Cryptocurrency Financial News
The conference known as “Proof of Conference” was slated to run in May has been canceled due to “less interest than anticipated,” according to co-founder Kevin Rose.
Among the nonfungible tokens (NFTs) stolen from the PROOF co-founder were 25 Chromie Squiggles and one Autoglyph NFT.
PROOF Co-founder Kevin Rose announced the deal via Twitter on Jan. 6, noting that the aim is to get the Moonbirds brand recognized on a global scale and not just in the Web3 space.
Storing an NFT “in chain” means that the NFT can be generated completely off the underlying smart contract, without any need for an off-chain storage provider.
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
The extreme success of Moonbirds is the NFT story of the year so far. The collection opened up so strongly that it archived instant blue chip status and a place at the top of the charts. The market for NFTs is bearish at the moment, how did the pixeled owls accomplish such a feat? It certainly wasn’t just the art, even though the Moonbirds have a distinctive look and probably make excellent profile pictures AKA PFPs.
Let’s uncover the story. This one has it all; a nascent but powerful organization, crazy numbers, internet legends, an ambitious roadmap, light controversy, and, of course, metaverse plans.
Moonbirds: Formal Characteristics
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. The madness doesn’t end there, according to CryptoSlam, the Moonbirds have generated $481M in sales so far. That’s 160K ETH from almost 12K buyers. And for every secondary sale, Proof received a 5% cut.
According to the Moonbirds official site, the organization distributed those original 10K birds as follows:
7,875: Public sale to allowlist winners
2,000: PROOF Collective Members (1,000 passes) each receive two free mints
125: PROOF wallet for future collaborations, marketing, and advisors
All interested parties, including Proof Collective members, were able to enter a raffle to be whitelisted for that public sale. Of course, there was controversy, which we will cover. The Moonbird NFT collection promised the usual, membership to a private group and a Discord server, and future yet-to-be-revealed utilities. A staking mechanism, cleverly named “nesting” and a future metaverse codenamed “Project Highrise.”
According to the Moonbird’s site, their “unique take on the Metaverse” will be “a dramatic departure from the existing ‘never-ending’ worlds that feel like a digital ghost town. Ours is uniquely different, and you’ll have first access as a nested Moonbirds holder.”
It’s also worth noting that, “owners of Moonbirds have full commercial art rights for the Moonbird they own.”
ETH price chart for 04/30/2022 on Oanda | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
What Is “Nesting” And What Can It Do For You?
Staking is a DeFi staple. It locks assets and takes them off the market, which benefits all other holders and the project in general. In Moonbirds, the process is called “nesting,” and “the longer you nest your Moonbird, the more rewards you’ll accumulate.” What rewards exactly? That’s not yet clear. And the nesting process is not yet available.
However, the Moonbirds site already lists certain characteristics. Nesting will be “non-custodial (no need to transfer it to another contract) and the holder numbers displayed on OpenSea etc will not be impacted.” Those stats are very important for NFT projects. Holders can’t sell their NFTs while nesting, but they can transfer them. “The intent is to allow holders to move their Moonbirds between their own accounts, e.g. if they compromise their wallet via a rogue signature.”
There’s also this vague promise, “as soon as your Moonbird is nested, they’ll begin to accrue additional benefits. As total nested time accumulates, you’ll see your Moonbird achieve new tier levels, upgrading their nest.”
Controversy. Of Course.
For the level of success that the Moonbirds accomplished, the controversy around them is pretty mild. The first two aren’t the Proof Collective’s fault, and the third one is pretty standard practice. Let’s go through them:
Looks like someone created 400+ accounts to Sybil Attack the @moonbirds_xyz raffle:https://t.co/HeWT5d8DCP
They’ve already sold the majority it looks like. Just at a quick glance they won 20+
One example:https://t.co/UTqYWRkgsG pic.twitter.com/szgJGT5JXO
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) April 16, 2022
Oh the spam is terrible! We’re doing everything we can to contain it. Lots of bad actors doing their play. This wasn’t project criticism (which is of course valid) so much as gatekeeping which projects deserve recognition or success.
— Justin Mezzell (
,
) (@JustinMezzell) April 19, 2022
1/ Some people contacted us to ask our opinion on @moonbirds_xyz that is minting tomorrow for 2.5 ETH, which would take out more than 75 million USD out of the ecosystem. As usual, many are afraid to speak out because they don't want to offend "powerful" Web3/NFT influencers/VCs. pic.twitter.com/YXvAqs8mwn
— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) April 15, 2022
Hardly anything to write home about. On the next “Blue Chip NFTs 101” we’ll take a look at the organization behind the Moonbirds, the Proof Collective, and their other NFT project. A membership to the influential group. It might be the NFT with the most valuable utility to date.
Feature Image Moonbirds sample from the official website | Charts by TradingView
After selling for a mint price of 2.5 ETH on April 16, the floor price of Moonbirds has also quickly risen to 18.45 ETH.
