NFT Quick Hits - August 2023

Milady and Pudgy Penguins

The NFT market saw a bit of a rally to close the month despite volumes and prices in most blue chip NFTs trending downward. Miladys were up roughly 40% on the month. Pudgy Penguins were down roughly 9% despite continuing to grow their physical IP presence, launching a new line of Pudgy Penguin figurines and a clothing line, Igloo. Pudgy Penguins are on track to do $10 million in sales for their children's toy line in 2023.

Generative Art and Gaming

There continues to be activity in art and gaming NFTs. Sotheby’s launched a generated art series and the first collection has seen sales volume over $1 million so far. Several generative art exchanges have launched on Ethereum and Ethereum Layer 2 networks (scaling networks on top of Ethereum). More crypto games are coming online featuring NFTs as in-game IP, including a new game announced by Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, as well as one by Zynga, the creator of Farmville. Another game, NFL Rivals, has surpassed 1 million app downloads. 

New Use Cases To Watch

There have also been developments in new use cases for NFTs. A company called Courtyard is offering “real world asset” NFTs such as watches, Pokemon cards, and other collectibles, by authenticating the items, insuring them, and creating digital representations that can be traded or financialized in DeFi applications. Making Coffee, a decentralized coffee company, is using yield-bearing NFTs as a solution to supply chain financing for its coffee business. 

Physical NFTs and Real World Experiences

Other projects are mixing in digital collectibles and physical world experiences. Crypto artist 0xDeafbeef launched a project where followers will travel to Patagonia to obtain physical artifacts containing cryptographic hashes engraved on them, letting them claim an NFT that will continuously fade over time unless they return to “refresh” it every year for 10 years, at which point the NFT becomes immortal.

Notable Sales

There were also a few notable high end NFT sales, such as the sale of 4 trait, “trippy” Bored Ape for 275 ETH and a 0 trait CryptoPunk that sold for 500 ETH.