#149 - WTF was DigiDaigaku's Super Bowl ad? 🏉

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Today,

• DigiDaigaku’s weird Super Bowl ad

• The Checks burn mechanism kicked in

• Project watch: Notable Pepes, Uints & Odiville

• Headlines, Tweet & meme of the day

Top 24 hr collection volume

via CoinMarketCap

1. BAYC - 13 sales earning 914.99 ETH (0.37%)

2. Doodles - 104 sales earning 661.56 ETH (0.03%)

3. DigiDaigaku - 71 sales earning 651.46 ETH (0.20%)

4. MAYC - 40 sales earning 612.94 ETH (0.12%)

5. Pudgy Penguins - 113 sales earning 570.69 ETH (0.22%)

DigiDaigaku’s 🤔 Super Bowl ad

After months of Twitter hyping from DigiDaigaku’s founder, Gabriel Leydon, the pfp/gaming project's Super Bowl ad finally aired.

For anyone not aware of the anime-styled universe, the ad didn't explain much – it showed a couple of the franchise's characters gesturing toward a big QR code, with the words "scan now."

Where did that QR code lead?

The first few thousand viewers who scanned the code were taken to a mint page for DigiDaigaku Dragons, a free NFT that some lucky minters were able to flip for a quick profit:

For the majority of viewers, however, who weren't as quick on the draw with their cameras, the QE code led to ...where else, but Gabriel's personal Twitter, where he was demanding follows and retweets. 😯

– which may not be surprising on reflection, given Gabe's penchant for using project announcements as a chance for self-promo.

But hijacking a multi-million super bowl ad to push his personal following past the 1 mill mark seems like an extra questionable move...

DigiDaigaku community members were also unimpressed with the lack of info or story in the ad itself.

I gotta agree: where is the incentive for viewers to scan the code – or even spend a second wondering what DigiDaigaku is all about?

As for how the ad affected NFT sales, the Genesis Collection floor price started falling after it aired, from just under 12 ETH to ~9 ETH at the time of writing.

+ there are still thousands of Dragon NFTs left in the project's own wallet.

Tweet of the day

On the web3 wire

Paris's Centre Pompidou adds 13 NFTs to its permanent exhibition 🇫🇷Another of the world's more famous homes for fine art puts its reputation behind CryptoPunks and other pioneering collections (then Punk's brand lead said this).

Does crypto need to reckon with its role in the Ukraine war? 🇺🇦Coindesk investigates how Russian troops are receiving crypto donations.

10 Generative art collections to keep an eye on 👩‍🎨NFTNow profiles artists using the fxhash generative platform.

Checks are burning through the floor?

Super Bowl Sunday also saw another big event in the NFT space – the opening of Check's burn window.

A series of smart contracts lets holders turn their Checks open "edition" into an on-chain "original", and then destroy multiple Originals to produce new artworks with sequentially lower (and rarer) numbers of checkmarks.

Converting a Checks edition into an original produces randomized color and pattern variants, adding a luck element to the process.

Original Checks are also somewhat customizable, with burners able to partly predict the color of their creations – as you can see in this thread from @0xDigitalOil:

At the time of writing, only a few holders have burned enough NFTs to produce a rare single-check artwork. Will we ever see the ultimate burn – the single black checkmark?

How's all this affecting prices?

With the burn now live, anticipation around Checks has crested, and it looks like the NFT hype train has already left the station in search of new meta.

What's left behind is a much smaller committed community, and a floor price (for Editions) that's fallen back down below 1 ETH.

That steep drop from an ATH of +$4000 has sparked tension among holders

– between those who see Checks (and NFTs in general) as speculation vehicles, and those who are happier to treat projects like this as experiments in art and attention.

But don't count out Checks just yet – all it takes is another viral moment to bring a flood of new speculators.

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Decentra Daily's Project Watch 🔭

New NFT projects lighting up Twitter this week...

Notable Pepes

• Twitter page

• Founder: Vincent Van Dough, of Pepe Checks fame (+ other viral art)

What's the project?

Vincent Van Dough says no there'll be no burn mechanism for his Checks derivative collection, Pepe Checks. Instead, those NFTs will act as an allowlist for Notable Pepes, a Pepe-inspired meme art card series that looks like it could also have some lite lore/narrative stuff going on.

Uints

• Twitter page

• UINTS website

• Founder: @parkthomp

What's the project?

With a minimalist aesthetic and gamified mint/burn mechanism, Uints seems destined (if not designed) to draw comparisons with Checks. This time, players aren't creating patterns with checkmarks, but numbers on a digital screen. BTW, a "uint" is a programming term for an unsigned integer.

Odiville

• Access Pass

• Announcement thread

• Founder: Odious, one of the artists behind Inhabitants

What's the project?

After dropping mysterious Tickets, Inhabitant's artist Odious posted a thread announcing Odiville: a vague, gamified experience where an auction-determined Game Master will present players with choices that affect assets in the Odiville ecosystem. Tickets act as entry-to and currency within the game.

See ya! 👋

Meme of the day

What we're reading this week