The NFT space can feel like information overload at times, so we’ve cut through the noise to deliver you a curated dose of what matters most. Your all-in-one weekly companion.
Headline News - $BLUR Token Goes Live, Marketplace Warfare and Numerous NFT Collections Get Swept
Otherdeed For Otherside tops the 7-day volume charts on OpenSea. Moonbirds sits in second, Mutant Ape Yacht Club is in third, Bored Ape Yacht Club is in fourth and Azuki is in fifth.
A favourite from the last bull-run, ON1 Force, saw its floor price increase by over 40% in the past week, with several large sweeps occurring. Cool Cats continued to attract attention amidst plenty of activity on their socials. They recently released their Cool Cats Journeys Litepaper. Meebits saw some huge sweeps over the past week, but the 20K collection, as is often the case, struggled to see a marked and sustained increase in its floor price.
Bitcoin Punks found their way into the Ethereum ecosystem via the Emblem Vault, and despite a huge amount of fake assets being purchased, witnessed an impressive and consistent run of sales. Floors fluctuated from around 0.25ETH to 1ETH across the week.
BEANZ Official saw great volume after announcing two new BEANZ characters, Jay and Jelly, putting it 7th by weekly volume. Checks - VV Originals, by Jack Butcher, sits one spot behind its older sibling, Checks - VV Edition, in weekly volume. It’s 11th in the charts with just under 4,000ETH traded.
NFT marketplace Blur has been ablaze with sales following the $BLUR token airdrop which went live earlier in the week. The platform has obliterated the competition in terms of daily volume. On Thursday it saw over $78M USD traded on its platform, compared to OpenSea’s $12M USD.
Two days after the $BLUR token went live, the platform launched an attack on rival OpenSea, making a public announcement encouraging users to boycott its rivals due to their creator royalties stance. Yesterday, OpenSea made a major announcement themselves, seemingly in response to Blurs actions. For more details, see the Talking Point section below.
NFT marketplaces and airdrops aside, there’s been plenty of other news in the web3 space, and we’ve got it all covered. Head into the sections below, click on the relevant links and get stuck in.
If you enjoy ZenCaps, don’t miss out on ZenDaily. It’s published Monday to Friday and provides a short recap of the past 24hrs in the NFT space. Subscribe for free here.
Curated News - the biggest stories of the past week
BIGGEST NFT Sale: CryptoPunk #4608 - 220ETH
Renowned NFT Artist Pplpleasr Directs New Linkin Park Music Video
Louis Vuitton Strikes Epic NFT Partnership with Yayoi Kusama
Brazil’s Oldest Bank Allows Residents To Pay Their Taxes Using Crypto
El Salvador to open a ‘Bitcoin Embassy’ in the United States
Over 100K Ordinals Minted on Bitcoin, Bringing Cheers and Network Congestion
Magic Eden Lays Off 22 Staff as Part of Companywide Restructuring
Gaming Company Square Enix Partners With Polygon for NFT Art Project
You Are the Art: Chainspace NFT portals connect Bitcoin and Ethereum
Sony Teams Up With Astar Network for Web3 Incubation Program
eBay NFT platform KnownOrigin launches creator smart contract
Educational: ETH and NFTs: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners and Experts
Educational: ZenAcademy’s 30 Days Of NFTs - Entry Level NFT Course
A word from our Founder: Welcome to ZenAcademy! and why to join
Project news & things we’re keeping an eye on
'Bitcoin Is the Best Brand in Crypto': Why DeGods NFTs Are Now on Bitcoin
NBA Top Shot Will Let Users Buy NFTs via Apple, Android Mobile Apps
NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Partners With MoonPay to Offer CC Payments
Rarible NFT Marketplace Annouced They Will Support Tezos Blockchain
Sappy Seals Will Launch Gamified Open Free Mint Collection On Bitcoin
Art Blocks and NFT Gallery Bright Moments Team Up to Bring Generative Art IRL
Talking Point - NFT Marketplace Warfare
Certainly the hottest topics this week were the $BLUR token going live and the subsequent royalties debate that ensued. The TL;DR is that Blur, with the momentum of their token launch in full flow, announced that it will enforce any royalty fee requested by any NFT project creator, so long as that creator blocks the trading of their collections on OpenSea. OpenSea’s response was to announce that they will be doing the following:
OpenSea fee → 0% for a limited time
Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new)
Marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter
There’s a lot of opinions being voiced on Twitter, but the overriding sentiment can be summed up as follows:
People view OpenSea’s announcement as too little too late, suggesting the platform took advantage of its position as market leader for far too long, by enforcing unnecessarily high fees
Users are highly unimpressed with OpenSea saying fees are 0% for a “limited time”, suggesting it’s simply a ploy to retain/attract users, before ramping it up again once they regain market dominance
The NFT community seems to prefer Blur over OpenSea at the moment
There are calls for a (long overdue) OpenSea airdrop to placate the community
Many notable figures say the royalties game has “always been a race to zero”
For more detailed analysis on this topic, please read the articles linked below.
OpenSea Announces Major Changes to Fees and Creator Royalties
OpenSea Drops Fees, Cuts Creator Royalty Protections as Rival Blur Rises
NFT Traders Flex Their Blur Airdrops: Here’s Who Got the Most Tokens
Zeneca’s Tip Of The Week - Always Be Listed
This is definitely a "do as I say, not as I do" thing, but it's something I've learned the hard way and with the beauty of hindsight. Generally, you always want to have your NFTs listed, unless they're in those rare "I am never selling no matter what" category. When I say "always be listed", I don't mean at floor -- I mean well above floor, generally.
The reason is that you never know when a) someone will decide they love yours and pay well above market price/floor for your specific NFT, or b) when some piece of news will drop and rocket the floor up significantly.
But, isn't that bad, if the floor goes up and we lose our NFT? Sure, if it stays high, but 95% of the time when there's a rapid and significant rise in floor price due to a news event, there's also a significant retrace.
By having your tokens listed well above floor, you can reap the upside when this happens and usually buy back in at a lower price point (if you want back in).
Yes it takes a bit of time to list everything, and to stay on top of your portfolio, and it costs money to de-list if you want to cancel your listing but in my opinion it's generally worth it.
One other side-tip is to use timed listings i.e. list something for 7 days or a month and if/when it expires, you can re-list (without paying gas again) at a new price.
ZenAcademy & 333 Club Noticeboard
ZenAcademy Community News
ZenAcademy’s Student IDs are available for everyone! We’re so excited to have reached this point, with over 8,750 Student IDs already claimed. It’s been amazing to be able to provide a FREE access point into our community for anyone wants to join. If you’ve not done so yet, Claim your token here: https://zenacademy.com/enroll. Remember, these are Soulbound NFTs which means that they cannot be sold or transferred out of the wallet that mints them. Also, the supply is unlimited which means that you do not need to rush.
Lately, we’ve noticed an increase in spam/scam posts made in the free-member (student) section of the Discord. This is mostly done by accounts who do not have a Student ID. Please remember to be extremely careful with anyone in the Discord, and triply so if they ask you to go to DMs or click any link -- this should send massive warning signs.
Because of the above issue, we will soon be token-gating the entire Discord. This shouldn't affect most people, because anyone can now mint a free Student ID and join us. If someone doesn't know how to do that (ie total beginner), please take a look at our FREE ‘30daysofnfts NFT Intro Course’. Here you can learn how to set up a wallet and buy an NFT.
Community member @NiklasPeterson has created a wonderful Figma file for anyone wishing to display their PFP in their student ID. Follow the instructions here (you'll need to click "get a copy" and sign in to Figma on your own end): https://www.figma.com/community/file/1205274415793853767
We're making some changes to the way ‘🎁│giveaways’ are run -Up until now, the allocations we have received have been split between The 333 Club and ZA, with token holders and OG members eligible to register. This has worked well and a lot of OGs have received a lot of value from this, but being mindful of the increasing price people are paying to buy a ZA NFT, we think it's fair and reasonable to reserve our giveaways to only those who have paid for a token in our ecosystem. That said, we always try to be inclusive and so we are going to carve out a small % of every giveaway for Student ID holders (most likely 5%). The net impact of this is that ZA Genesis / ZenChest holders will have increased odds to win a giveaway, OGs will have reduced odds, and Students will have a chance to win. The 333 Club members are unaffected and still have the best chances simply due to the low number of people entering those giveaways.
ZenAcademy - Latest Content Releases
YouTube Video: Episode #71 of Two Bored Apes is now available - BLUR Airdrop, Centre Pompidou and LACMA acquiring NFTs
YouTube Video: Episode #70 of Two Bored Apes is now available - ZenAcademy Student IDs (FREE NFT), Bitcoin NFTs, Dookey Dash Bots
Zeneca Newsletter: Letter 35: Lessons From Poker to Crypto
YouTube Shorts: How To Avoid SCAMS
YouTube Shorts: Which NFTs should you buy?
ZenAcademy Regular Events
The ZenDaily Show hosted by Zeneca and Emileevee, every Mon-Fri. This space is all about education, information and entertainment. It'll have a focus on Web3 education, topical perspectives, and being a forum for the ZA community and beyond to join in & discuss what’s going on in the web3 world. Additionally, Zeneca will be doing what he does best: distilling complicated information into easily digestible bites.
Wellness Wednesdays - Hosted by @Kit777 every other Wednesday. Kit talks with one of our highly esteemed members in a Twitter spaces where we pause, take a break and discuss all things related to mental health/wellness and our shared human journey in life.
Artists Corner - Every other Wednesday, and hosted by KingInTheCastle, this event takes place in our Discord for our members. Artists take to the mic and share their journey, experiences and knowledge with our community. Hop in the call to learn and have fun.
Thankful Thursdays - hosted by Zeneca and Emileevee every Thursday at 17:00 ET. An hour escape from the chaos of web3, focused on bringing as many speakers up as possible, with zero pressure, to share what they're thankful for and discuss topics related to mental health, wellness and all things good.
333 Club’s weekly ‘This Week in NFTs’ Twitter Spaces, each and every Sunday. Follow the 333 Club Twitter page here for more info.
Join Poker Nights via our Discord. Events held weekly, with prizes to be won.
There’s a new ‘global-events’ forum in the ZA Discord to help facilitate IRL meet-ups amongst the community. Find more details here.
Don’t forget to keep across the Giveaways Discord channel, with plenty of allowlist spots up for grabs on a regular basis.
Follow RogueRaven on Twitter here: @RogueRavenNFT
Nothing in this or any other ZenCaps publication should be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in ZenCaps publications do not reflect those of Zeneca or the ZenAcademy.
Always exercise caution within the NFT space and adhere to best practices when it comes to making any investments. There is plenty of potential, but this comes with inherent risks.
Stay safe, and as always, good luck.