Market Updates
Weekly NFT Volume
NFT Weekly Volume sees a small spike this week, rising an estimated 24% from the previous week.
This is partially due to the Azuki Vegas event, increasing the activity levels of the Azuki ecosystem.
On Blur, the number of Azuki and Beanz on Blend, whether it be borrowing or lending, has increased overall as traders try to capitalise on any news.
Blur continues taking majority market share of 74%, while Opensea + Opensea Pro takes 21%, leaving 5% for platforms such as LooksRare, x2y2 and more.
Weekly Active NFT Traders
Active Trading Wallets continue to fluctuate as we see a dip in active wallets this week.
There were a total of 80,901 active wallets during this week, compared to last week's number of 95,771.
When will we recover???
Large Cap PFP Index
NFTs continue to take a hit as powerhouse Yuga Labs loses dominance slowly.
Gap between CryptoPunks and BAYC widens again, putting CryptoPunks as the only PFP project above the 400,000 ETH Market Cap.
A significant dip in BAYC and MAYC of 16.16% and 15.97% respectively, sees Azuki overtaking MAYC in Market Cap.
DeGods also takes a significant hit, losing about 10.29% following a nice pump last week.
CloneX continues to weaken and falls below the 40,000 ETH Market Cap range.
Mid Cap PFP Index
Mid Caps had a mixed week, but mostly following the same trend as Large Caps, seeing a general dip.
Again, Yuga loses dominance, seeing gap between Pudgy Penguins and BAKC widening.
Milady Makers experiences a 10.38% rise, overtaking BAKC as the second largest Mid Cap.
Potatoz and Doodles dips 17.34% and 20.98% respectively. Pain for Doodles again as they approach closer to the 10,000 ETH Market Cap.
VeeFriends, surprisingly, with a slight rise of 5.38%, catching up to Potatoz.
Trending NFT Projects of the Week
Newly minted collection "Utility Wen" sees a ton of volume and sits at an estimated 3x from the mint price of $96.
Beanz makes top 5 this week following the Azuki Vegas event.
Spotlights
Inscriptions on Ethereum = Ethscriptions...?
What are Ethscriptions?
You’ve heard about inscriptions on Bitcoin, but what are Inscriptions on Ethereum? Ethscriptions is a concept developed by Tom Lehman (former CEO of Genius.com). It’s the process of using Ethereum's “call data” to embed an image directly onto the Ethereum main chain. According to Tom Lehman, it's cheaper and more decentralised than using contract storage.
Currently, the most popular 10,000 collection on Ethscriptions is Ethereum Punks.
How to create an Ethscription:
> Step One: Convert an image with a maximum size of 90KB to a Base 64-encoded data URI (data:image/png;base64,...) using a service like base64-image.de.
> Step Two: Convert the data URI to hex using an online tool like hexhero.
> Step Three: Send a 0 ETH transaction to the person you want to own the Ethscription with the hex data from Step 2 in the "hex data" field.
> Step Four: If no one has Ethscribed the same data, your Ethscription is created, you're good to go. (You can’t Ethscribe duplicate data)
The above steps are a TLDR and you can find the full information on the website created by Tom Lehman here.
Can I buy and sell Ethscriptions?
Absolutely! You can buy and sell Ethscriptions via EmblemVault on Opensea.
As Ethscriptions are not natively tradable on Ethereum, smart contractors do not recognise them. Therefore, the EmblemVault is required.
If you have created your Ethscription and want to sell it on Opensea, follow this very simple walk-through video.
What does this mean?
Ethscriptions is a new technology developed on Ethereum that is supposed to be cheaper and "truly on-chain". Whether it's here to stay or simply the hype, is extremely hard to predict.
However, it's important to note that Ordinals were also seen as a trend 6 months ago, but everyone is now scrambling to get involved. So, anything can happen.
Relevant Links
Base 64: http://base64-image.de
Hexhero: https://www.hexhero.com/converters/utf8-to-hex
Ethscriptions Guide: https://ethscriptions.com/
Ethscriptions Opensea: https://opensea.io/collection/ethscriptions
NFT influencer Elena delays Ordinals drop following controversy
Best known for her daily threads and updates, NFT influencer Elena faces criticism for using stolen artwork in her Ordinals collection, "Atomic Ordinals". The collection was initially scheduled to launch on Magic Eden's Bitcoin Creator Launchpad on 21 June, with a mint price of 0.05 BTC.
Elena was first called out by Mulan, another NFT influencer & Artist. The initial criticism raised was regarding the low effort pixel art and high mint price. Mulan stated in her thread that the low resolution meant that it was unprintable and undisplayable. Charging $1,500 USD for that art was unacceptable.
Elena then postponed the mint of the collection after being caught using stolen artwork by DachshundWizard, a well-known shitposter. Mulan released a second thread showing the comparison between Elena's works and the originals.
On 23 June, Elena announced her decision to proceed with the mint, which will include a FREE mint and an art rework.
This has divided the Twitter community, with one half supporting Elena for her work in the space and the other despising her actions. Elena has also received death threats, which in our opinion, are unwarranted. But we'll let you guys be the judge.
What does this mean?
While we wouldn't wish for Elena's downfall, this seems to be a mistake that someone of her status shouldn't be making. It will be a hard comeback for Elena.
We've also noticed that her daily rewinds have become less consistent, which was the initial value she brought to the space.
With that, Azuki has also revoked Elena's "Azuki Resident Researcher" status and grant. This points towards an unfortunate decline in trust and influence.
While monetisation is and will always be the goal for a Twitter threador/influencer, and there's no fault in that, Elena could have done better and monetised her content in a different way.
We still foresee Elena minting out her collection, especially now that it is a free mint. So if you are whitelisted, there's no harm in minting.
Relevant Links:
Atomic Ordinals Twitter: https://twitter.com/atomordinals
Elena Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElenaaETH
Mulan Twitter: https://twitter.com/mulan_art
DachshundWizard Twitter: https://twitter.com/dachshundwizard
Magic Eden Ordinals Marketplace: https://magiceden.io/ordinals
Azuki lights up Vegas (and the NFT space)
Azuki’s event of the year, "Follow The Rabbit" has arrived.
Earlier this year, Azuki pulled out of NFT NYC, which surprised a lot of people. Instead, they announced a standalone event titled "Follow The Rabbit" in the summer, in Las Vegas.
Holders had to reserve their spot via Tokenproof, an NFT-IRL events token gating platform.
"Azuki Las Vegas is the result of us trying something new. Why take part in an overpriced conference (NFTNYC) when it's the projects that are bringing the community together? "
- Zagabond
Event Details:
Venue: Hakkasan Night Club Vegas
Date: 23 June
Time: 10pm to 2am (PDT)
With very little teased about what was going to happen, there were a ton of speculation about what was going to happen. There were talks of a token drop, $BEANZ, an airdrop of a new collection, or even an Anime release. The speculation led to a pump in the floor price of Azuki, from 12 ETH to 16 ETH (estimated).
During the week of the event, community members organised community events, meet-ups, casual dinners and drinks. A handful of community members also created physical items such as badges, patches, and stickers to give out to fellow Azuki holders.
Azuki announced that these community events would be scheduled to fit around Azuki's main "Follow the Rabbit" event, working with community members to ensure that the events are complementary to the main event. It’s always great to see community members taking on initiatives to help grow the brand.
On the event day, members gathered inside Hakkasan Nightclub for the much anticipated main event. The highlight, was a well done animation of Azuki characters, along with an Avatar-esque storyline. This lead up to Zagabond's silhouette walking up to the screen and dropping the iconic "Check your motherf*cking wallets".
You can check out the animation posted on here, on the Azuki Twitter page.
Azuki also airdropped every Azuki holder an “Elemental Bean” while every Azuki and Beanz holder was airdropped a commemorative Soul-Bound Token, the "Elemental Chip".
Azuki Elementals was now introduced as the third drop of the Azuki ecosystem, with 10,000 airdropped to Azuki holders and the other 10,000 to be minted.
Azuki Elementals Mint Details:
Mint Date: Tuesday, 27 June 9:00 AM PT
Total Supply: 20,000
Supply To Be Minted: 10,000
Reveal Style: Optional reveal after sell out, Gacha style. (like Renga Blackbox)
Mint Price: 2 ETH
Mint Phases: Phase 1 (Azuki Holders), Phase 2 (Beanz Holders), Phase 3 (Public)
Mint Mechanisms: Deposit first, difference is refunded.
For detailed information, refer to this Tweet:
✦ 9:10 AM PT - BEANZ Presale
✦ 9:20 AM PT - Public Sale
azuki.com/elementals
342
What does this mean?
No one has seen how these Elementals will look which leaves much to be desired and with current unfavourable market conditions, how they will be received is yet to be seen.
Azuki also received criticism for the high mint price and short mint period. The scale of what they are trying to do is "raising 20,000 ETH in 30 minutes". While there are many sceptics that this is possible with the current market, Azuki is well known to have one of, if not the strongest community and if there's any project that can pull this off, chances are, it's Azuki.
While there are a ton of positives, we find it hard to believe that this is overall bullish for the NFT space due to the huge amount of liquidity extracted out of the markets.
But whether it is a net positive (whether Azuki can use this money to onboard the masses), or net negative, is too early to comment.
Trader's Handbook
Steps for a better chance at minting:
1. Bookmark the mint site beforehand (azuki.com/elementals)
2. Make sure you have all the ETH required to mint (We'd recommend having 1-2 ETH extra for safety)
3. If you want to attempt minting during the Beanz phase, be sure to familiarise yourself with Metamask custom gas settings and set it beforehand. You can find a guide here - "how to customise gas settings in Metamask"
4. *** If you are familiar with bots, use it for a significant advantage.
A snapshot will be taken a few hours before the mint, do make sure that the assets (Azuki/Beanz) are in the wallet you want to mint from.
Always remember to stay vigilant and double check everything before clicking links and signing transactions.
Relevant Links:
Azuki Twitter: https://twitter.com/Azuki
Azuki Elementals Website: http://azuki.com/elementals
Metamask Gas Customisation Guide: https://support.metamask.io/hc/en-us/articles/360022895972-How-to-customize-gas-settings#:~:text=Click%20on%20the%20fee%2C%20and,for%20your%20transaction%20to%20complete