NFT Weekly 3/20/2022: $APE takes over, NFTs to Instagram, and Dr. Disrespect's NFT gaming studio

NFT Floor Price Recap

This week saw insane amounts of volume and activity in the NFT market as Yuga Labs announced their token $APE, which was airdropped to all Bored Ape Yacht Club members and Mutant Ape Yacht Clubs. With $APE opening around $7 and holding throughout the week in the low $10s, a lot of liquidity has entered the NFT market.

Movements in the market are highlighted by insane volumes for both Bored Apes and Mutant Apes, increasing with 10000s of ETHs from last week. Cool Cats, WoW, and Cryptoadz surged this week as well, as Yuga Labs gave a trailer into their Otherside project which featured the projects. Anticipation of this new project and collaborations is what kept BAYC/MAYC floor prices consistent at the end of the weekend, which is a good sign for holders considering many dumped their Apes after collecting the long-awaited $APE token.

NFT Worlds on the other hand had a drop in volume, which is possibly due to the fact that many are anticipating a Land drop from Yuga Labs. Meebits volume dropped after picking up insane volume from the YL acquisition but shouldn't be anything to be worried about due to the steady increase in floor price.

NFT Project Recaps

Bored Ape Yacht Club

• Yuga Labs drops their token $APE with proposals and docs about the ApeCoin Dao
• Farokh holds interview with members of ApeCoin board [recording], headlined with members such as Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit
• Yuga Labs drop sneak preview of Otherside project, which features collabs with projects such as Cool Cats, World of Women, Cryptoadz, and more
• Leaked, but not verified, investor slide deck pitch from Yuga Labs which highlight a potential Land drop (30k to BAYC/MAYC holders, 170k public at 1 ETH)

Cool Cats

• $MILK disparity compromise solution proposed by Tom which will let Cats passively earn 2x $MILK while pets earn 2x $MILK from quests
• Cooltopia airdrop contracts are created. Cooltopia ecosystem aims to have features such as land, quests, battling, marketplace, etc.
• Problems with Polygon have been reasons for delays, and even after the community has suggested to explore additional chains the team is continuing to build with Polygon

World of Women

• Pranksy shows teaser of the new galaxy collection
• World of Women teases their event, WoW Gala which will be an exclusive meetup to holders of either WoW or WoWGalaxy
• New ArtDrop revealed for WoW Season 7

Other NFT Projects

• Metaheros raise staking for $POW increased to 2,400 $POW a week which is ~1K USDT/month
• Lazy Lions partnered with the Sacramento Kings
• Creature World announce a unique token called the Traveling Creature, which requires actions each time the token is sent to you. Participants may be in for some sort of reward.
• Punk6529 (one of the most respected leaders in the Web3 space), makes his first podcast appearance in Laura Shins Unchained podcast
• MetaMask teases their upcoming token $MASK to be sent out to users

NFT/Crypto News

Yuga Labs drops cryptocurrency $APE, ApeCoin, and forms DAO

Almost all over the news this week was the announcement of the long-awaited token, $APE, from the famous NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club. The token has a total supply of 1 billion $APE to exist, but only 150 million were unlocked at launch to existing Bored Ape Yacht Club (and Mutants) holders. Another 117.5 million is unlocked for the ecosystem fund, which will be proposed by the DAO.

Along with the token is ApeCoin DAO, a governing body where all $APE holders are members and can vote on proposals. Some proposals include staking, which would allow holders of $APE, BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC to earn $APE passively throughout a 3 year period.

Notable board members of the DAO include Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and Yat Siu of Animoca Brands.

With the token trading from $8-$15 throughout the week, Bored Ape holders quickly profited over 6 figures from this airdrop alone. Mutant Apes gained roughly $15,000 - $30,000 depending on what price they sold.

One extremely surprising fact is that the token launched on nearly every major exchange (FTX, Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, etc). Given that these exchanges are incredibly difficult to list coins such as Doge, it's definitely a positive sign in the hype, utility, and roadmap $APE has laid out.

Mark Zuckerberg confirms NFTs are coming to Instagram

Overshadowed by much of the news from $APE, Mark Zuckerberg recently announced at SXSW that Meta will add NFTs to Instagram. While the first step will be to integrate NFTs with Instagram, a long term goal will be to directly mint an NFT on the platform.

With Twitter recently introducing a feature that lets users set an NFT as their profile picture (and verifies their ownership), it'll be interesting to see how Meta integrates this technology with Instagram. Specifically, Instagram is a platform where profile pictures aren't the main focus. Unlike Instagram, on Twitter you can actually click into someone's profile picture. Since this has never been a feature on Instagram, it'll be interesting to see how the platform decides to integrate this technology.

Meta is no stranger to the blockchain. Back in 2019, they announced their work towards their own cryptocurrency Libra, which would be backed by many of the major companies that work with Meta. While this has come to an end in early 2022, the change from Facebook to Meta still proves the company's strong interest in the Metaverse and Web3.

Dr Disrespect announces gaming studio with NFT access pass

Announced back in December, Dr Disrepect's gaming studio Midnight Society has recently announced that they're embracing NFT technology. In a recent post, the studio went to announce a series of Access Passes which will grant holders access to the early builds of the game, private Discord channels, and the ability to vote on key designs of the development of the game.

The first series of the Access Pass is known as the Founders Pass. 10,000 of these will be sent to a select group of community members and have various benefits such as permanent utility with the studio, guest lists, gear drops, etc.

Many in the NFT community have been waiting for the announcement of a major game studio incorporating the technology. While Axie Infinity dominates the NFT gaming industry, the game was not designed by a major studio and does not feature advanced graphics, frame rates, and mechanics that mainstream gamers would like to see. It'll be interesting to see how a AAA development studio utilizes this technology.

Other NFT News

• Universal Music Group is launching a band titled Kingship
• DeFi protocol, Aave, announced their newest update in V3, which will support cross-chain transactions, gas optimization, and specific features in L2 networks such as Polygon, Avalance, Arbitrum, etc
• Magic Eden, the top Solana NFT marketplace, announces a $27M Series A
• Coinbase Wallet now supports $SOL and Solana-based tokens but have yet to integrate NFTs

That's it for this week's newsletter. If you like reading and learning more about the Web3, Crypto, and NFT space, subscribe! Information in this space moves fast, and we aim to condense the news you need to know!