Since the crash of the crypto market in May, monthly trade volumes in the NFT ecosystem have gone down, especially when compared to the all-time highs reached in January of this year.
Wednesday had the most ether (ETH) worth of NFTs sold in a single day in September and the last 30 days. But there was a lot of trading activity this week in particular.
On September 28, 12,565 ETH were swapped for a total of $16.6 million. Because the price of ether goes up and down, even though the volume on September 20 was lower in ETH (12,549 ETH), it was higher in USD at $17 million.
This week’s rise was probably caused by three sales: a $4.45 million CryptoPunks sale, a $1.3 million Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) lending agreement, and a $16.75 million generative art sale.
Tyler Hobbs, who made the well-known Fidenza project on Art Blocks, and Dandelion Wist, who helped start Archipelago, have released mint passes for their new collection, QQL. The passes were first shown at an auction in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
This generative art experiment sold 900 mint passes and made sure that everyone paid the same price at the end by using a rebate system. Even though the auction ended at 14 ETH, the QQL project ended up with about 12,600 ETH, or about $16.7 million.
QQL pass holders say that using the algorithm to choose the output of the on-chain art they mint “empowers the collector as co-creators.”
Many investors in QQL may already own Hobbs’ Fidenza or other works of generative art, such as other pieces that have sold for more than $912,741 in a single day.
The popularity of generative art NFTs has helped the NFT art market grow, and the Art Blocks NFT platform is leading the way with collections like Fidenza, Chromie Squiggles, and Ringers.
Art Blocks is known for this feature as well as its curated collections, which are collections of projects that one artist or a group of artists can submit work to. In November, Art Blocks will be two years old. Art Blocks says that its most recent and eighth series will be the “last of its kind.” Curated projects won’t have a numbered series in the future.
A large-scale NFT lending transaction was done with Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs
Fragment, a company that “creates rich stories and worlds for the metaverse,” borrowed 1,000 ETH from the NFT lending platform Arcade on Tuesday in order to buy Mega Noise, one of the rarest NFTs in the MAYC collection.
1000 ETH was borrowed against two mega mutants today on @arcade_xyz! The payback is set to be 1,044 ETH in 90 days (18% APY). Additionally the borrower (@fragmentxyz) has bought a third mega mutant from @machibigbrother pic.twitter.com/0dkWIVOGYo
— 0xTIGΞR (@PltTiger) September 27, 2022
The collateral for the loan is two more Mega Mutant Apes, Mega Electric and Mega Swamp, which Fragment will lose if the loan is not paid back in 90 days.
Nexo started the loan and paid for it through Arcade. Meta 4 NFT Lending Fund was the loan’s underwriter. It found and set up the loan and took on the risk if the borrower didn’t pay.
Brandon Buchanan, the founder and managing partner of Meta4, says that this type of activity is important because it is a beautiful example of tokenized finance in which we are working at the intersection of DeFi and NFTs. The prices of the assets are also shocking.
Buchanan went on to say that deals like this are very hard to figure out because there isn’t much transaction history or similar deals to look at. If you want to be sure that custody solutions are safe, you need other ways to pay for them from sources that can handle the perceived risk.
Now that Mega Noise is a part of Fragment, it has a total of five NFTs. We only know that about a dozen or so Mega Mutant Apes were made with “mutant serum” and then left the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Rare CryptoPunk Ape
Daniel Maegaard, also known as seedphgrase.eth, sold his rare Ape CryptoPunks NFT to an unknown buyer for 3,300 ETH, or $4.28 million.
This is the most ETH that a non-alien punk has ever sold. In February, another Ape Punk sold for 2,501 ETH, which is about $7.8 million. This was the second-highest sale of Punks in 2022 and the fourth-highest sale of Punks ever.
Punk 2924 bought for 3,300 ETH ($4,451,633.94 USD) by 0x9045de from 0x1da533. https://t.co/bh7Rjs9Aob #cryptopunks #ethereum pic.twitter.com/PT9v9bCC5s
— CryptoPunks Bot (@cryptopunksbot) September 28, 2022
Since its $12.5 million sale of high-end jewelry with Tiffany & Co., which was one of the first NFT projects, CryptoPunks has continued to get a lot of attention and make a lot of sales.
Yuga Labs, the company that owns CryptoPunks and MAYC collections, was worth $4 billion in March. This was the most money any NFT company had been worth up to that point.
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