Welcome to another edition of the Weekend Degen Report.
What to expect: 1490 words a 6-minute read.
You can support me on Patreon or subscribe to premium below. I also encourage you to check out my archives and podcast for more interviews and writing.
Creative Corner
GM GM.
Here is what I got going on my end. Last week I dropped a premium article regarding courtyard. You can read it below.
This week I will be dropping a YouTube video regarding Courtyard as well, so if you missed the article it will have the highlights. This will be my method going forward, premium subscribers will get the research one week before general.
Last months BlockMon was a fun one. Next one will be November 27, where I will be opening a box of Evolving Skies which is a ~$450 box of Pokemon. If you want to get in on the fun you can visit my store.
Lastly, I will be launching a new segment on my podcast that will make it so I have content even when I am still interviewing artists. Title is Market Muse (name inspired by ACK). I will be doing this bi-weekly (first episode this week, aka the weeks I am not writing a premium article here so I can stay sane.
Okay enough of the shilling, lets get to the news. CIAHOAD
Knowledge
With the NBA season starting. Did you know Shaq made almost 12,000 baskets in his career but only one of them was a 3-pointer. That one shot can be seen below. Kind of nuts to think about since he had a long career and is a hall of famer. Especially considering now a days, everyone chucks 3s thanks to Curry.
NFT Space
This week's recap of the news starts off with Lucrece, who dropped a 6529 meme card called Nightmare Gothic. It sold out within seconds, a really awesome piece inspired by American Gothic.
A piece that that debuted before The Great Depression. It was meant to leave the viewer with a positive image before shit hit the fan. Is Lucrece trying to impart us with a positive image? Lucrece has created hilarious timely memes before and this is definitely up there with one of them.
On the Manifold side, they've been really killing it recently. They did the on-chain minting a couple of weeks ago and now it looks like they're exploring being the platform to help artists launch NFTs combined with physicals. It seems you can apply if you're an artist who wants to get physical, so let's see what comes of that soon.
AlienQueen had a new drop as well, called The Visionary. It's a really awesome piece and I've been really digging AlienQueen recently, gathering as many pieces as I can. It seems like both the tabz collectors and the SuperRare collectors will be able to get on this edition. But I may have to check out secondary as I am in neither group.
YugaLabs are partnering up with MagicEden. Magic Eden is a Solana marketplace, and it looks like they're trying to become a cross-blockchain market. They're moving into the ETH market space, so it looks like Bored Apes is partnering up with Magic Eden to make sure that they contractually obligate sellers to honor creator royalties, taking a stance against OpenSea. We'll see how this partnership goes. Solana has a ton of VC funding so they may be a nice catalyst for their tech.
Speaking of OpenSea, they cut half of their employees as they're moving in a new direction. It doesn't surprise me; a lot of tech companies and companies as a whole have been letting go of people. It seems like a quick, easy way for them to start fresh. Maybe they overhired quickly when it was a bull market. OpenSea seems to be at a crossroads, no longer the leader in the space, but more reacting to others. Maybe moving toward a more lean and agile team will be good for them, or it may be the beginning to the end.
In the world of DeFi I was reading this post by Bankless and it caught my attention. It spoke about some new tech called intents; here is a summary of what I can gather. Intents could revolutionize trading. They're an easy, user-friendly way for individuals to express their trading preferences and have solvers or market makers fill those preferences. This could potentially drive a wider range of trading options, which could ultimately drive the price down.
An example of an intent might be: "I want to buy 0.5ETH at X price." With that intent, a solver can figure out how to buy or sell at that desired price. They'll execute those orders at the best possible rate, using the best options and liquidity available from both on-chain and off-chain sources. This could greatly increase the user experience in crypto transactions and hopefully support growth.
Right now, there's a really big entry gap for people to get into DeFi. There are a lot of platforms out there, a lot of tools that can help you with DeFi. Because of that, it really just depends on what tool you use and how user-friendly it is. Hopefully, this will make it easier. You won't have to worry about knowing what 1inch, Uniswap, finance protocols, or DeFi networks are. It will kind of just take care of it for you. This should help with onboarding a bunch of users.
In other big news, xcopy dropped Remnants which was a part of the SuperRare pass. It really took off immediately from a sales perspective. It has already done more than 60Eth in volume, with the floor at 7eth right now. AlgoBro which recently dropped as well, for example, has had multiple sales since dropping, ranging from 6eth to about the peak of 9.6eth. Now it's back down to the sevens. It's had about seven different sales, doing about 57eth in volume. It's definitely one of the pieces that I want to add to my collection.
This new direction that xcopy is going in is different. Some people like it, some people don't. It's very similar to Steady from the Noble drop. That was the first piece that started off this new exploration of style. With a more abstract style xcopy could gather newer collectors into the fold; time will tell.
We also got a preview, thanks to NFTNow, of ACK's drop with Avant Arte. The name of the piece is called Warothy, a really great piece. It's a very gorgeous piece, one that I definitely want to hopefully add to my collection.
Inspired by Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, she's a dreamer, I'm a dreamer myself, making everything happen without struggle and tribulation. The piece itself glitches as well irl, which makes this a banger and half. There will be 25 editions priced at 5,000 Euros. A piece of fine art worthy of my blank walls.
Lastly, FXhash aka the Tezos Casino is lauching v2 on December 1st. With it a slew of new features as well as being a cross chain platform (eth and tezos gen art). FXhash has come a long way from the days of only being open for a few hours/days at a time to now. Bravo to the team and may this upgrade bring you the respect your deserve.
The Zealy.io word for this weeks read is, “intent”. Make sure to get in on the fun and giveaways.
Notable Sales
I was rushing to get out of a meeting to get this piece but BBA beat me to it. The first Security by Ripcache sold for 2.490eth. More recently another sale of this happened a couple hours ago for 3.2eth.
No Favour sold for 19.99eth.
A skull of Luci traded hands for 75eth.
This dope ass collab with uczine x Str4ngeThing sold for 2eth.
Upcoming
Keeping an eye out on this Gundam x McDonald collab to see if it makes it to the states. I am big Gundam fan and this would dope af.
I am looking forward to more and more Pokemon cards being traded on the blockchain. One of the biggest trades (so far) regarding Pokemon took place this past week.
Meme Of The Week
I recently went to the framers to drop off my coral ACK print.
Fin
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
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