There is a Surging Sense of Optimism in the NFT Ecosystem

Dear HackerNoon Nation,

Is the worst of the crypto shakeout that started last year behind us?

Who knows, but one thing’s for certain: there is a surging sense of optimism in the NFT ecosystem right now.

Indeed, more and more people think the bottom’s in, and activity is picking up across the board. The number of NFT traders, the number of NFT trades, NFT volume stats — presently all these metrics are markedly uptrending.

So, we’re back then?

We’ll have to see how the months ahead unfold, but things are unquestionably feeling more bullish lately. For now let’s recap the past week, as always thanks for reading everyone and have a great weekend! ✌️

-WMP

📣 General NFT News

• Easy Company, a web3 social wallet play, raised +$14M in seed funding.

• Jake Gallen published a great primer on the history of NFT marketplaces:

  
  

• Lens Protocol introduced support for token-gated publications among “Lensverse” projects.
• Luiz Ramalho, the founder of Fingerprints DAO, joined Nouns DAO.
• mint.fun introduced Allowlist notifications so you can get email alerts whenever you’re added to new NFT allowlists.
• OpenSea added support for Arbitrum Nova, an L2 specialized for social and gaming use cases.
• PleasrDAO teamed up with Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg on a Pentagon Papers-themed NFT auction.
• Zora has some of the best DAU stats in crypto right now.

🏆 Digital Collectibles

• Azuki introduced Hilumia, a new interactive world for Azuki holders.

• Yuga Labs is prepping for its upcoming Sewer Pass mint, which will grant access to the limited-time Dookey Dash game:

  
  

🎨 Cryptoart

• Chromie Squiggle #7997, a HyperRainbow, resold for Ξ134 ETH:

  
  

• Fidenza #967 resold for 140 WETH.
• SuperRare is integrating Quadratic Voting (QV) into its Space Race DAO votes.

🎮 Decentralized Gaming

• Bulkis.eth used alpha he learned from studying the mechanics of Wolf Game early on in order to trade up into a CryptoPunk, check this out:

  
  

• Axie Infinity Origin Season 2 gameplay, which will last for +40 days, kicked off.
• Mavis Hub 2 is now available to download.
• Pirate Nation released its latest series of gameplay updates, e.g. players’ voxel characters can now move around and explore the Pirate Nation world.

💽 Music NFTs

• Coopahtroopa published This Week in Music NFTs - Jan. 9th.

🌐 Virtual Worlds

• Nifty Island added support for Nouns avatars:

  
  

💎 DeFi x NFTs

• NFT loan volumes increased 10x over the course of 2022.

Author Bio

William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal—a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!