Ordinals fever

Welcome to The Metadata.

🚨 Final chance to fill up this survey and help us improve! If you have 2 minutes, it would mean a lot. Plus, you'll be in with a chance to win a Lollipop Racing item! 🚨

If you’ve done so, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Today we cover:

• Black Monday in the crypto world means NFTs are not catching a bid. What’s everyone worried about?

• Data Tuesday: Ordinals seems to be bucking the trend in terms of interest

• The case for Penguins to flip Azuki

• A great list of upcoming free mints

Market Update: Black Monday

NFT markets these days are as flat as a pancake left too long on the griddle. The Forkast 500 NFT index is down 5% on the week. Everyone’s attention is focused instead on:

1. Base, the new L2 by Coinbase with lots of memecoin activity, rullpulls and scammers.

2. Existential crisis in DeFi land. Several CRV pools were exploited this week, leading to questions about the health of Curve, one of the largest DeFi protocols with billions of dollars in locked liquidity

The Curve / DeFi situation is still evolving. Some are even calling it a “Black Monday” in the crypto space. With all this turmoil, we don’t think NFTs will catch any bid until this situation resolves.

Notable collections:

• Bored Ape Yacht Club: 29 ETH (-5% from last week)

• DeGods: 8.2 ETH (-1%)

• Azuki: 5 ETH (+4%)

• Mutant Ape Yacht Club: 5 ETH (-1%)

• Pudgy Penguins: 4.4 ETH (+8%)

Notable NFT sales:

• An Autoglyph for 199 ETH

• A trippy fur BAYC for 275 ETH

• A pipe Chromie Squiggle for 49 ETH

Ordinals Bucks The Trend

The total number of weekly NFT traders on Ethereum continues to fall to its lows for the year (48,971). It’s nearly back to July 2021 levels, before the huge NFT bull run started.

One ecosystem that appears to be bucking the trend is Ordinals: at least in terms of new mints. The number of Ordinals inscriptions (mints) shows no signs of slowing down, with over 400k inscriptions on a single day in July and bringing the total inscriptions to 20M+. The rising number of new inscriptions indicates a significant level of creator interest.

We hear on the grapevine that several top contemporary artists are considering dropping new works on Ordinals.

Secondary market activity on Ordinals has fallen significantly from its peak in May (BRC-20 craze), but it’s still higher than it was in March & April this year.

The Ordinals ecosystem could be 6 - 9 months away from exploding, given the amount of development and a slowly rising level of interest. In light of these trends, we strongly recommend keeping a vigilant eye on this sector for emerging opportunities.

Our Favourite Tweets

🐥 The case for Penguins to flip Azuki. It’s pretty compelling

🐥 Why culture takes time to accumulate. It doesn’t happen in a matter of weeks, but years.

🐥 Multi-data NFTs (ERC-7160), a new primitive?

🐥 Warner Bros announces a new accelerator program to explore new technologies, including Web3

🐥 LV’s VIA speedy bag that was given to LV trunk NFT holders has a floor of 15 ETH

🐥 DeGods Season 3 begins next week… finally. We still don’t know what it is though.

🐥 Azurbala, the storytelling project by Tally Labs, teases a new beginning on Aug 17

🐥 CBD series 4 begins, minting at 0.065 ETH each. Price down after announcement that control will be relinquished to whoever owns the most CBDs.

🐥 Mighty Labs, a DAO is doing a Pioneer drop

Upcoming Mints

🍿 A great list of upcoming free NFT mints

That's it for today folks, see you tomorrow. 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.