10,000 NFTs in 20 Minutes
Photo artist Jeremy Cowart set a new record this week creating 10,000 unique photo NFTs in 20 minutes in front of a live audience. Here's how he did it, plus an update on Jack Butcher's Opepens.
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news includes:
A new photo NFT record
Jack launches 1st 2 Opepen packs
Blur Blend hype wears off
$PEPE soars again
SUI debuts
📷 Jeremy Cowart Makes NFT History
While the NFT market itself may be fairly boring these days, artists continue to try to spice things up.
And Jeremy Cowart may be leading the pack, setting an unofficial record on Tuesday by creating a 10,000 photo NFT collection live in just 20 minutes.
The kicker - each of the 10,000 photos are completely unique.
This is how it went down.
The Details
Jeremy Cowart is a renowned photographer having worked with subjects ranging from Barack Obama to Taylor Swift to the Kardashians, and published in Rolling Stone, the NY Times and Time.
For his latest venture into the NFT space, Jeremy created his collection AURAS on May 2nd at a live event in Nashville, TN.
Jeremy was a one-man shop for the creation process, not using a team.
Instead he did the following:
Used himself as the PFP and main character for the photos
Wore all white including a white mask
Leveraged his patent-pending lighting techniques, 3 layers of projection, and a 130-foot, $5M LED volume screen set behind him
Edited the photos instantaneously into 8 different styles using a pre-built custom app
He effectively embraced the concept of rarity and traits in typical PFP projects, and created his own through lighting, background projections and external things that happened around him during the live event.
And the live crowd got to watch it all go down in front of them, in just 20 minutes.
What are they saying?
A few telling quotes, from the Decrypt piece covering this story:
“This is the culmination of about 10 years of pushing myself in the studio and trying new things. Tonight is me revealing all of that for the first time.” - Jeremy Cowart
“The way that Jeremy’s art was flashing, sometimes the [music’s] tempo synced up perfectly. I was watching it like ‘Oh my god, we couldn’t have planned this." - Cristina Spinei, the composer whose work played during the live event
Sounds like the live event was enthralling.
How To Participate
If interested, the AURAS project is going on sale next Tuesday, May 9.
Supply: 10,000 total (999 free for his Block Queens holders)
Price: TBD
Time: 10 am ET for Block Queens holders, 11 am Allowlist, 12 pm public
Allowlist: premint.xyz/aurasbycowart/
Learn more and dive deeper with Jeremy's website.
🐸What's Jack Got Cookin with Opepens?
Jack Butcher has been slowly rolling out plans for the evolution of his Opepen project over the past several weeks, but things are speeding up.
This week he has officially launched his first two "packs", where the Opepen editions take on their final form for lucky raffle winners.
And demand has been off the charts.
Here's How It Works:
Each pack contains 80 NFTs with one overarching theme but different artwork
The packs contain editions of x/40, x/20, x/10, x/5, x/4, x/1
There will be 200 packs in total
Jack shares a preview of the art, and Opepen holders can opt-in to the raffle
If there is at least 200% interest (meaning 160 subs), the pack will go live
Winners will see their metadata change from the Opepen edition to the specific NFT from the pack (an edition ranging from a 1/1 to a 1/40)
It looks like Jack will roll out 2 packs at a time, on a weekly basis (though cadence not formalized yet).
This week Jack rolled out packs 1 and 2, and just yesterday we saw the final results.
And demand was off the charts.
By The Numbers:
The initial packs were significantly over-subscribed.
Pack 001 called "8x8" saw 8600% subbed to the forty edition and 13600% to the 1/1 (meaning 3,466 and 136 opt-ins respectively)
Pack 002 called "Brought to Light" was 1900% subbed to the forty and 4000% to the 1/1 (meaning 760 and 40 opt-ins respectively)
Early market action has been a bit tough to parse through, but looking at some current floors:
Opepen floor: 0.21 ETH
Brought to Light x/40: 0.4 ETH
Brought to Light x/20: 0.5 ETH
Brought to Light x/10: 1.2 ETH
Brought to Light x/5: 6 ETH
Brought to Light x/4: 4 ETH
8x8 x/40: 4.05 ETH
8x8 x/20: 7.2 ETH
8x8 x/5: 7.77 ETH
Not much is listed and of course fairly illiquid at these prices, but still nice to see the market valuing these initial Opepens fairly high.
Early reactions seem very positive to the art and the process overall. But it was very likely that the first few packs would be over-subscribed, given their being first and potential historical value.
We will see if the market keeps subbing to packs 10, 15, 20, etc. If the packs are not 200% subscribed, then Jack "throws out" the art and creates something new - a very interesting dynamic.
Looks like Jack might have a real winner on his hands here - but a lot of work remains to be done.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Trading volume was just over 13k ETH on Wednesday, down ~20% from Tuesday as the Blend pop wares off; NFTs mostly even on the day
Doodles opened applications for its community oversight positions called "Doodle Watch", available through May 5
A rare DeGods sold for 70 ETH ($129,000) yesterday, in one of the most notable NFT sales of this (very quiet) week
NBA Top Shot dropped new exclusive packs for its app users yesterday, with price points of $2.99 and $19.99
Forgotten Runes shared a progress update on its development of the Forgotten Runiversse yesterday, including its architecture, battles scenes, rewards and economy design
The Western Art Dept team announced its first NFT auction to be held May 9 - May 10, featuring 1/1s from multiple artists held on Foundation World
This Medusa DeGods sold for $129,000 yesterday
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
The crypto market jumped again on Wednesday; BTC +2% at $29,150; ETH +2.2% at $1,905
$PEPE rallied 100% to a new ATH of $720M MC; $TURBO rallied 30% to a $35M MC in a very volatile day
SUI debuted its mainnet and token launch, with $SUI doing a 13x from the presale price, now at $1.32
🚀 NFT Total Volume
MAYC (1,167 ETH, 11.35 ETH Floor)
Wrapped Cryptopunks (1,166 ETH, 52.8 ETH)
Azuki (956 ETH; 15.45 ETH)
DeGods (454 ETH, 8.36 ETH)
Milady (349 ETH, 3.2 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
Alpha Gardeners Pass (31%, 1.04 ETH Floor)
Wumbo Pass (29%, 2.4 ETH)
AKCB (20%, 0.6 ETH)
ALTS by adidas (10%, 0.32 ETH)
HV-MTL (3%, 1.24 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
The main drop on my radar today is Fuddies, from NFT and crypto personality Rain. It is dropping on the SUI mainnet which just opened yesterday and is likely the first (or at least one of the first) NFT projects to drop there.
Given the success of its token launch yesterday (SUI is holding at $13.8B FDV and already the 64th ranked coin), this will see some demand.
Otherwise, Escher is back for a new edition drop today from Jubbish Jay at an attractive entry price.
Escher Exclusives: "Circling" by Jubbish Jay (12:00 p.m. ET); 0.05 ETH
Flowers, Flowers, Flowers by Philip Colbert (12:30 p.m. ET); 0.029 ETH
Fuddies (4:00 p.m. ET); $125 on SUI
Remo's World (8:00 p.m. ET); 0.1 ETH
Enjoy this write-up? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's Project Schedule page.