#117 - What's happening in NFTs this week?

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the web3 newsletter that's trying to wake up from a food coma and get back to work.

Today, a round-up of NFT stories from over the holidays:

• DeGods and Y00ts leave Solana

• Kabosu the Shiba's sad news

• InfiniGods Shipwright

• The Trial of Jimmy Pt. 2

• Web3 magazine year reviews

• Plus, Wiggle's alpha of the week

NFTs across 2022

Here's 3 graphs on the market over the year. You're gonna have to zoom in.

(via The Block & CryptoSlam)

Popular floors this year

Trade volume by collection

Weekly gaming & collectible sales

What's happening in NFTs this week?

Here's what you need to know from across the holiday period...

On the 1st day of Christmas

DeGods and Y00ts – 2 of the top collections on the Solana blockchain – announced they'll be bridging to other protocols in 2023.

Dust Labs is moving its top-performing projects to Ethereum and Polygon in Q1 – and will also bridge the ecosystem's DUST token to both chains.

DeGods and y00ts creator Rohun Vora (Frank III) posted a voice message on Twitter announcing the move, with some corporate speak about "coming to the realization that in order to grow we need to explore new opportunities."

Basically, he doesn't see a future with the Solana chain and wants his projects in the mix with the top collections and big audiences of Ethereum and Polygon.

(And given Solana's ties to FTX, maybe there won't be a future for SOL at all...)

A good move? Splitting the Dust Labs IP across the two most popular chains for digital collectibles seems like a smart idea.

But, bridging such large projects to a new blockchain will be a technical challenge and raises the risk of hacks. 🧐

What you need to know:

• All migrations will be owner opt-in

• Sales of DeGods rose following the announcement

• Polygon offered a partnership fund grant to secure y00ts

• Technical details of the migration are TBA

On the 2nd day of Christmas

Kabosu the Shiba – the face of Dogecoin and official dog of web3 – had some sad news:

On boxing day, Kabosu's owner took to social media to share that, at the grand age of 17, he has been diagnosed with cancer. 😢

What you need to know:

• Before $DOGE, Kabosu spawned an entire genre of doge memes

• Elon's doge-themed xmas Tweet caused a 115% trading volume spike

On the 3rd day of Xmas

Web3 game studio InfiniGods launched its Shipwright platform:

Shipwright is a new way for players to trade rewards and powerups from their gameplay.

Now, when you play InfiniGods games like Infinimerge, you can convert your winnings into an ERC-1155 token (an Arc) to sell them on secondary marketplaces.

Like other Infinigods collectibles, Arks have in-game utility, bestowing powerups and boosts.

Here's how InfiniGods explain the details:

On the 4th day

New content in BAYC's Trial of Jimmy the Monkey dropped:

Last time, we got a short film about Jimmy breaking the spacetime continuum with his bathroom antics.

He pooped out an interdimensional lockbox, only to accidentally swallow the key.

This installment comes in the form of an interactive explainer, where "The Great Dog Prophet, Gary" gives us a tour of the prophetic hieroglyphs on Jimmy's magical box.

Gary tells us about powerful "shards" that got scattered across the "underworld" and need collecting – along with Jimmy's key.

What you need to know:

• The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey is BYAC's latest narrative project

• On Jan 18, Ape holders can participate in a free interactive mint

And on the 5th day...

Watcher.Guru, Decrypt, Coindesk, and Blockworks all published reviews on the state of NFTs, crypto, and web3 in 2022.

To save you scrolling, here are the points that all the big web3 magazines agree on:

• 2021’s bull run continued into Q1 of 2022

OpenSea was valued at $13.3 billion, Bitcoin and Ethereum had all reached all-time highs, the cryptocurrency total market cap exceeded $3 trillion, and FTX was running Super Bowl ads…

• But downward macroeconomic trends dampened markets

Q2 saw a decrease in prices and volume due to interest rate hikes and the collapse of Terra. Hedge funds like Three Arrows Capital lost billions in the sell-off following the collapse.

• In the summer, VC's were still investing and NFT projects got more focused

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX was rising up to aid other cryptocurrency companies, while NFT creators shifted to smaller-scale collections with narrative storytelling and "creator/creative ecosystems."

• As the year ended, crypto got complicated and NFT utility ruled

The picture for crypto is cloudy after the collapse of some of the space’s biggest platforms, indictments of those involved in the FTX fraud, and regulation discussions gaining traction.

As for NFTs, projects that give users value in the form of IP, community connections, immersive stories, virtual & game perks, and IRL experiences look best set to whether this (polar) bear market.

That 12 days of Christmas song is mostly just birds, hey?

Tweet of the week

Alpha of the week

Jingle, Jingle... Wiggles is back with another round of free mints for the holidays.

Free mint: LIVE//

• Artist: fvckrender

• Edition size: Open edition (29,398 minted at time of writing)

• Closes: January 26

fvckrender is a 3D digital artist from Canada.

His clients include @KingJames, @ColumbiaRecords, @LilNasX, Spotify, and Instagram.

No utility here, but a great chance to own an OE piece from fvck.

fvckrender says:

• Price: Free

• Network: Ethereum

• Token standard: ERC 1155

• Minting partner: Manifold

That's all from us!

👋

Meme of the week

After DeGods and Y00ts leave the Solana chain...