Catching The Next BAYC - Finding The New Blue-Chips of NFTs Rising In 2023

Recently, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates one after another, LUNA and Celsius have experienced flash crashes one after another, and events such as the correlation between regulation and the stock market and securities market have led to large fluctuations in various assets in the market. With the bear market background of the overall market, there are many cases where crypto projects fall below the issue price and the public sale cannot be completed.

Avatars, land, artwork so far. Avatars are one of the most mainstream digital collections or non-fungible tokens assets. Among the top ten major projects, there are 7 avatars, 2 lands, and 1 artwork. Among the six blue-chip projects, Yuga labs’ products account for half of them, there is no doubt that the new crypto gangster, but the homogenization of is getting more and more serious, we should not lie on the cognitive hotbed of the past.

As the date of the Ethereum merger on September 15 is approaching, perhaps we should observe and think from a new dimension and a new perspective for non-fungible token assets. The crypto market and the metaverse are evolving at a tenfold speed. Opportunities Left to the prepared, let's try to capture the direction and trend that the next wave of NFT blue-chips might appears.

I. Top 10 Traditional Blue-Chip NFTs

Let's look at the top ten blue chips first. The copyright income of the top projects is very considerable. The combined BAYC+MAYC is about 40,000 eth (more than 100 million US dollars), which is a very considerable income. At present, there are not many projects that can reach 100 million income in the entire crypto market. From the side, it can be seen that the BAYC avatar project is very powerful. When we focuse into the avatar field of the Top ten blue-chips, and the core is the community.

1. Head portrait blue chip

"Vibe" is a very popular word in overseas communities. Translated into Chinese, it can be called "atmosphere" or "culture". This factor accounts for more than 80% of the success of a project. You can see the head of each The community behind the avatar project has a very clear community culture in it. 

1. CryptoPunks, the most classic and the first NFT project in the true sense, the community culture is the older generation of crypto geeks, and the holders all advertise themselves as early participants in the industry. Larva Labs is the pioneer of NFT, opening the door to the NFT world for people through CryptoPunks. At the same time, Larva Labs has been doing what they really want to do, depicting the world they love through works one by one, from CryptoPunk to generative art and the metaverse.

2. NBA Top Shot: In August 2020, an NBA star card trading platform called "NBA Top Shot" began its public beta test. The company behind it is Dapper Labs, the issuer of CryptoKitties. In less than half a year of public testing, it has generated more than 3 million transactions, with a transaction volume of about 460 million US dollars, surpassing CryptoKitties and ascending to the top of the NFT project list. NBA Top Shot is the third largest milestone in NFT history after CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties, and its pioneering gameplay has become the object of imitation by subsequent NFT projects.

3. BAYC, the new PFP gangster, BAYC really made collectibles or digital artworks socialized, and then introduced a lot of traffic out of the circle. It is the leader in the wave of social NFTs. That's why BAYC is currently the most popular and successful project on the market.

4. Doodles, time comes October 17, 2021, CryptoKitties project owners Evan Keast and Poopie released their second project "Doodles", which is a combination of 10,000 brightly colored cartoon line drawing creatures, mainly of type There are humans, cats, crocodiles, dolphins, monkeys, flames, skeletons, aliens, ice cream, etc. The floor price of Doodles has been maintained above 10ETH. Keast, the founder of Doodles, pointed out that Doodles' goal is to become a Web3 comprehensive entertainment company. Doodles currently has a gap with top super blue-chip projects such as BAYC, but its unique culture and vibrant community have become the inexhaustible power of Doodles.

5. AZUKI: Red Bean is a very typical oriental aesthetic NFT. Azuki's style is very in line with the aesthetics of people in Asia. The largest purchasing power is also in Asia. Azuki contains a total of 10,000 NFTs. In a market where pictures are rampant, the release of Azuki is a beyond dimensionality blow.

6. Mfers - Matchstick Men, representing a new generation of mourning culture. The picture on the far right of the picture above is a typical Matchstick Men. He is paralyzed on a chair and playing a computer, showing the mourning culture of the young people in the Z era and they don’t care.

7. GobulinTown: Released in June 2022 and quickly hit the top of the charts. The character of Goblin Town embodies the aesthetics of ugliness. The head of the pointed-eared goblin is reminiscent of the goblin guards in "Harry Potter", but the style is more grotesque and even a little ugly. The NFT series consists of 9999 goblin avatars. Goblintown's official website has no roadmap, no Discord, and no practicality. But in the eyes of Goblin fans, less is more, and the ugliness reflects a unique beauty. It is now the second-largest NFT on OpenSea, second only to BAYC.

Every NFT community needs a differentiated culture and tone, and Vibe largely determines whether it can become a blue chip in the short term and continue to survive in this industry in the long run. There are many NFT or digital collection projects. When the market is at its hottest, there are more than a dozen projects on sale every day. How to keep users and how to unite the community. Most avatar projects are not like DeFi projects or protocols, Difi projects often have exact business models and cash flow

The early avatar-type NFTs had no business model except for transaction fees, so the core was the cultural tonality and centripetal force of the community. Basically, the avatar project is top-down. Many avatar founding teams are grassroots or anonymous. Unless the project is successfully expanded later, the community users will not know who the core personnel behind this project are. Maybe they will There is a code name and an avatar, but the founding team basically keep anonymous.

2. LAND Blue-Chips

Looking back at the real estate blue-chip NFTs, the most classic ones are DecentraLand and The SandBox. DecentraLand was first founded in 2017, and The Sandbox can even be traced back to 2011. After several years of development, the two metaverse spaces have successfully attracted many entities entry. In addition, there are metaverse land platforms such as Cryptovoxels, NFT Worlds, Otherside, etc. 

Virtual Concert and Exhibition in Yahoo's Metaverse Platform on Decentraland 

8. Decentraland: It is a decentralized virtual space on the Ethereum network. Users can create various space scenes and content here with a virtual identity. All buildings, scenes, and content are in the form of blockchain assets (mainly NFTs) In the way of existence, in addition to the creator, other people can also enter this space to visit and experience the metaverse world.

Each piece of land (LAND) in Decentraland is represented by NFT, and each piece of LAND is coded and is an NFT token with unique location parameters. LAND needs to be purchased to obtain it. The payment method is Decentraland's native token MANA. LAND can also be traded between owners, and the transaction is recorded on the Ethereum chain.

At present, many physical companies have opened stores in Decentraland. Samsung Electronics has opened a virtual version of its 837 flagship physical store in Decentraland. This physical store is located at 837 Washington Street, New York City, and now has a virtual flagship store in Decentraland' Samsung 837X'. On February 9 this year, when Samsung released the Galaxy S22 and Tab S8 series products, the conference was also held simultaneously in the virtual store.

Sotheby’s moved its London gallery to Decentraland, setting up a virtual exhibition hall, and some NFT artworks even completed special auctions in this virtual gallery.

In April 2022, Decentraland held the Metaverse Fashion Week, and the makeup brand Estee Lauder launched the 'Little Brown Bottle NFT' at the event for users to dress up their avatars, and users who received the 'Little Brown Bottle NFT' avatars can dress up

9. The SandBox: A virtual space built on the Ethereum network, which mainly focuses on games. Players can use NFTs and the platform's native token SAND to build and experience 3D games, and can use community-created pixel models to make games.

There are 166,464 pieces of land (LAND) in The Sandbox, each of which is an NFT. The payment method for the land in this space is the platform’s native token SAND. After purchasing, users can freely design and run the created games and related spaces on the land. . In addition to being able to be constantly dressed up, these spaces can also be used to collect rent — rent to other game developers for rent.

The platform presets a number of games for players to experience. After completing tasks, you can get Token rewards to buy more props and game resources. For creators, The Sandbox platform provides VoxEdit (creation editor), GameMarker (game creation), Marketplace (trading market) and other free creation tool components, enabling developers, artists and other creators to build content. These tools are very easy to use, it does not require any coding knowledge, just drag and drop some elements to build a virtual space or game world, and the works can be put on the market.

At present, commercial entities such as sports brand Adidas, luxury brand Gucci, Hong Kong Regal Hotels Group have settled in The Sandbox, and government departments such as Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) have even established virtual departments in the space, becoming the world's first. A custodial entity that appears in the Metaverse.

To sum up, the two virtual spaces, Decentraland and The Sandbox, are becoming the first choice for commercial and even government organizations to try out the metaverse. Various organizations build their own metaverse scene by purchasing virtual land, and then further organize activities in the virtual scene. . These two metaverse platforms are becoming the gateway between the real world and the virtual world.

The value of land blue-chip NFTs is often reflected in the subsequent ecological construction of the Metaverse. Now we see that most of the metaverse projects, the development progress is relatively slow, most of them are in beta version (such as SANDBOX), even in the stage of a trailer, the scope of application is still very limited, if the metaverse platform wants to develop further In the future, it will need to be deeply integrated with VR, AR and other technologies to enhance the sense of reality and interaction. Otherwise, the blockchain-based metaverse space and plots will only stay in the hype stage, and will not be able to implement the economic system on the chain

3. Artworks Blue-Chip

10. Art Blocks is a unique platform that generates digital artwork on demand based on algorithms. It launched in November 2020, and several Art Blocks NFTs have already sold for over $1 million. There are quite a few Art Blocks collectibles, ranging in price from less than $500 to over $1 million. That leaves investors with plenty of options. 

Blue-chip art and digital collections are digital derivatives of physical art. Combining with AI artificial intelligence and the ability to confirm the rights of blockchain assets, they have unique value characteristics. Art blue-chip products and business models are very clear

II.

New wave of NFTs

We believe that NFT is not just N small pictures generated by simply piecing together elements through AI tools. It is a great fallacy to position NFT as digital artwork/digital collection. NFT is an intelligent data container with infinite possibilities. Based on it, there will be many derivative applications beyond our imagination, and the first prosperity of NFT in 2021~2022 is just the beginning.

1. Utility Pass

The bear market always brings new changes and trends. The new narrative begins this month. We have observed the entire art market, and even extended to the entire market. One of the more interesting points is: Utility Tools, Utility Pass, application tools digital certificate, or utility membership card (PASS digital certificate), such as the Pass of the incubator, the Pass of Dao, or the Pass of tools. Utility Pass has appeared in the second half of last year. At that time, some project communities issued membership cards to users. With this membership card, they can get the airdrop of the second wave of NFT digital artworks, or have other rights. But it was not valued by the market at that time, and people paid more attention to Metaverse Real Estate.

But by August 2022, the "MoonBirds" are rising very fast, and basically everyone in the community has heard that，one MoonBirds is worth 30 Ethereum, about 100,000 US dollars. The price of the artwork behind it has reached 100 Ethereum at the highest, 300,000 US dollars, the price is very exaggerated.

Moonbirds : is launched by the PROOF Collective team. Based on the 10K PFP NFT series on Ethereum, 10,000 different pixel wind owls are issued. NFT holders can have the right to use the PROOF Collective Discord. Moonbirds is a permission type NFT (Utility Pass, also has pfp attribute). When Moonbirds participates in the lottery, there is a threshold. In addition to authenticating Twitter and Discord, it is required to have at least 2.5 ETH in the wallet.

According to the description on the official website, holders of Moonbirds have the following three permissions: First, holders can unlock membership in private clubs, including entering PROOF's private Discord to participate in closed-door discussions. Second, holders will get the pre-purchase qualification for the metaverse project "Project Highrise" that PROOF will launch next. Third, to get the special gameplay of Moonbirds, the holder can put his Moonbird into a "Nesting" state.

The Utility Pass gameplay is to hold this certificate or NFT artwork, and then have the right to enter this incubator organization and obtain a series of new digital artwork airdrops in the future. Proof has airdropped two before, and the performance is not bad, but it is not as successful as "Moonbird". "Moonbird" is indeed very successful this time, and the transaction volume is also very exaggerated.

There are also Vee Friends and Outland. These three projects are actually somewhat similar. The first wave was issued with Pass digital certificates. These three projects are basically relatively influential entrepreneurs in the Western encryption art circle. , big V, or initiated by KOL. If we think from the traditional logic, it is more in line with the logic of Web2 in the usual sense - KOL celebrity effect, the founder has a very strong influence and foundation, and then he empowers the previous Holder through Utility Pass, and continues to send subsequent derivatives products, so as to bring the startup and enthusiasm of the entire community.

2. DAO Pass

In addition to the above-mentioned incubator Utility Pass, there is another widely used digital rights-like thing: DAO Pass. DAO Pass has a lot of communities, and it sends out a lot of digital collections. You can only access some Discord channels if you hold a DAO Pass. Different levels of NFTs issued by it have the right to enter different channels, and the content inside is different. The higher the channel, the more valuable the latest information is provided.

There are many early Alpha communities that have issued DAO Pass, and a series of communities such as Lasercat are doing well. In the mass market, not much is known about Dao Pass, so the users of these programs are very loyal and perform very well. The other category is Tool Pass, which can unlock some advanced functions, provide various data, and bind a series of social tools and data analysis tools such as Twitter. If you hold this Pass, you can have some powers, including some airdrops after it. Generally speaking, in addition to price fluctuations, Pass-type things can obtain relatively high income by themselves. On the other hand, it will be more demanding of the team.

3. DID - Decentralized Digital Identity

In the future, Web3.0 is the most attractive, and the core of Web3 is DID or digital identity. Because in Web2, people use ID cards to connect with each other. You have your name, ID card information, and account information.

In the Web3 world, there is only one address, and a person can have many addresses, including on multiple chains, with addresses of Ethereum and ETH. Is it possible for these addresses to be aggregated and managed with a unified digital identity? With this thing, you will generate a new person portrait on the chain. All behaviors, all data, and digital assets on the chain are real and verifiable, but not necessarily completely open and transparent, and data privacy is also an issue. Just need. But Web3 can make information provable and true, but not public, through a series of various privacy protection technologies, zero-knowledge proof technology, and MPC technology.

In addition, from the development history of NFT, BAYC has become a mainstream social identity symbol for the transition from WEB2 to Web3.0, so the next wave of DID implementation may not be the standard DID defined by our current organization (defined by Microsoft, DIF, IETF), Perhaps it is the de facto standard of natural selection by the community. Here we are optimistic about the NFT standard derived from ERC 721.

Regarding the popularization of DID, we suggest that you can refer to the results of the competition between XML and JSON. The winner must have a broad project consensus to become the de facto standard.

• ENS is the full name of Ethereum Name Service, which is the domain name resolution service of Ethereum. It can be compared with the DNS of traditional Web 2.0. What the traditional DNS does is to convert the IP address that is difficult for humans to remember: such as 198.35.26.96, into human-friendly form. At present, the role of ENS is mainly to map complex Ethereum addresses into simple and easy-to-remember names in xxx.eth format, but the role of ENS is far more than that. The greatest value of ENS is that it truly allows most users to have their own DID. , and build a lot of related data with this DID as an index. ENS itself is also a special type of functional NFT digital assets, and has natural scarcity and value-added. However, ENS' basic tools and vertical functional orientation lead to its unique complexity, making it incompetent for the properties and wide application of metaverse social identity
• OpenAvatar - OpenAvatar Protocol initiated by YieldDAO Opens the virtual avatar metaverse digital identity standard protocol, which promotes the best integration of PFP/Avatar NFT and DID from the dual levels of organizational structure and technical standards, and promotes the best scalable technical framework. YieldDAO proposed To develop extensive Metaverse identity interoperability, OpenAvatar is in fact developing a new generation of simplified DID based on the EIP721/EIP1155 NFT standard, providing diversified identity authentication and verification services for all NFT projects and decentralized DAO organization projects. 

4. POAP - Proof of Participation

Another interesting application area is POAP. POAP means Proof of Attendance Protocols, which means proof of attendance. It records a series of user interactions on the chain, such as what they participated in. This thing is the NFT version of Degenscore. The other is the social relationship: the social relationship between addresses is precipitated in the form of nft, and the social relationship can be transferred. Or store the content on the chain and turn the content into an NFT. I like an author, I can collect him, and even give him a reward. I think this series of things is to make the concept of "me" richer, more vivid and more complete in the chain world. What settles down is a person's complete chain resume, identity information, POAP It may also be the cornerstone of Web3.0 in the future

• POAP: A grandfather-like classic project, the platform with the most users and NFT achievements, POAP is essentially like an on-chain personal behavior database, whether you participate in community meetings, events or explore certain venues in Decentraland, A badge can be claimed on POAP as definitive proof of behavior. To a certain extent, POAP is currently the most complete and richest product on the chain.
• DEGENSCORE: According to your historical behavior data on the chain, the Degen score is given, which can be understood as the Sesame Credit on the chain 

5. Digital Rights CC0 & METAIP

In 2016, the "G20 Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative" issued by the G20 Hangzhou Summit pointed out, "The digital economy refers to the use of digital knowledge and information as key production factors, modern information networks as an important carrier, and information communication. A range of economic activities where the effective use of technology is an important driver of efficiency improvement and economic structure optimization."

Compared with traditional carrier works, native digital content is becoming the most important form of building digital culture/metaverse. Fundamentally and in the long run, NFT products have greatly innovated and facilitated the creation, development, utilization, and circulation of digital content works.

• NFT products can facilitate the confirmation of the creation of works, because the confirmation mechanism of NFT products is not based on a specific centralized platform, but is based on the user's commitment and confirmed by the entire blockchain network.
• NFT products can facilitate the development and utilization of works, because adapted works can also confirm the rights of the whole network, and can enter the corresponding scene for consumption.
• NFT products can facilitate the circulation and transaction of works, because the blockchain makes the transaction process traceable, and smart contracts ensure smooth transactions.

On August 5, 2022, Kevin Rose, the founder of the famous NFT project Moonbirds, publicly announced on social media Twitter that Moonbirds NFT will be converted to "CC0 mode" and MoonbirdsDAO will be established.

At present, NFTs are beginning to turn to CC0, it is a cheap and fast shortcut to try to activate external creativity to bring new opportunities to the project by opening the copyright CC0. We see that MoonBirds is trying this approach. And successfully attracted the attention of the currently silent market.

In addition to CC0 with fully open copyright and limited open BAYC (NFT brand name and brand use rights are not open to Holder), is there a third copyright model option, which is more open than BAYC and better represents the rights of holders than CC0. What about a generation of Metaverse native digital copyright IP model based on smart contracts? We searched all Metaverse IP projects on the market and found that the Metaverse native MetaIP decentralized copyright agreement released by "DragonCapsule" is a good innovation. , through the WEB3.0 global standard ERC721, the digital rights and interests of the holder's MetaIP are bound, and the NFT brand name and logo use rights are shared and opened to the Holder, and the digital rights and availability of the liquid Metaverse IP are realized based NFT. 

If the BAYCs are the "PGC mode", the CC0 NFT projects to which Mfers and Moonbirds belong the "UGC mode", and the MetaIP project that DragonCapsule belongs is the "PGC+UGC mode", we think that MetaIP has the advantage the both. the MetaIP model not only allows global Holders to participate in the creation and promotion of IP, but also protects the driving force for developers to continue to innovate and promote the project forward. The co-creation and sharing power of DAO. It represents the development direction of NFT digital copyright.

To promote the digitization of NFT assets, the global circulation of digital IP, and the protection of digital rights, we see that behind the NFT standards and technologies, there is a brand new giant market for digital content and digital culture.

6. Digital IP Cultural Property Rights

As mentioned above, most of the current NFT products and projects are only developed and rapidly profitable around shallow content such as community Vibe and Meme culture. It is rare to design and develop from the perspective of digital cultural property rights, and to plan the medium and long-term RoadMAP roadmap to gradually realize it. This shows that the development of NFT is still in its infancy and lacks native digital IP brands.

Taking the Metaverse and Web3 as the framework, to further explore the diversity of NFT display, etc., through stories, entertainment, game functions, etc., to give NFT intellectual property branding and collection value, and even include the aforementioned IP value equity certificates (such as based on DAO Pass), discover In order to show more value and further drive NFT value marketing, digital native IP branding will also bring long-term value growth space for NFT.

BAYC Boring Ape is gradually becoming a unicorn in this field. Among the six blue chips, BAYC issuer Yuga labs has half of its products and ranks in the top three. In March 2022, Yuga Labs, the developer of Boring Ape, acquired CryptoPunks. Announced the opening of the commercial copyright of the pixel avatar NFT series. From this perspective, BAYC undoubtedly has the long-term investment value of crossing the bulls and bears.

On the other hand, we have seen some highly innovative new projects that are slowly realizing their innovation strategies. DragonCapsule is the world's first NFT collection with dragon culture's native digital IP and ecological environmental protection as its core elements, and it is also the first NFT collection in the world. Using the NFT portfolio of the METAIP protocol, Dragon Capsule has opened up the rights to use the IP brand name and logo, and has achieved rights sharing with global Holders based on the DAO Pass digital certificate.

The project party grants holders and community members a series of rights and interests through innovative MetaIP authorization forms (including the adaptation of NFT avatars, secondary creation, and derivative development, DAO identity digital certificates, etc.), which drives the secondary creation of holders and community members and enhances NFT. The playability, narrative, and applicability of the project, creating a strong community consensus and generating practical value are what the Web3 world wants to see. 

METAIP ：https://github.com/DragonCapsule/MetaIP

7. Data Market and Enterprise NFT Platform

Praphul Chandra, founder and CEO of Koinearth, wrote an article for the World Economic Forum titled "If data is the new oil, then corporate NFTs are the tankers". Chandra points out that there are many fantastic benefits of treating data as an asset, but there are also logistical issues that make this difficult. NFTs help alleviate many of these challenges.

KoineArth's marketsN is the world's first enterprise-grade NFT platform that operates in an environmentally friendly manner. Built on Tezos, one of the first proof-of-stake blockchains, marketsN operates in an energy-efficient manner and provides a neat NFT solution that is tightly integrated with the sustainability efforts of all businesses around the world. "

The marketsN platform aims to enable businesses to digitize and attach immutable metadata to key documents and products in the form of NFTs. The role of enterprise-grade NFTs is to ensure a complete record of proof of ownership, transparency and transaction history to provide greater traceability, visibility and authentication, and ultimately to facilitate closer contact between parties, where the accuracy of information can be determined in real time against the record sex.

We see that the use of NFT in the enterprise data exchange market will have huge development space, and marketsN is a typical case. Perhaps the larger data trading market space comes from the global NFT data exchange network. Since NFT itself can be a container of intelligent data, it has also become one of the best carriers for global data transactions.

What we want to emphasize is that NFT is the best carrier for digital asset confirmation and data flow proof for data transactions, but NFT itself is not a silver bullet for data transactions, it cannot independently solve value discovery, data security and data privacy protection Etc., NFT is just a key piece of the puzzle on the holy grail of global data transactions.

We expect to see the emergence of new killer blockchain data transaction applications. 

III. Catch The Next Bored APE

We believe that NFT is not just N small pictures generated by simply piecing together elements through AI tools. It is a great fallacy to position NFT as digital artwork/digital collection. NFT is an intelligent data container with infinite possibilities. , the above-mentioned WEB3.0 DID digital identity and the original IP copyright of the Metaverse are only one of its possible killer applications.

Compared with mature decentralized financial application fields such as Defi, the NFT field has not gone through a complete bull-bear cycle. The entire encryption industry is developing rapidly, and some technical bottlenecks, including privacy and security, need to be broken through. In a short period of time, it is difficult for Web3 to have a super-large-scale application ecology like the mobile Internet. The metaverse is a completely different and brand new world. We need to think and analyze from a new dimension and perspective. We cannot just apply traditional Web2 user needs and application scenarios.

This article only opens a small window on the development space of NFT to inspire everyone to observe and capture Web3 from different perspectives. The next wave of digital economy will surely give birth to a new digital economy model, and there will be unlimited development space in the future.