, pitch days, workshops.

An IRL collaborative, decentralized community.

All Web3 patron funded.

That's Bob Loukas's vision for Station3NYC, which just got a bolster from Polygon Labs.

What Happened?

Station3 is one of Web3's first IRL hubs, launching in Manhattan as a collaborative workspace for builders and artists in the NFT space.

Founded by Bob Loukas, Station3 provides office space, infrastructure, event support and other kinds of general support and aid for builders. 

Yesterday, Polygon Labs and Station3 announced the launch of The Builder House NYC.

It's a 3-month program consisting of workspace, events & programming, with other highlights including advising from Polygon Labs, hackathons, pitch days, meetups, investor syncs & more.

So this Web3 hub has got some serious backing.

They've also got a very interesting mint coming up allowing interested parties to participate in Station3 from across the globe.

The Station3 Patron NFT 

Bob and Station3 are set to mint "Patron NFTs" crowdsourcing support for its program.

The mint will raise up to $2.7M which will be used for workplace grants for those teams, builders and artists using the Station3 workspace.

While no utility is promised, Bob's vision for the mint is that patrons support the teams and artists via the mint, those teams and artists "remember" the patrons in their future work (potentially rewarding them with token drops or NFTs), which deepens the community and leads to more patrons.

A flywheel effect, if it works as envisioned.

Now the teams have no formal commitment or expectations to deliver that utility, which in some ways makes it more powerful (and with more potential upside).

Bob also has several raffles set up for Patron NFT holders in the near future, including a Ringers and art pieces from high-profile artists such as Tyler Hobbs, Emily Xie, Harvey Rayner and more.

The mint goes live for allowlist on July 10th at 10 am ET with the public sale on the 11th at 10 am ET. 

850 NFTs will be sold at 0.88 ETH.

Learn more about Bob's vision with our interview from July 6, or dig deeper in his website.

🤔 Should NFT Projects Do Buybacks?

Wondering if your favorite NFT project will ever buy back its NFTs?

Well infamous founder and farmer MachiBigBrother thinks that Yuga, or at least its ApeCoin DAO, should.

In his most recent Apecoin Improvement Proposal (AIP) idea, Machi suggests the ApeCoin DAO should buy 1000 BAYC, 2000 Mutants and TBD # of BAKC & Punks.

The intent? For Yuga to donate them to art museums around the world.

Is this an absurd idea or does it have some merit?

Putting the thought of Mutant Apes in art museums aside for now, the concept of buy backs is a very interesting one for the NFT space.

It's a common practice in stocks and is usually viewed as a positive sign when companies buy back their own shares.

Yet it seems more controversial for NFT projects to do the same, for some reason.

We have seen projects do this already, notably rektguy and Rug Radio (OSF/Mando and Farokh's projects), where the founders effectively DCA their NFTs over time.

This act instills confidence that the founders actually want their NFTs and believe in their long-term value, and also provides short-term buy support.

The key question here is - what will they do with them? Will they eventually sell, or have they effectively reduced the supply of the set?

Teams re-selling their NFTs would likely be viewed negatively, but there are ways to do it (couched with formal public announcements and rationale).

And who would complain if teams buy in the bear and sell in the bull (if it ever comes)?

I sure wouldn't and personally love the idea.

I also think there are a few struggling major PFP sets who could gain a lot of goodwill with their holder base and the market overall by implementing a program like this.

As for Machi's proposal - the scale is likely too large and makes what would have been a serious idea more laughable. Buying 1,000 BAYC and 2,000 MAYC alone would likely tally $100M or more.

But what if they bought 50/100 per month? Is the idea as crazy then?

We will see how the vote goes, but Pandora's Box may have very well been opened here with this AIP.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

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

• Trading volume came in around 13k ETH on Thursday, NFTs again saw a mix of red and green on the day
• Yuga released a poster for its upcoming Legends of the Mara game showing all the characters which would be able to play, including Mutant Hounds, CrypToadz, World of Women, Forgotten Runes Wizards, Renga, and 10KTF (several of which saw their floors shoot up 20-30%)
• NFTperp announced the surprise closure of its v1 private beta, citing bad debt it had accrued; all users' margin was returned but those with positive PNL were provided tokens instead of their gains
• Azuki shared new details for the vote for its Elementals background change, opening today at 6 pm ET
• Moonbirds officially launched their Mythics Eggs, along with new details on how the Oddities sacrifice and reveal mechanics will work
• Jack Butcher debuted the art for Opepen 009 called "Unity" by Jalil_ETH, the dev for visualize value and Jack's projects (already 6,000% subscribed)
• Memeland released its Trait Development Kit, allowing creators to begin preparing for create custom traits for their upcoming Captainz Traitables and Trait Store
• Memeland acquired the ENS domain meme.eth for 42.069 ETH, then tweeted "WHO CONTROLS THE $MEME, CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE."
  
• ALTS by adidas opened its Rift Valley Motel Vending Machine, allowing the collecting of traits for holders
• NFT Inspect added support for MoonPay's payment processor in its Chrome extension, allowing buying of crypto and NFTs directly from its extension

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• The crypto market fell yesterday after job market news and new Binance FUD; BTC -3.3%% to $30,150; ETH -4% at $1,860
• Binance Senior Execs including General Counsel, Chief Strategy Officer and SVP of Compliance have quit in response to the DOJ investigation
• Coca-Cola Serbia is teaming up with Solana NFT marketplace SolSea to offer NFTs and limited edition offerings at EXIT Festival
• Farcana (a web3 arena shooter game) announced a strategic partnership with Animoca Brands to bolster its growth and expand its footprint in web3 gaming

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• BAYC (3,980 ETH, 31.55 ETH Floor)
• Azuki (2,323 ETH, 6.53 ETH)
• MAYC (1,801 ETH, 6.15 ETH)
• DeGods (683 ETH, 8.39 ETH)
• Azuki Elementals (288 ETH, 1.05 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

• 10ktf Kagami (76%, 1.97 ETH Floor)
• CrypToadz (29%, 0.75 ETH)
• Mutant Hounds (29%, 0.23 ETH)
• Moonbirds Mythics - Eggs (22%, 0.27 ETH)
• Oddities (16%, 0.24 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slow day of drops in what will likely be a slower weekend.

The highlight today is a new mint in the Goda Pass ecoystem called The Platonic Solids Collection by artist Anthony James. This interactive collection allows collectors to combine artworks via a burn mechanism, unlocking new shapes, attributes, and elements in an interesting twist.

If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Nine by Nineworldz (2:00 p.m. ET); 19.9 MATIC
• Goda: The Platonic Solids Collection by Anthony James (3:00 p.m. ET); 0.2 ETH

Enjoy this write-up? 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.