This week a reluctant NFT artist made many times their annual salary in days, two sizeable NFT conferences took place nearly two thousand miles apart, non-Ethereum blockchains saw record NFT sales volumes, and a Discord suffered a hack courtesy of a compromised third-party plug-in. In other words, you know, just a regular week in NFT Land.

Right, let’s get straight into it!

DYOR 🧐

As the world learns to live with COVID-19 and reopens, in-person events are set to ramp up again. This week we saw Permissionless in Florida and VeeCon in Minnesota doing just that, attracting plenty of attendees in the process.

But one of the biggest events on the NFT calendar is still to come, and though summer in the US only officially starts after Memorial Day (May 30), and NFT.NYC only starts on 20 June, the savvy are already preparing for the June extravaganza that sees the Big Apple turned into NFT Central.

We’re among those who are planning, prepping, and plotting, and we want to let you know what we’ve got in the pipeline in case you want to participate.

During NFT.NYC, we’ll be collaborating with Decentralized Dance Party for an activation for MetaLetters, our artist-empowering initiative that launches later this year. We’ll dance through New York’s Times Square while hosting a scavenger hunt for gigantic, augmented-reality letters which will hover overhead.

If you’re a 3D artist, we’d love to include your work in this out-of-this-world experience. Head over to the sign-up page for all of the details, and look out for MetaLetters and Metaversal signage, stickers, T-shirts, and merchandise during NFT.NYC. It’s going to be, to use the parlance of those far hipper than us, “lit.”

🤐 Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies 🤫

Sounds rare 🎧

Art of the Matter 📢

One of the major failings of current metaverses is that they seek to mimic the real world. Why limit yourself to things as they are when you could create a new (virtual) reality of things as they could be?

That’s just one of the questions Jessica Angel and Craig Wilson will be talking to VR/AR expert, metaverse maven, and founder of Frontier Collective, Dan Burgar, on Monday, 23 May on their weekly Twitter Spaces series Art of the Matter.

Head over to the tweet below to set a reminder for a session about the infinite possibilities of the virtual, and the responsibility those of us building an open metaverse have to ensure it’s better than real life, not just a simulacrum of it.

Or set a reminder of your own on the calendar or mobile device of you’re choosing (we believe in freedom of choice and platform agnosticism), but whatever you do, tune in at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET.

Probably nothing 🤔

All aboard OpenSea’s Seaport 🚢

On Friday, the leading NFT marketplace on Ethereum, OpenSea, announced a new protocol called Seaport designed not just for its own marketplace “but for all builders, creators, and collectors of NFTs” because the core smart contract is “open source and inherently decentralized, with no contract owner, upgradeability, or other special privileges.”

What does the mean for the regular degen? For starters, it means more granular control over interactions. Want to bid on a whole collection but only by specific traits? That’ll be no problem. Want to tie potential sales prices to a range based on current pricing at the time of the transaction? Seaport will allow for that, too. Who knows, at this rate, we might even see OS incorporating rarity stats before the year is out. You never know your luck in the big town.

Memeland is coming 🐙

If you’ve spent a lot of time online over the past two decades, you probably know 9GAG, a company founded in 2008 that helped shape modern meme culture. Aside from boasting substantial Twitter (16.8 million) and Instagram (58.2 million) audiences, it’s one of the few media companies to survive the tumult of the last decade’s media shake-ups.

Now, it’s entering the web3 space with Memeland, and that matters… because meme culture powers web3 in more ways than many of us would like to admit. Moreover, given 9GAG has embraced pixel art for its metaverse play, and its list of illustrious investors and advisors includes the likes of Moonbird’s Kevin Rose, VeeFriends doyen Gary Vaynerchuk, and four-hour-everything guru Tim Ferriss, it evidently hasn’t come to play.

The original Memeland drop was delayed. Now, whether that’s because the market is down or because 9GAG knows it can extract more value if it waits for the next bull run, well, we can’t be sure, but we can be sure it’s worth watching whatever happens next.

Runner’s Race to 1K 💨

Runner is a new NFT project from the brilliant minds behind the likes of Hollywood smash hits The Hunger Games, Birds of Prey, and I, Tonya, among others. Its drop happens later this year, and ahead of it, the team behind it is releasing a comic book that grants some holders early access to the mint.

Ahead of the drop, if you’re among the first 1,000 people to follow the Runner Twitter account, join the Discord, and like and Retweet the promo tweet below, you could win a framed and signed first edition of the comic book.

Who knows, one day it could be as valuable as the first edition of Marvel or DC’s first-ever comic books, or the first runs of classic series like Spiderman, X-Men, or The Sandman. You lose nothing by entering, but you could win everything if you do. Which is what we call the definition of a no-brainer.

Bag boosters 💰

The week that was (13 - 20 May, 2022) 🗓

Last week, Azuki dominated, Otherdeeds were in second, and Okay Bears were in 10th position. This week Azuki has dropped to ninth spot, Okay Bears have climbed to third, and Otherdeeds have held steady. The newcomers this time around are Chimpers and GENE_SIS: The Girls of Armament.

🥶 We are all Mr. Meeseeks 💙

NGMI ☄️

Shillfest, OpenSea style 🤑

OpenSea recently added support for NFTs on the Solana blockchain. While the de facto marketplace for Solana NFTs, Magic Eden, has seen its transaction volumes boom in recent weeks, OpenSea hasn’t seen the same enthusiasm for its own Solana-based listings. To try and give them a bump, it decided to plug a few notable projects.

Which would’ve been all fine and well if the projects it had chosen were… well… better… or at least more representative of the best Solana has to offer. Instead, it chose such a poor selection of random Solana projects even Magic Eden couldn’t resist publicly dragging it.

To the moon 🌜

We can’t decide whether this is the beginning of a PFP revolution or the first signs that the category is about to die a horrible, ignominious death, but you can now use something called The Bueno Generator to create PFP collections without needing any ability to code.

In a move that’s almost certainly better news for all and sundry, Foundation has opened its platform to anyone who wants to play.

Pixel artist jmw327 set off a storm on Twitter after a tweet about trying their hand at NFTs in order to up their income not only went viral on NFT Twitter, but saw them net four times their previous annual income from the sale of a single piece.

Link-in-bio service Linktree has added support for Ethereum-based NFTs via a partnership with OpenSea (though, frankly, we’ll stick to rival Koji, which has supported NFT integration for ages).

And a16z released its 2022 “State of Crypto Report” which is worth a look, even if you only read the “5 key takeaways” or CTRL/CMD+F for “NFTs.” You do you, boo.

🪡 Thread of the week 🧵

Goats only 🐐

Whether you want “utility” from every NFT, or you think the utility of NFT art is the art itself, (🤔) you should be watching or listening to Goats and the Metaverse.

In each episode, collectibles OG and entrepreneur Stan “The Goat” Meytin and Metaversal co-founder and CEO Yossi Hasson talk about digital and IRL collectibles, NFTs, and the week’s news worth knowing.

This week, they explain what generative art is (and why it’s booming), unpacked Memeland NFT from meme lords 9GAG, and looked at Degen Toonz. Check out the latest episode here:

Aside from providing invaluable insights into digital art and collectibles, Stan and Yossi are also putting together a collection of NFTs dubbed “The Goat Vault.” When the show hits 5,000 subscribers on YouTube, one of those lucky subscribers will win the contents of the vault which, at last count, was valued at over $30,800.

Prefer listening? Check out Goats and the Metaverse on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, or wherever you get your podcasts.

LFG 🎉

Making frens 👯‍♂️

This week, we attended Permissionless in Miami, Florida, and VeeCon in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Why do we mention this? Because we believe that a fundamental part of building community is meeting in person, shaking hands, breaking bread, and sharing ideas and strategies for building the sort of open, equitable, inclusive, welcoming, and revolutionary metaverse we’re trying to create with our partners.

Much of web3 happens online, but as anyone who’s spent recent years working remotely will tell you, there’s no substitute for in-person interactions. To that end, we’re putting together a calendar for the year’s events. So if you’re hosting an NFT event (whether in the flesh or virtual) and would like to see it included, please reach out to us at [email protected].

Speaking of community, this week, we reached 5,000 followers on Twitter. Thank you to all of you who’ve followed us. We’ve got so many amazing projects to show you soon.

Money <> mouth 💸

Each week we’ll offer you a look at an NFT project we’ve invested in and the motivation behind it. This week we’re looking at “Dragons #366” by generative artist William Mapan.

“Dragons” is Mapan’s first series on Tezos-based generative art platform fx(hash). He’s traditionally minted his work on Ethereum-based Art Blocks. Since mint, the project has consistently ranked in the top 10 projects by volume traded on fx(hash). We’re delighted to hold a piece from such an iconic project… and such an inventive and beautiful one at that.

IYKYK 😉

Until next time, see you in the Metaverse.