Notable Pepes are the Latest Craze

GM. It's Monday again. Whether you're braving the office jungle or embarking on a new personal quest, we've got just the thing to kickstart your journey. We're going to take you on a wild ride through the world of JPEGs, so buckle tight and let's get right into it.

Today we cover:

• BAYC's rollercoaster price action over the weekend

• Notable Pepes gain traction

• ON1 Force announces its rebirth in today's News

• New projects corner

Market Update: BAYC Shenanigans over the weekend

It was a rollercoaster weekend for NFTs. We saw Machibigbrother (an NFT whale) liquidating $17M worth of NFTs including 90 BAYCs, 191 MAYCs, 112 Azukis and 308 Otherdeeds. This temporarily sent the floor prices for BAYC down below 60 ETH, triggering fears of a liquidation cascade that would further depress floor prices.

At one point, people were fearful that bid farming on Blur would kill NFT floor prices, given the shenanigans that went on. Since then, floor prices for BAYC have recovered somewhat and the fear seems to have subsided.

(BAYC price chart above courtesy of Gem.xyz)

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Notable Pepes are the Latest Craze

💲 What to know: Notable Pepes is an NFT project by Vincent Van Dough, an anonymous prolific art collector and Pepe connoisseur.

Pepe the frog is one of the most popular internet memes today. It was created by artist Matt Furie and the meme has been widely adopted in cryptocurrency circles.

☘️ In the weeds: Notable Pepes is following the playbook of Punk6259's Seize the Memes project (which we covered last month). It aims to proliferate the Pepe culture through the use of Limited Edition mints.

The first collection, Pepe Checks, was released as an Open Edition a few weeks ago at a price of 0.0069 ETH ($11). A total of 237,800+ NFTs were minted, now at a floor price of 0.03 ETH ($50). Owning a Pepe Check gives you a chance to win an allowlist spot for all future card collections.

Every Sunday, 5 new card collections will drop. Each collection is a new interpretation of the Pepe by a different artist and will have varying edition sizes (typically small, 100 to 1000). There will be a total of 50 card collections in each Series.

Yesterday, Cards Collections #3 - #7 just dropped. Already, the rarest collection with an edition of 100, Pepe Chairs, is sitting at a floor price of 4.9 ETH. Pretty good considering each card costs just 0.069 ETH to mint. Pepe Chair is by artist Danguiz, who is also the director of AOTM — an art gallery specializing in contemporary digital art.

🤑 Why it matters: Memes play a huge role in NFT culture. It is how messages are spread, in a fun and harmless way. Pepes have been adopted by crypto natives as their meme of choice and are a representation of crypto culture.

Vincent Van Dough is an influential art collector. He proudly declares that a "contingent of Rare Pepe artists & scientists, Fake Rare creators, and representatives of the frogs have been assembled to give rise to a new movement, spreading dank Pepes far and wide.". We wouldn't fade him.

Economically, it's an interesting experiment with the use of a series of low-supply editions resulting in slow inflation in the total supply over time. The idea is that the collector base (and hence demand) will grow over time, which could counter the inflation of new cards dropping each week. Whatever happens next, we will all get to enjoy some good Pepe art.

Today's News & Coolest Tweets

• ON1 Force, a 10k PFP project, announces its rebirth and future plans under its new ownership.

• Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins joins Games For A Living, a Web3 gaming startup

• Ryan Carson, NFT fund manager and host of the Daily Dose, announces he is "taking a break" from Web 3.

• Bitcoin's Ordinals Wallet releases an airdrop.

🐥 Lots of people are minting Coinbase's Open Edition NFT (It's still open for 6 days)

🐥 Creator perspectives on royalties

🐥 90% of tokens in top NFT collections have not traded at all this year

🐥 How Web3 unlocks the next version of Fandom

🐥 Collab + Currency (Consumer-focused VC)'s weekly roundup

New Projects Corner

🍿 (Game) Degen Zoo is a community-focused effort to build a game in 30 days

🍿 (Collectibles) Tarzan coming soon

That's it for today folks, see you tomorrow. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). And if you aren't already a subscriber, join us now to get all the daily alpha you need.

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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.