Blur Season 2 is ending on 20 November

Welcome to The Metadata, the only NFT newsletter that you’ll ever need.

To make sure every single issue is impactful for you, we'll be releasing a fresh issue once a week.

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Today we’re back to our usual programming, covering:

• Winds of Yawanawa surges in price. Why?

• Blur Season 2 will end on 20 November. How will this impact the token price?

• Our favourite tweets on NFTs and gaming

Is WoY the next Fidenza?

Winds of Yawanawa (WoY) by Refik Anadol has been stealing the limelight this week. It’s not every day that a generative art collection catapults to the top of the leaderboards, above our favourite PFP collections like Mutant Apes, but that’s exactly what WoY did.

Over the past 7 days, its floor price has doubled from 6.5 ETH ($10,000) to 13 ETH ($20,000), indicating of robust demand. Why? Refik is one of the most celebrated artists in the space. One of his artworks, Unsupervised, was acquired by MoMA last week and will be in its permanent collection.

And there’s a story behind WoY. Refik uses weather data (wind speed, temperature etc) from the Yawanawa tribe in the Amazon rainforest to create mesmerising, dynamic data paintings in his signature style.

2 years on… Could WoY actually be the “next Fidenza”? Time will tell.

Blur: We Have a Date on 20 Nov

Probably the most interesting announcement last week has to be Blur finally setting a date: Season 2 will finally end on 20 November.

How could this impact the BLUR token? Here’s out take:

• The end of Season 2 will lead to 300M+ BLUR tokens being distributed as rewards to Season 2 participants. Some of the large farmers (Hanwe, CBB) will likely receive a a substantial share of the rewards (~30%).

• The current circulating supply for BLUR is ~1 billion. So the end of S2 will result in a 30% increase in circulating supply: potentially ~$50M in sell pressure if all farmers sell their rewards

• Many farmers have had a tough run with Blur farming. NFTstats.eth did an analysis on how farmers are down 50,000 ETH ($75M+) from Blur farming. It’s reasonable to expect that many will sell the token to partially recoup their heavy losses.

• What does the token actually do? There is no utility for the BLUR token today, except for governance rights. Blur currently lacks a revenue-generating mechanism and doesn't have a community treasury, raising questions about the token's intrinsic value.

• However, this could change soon. Arca, a digital asset fund, put up a proposal last week to turn on the fee switch. In the proposal, Blur would charge a 1% fee on all trades and use the fees to buy back and burn BLUR tokens. Essentially, this would be a revenue sharing mechanism and will provide support for BLUR price.

• So far, the community has been divided on this issue. Some have expressed concerns over the timing of the fee switch:

  • Users’ price sensitivity to fees is at an all-time high

  • Fees could chase farmers away and reduce liquidity even more

  • Would it be better to wait till markets start to recover first before implementing fees?

Even if not implemented any time soon, it’s worth thinking about how to build value drivers for the BLUR token, and when should fees be implemented. NFT markets are in a fragile state today, and one wrong move could see Blur fall out of the game. Achieving that fine balance between short-term gains and long-term sustainability is a tough challenge. Blur’s fate is on the line.

Our Favourite Tweets

🐥 The Pudgy Penguins team works 14 hour days. Dedication

🐥 Is acquiring an OG NFT project IP the way to go?

🐥 Web3 gaming will absolutely own Free-to-Play games

🐥 Axie Infinity still has 100,000+ MAUs today

🐥 BIGTIME launches with a bang. Is launching a token the best marketing strategy for a game?

🐥 Nouns are into gaming too

🐥 Polygon shrewdly dropped a proposal for use its L2 solution to build ApeChain, a dedicated blockchain for the Ape ecosystem

🐥 OpenSea launches its creator studio, taking on Manifold and other similar creator platforms

That's it for today folks. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe with just one-click:

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only. None of this is financial or investment advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets. Minting and buying NFTs is risky. Please do your own research.