1/ New Projects
Velocity Series 2.0: New Velocity Art Pass by ByBit, Red Bull Racing, and AOI will be released soon. Last year, during the F1 2023 races in the Netherlands, Japan, the USA, and Abu Dhabi, Velocity launched art collections featuring works from four renowned NFT artists, including Jack Butcher, founder of Art Blocks Snowfro, Per Kristian Stoveland, and Rik Oostenbroek. The first collaborating artist for the new Velocity Pass will be Kjetil Golid, who released the "Paper Armada" series on Art Blocks three years ago.
CAT21: Who doesn't love an Ordinals Free Mint? These cute cats created by @HausHoppe remind me of MoonCat. Moreover, this is a new... protocol? @LightRider5 said they have found another way to squeeze extra data into Bitcoin txns, "CAT21 will demonstrate, once and for all, that filters are completely useless, no matter how strict they are".
https://twitter.com/HausHoppe & https://twitter.com/LightRider5
beeings by bee: bee is a creator active in the ETH ecosystem, known for his impressive work related to Pepe. He is now about to release his first Ordinals collection "beeings". This is a small and unique collection, with a 201 total supply. bee said, "beeings" are anon internet shadows, the embodiment of our cultural expressions, seamlessly molding into the ever-growing narrative of our collective digital existence.
Doppelgangers by Gruff: Gruff's PFP collection "Gruffter" achieved significant success last year. Doppelgangers will have a much larger supply of 4,069, to be released on Base. This collection continues Gruff's gritty style and draws some inspiration from Jack Butcher's Opepen. With the ongoing art szn on Base, coupled with Gruff's upcoming Ordinals collection, the price of "Gruffter" has been rising continuously last week.
Stained Glass by slander.eth: Another art collection worth our attention this season is upcoming to Base. Last year, slander.eth made a notable impact with the "Synchronicity" collection on ETH. Now, he is about to launch his first generative art collection on Base, "Stained Glass," featuring slowly drying stained drips that give a rough and blurred glass texture.
Vacation by Roope Rainsto: We can see many mistakes made by AI in creating this image, such as the floating cable car, the bizarre face in the lower right corner wearing an orange top, and the distorted, truncated legs. This aesthetic of AI flaws is intentional. It makes us think of alignDRAW, consider the strange architecture of the last century and the millennium, like Japan's Nakagin Capsule Tower, and recall the quirky designs of early mobile phones from Nokia, BlackBerry, and touchscreen mobiles. Back to AI art's old school, the roughness of the developmental process is more fascinating than the polished outcome.
2/ New Technologies & Innovations
Runes: As we get closer to the 2024 Bitcoin halving, the official fungible token protocol of Ordinals, Runes, is set to activate at block 840,000. Runes is UTXO-based, has a small on-chain footprint and encourages responsible UTXO management. Although Runes is a standard at the Ordinals protocol level, its implementation is independent of the Ordinals protocol, similar to Taproot Assets and RGB.
3/ NFT Projects Updates & News
1/ The top 5 NFT projects by total market cap are CryptoPunks, Runestones (Bitcoin), NodeMonkes (Bitcoin), BAYC, and Pudgy Penguins. Bitcoin halving, and the official launch of the Runes protocol, is drawing nearer. As we anticipated last week, Runestones and NodeMonkes pumped.
2/ NFT szn continues on Base. Last week's star project was @traf 's "based punks," with 0.0075 ETH mint price and a 5,000 total supply, still maintaining a floor price of about 0.45 ETH, marking a 60x pump. Influenced by this, many artists active on ETH are coming to Base. Since entering April, the NFT trading volume on Base has overwhelmingly outperformed that on Arbitrum and Optimism. Last week, NFT trading volume on Base accounted for 95% of the total across Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
3/ "Runes" are coming soon, and Bitcoin NFTs are hot. Last week, "Runes" NFT projects including Runestones, RSIC, and Rune Pups, saw a huge pump. Notably, after Ansem bought $PUPS during a livestream, Rune Pups skyrocketed nearly 7 times in just 2 days.
4/ Memeland introduced "Memenet", a blockchain that offers a safe, low-cost, degen-friendly way to build on-chain. They are incubating Memenet inside of Memeland and this chain will use $MEME as its native gas token. Memenet will provide a native yield for ETH and stablecoins. This yield comes from Ethereum layer 1 staking and trusted RWA protocols, which will be automatically passed back to Memenet users.
5/ OpenSea supported Blast NFTs and ERC-721C, a standard that enables creators to implement programmable and enforceable creator earnings on-chain. ERC-721C also allows creators to implement custom logic within their collections, opening up new avenues to engage their communities in innovative ways. Additionally, it's worth noting that OpenSea has firmly dominated the Base NFT market.
6/ Doodles has announced a groundbreaking storytelling experience coming this summer, “Dullsville and The Doodleverse”. The first ever animated special will be accompanied by a Doodles Records original soundtrack with three music videos, featuring some of the world’s biggest artists including Pharrell Williams, Lil Wayne and Coi Leray. Lil Wayne and Coi Leray will also be voicing characters in the film. This campaign, including the film, music, live events, partnerships, exclusive merchandise and digital collecting experiences, dubbed "Project Gray", will begin to roll out early summer and will culminate in an immersive premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by a global release.