Abstracts

• The Indian Parliament implemented a 30% tax on cryptocurrency gains, causing trading volumes on major Indian exchanges to plummet.
• $600 million was breached from the Ronin Network, which houses the P2E titan Axie Infinity.
• Zilliqa blockchain’s native token $ZIL rocketed 400% ($0.045→$0.186) after the announcement of Metapolis: “the metaverse for all".

Discussions

• Changing Landscape of NFT Marketplaces Amidst the NFT Gold Rush
• Metaverse(s): Land or Networks?
• The Next BAYC: Doodles

The Changing Landscape of NFT Marketplaces

Recording $2.49 billion in sales just last month, OpenSea continues to retain its dominance as the biggest NFT marketplace today. However, recent developments in the NFT markets are sure to stir up some much-needed competition for the throne.

First, the introduction of fiat payment options will increase the pool of potential buyers. Coinbase announced its partnership with Mastercard for its upcoming NFT marketplace. OpenSea recently revealed its plans to integrate with MoonPay, which routes transactions from VISA, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

While adoption of these payment options will bring fewer crypto-native users onto existing marketplaces, it also lays the groundwork for future marketplaces to easily incorporate the same features.

Second, mainstream corporations are slowly dipping their feet into the NFT scene. LINE, one of the largest messenger applications in Asia owned by SoftBank and Naver, will be launching its own NFT marketplace on April 13th.

With over 180 million monthly active users, LINE plans to leverage its existing user base by integrating the two services and kickstarting marketplace activity. Their success will surely invite other social platforms to follow suit and effectively dilute the concentration of activity at OpenSea. When that time comes, we should also expect to see platform-exclusivity of specific NFTs as the primary differentiator between marketplaces.

What do you think the NFT market will look like in 2025?

- Donatello

Metaverses: Land or Networks?

Facebook rebranded to Meta, the sale of virtual land reached $500 million in 2021 with the expectation to double in 2022, and the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) $APE foreshadowed the big-bang of their own metaverse.

But will the “metaverse” live up to our expectations? And can we adopt the same valuation models used by real estate IRL? While headlines highlight gargantuan purchases of virtual land as proof-of-value (e.g. Sandbox, Decentraland), there is one big elephant in the room: “fixed” supply.

Fixed supply is an inherent characteristic of all traditional real estate—there is only so much surface area on Earth that can be bought or sold. Metaverse platforms, however, are not constrained by the same limitations. Even if they do claim to hard-cap the number of available land plots, demand-led expansion will always be a financial incentive. On the other hand, if a platform fails to perform, it will be incentivized to integrate with its competitors, further diluting any value determined via supply.

Given the rationale of integration, it comes to question whether the same valuation methodology of traditional real estate uniformly applies to virtual land. Personally, I am left wondering whether we should begin thinking of metaverses as L1-like ecosystems that reap the benefits of network effects (Tascha labs has a great piece analyzing L1’s as an analogy to countries). Under similar reasoning, the determinants of value in virtual lands should focus on the contents/dominance of their ecosystem, rather than the scarcity of available plots.

Regardless, it is safe to say that no one really knows what our “metaverse” will look like. Whether it be a product of Meta or a champion of crypto-natives, its value will remain an exciting mystery to be solved by social consensus.

- Machiavelli

The Next BAYC: Doodles

$300,000 JPEGs have mesmerized the world. The Bored Ape Yacht Club’s meteoric rise (0.2 ETH in April 2021 to >100 ETH in less than a year) has convinced the masses that yes, “1 mint can change your life”. Yes, all these hours spent scouring Discord servers and grinding for whitelists will all be worth it in the end.

Such price hikes are not unheard of in the cryptocurrency space. Dogecoin ($DOGE) started at $0.01 on January 3, 2021 only to spiral up to a mindblowing $0.685 on May 7, 2021. And while other lower-cap coins consistently experience significant volatility as well, it is possible the that non-fungible, less liquid nature of NFTs makes them particularly primed for meteoric rises (and in some cases, cataclysmic falls).

Enter: Doodles

The Doodles collection was launched by an impressive team. @evankeast and @poopie, leaders at Dapper Labs and the historical NFT project, CryptoKitties, brought their expertise in branding and financialization. The creative genius, @burnttoast, breathed life into the 9,999 playful collectibles.

Starting at around 1 Eth at public sale, Doodles have had strong fundamentals since its inception. The NFT craze in December 2021 has skyrocketed the price once again to 15 ETH and settled around 16 ETH at the time of writing. Following the trajectory set by the predecessor, BAYC, Doodles is once again looking for a big jump to 30-40 ETH in the next 6 months.

Despite the speculative aspects, the most attractive components of the Doodles project are community and execution. The Doodles team has always been sourcing avenues to give back to the early supporters and the community; collectors are able to license their Doodle to create/sell officially licensed derivatives and earn a share of the revenue. The derivatives projects have been focused on not diluting the investors and the team is actually delivering games and animations made by professionals.

Owning a Doodle is more than owning one of 9,999 “Doods”. Each ERC-721 represents a piece of a growing business and access to a community of NFT lovers. We purchase ridiculously priced JPEGs believing in the team’s vision, their ability for execution, and the supportive community behind it all. It’s a testimony to the fundamental belief we all cherish: the value of NFTs are derived bottom-up, not top-down.

- Da Vinci