A Big Day for Digital Art
Over $3M in digital art sales took place yesterday. Read on for the details and what it means for the market.
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news includes:
Over $3M in digital art sold in major day
Memecoin shares new airdrop details
Blur to allocate more than 300M tokens for SZN 2
Doodles unveil CAMP details
Neopets cancel their metaverse plans
💸 Art's Big Day
Yesterday was one of the biggest days for digital and generative art sales in months, across primary and secondary markets (let's throw Goose day out for now).
There were 5 different major new mints yesterday, the end of the Sotheby's Contemporary Discoveries auctions (which saw fireworks) and the beginning of the Gucci x Christie's Future Frequencies auctions.
How did each of those go, and what does it mean for the art market?
What happened?
Here were the major drops and events from yesterday:
Sotheby's auctions - final day
Braindrops "Dominoes in Fluxus" <minted 500 at 0.1>
Iconic Moments x Jackson Pollock "Beyond The Edge" <389 eth>
Prohibition "Beauty Supply Is Out of Du-Rags" <minted 190 of 333 at 0.09>
Art Blocks Curated "Gumbo" <minted out at 1.1 for 388>
Prohibition "Necromancer" <minted 240 at 0.05>
Gucci x Christie's Future Frequencies - kicked off
On top of that, a Deekay Motion 1/1 sold for 52.5 ETH on AOTM gallery.
Overall more than 1,570 ETH ($3M) was spent on art across all of these sales.
Looking at some of the highlights:
Sotheby's Contemporary Discoveries Auctions
Bids were not looking that strong just 24 hours out of the lots closing, but many finished strong and we saw some surprisingly high outcomes.
For those that were not following, this auction had hundreds of pieces spanning traditional modern art and digital art, with Art Blocks, CryptoPunks and 1/1s from leading artists featured as Grails III (from the 3AC collection).
A few of the most notable sales:
Fidenza #290: $279,400 (147 ETH)
Wild White CryptoPunk 4153: $254,000 (134 ETH)
Fidenza #203: $241,300 (127 ETH)
Ringers #502: $152,400 (80 ETH)
Ringers #978: $139,700 (73 ETH)
Seerlight "Lantern Festival": $76,200 (40 ETH)
Overall the sales notched over $1.2M (630+ ETH) across 17 lots with most pieces outperforming expectations (except the Wrapture and perhaps some of the lower-end Art Blocks).
Iconic Moments
The Iconic Moments x Jackson Pollock drop was a highlight of the day, with 4 of Jackson's pieces turned into NFTs for this collection.
Each of the 4 editions of 100 sold out at 0.79 ETH each, plus 25 full sets of the 4 sold for 2.93 ETH. That's a 389 ETH raise for the artist and team.
Iconic Moments then surprised holders by sharing that each would be eligible for an Ordinals NFT coming soon on Bitcoin thanks to Magic Eden.
Secondary is holding at 0.58 ETH this morning.
Prohibition Day 1
Prohibition, the new generative art platform on Arbitrum, has been off to a lightning fast start.
On Tuesday they launched their Day 0 project Monospatial (100 NFTs sold at 0.05 ETH, floor now 0.24).
Then yesterday they returned for 2 more drops from Ed Balloon and Andrew Mitchell.
Andrew's Necromancer saw success on primary, selling out its 240 NFTs at 0.05 ETH, with Ed Balloon's "Beauty Supply..." selling 190 of 333 at 0.09 ETH.
Current floors are 0.07 ETH and 0.09 ETH respectively.
Oh, and 2 more drops come tomorrow.
Art Blocks and Braindrops
Both of these established platforms saw success with their primary sales yesterday, but secondary results were mixed.
Braindrops "Dominoes in Fluxus" sold out its 500 NFTs at 0.1 ETH mint, reaching a 0.14 ETH floor on secondary on 6 ETH volume.
AB Curated "Gumbo" had the highest mint out of all the drops, selling out its 395 NFTs at the 1.1 ETH level, though the floor has fallen by almost 50% to 0.58 ETH on secondary (on 100 ETH volume).
Overall Takeaways
If you are an artist, these results were very encouraging. $3M worth of digital art sold in the depths of a brutal NFT and digital art bear market. Those artists featured in the Future Frequencies auctions are likely feeling better.
As a trader, the results are less positive. All of the major mints from yesterday are either at or below the floor, not a surprising outcome.
So much supply hit this market this week, and with $3M in primary sales, there just isn't that much to go around for secondary (I'm seeing just 128 ETH in secondary volume with Gumbo taking up 100 ETH of that).
Secondary markets are turning fairly illiquid, and quick.
It's fine if you are buying art you like and plan to hold; not as much if you're looking for a flip.
But perhaps removing the speculation and flip aspect of these art mints is what's needed for us to reset the market.
Regardless, congratulations to all the artists on a major day!
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Trading volume came in around 6k ETH in what is a new local low; leading NFTs were mostly green in a small relief rally
Memecoin shared new details for its airdrop, saying it will be 25% of the total supply (17.25B tokens), will go to MVPs, Captainz and Potatoz and there will be some unknown split between locked and unlocked tokens
Blur founder Pacman says the team does plan to allocate more than the original 300M tokens for Season 2 farmers
Moonbirds Mythics Egg activations and Oddities burns will begin today, with up to 100 Mythics able to be "born" each day until the 20k supply is reached
Doodles unveiled new details about its partnership with CAMP, including an exclusive grand opening event in Chicago, IL on August 17; OG Doodles holders can register through TokenProof to attend and claim up to 6 free tickets
Axie Infinity introduced Axie Experience Points (AXP) and Axie Levels, transforming Axies into dynamic on-chain NFTs that can evolve and improve over time
Solana Labs announced GameShift, a new web3 game development API simplifying the process of building games; the full suite of tools covers custody solutions, marketplaces, inventory management, NFT minting, and more
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
The crypto market was up slightly on Wednesday; BTC +1% at $30,300; ETH +0.6% at $1,920; XRP +2% at $0.81
Futureverse announced a successful $54M Series A funding round led by 10T Fund and Ripple, with plans to use the funds for its open metaverse platform and AI gaming
The Neopets Team (TNT) welcomed new leadership and canceled their metaverse plans, instead opting for a new mobile app called "World of Neopets"
🚀 NFT Total Volume
Azuki (1,384 ETH, 5.6 ETH Floor)
BAYC (1,342 ETH, 33.2 ETH)
MAYC (683 ETH, 6.07 ETH)
Milady (482 ETH, 2.73 ETH)
DeGods (249 ETH, 8.66 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
Full Send Metacard (51%, 0.31 ETH Floor)
Matrix 2061 (25%, 1.5 ETH)
Lazy Lions (17%, 0.22 ETH)
Genuine Undead (16%, 0.15 ETH)
Potatoz (11%, 1.84 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is a slower day after a packed week, with just a handful of notable drops on the radar spanning Ordinals, art and PFPs.
The art drop is "Interference" from Phaust, the generative art collective based in London. The sale will be a Dutch auction starting at 0.5 ETH with a 0.1 ETH resting price for the 236 NFTs.
Then Garbage Friends goes public for the remainder of its supply (~1,300). With the team reducing mint price to 0.065 ETH (from 0.1) it will probably sell out with the secondary floor at 0.09 ETH, but it may be close. Regardless upside is capped except for those going for a rare lotto.
If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
Metablocks (12:30 p.m. ET); BTC
Tonic x Phaust "Interference" (1:00 p.m. ET)
Garbage Friends - public sale (9:00 p.m. ET)
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 NFT Calendar page.