NFT Projects Enter the Acquisition Era
NFT Projects Enter the Acquisition Era
Pixel Vault dropped several bombshells yesterday, including the news that Gfunk had acquired the notable NFT Play-to-Earn game Wolf Game. Are acquisitions good for holders and/or buyers?
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news includes:
Pixel Vault adds advisors, new $GG details and acquires Wolf Game
Phantom adds new Auto Confirm feature
Pudgy left facing toys sell out in 8 seconds
DraftKings leads all NFT projects in sales with $4.5M after NFL pack drop
Rollbit and UniBot soar on back of tokenomics and featured releases
💰 The Acquisition Era Begins for NFTs
Rumors have been swirling for a few weeks now that some major NFT projects were shopping to get acquired.
Well in NFTs, when there's smoke there is always fire.
Yesterday we got news of a blockbuster acquisition of the Wolf Game project by Gfunk, as part of a larger Pixel Vault revamp.
And this came just days after the Lilttle Lemons project announced it was acquired.
Now the question becomes - is this good for holders?
Before answering that though, let's look at the 5 major announcements out of the Pixel Vault ecosystem.
Pixel Vault Reboots
Pixel Vault and their decentralized game protocol Reboot have had a very busy week.
In fact, they may have dropped more major announcements in the past 2 days than we have ever seen in NFT history.
To recap, news events from just this week include:
A new utility and governance token $GG
A new all-star cast of advisors
A teaser for their new game BattlePlan
The Supernova announcement that $GG is going to replace $POW, $PUNKS and Planets
The Wolf Game acquisition announcement
So this ecosystem has a new token ($GG) which is replacing the others, a new set of advisors, a new game coming and a marquee web3 game acquired.
I'd call that a big week.
That advisor list is absolutely a "who's who" of crypto and NFT leading personalities and builders, including Size Chad, Keyboard Monkey, Loopify, Dingaling, Bharat, Richerd, gmoney, seedphrase, Gfunk, Brycent, Farokh, Chris Jourdan, NFT Bark, and Onchain Studios.
The new BattlePlan game looks like a fun brawler game set to have onchain prizes, an active leaderboard and (I'm guessing) NFT integration (expecting more news on this soon).
Not to mention their addition of one of the biggest cult games in NFT history in Wolf Game.
And the team got out in front of questions swirling around what $GG meant for the other ecosystem tokens by sharing its Supernova video and blog explaining that $GG would in fact replace them.
Holders of Pixel Vault assets were definitely rewarded this week after months of patience.
Now they await more details on GG, the games and integration, and what it means for their NFTs.
Acquisitions - Bullish or Bearish
Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture - are NFT acquisitions a good thing for holders?
History says yes.
Though we don't have a large sample size, both the Pudgy Penguin and 0n1 Force acquisitions have been bullish catalysts for their ecosystem (let's put the Punks acquisition aside since it's more of an art project than a PFP).
Prior owners who either didn't know what to do with the brand, were in over their heads, or simply were ready to walk away were replaced with hungry new teams with big plans.
That's a win for holders, regardless of price action (though price action has been good).
We also have more strategic acquisitions like RTFKT (by Nike) and 10KTF (by Yuga), which drove a ton of value to both ecosystems (at least early on). Though the Nike acquisition does show the potential risks if the new owner doesn’t lean into the brand enough.
Are acquisitions good for the buyers?
That's a tougher question.
Buying an NFT project comes with a lot of baggage (i.e. the community). Most remaining holders are likely majorly underwater and probably bitter.
When Little Lemons was acquired, my first reaction was why? Why not just create new lemon art?
That one is a little more puzzling, even if the acquisition price was $0 (likely was, or close). We will see if we get more rationale as the owner and more details are released.
Buying Pudgy IP as one of the cutest PFPs from the 2021 NFT cycle made more sense, and Nike buying RTFKT as they looked to build out their digital shoe arm was logical as well.
The Wolf Game buy makes sense too, if the new buyer (Gfunk) believes he can integrate the P2E game into an active ecosystem with more ongoing management and attention.
Ultimately I think the Wolf Game acquisition, and most in general, can be true win-wins for holders and buyers, with the right intentions, plans, capital and resources (though that's a big caveat).
Now we wait and see if Gfunk, Pixel Vault and Reboot are up for the task (my gut is yes).
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Trading volume again ticked up to 6k ETH on Tuesday; leading NFTs saw slight red though lots of green led by DeepBlack, Wolf Game, Grails and Themes and Variations
A new drop from notable contemporary artist Yue Minjun "Boundless" sold out its mint at 0.39 ETH in its public sale before rallying to 0.73 ETH in first day trading action
Bicycle Playing Cards officially unveiled the Bored Ape Community Playing Card Collection, featuring Bored Apes from its 1227CastingCall
Phantom Wallet launched a new beta feature "Auto-Confirm" which automatically signs transactions and messages, meaning no more transaction approval pop-ups; it's currently only available for trusted apps like Magic Eden, OpenSea, Star Atlas, Matcha, Jupiter, and Tensor
Pudgy Penguins sold out their left-facing collectible toys yesterday, with its supply of 150 priced at $249 gone in 8 seconds
DraftKings Reignmakers kicked off its 2nd NFL season yesterday with its first pack drop of the season with the Play Action set, featuring price points of $19.99, $499.99 and $2999.99, raking in over $4.5M in the sale and making them the highest volume project in all of NFTs yesterday by a wide margin
NFTfi introduced loan streaks, a new method to accumulate Earn Bonus Points during Earn Season 1 by incentivizing returning assets into loans after initial completion in recurring fashion; the points were also retroactively rewarded based on activity from May 2020, a nice bonus for early users of the protocol
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
The crypto market was up on Tuesday; BTC +2% at $29,790; ETH +1.7% at $1,865
RLB surged 50% to 0.157 on a new tokenomics announcement, and UniBot jumped 20% to $180 after its UniBotX release garnered wide acclaim
Generative art platform fxhash completed a $5M seed funding round, with plans for fxhash 2.0 including Ethereum integration, on-chain minting tools, and an overhaul of the platform design
Etherscan launched its Blockscan mobile app, enabling wallet-to-wallet messaging for web3 addresses seamlessly on mobile and featuring end-to-end encrypted conversations
🚀 NFT Total Volume
BAYC (970 ETH, 29.1 ETH Floor)
MAYC (727 ETH, 5.72 ETH)
DeGods (703 ETH, 8.88 ETH)
Azuki (598 ETH, 4.75 ETH)
Pudgy Penguins (339 ETH, 4.13 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
DeepBlack (56%, 1.47 ETH Floor)
Moonbears (55%, 0.35 ETH)
Wolf Game (36%, 0.1 ETH)
Grails IV Mint Pass (34%, 0.8 ETH)
Themes and Variations (28%, 4.84 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is a major draft of new mints and events, likely the busiest day of the week.
The highlight for today is definitely the long-awaited DeGods III and y00ts 2 update coming from Frank DeGods and team. There is speculation around an art upgrade, but definitely hope that there's more to this update than just that. And we should find out today.
Base is starting their Onchain Summer today, so expect more mints and news out of that L2. And then Floor and Art Blocks are both back with new art releases today.
If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
Floor ICONS x Rick Crane (12:00 p.m. ET)
Art Blocks Presents "Subtle" (1:00 p.m. ET)
DeGods III and y00ts 2 (TBD)
Base Onchain Summer (TBD)
Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? 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.