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Blue Chip NFTs 101: Cool Cats Lands On Its Feet And Does It In Style

Do the Cool Cats still have Blue Chip status? The collection fell on hard times lately, but so has any other NFT project out there. We’re in a bear market, after all. A Hollywood agency manages the Cool Cats project, they had the coolest exhibit in NFT NYC, and collaborated with TIME magazine in a weird NFT drop. Still, the collection’s floor price is down to levels not seen since the project’s conception.

The Cool Cats started spreading good vibes in July 2021. It’s a PFP collection consisting of 9.999 unique cats assembled from various traits that could form 300K possibilities in total. The ecosystem expanded in two major ways a while ago. They launched their secondary collection, the Cool Pets, and their own token, $MILK. The new coin is the blood that powers the gamified experience that the collection’s creators have been releasing.

Speaking about those, the core team are: the smart contract programmer Tom Williamson, web developer Rob Mehew, creative director Evan Luza, and illustrator Colin Egan AKA The Cartoonist. The unofficial fifth member of the band is Mike Tyson. A few days after launch, the eternal heavyweight champion changed his Twitter profile picture to a Cool Cats and that propelled the collection when it needed it the most. 

The Relationship Between Cool Cats And CAA

The Cool Cats went Hollywood on March 2021. In a move unprecedented at the time, the creators signed with leading talent agency CAA. In a press release from the time, the partners explained the deal in detail:

“Leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) has signed Cool Cats, producers of the widely known Cool Cats and Cool Pets NFT collections. In collaboration with the gamified NFT company, the agency will identify and create opportunities for Cool Cats characters across an array of areas, including licensing and merchandising, animated content, brand partnerships, live events, publishing, and more.”

So, there’s serious money and interests behind the cats. Why are they fading away into the background, then? Is it just an effect of the bear market? 

ETH price chart for 09/24/2022 on OkCoin | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
Cool Cats ’ got utility

First of all, Cool Cats holders get their NFT’s property rights. That means, they can produce commercial projects with their NFT’s images. Cool Cat owners also get access to the project’s Discord server, and priority for all of the exclusive Cool Cats events and mints. Holders can stack their  NFTs and get yield in $MILK.

Another benefit is access to Cooltopia, a project they define as “a gamified ecosystem built on interactivity and utility, community rewards and growth, collaboration with brands, and much more.” Another self-definition has Cooltopia as a “place where having a Cool Cats NFT grants you evolving access to games, tokens, community events, collaborations, and more.” 

Plus, there’s the Cool Pets side project. A reward to NFT holders and a way for newcomers to enter the ecosystem at a lower price point. The Cool Pets collection has 19,999 units. Every holder got a pet for free and the general public bought the other half. The Cool Pets first come as an egg image that hatches and reveals the final NFT. The pets are divided into four elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Grass.

The $MILK token

The $MILK is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. It’s the oil that greases Cooltopia’s gamified economy. According to the documentation:

  • “$MILK is the key to all sorts of functionality and fun in the Cool Cats ecosystem, from buying Battle or Housing chests to going on quests.” 
  • “$MILK is also how you’ll enhance and evolve your Cool Pets.”
  • This one describes the NFTs staking-like mechanism: “Your Cool Cat is earning $MILK just by being cool (the $MILK claiming clock begins as soon as the contract is deployed), and that $MILK will accumulate over time.”

Controversy And Suspicion

There might be something strange going on with this project. In April, the newly-appointed CEO stepped down after just three months. There was never a credible explanation given. The collection just tweeted, “Chris Hassett has stepped down as CEO. We thank him and wish him the best moving forward.” Is there problem brewing in the Cool Cats headquarters? 

And then there’s the price. At its height, in October 2021, the Cool Cats floor price was around 26 ETH. Almost a year later, the floor Cool Cats are trading for 2.9 ETH. That’s not all, the Cool Pets’ floor price is currently at  0.18 ETH. Are those Blue Chip numbers? Even though we’re basically in the middle of a crypto winter, the collection seems to be falling off a cliff… 

Will the Cool Cats land on their feet?

Featured Image: screen shot from the collection’s site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – Azuki, A New Kind Of Brand For The Future… And A Scandal

The idea behind Azuki is to mix NFT culture with anime-style drawings, with a global community working together behind the scenes. Which is phenomenal. Azuki defines itself as a “decentralized brand for the metaverse.” This brand’s main product is a collection of 10K anime-style avatars in NFT form. The collection is also called Azuki and at inception was one of the NFT space’s biggest success stories… 

… until admissions and revelations by one of the project’s creators cast a shadow on Azuki as a whole. 

Let’s review the project’s history, its characteristics, and the revelations that changed it all.

Azuki’s Origin Story

The project exists since January 12th, 2022. The team behind Azuki is Chiru Labs, their slogan is “Born in Los Angeles. Building for the metaverse.” Most of the members use pseudonyms and keep their identities private. A few use their real name, like Azuki’s co-creator and illustrator Arnold Tsang from Toronto, Canada. He’s well-know for his participation in “Overwatch,” which Wikipedia describes as “a 2016 team-based multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment.”

The community behind it is a key part of the project. On Azuki’s website, they use slogans like “A new kind of brand that we build together” and “A brand for the metaverse. By the community.” Ownership of one of the 10K Azuki NFTs gives the user access to The Garden. A virtual place Azuki promises “starts with exclusive streetwear collabs, NFT drops, live events, and much more that will be revealed over time.”

Azuki is a digital brand. A “decentralized brand of the future.”

At first, it seemed like the NFT collection was going to propel them to instant classic status. The initial success made their name recognizable and sent the collection’s floor price to double digits. At one point, it reached a maximum of 22 ETH. Nowadays, the floor price at Opensea is 7.4 ETH, what happened? Whatever the reason, the Azuki collection gets around. It has moved a total volume of 260.2K ETH in transactions so far.

We Need A Little… Controversy

The turning point for Azuki was a Twitter Space, of all things. On May 10th, crypto influencer Andrew Wang interviewed  Zagabond, one of Azuki’s founders, who just like that revealed that he was part of a few NFT projects that didn’t end well. It almost sounded like they were a rug pull, and people freaked out accordingly. The collection’s floor price started falling and it hasn’t recovered yet. 

It was a mystery at first, but according to Cryptoslate, the projects Zagabond was involved with were:

  • CryptoPhunks, the original CryptoPunk copycat collection. The first collection to receive a DMCA takedown from Larva Labs. Because of that, the CryptoPhunks were delisted from OpenSea and Zagabond gave the project to all the holders in July, 2021.
  • Tendies, a project that failed to capture the NFT culture’s imagination and shut down in the middle of the minting process. 
  • CryptoZunks, a collection that defines itself as “the first Punks to be generated on-chain with randomized attributes. Each Zunk is guaranteed to be unique from any Punk.” Apparently, it failed because of Ethereum’s expensive gas fees.

According to Cryptoslate, “Like the first two projects, this failed one was also a lesson. Zagabond said these three projects taught him that “blindly following the NFT meta doesn’t get you far.” He claims that all the lessons from these projects are now being applied to make Azuki a success.” None of that helped and the collection’s floor price went downhill. 

The question here is, were these projects rug pulls or simple failures without bad intentions? 

ETH price chart for 09/08/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
Azuki, Built For The Metaverse

The definition of metaverse in Azuki’s site is controversial, to say the least.

“The metaverse today is where we currently spend most of our time: Discord + Twitter. How do we amplify this experience for Azuki members? How do we distribute the brand to places that have the most attention today? More importantly, where will the metaverse be one year+ from now?”

Is simple social media part of the metaverse? How does Azuki not know where the metaverse will be one year from now? Other blue-chip NFT collections are already building their version, laying their chips on the table. Is Azuki too late? Or are Chiru Labs just quietly developing? According to the company, they’re exploring the possibility of developing a game. “Few teams have the experience and background to build a genuinely great game with mass market appeal and scalability. Though the core team has the experience, it’s a huge endeavor nonetheless.”

The Azuki collection is down, but not out. The team seems to have shaken the stink that Zagabond’s revelations brought, but did so in the middle of a bear market in which the whole NFT market is down. Azuki stopped the bleeding. The question is, can they reclaim and even surpass past glories?

Featured Image: Azuki banner from their site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101: Art Blocks Does It Differently And Frequently

Unlike other NFT collections, Art Blocks is a platform. Its focus is generative or algorithmic artworks. The artists create the style of the collection, the colors, and forms, or the “blocks” if you will. Each mint sorts through endless possibilities to create a unique piece. At minting time, the customer interacts with a generative script and the result is a randomly generated, unpredictable work of art. Depending on the collection, the resulting NFT can go from a static image to a multimedia experience.

In most of the other Blue Chip collections, like World Of Women or Doodles, an artist or a group of artists creates the art and its different traits. In contrast, multiple artists constantly create Art Blocks collections. As you might imagine, some of them are more valuable than others. The platform’s creator is Erick Calderon, better known as Snowfro. He’s the artist and coder behind Art Block’s first and flagship collection, Chromie Squiggle. You’ve probably seen them around, and one of the squiggles serves as the logo for the whole platform. 

Other iconic and multi-million dollar collections launched through the platform are Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs and Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers. Of course, those are the stand-out, incredibly successful ones. New collections and projects launch through Art Blocks every week, as you can see in this very busy calendar. To avoid gas wars at minting time, the platform uses the Dutch Auction method. That is, the sale starts at a high price that lowers as time goes by. The clients wait for their ideal price, if it ever gets there.

How Does Art Blocks Work?

So far, the platform has generated $277M in primary sales and a whopping $1320M in secondary sales. The platform royalties are 10% for primary and 2.5% for secondary market sales. The artist receives a fair 5% for each secondary resale. From primary sales, there’s a mandatory 25% donation to the artist’s favorite charity. Which is interesting, but wow.

According to Art Block’s website, they offer “genuinely programmable on demand generative content that is stored immutably on the Ethereum Blockchain.” That’s not entirely true. The script and the NFTs are there, presumably forever, but the art is too complex to be stored on-chain. The files are in IPFS or other storage solutions.

Art Blocks also claims that “collectors actively participate in realizing an artist’s vision by generating unique algorithmic artworks,” which is debatable. The mind-blowing thing is that an Art Blocks holder with access to the script and Ethereum’s ledger could theoretically reproduce the NFT. So, technically, everything they claim is true. 

Even though Art Blocks is a platform, it’s not open to everyone. A team curates the collections and selects the artists worthy of participating. They offer three tiers of collections, each with different characteristics. Let’s look into them.

ETH price chart for 07/22/2022 on Kraken | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
The Different Collections

  • The Curated Collection: This is the main one, Art Blocks releases it “on a regular schedule.” Only a few selected artists have made it to the seven quarterly series so far. According to their website, “Art Blocks established a curation board to carefully select projects for inclusion in our Curated Collection. The Curated Collection is a group of projects that push the boundaries of Generative Art in their technical innovation and aesthetic beauty.”

The company’s account executive, Druid, expanded on the collections’ characteristics in a Medium post. “Since we launched Art Blocks in November of 2020, our first official set includes all Curated drops in 2020, with full quarterly sets beginning in 2021. Artists have a six-month cooldown between deploying projects in the Curated Collection.”

  • Playground Collection: This one is less formal, “Art Blocks artists who have been previously included in the Curated Collection” can play around and do what they want. Druid expands, “It’s important to note the Playground’s limitations: first, an artist can only launch a Playground project after a Curated project. Second, only one project per artist can be active in the Playground at once, and it must be completed before another can be launched on the Playground.” Also, there’s “a two-month cooldown between deploying projects in the Playground Collection.”
  • Art Blocks Factory: This is more general and it’s for artists that don’t necessarily have participated in The Curated Collection. According to the website, “The Factory Collection includes projects selected directly by Art Blocks and highlights our standards for technical quality and artistic beauty.” And according to Druid, “Factory artists will be required to sell out their entire project before releasing anything else on the platform. They also will have a two-month cool down between projects on the platform.”

Powered by Art Blocks (PBAB)

Last but not least, the company offers this very interesting product. “Powered by Art Blocks (PBAB) is a custom branded solution from Art Blocks. It allows the generative NFT minting technology used by artists at Art Blocks to be integrated with third-party sites”. That means that organizations can use Art Blocks’ “smart contracts and rendering infrastructure” to generate “branded generative projects.” 

PBAB could be huge in the future. Keep your eye on it.

And keep your eye on NewsBTC for other Blue Chip NFTs guides, like this one for CloneX and this one for Goblintown.

Featured Image: Screenshot from Art Blocks website | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – Down, Down, To Goblintown. An Unlikely Success Story

Goblintown ‘s rise to the top is one for the books. The Moonbirds came into prominence in a bearish market, but the Goblins took over in the middle of a global recession and the NFTs first winter. How did these misfits do it? Using confusion, misdirection, FOMO, and a great marketing plan that took everyone by surprise. People weren’t sure of what was happening, but they didn’t want to stay out of the party. 

The creators of Goblintown made it easy for them. First of all, the project was a free mint. Second, it uses a Creative Commons Zero license, which means no Copyright and the possibility of commercializing the Goblin drawings as needed. Third, even though the hype was there, they didn’t use influencers, cross promotions, or whitelisting. Maybe because of that, the mint didn’t generate a gas war like many other successful projects.

Goblintown ‘s Unusual Launch

Launched on May 22, 2022, the generative collection runs over the Ethereum blockchain. From the beginning, Goblintown promised, “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility. CC0. Contract wasn’t actually written by goblins.” The other sentence that stands out from Goblintown’s website is: “Don’t be f*cking greedy. That’s how we got ourselves here.” This suggests that the collection serves as a commentary on the NFT market and culture. And that’s not the only clue pointing that way. 

On the slightly negative side, the royalties are a whopping 10% and the creators set aside 1000 NFTs for their other projects’ holders. Considering Goblintown was a free mint, those two factors don’t seem that bad. So far, the main collection has generated 43.9K ETH in total sale volume and has a 3.1 ETH floor price at Opensea. For a moment there, Goblintown was so hot that it flipped the almighty Bored Ape Yacht Club and became the highest-selling collection for a day or two. 

The Mystery Of Goblintown’s Creators

At first, they thought it was notorious NFT artist Beeple. Then, that the infamous Yuga Labs was behind the project. For a time there, people even believed that the brain and voice behind “Beavis And Butthead” and “King of the Hill,” Mike Judge was Goblintown’s creator. And, since one of the Goblins kind of looks like Snoop Dogg, that rumor circulated too. It made sense because people still believe that Snoop is famed NFT collector Cozomo de’ Medici, even though that story proved to be false.

The only one that came forward and addressed the rumors was Beeple, who tweeted, “insane I have to say this, but I have not joined any shockingly low effort pump and dump projects that will remain nameless.” Later, as the Goblintown project proved its worth, the creator changed his tune and tweeted the piece “The rise and fall of Goblintown” together with the hashtag “#iamthefounder.”

However, Beeple was not the founder. Seeing Goblintown’s immense success, the mysterious creators had to doxx themselves. Just in time for the NFT NYC conference, they released a message in which they admitted that Truth Labs was behind the project. The company was behind the mildly successful NFT collections Illuminati Collective and The 187, and struck gold with their third outing.  

On Truth’s website they define themselves as:

“We are dedicated to sharing delightful blockchain mischief, exploring creatively, developing rich, fun worlds and experiences (both IRL and in the digital realm), and providing a platform for new voices and visions in this space.”

In a strange turn of events, as the creators doxxed themselves, Goblintown’s floor price fell from almost 5 ETH to a little over 3 ETH. 

ETH price chart for 07/16/2022 on Binance | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
The Collection’s Iconography

The Goblintown name comes from The Hobbit, specifically from a J.R.R. Tolkien poem called “Down, Down, To Goblin Town.” That name also suggests that the collection serves as a commentary on the NFT market in the crypto winter. Are there other clues? Several. For example, one goblin like Dj and producer Steve Aoki, who’s a notorious NFT collector. Another one wears a t-shirt that says “Phunks, Zunks, Tendies, Azuki,” a clear reference to Azuki’s creator and all of his rugged previous projects.

Yet another one of the traits is a reference to the infamous Mike Novogratz’s Luna tattoo, and thus a commentary on Terra’s collapse. 

And, what about this image that references a lot of blue chip NFT projects and is titled “Up, Up, To Goblintown.” 

And well, speaking about Steve Aoki, he was the Dj at Goblintown’s highly coveted NFT NYC party. There, he premiered the horrible NFT song “Piss On the Dance Floor (Goblintown Anthem).“ You can still buy it at a reasonable price here. And, speaking about NFT NYC, for better or worse, Goblintown managed to be the center of attention throughout the whole conference. 

What a story.

Featured Image: Screenshot from their site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – Let’s Travel To Space With The Doodles Collection

Veterans of the NFT big leagues, the Doodles let the CryptoPunks and Bored Apes take the spotlight and have been constantly working behind the scenes. Even though they’re not a worldwide brand like the other two, everybody’s seen the Doodles. They just don’t remember when or where they saw those little drawings. Don’t let that fool you, though. The collection’s total sales are  $496M, according to CryptoSlam. So far. 

The generative collection consists of 10,000 Doodles that “are made up of hundreds of exciting visual traits designed by Burnt Toast” AKA Scott Martin. The other two members of the team are Evan Keast and Jordan Castro, who in 2017 were part of the company that rocked the world with CryptoKitties. The first NFT project to jam the Ethereum blockchain. This experienced team has been key to the project’s success and constant expansion.

The Doodles exude class through and through. Their smart contract is auditable, their roadmap is public, and anyone can easily find them on the project’s website. An example of great management by an experienced team is that the Doodles invented whitelisting for minting events. The team closed the Discord before minting and gave their first followers, the people who were there from the beginning, the chance to mint first. The community at large saw the move as a mistake, but they quickly realized how smart the system really was.

According to their website, “hand-drawn Doodles include skellys, cats, aliens, apes and mascots. The Doodles collection also includes dozens of rare heads, costumes, and colorways of the artist’s palette.” According to OpenSea, the current floor price for a Doodle is 9.7 ETH and the total volume sold by the whole collection is 133.3K ETH.

The Doodles As A Governance Token

The project doesn’t contemplate NFT staking and it avoids the temptation of creating a new token for their ecosystem. The Doodles utility focuses on access to off the hook real-life events. More on that later. In the virtual world, though, they offer their holders new experiences like the Space Doodles and the Dooplicator. 

In addition to that, each Doodle is a sort-of governance token. A Doodle gives you voting and participation rights in the sort-of DAO that governs the whole project. The Doodle holders decide what to focus on next and control de community treasury, known as the DoodleBank. They have the right to vote on proposals, on the team and hiring, and on what to do in live events. Recently, they decided to fund a 3D Doodles project.

The communication flows through the project’s Discord channel. As it happens with most current NFT projects, this tool is a crucial part of the puzzle. For example, the Doodles server recently created a scam alert channel to protect the community from fraud and to have them monitor the internet for fake Doodles and people misrepresenting their brand.

ETH price chart on Bitstamp | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
What Are The Space Doodles?

As a special benefit to holders, at no cost to them, they can wrap their Doodles and transform them into Space Doodles. These new NFTs put the original Doodle into a Spaceship and in a space-like environment. If you don’t like it or miss your PFP, you can always switch back to Doodles. You might not want to, though. According to Open Sea, the Space Doodles’ floor price is 11.8 ETH. Liquidity is another story, the total volume sold by the whole collection is 1.6K ETH.

All art by Burnt Toast himself.

The company has also given the community free swag like the Dooplicator. At the time of writing, the floor price for these space backpacks is 2.79 ETH.

The Future Of This Blue Chip Collection

You’re only as good as your last hit, and for the Doodles that could be their real-life event in the South by Southwest festival. A warehouse painted with the collection’s characteristic pastel scheme, with screens everywhere, it was the talk of the town. They also distributed an NFT in association with paint manufacturers Behr and illustrated by Burnt Toast. Hopefully, it will be worth something one day. 

The point is, one of the objectives of Doodles as a company is to focus on live events and ultimately become an entertainment company. That’s great for holders that live in the US, it means that they’ll get access to a lot of events where the company will distribute secondary NFTs. It also means that Doodles will be constantly interacting with brands, artists, and other projects. That continuous activity will push the brand name out there. 

Another important benefit for holders is that Doodles plans to give them property rights. Eventually, people will be able to launch their own Doodle-related products for a small fee. Considering that Doodles is a top 10 NFT collection, we would say most of the marketing work is already done.

Read other Blue Chip NFTs 101 guides: Moonbirds, DeGods, Proof Collective, and CloneX.

Featured Image: Screenshot from the site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – What’s The Secret Behind CloneX? Built For The Metaverse

The secret behind CloneX is Takashi Murakami and the RTFKT team, that’s the short answer. The NFT collection is the result of the once-secret collaboration between the legendary Japanese artist and the experts in creating virtual sneakers. Steven Vasilev, Chris Le, and Benoit Pagotto founded RTFKT, which reads “Artifact,” in 2020. The CloneX public sale took place in the last days of November 2021. These people work fast.

The goal of the Ethereum-based CloneX collection is quite simple, to serve as avatars in the metaverse. These NFTs aren’t merely profile pictures. Through the upcoming Clone vault, the CloneX holders will have access to the avatar’s 3D files. The idea is that these figures will work in any metaverse. Plus, RTFKT has expressed metaverse ambitions of its own. 

In any case, RTFKT Studios co-founder Benoit Pagotto told Forbes:

“We envision a new kind of relationship forming between owners and 3D creators who will create bespoke content for the avatars, replicating what we’ve seen with Fortnite 3D models ripped by blender creators, creating content for Twitch streamers and YouTubers. It’s a full ecosystem, being built live, and the avatars are just the tip of the iceberg.”

Very nice, but let’s focus on the avatars for now.

About CloneX And Takashi Murakami

The project’s official site describes them as, “CloneX is our most ambitious project yet, the beginning of a whole ecosystem for our community, quality-focused, high-end avatars, ready for the metaverse.” Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami designed all of the CloneX traits, from their eyes and their mouths to their clothes and their helmets. Murakami lives in the line between pop and high art. He has worked with Pharrell and Kanye West, with brands like Louis Vuitton and Vogue, and also with Supreme, Vans, and Billionaire Boys Club.

There are 20K CloneXs total, and those are divided among eight different DNA types:

  • 50% are Human.
  • 30% are Robots.
  • 8.75% are Angels.
  • 8.75% are Demons.
  • 1.25% are Reptiles.
  • 0.6% are Undead.
  • 0.5% are Murakamis.
  • 0.15% are Aliens.

ETH price chart on Kraken | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
About The Controversial Initial Sale

The CloneX public sale was supposed to take place on November 29th. The demand was there, they sold 13K out of 20K before RTFKT had to pull the plug for the day. Their website was under attack. According to themselves, “Due to our website still being attacked and unusable, we’re pausing the minting till when we’ll have all fixed and upgraded.” 

The last 7K CloneX were minted on the 30th. Some people maintain something suspicious went on. At the moment, the rarity of each CloneX was still a mystery, so all the NFTs were theoretically worth the same. The public sale was supposed to be a Dutch auction starting at 3 ETH. In the second round, each of the 7K sold for 2 ETH flat. 

Considering that at the time of writing the floor price for a CloneX is 12.9 ETH, participating in any of the two rounds would’ve been extremely profitable.

Curious Facts About The CloneX Collection

  • At first, the code name for the project was: Akira.
  • All CloneX holders received a Space Pod as an airdrop. Check this Twitter account for “an ongoing thread of all the items being made for RTFKT Space Pods & Loot Pods by the CloneX community.”
  • Secondary market royalty for this NFT collection is a steep 5%. 
  • Holders own the IP of their avatar and can commercialize it for up to $1M.
  • The avatar’s 3D files will be available in the following formats: Unreal Engine, Daz3D, .blend, .obj, .fbx, .MA, and glb.
  • RTFKT will host “Forging Events,” where CloneX holders can forge real-life physical items based on your NFT.
  • For the virtual world, holders will be able to clothe their avatars through Clonex Wearables. Both RTFKT and independent creators will offer different garments.
  • At the moment you can only buy the avatars on the secondary market. They’re available on OpenSea.
  • In the real world, four white gold CloneX chains exist. They were created by Crown Collection in association with Murakami and RTFKT.

And that’s everything you need to know about CloneX at the moment. There are many more things to learn about RTFKT, though. Do your homework on that. And, while you’re at it, read “Blue Chip NFTs 101’s” other guides: Moonbirds and Proof Collective in Ethereum, and DeGods in Solana. More to come.

Featured Image: Murakami from the official site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – What Is The Proof Collective And Who’s Behind It?

The mysterious organization known as The Proof Collective defines itself as “a private members only collective of 1,000 dedicated NFT collectors and artists.” To join the Proof Collective someone would have to, you guessed it, own their NFT. So, in theory, anybody can be a part of it. In practice, though, the floor price for one of their passes is around 88 ETH at the time of writing. The size of the investment keeps the undesirables away.

The Proof Collective is all about NFTs. Because it’s the law, they run a private Discord in which you can probably receive the biggest alpha available. The organization also provides NFT info via its social media, produces a podcast in which they interview the biggest names in the NFT world, and, reportedly, owns a huge NFT collection.  At least its members do.

According to the website, those members own 153K NFTs, including 148 CryptoPunks and 817 Bored Apes. Who are those members?  We wouldn’t know for sure. Its founders are Kevin Rose, of Diggs fame, and illustrator Justin Mezzell. And it has been widely reported that the Proof Collective gave free memberships to digital artist Bleeple and motivational speaker and NFT millionaire Gary Vee. 

Enter The Influencers

In the following video, one of the Proof Collective founding members, Internet legend and Diggs co-founder Kevin Rose, says. “This is the very beginning of what’s going to be a multi-decade journey to build a new media company.” 

He also promises that Proof will combat FUD that comes with success by constantly shipping product. Moonbirds holders can expect benefits, airdrops, and physical objects related to the nascent brand.

What Is The Proof Collective?

The Proof Collective NFTs’ main benefit is the world’s most valuable currency: information. Besides a social club of sorts, the organization believes in “group bottoms-up-driven research.” Plus, some members are early NFT adopters that own all of the projects you hear about on social media and are actively looking for the next one. If you play your cards right and the gods smile in your direction, that  Proof Collective NFT might pay for itself in a few months.

The organization takes things one step further, though. As “a new media company,” The Proof Collective produces and releases its own NFT masterpieces. Their first product where the Grails, which mint was solely for the members of the organization and had the slogan, “20 artists. 20 unique pieces of art. Artist names revealed after the mint.” So far, they’ve unveiled art by Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Mike Shinoda, Larva Labs, Rachel Ryle, and Gary Vaynerchuk among others.

The Proof Collective’s second product was the incredibly successful Moonbirds, who conquered the world on a bearish market. “There are a total of 10K Moonbirds, they were issued under the ERC-721 standard on the Ethereum blockchain. The mint price for each one was a whopping 2.5 ETH. That means that, at current prices, the Proof Collective made over $70M on that first day,” our report said.

At the moment, the floor price for the Proof Collective NFT is 88 ETH, which at today’s exchange rate is more than $200K. And the prices of the listed for sale ones go up to a whopping 700 ETH. Currently, these NFT tickets sit at #17 in Cryptoslam’s “NFT Collection Rankings by Sales Volume” list. The project has sold more than $800K in the last 24 hours and more than $52M since the Proof Collective’s creation. 

BTC price chart for 05/10/2022 on Gemini | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
We Need A Little Controversy

Look, they don’t have any proof (no pun intended), but NFTethics suggests there’s something shady going on. “Some mentioned that we should check the purchases of proof collective, as many wallets only contains the proof collection and the floor is now 88 ETH. Wash trading is so common (…) these days that it’s not even noteworthy anymore.”

3/ Also nepotism is completely standard in the NFT space, so the fact that GaryVee (Gennady), his brother AJ, Beeple and some old friends received the Proof collective for free is standard. We saw quite a lot of other "old" friends that received the proof collective for free/$3. pic.twitter.com/o20NOgfIM4

— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) April 15, 2022

Wash Trading is the process of buying and selling an asset in order to increase its perceived price. “In some situations, wash trades are executed by a trader and a broker who are colluding with each other, and other times wash trades are executed by investors acting as both the buyer and the seller of the security,” according to Investopedia.

Could the Proof Collective have done that? Maybe. But there’s no evidence, all of this is mere speculation.

In Conclusion

The Proof Collective entered the NFT space with a bang. The space has never seen an ascension this fast and a track record this clean. So far, they’ve done everything right. Does that guarantee future success? No, it doesn’t. But it certainly is impressive.

Check the previous edition of the Blue Chips NFT 101 series, Solana’s “DeGods.”

Featured Image: Proof Collective NFT, promotional image from their site | Charts by TradingView