Week in Review: Meebits, Bored Apes & More
The NFT space saw an especially eventful past week. Ether hit an all-time high above $3,400, Beeple dropped his Spring Collection on Nifty Gateway and a number of new digital collectible projects launched and started gaining steam. Here are some quick hits on topics driving the community conversation this week.
Meebits
Given the market dominance and cultural cachet of the CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs projects, Larva Labs had set a high bar for their much-anticipated follow-up. So far, so good. Unveiled yesterday, Meebits are 20,000 unique 3D voxel characters created by a custom generative algorithm on the Ethereum blockchain. All owners will gain access to an asset pack that includes a T-pose OBJ file for 3D modeling and high-resolution renders, meaning that Meebits will be fully functional as avatars across the Metaverse.
“If the Cryptopunks are an ideal 2D avatar for Discord, Twitter, and other social media, then we hope that the Meebits will be the 3D avatar for virtual worlds, games, and VR,” Larva Labs explained in their introductory blog post.
Owners of CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs are eligible to mint one free Meebit (minus gas fees) per holding during a one-week community grant period. The remaining 9,000 Meebits quickly sold out during yesterday’s public sale in a Dutch auction format that started at 2.5 ETH. They can now be purchased via Larva Labs’ own secondary market and OpenSea. Sites like nftexp.io have started tracking Meebit trait rarities, with Dissected, Visitor, Skeleton and Robot types appearing among the most coveted attributes. We’ve already seen the first seven-figure Meebit sale, and the market looks likely to have legs for the foreseeable future with long-term appreciation potential.With the Meebits project, Larva Labs has cast a major vote of confidence in the Metaverse and extended reality as the future of NFTs. Considering the climbing prices for virtual land on VR platforms like Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space, it’s a smart bet by a visionary team that has consistently been ahead of the curve.
Bored Ape Yacht Club
Bored Ape Yacht Club became the talk of NFT Twitter over the weekend with notable collectors and artists quite literally “aping into” the fledgling collectible project.
Consisting of 10,000 unique apes programmatically generated from 170+ potential traits, the project promises members-only benefits to holders that include an initial collaborative graffiti board dubbed “The Bathroom.” The apes could originally be minted at a 0.08 ETH flat rate, intentionally eschewing the FOMO-inducing bonding curves that have driven short-lived hype cycles around other collectible projects.
Bored Apes have already seen an impressive rise in sales volume, ranking third for the past week behind CryptoPunks and Meebits on OpenSea. At time of publication, the secondary market’s price floor sat at 0.3 ETH and the highest sale was 21 ETH. The project’s continued success will largely depend on how its creators develop the nascent community and whether they can keep its most influential members engaged.
nft now podcast
The nft now podcast officially has a full month in the books. Since announcing our debut with Aeforia, we’ve hosted top crypto artists like Victor Mosquera and ThankYouX alongside trailblazing technologists like Jesse Grushack (sixnft, FWB, Ujo). Check out our most recent episodes below.We have an incredible slate of guests coming up, so be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on your favorite streaming platforms.