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

The Top 5 Most Valuable NFT Collections And A Tool To Track Them Down

Some of these NFT collections are so ever-present that they are already part of the collective unconscious. Others, the general public has not even heard about.  What makes an NFT collection valuable? Market capitalization is the potential value of the whole collection, based on its size and the value of the individual pieces. In the case of NFTs, it’s hard to pinpoint, because it’s a volatile market with lots of action all-day-every-day.

Agreeing on which are the most valuable #NFTs collections is certainly hard.

We created a matrix called "Most Valuable NFTs Collections" and it shows the 20 most valuable collections, sorted by their market capitalization.

Access this data for free here: https://t.co/wXJyMCmRBD pic.twitter.com/PyzbPMDKCk

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) April 21, 2022

When IntoTheBlock announced their list, they presented it by saying, “Agreeing on which are the most valuable NFTs collections is certainly hard.” Besides market capitalization, the “Most Valuable NFT Collections” list tracks number of owners, volume trade, average price, and number of sales. All of those stats are pretty common when discussing NFTs, but it’s certainly helpful to have them all on an interactive database.

The page also displays useful graphs that put everything into perspective, like “All-time Most Traded Collections,” “Collections With Most Unique Owners” and “Booming NFT Collections.” With that being said, let’s dive into each of the collections in the Top 5 and give some insight about them.

#1 NFT Collection: Bored Ape Yacht Club

At the moment, the BAYC surpassed the all-powerful Cryptopunks as the most valuable NFT collection. This is not surprising, since the Bored Apes became part of popular culture and are on their way to becoming mainstream. On their official site, they describe themselves as “A limited NFT collection where the token itself doubles as your membership to a swamp club for apes. The club is open! Ape in with us.”

As with most successful products, the Yuga Labs creation doesn’t come without its share of controversy. 

#2 Cryptopunks

They might not have been the firsts, but the Cryptopunks are certainly responsible for spearheading and popularizing the NFT movement. At first, you could mint them for free. Nowadays, the average price is 76.64 ETH. On their official site, they describe themselves as “The Cryptopunks are one of the earliest examples of a “Non-Fungible Token” on Ethereum, and were inspiration for the ERC-721 standard that powers most digital art and collectibles.”

The creators recently sold the whole collection to Yuga Labs. And, of course, controversy follows this project as well. And, they’re also on their way to mainstream adoption.

ETH price chart on Capital.com | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
#3 NFT Collection: Mutant Ape Yacht Club

At first, these ones were free as well. They came into the scene as a way to reward BAYC members. Owners received an airdrop of “Mutant Serum,” using it they could mint a mutant version of their ape as a completely new NFT. Nowadays, the average price is 32.99 ETH. They don’t have an official site, but this is the NFT collection’s Open Sea page. As you can see by its place on this list, the interest in this collection keeps growing.

#4 CloneX

The collaboration between legendary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and “digital artifacts” creator RTFKT is a success like no other. This might have to do with Nike’s recent acquisition of the company. The NFT collection ’s official site doesn’t describe itself, but NFT News does, “CloneX NFT collection is not only equipped for the Metaverse and features high-end avatars, but also marks the beginning of a community-focused environment ”

#5 NFT Collection: Moonbirds

The newcomer of the bunch is the Moonbirds NFT Collection. Their official site describes them as, “a collection of 10,000 utility-enabled PFPs that feature a richly diverse and unique pool of rarity-powered traits.” Since they’re so new, they’re easily beating all of the other collections in number of daily sales. Of course, the NewsBTC team has been covering the story as it happens.

Other NFT collections in the Top 10: Azuki, Sandbox’s LANDs, Doodles, Veefriends, and Meebits.

Featured Image: the most valuable list, taken from this tweet | Charts by TradingView