In less than a week, Moonbirds catapulted into the list of the top 10 highest grossing NFT collections of all time. A large-scale generative avatar NFT venture, the now larger-than-life project has shocked the NFT ecosystem, reminding everyone that NFTs can still be a “wink-and-you’ll-miss-it” kind of game.
A feat of monumental proportions, Moonbirds appears to be on its way to becoming a major competitor in the NFT PFP market led by Bored Ape. So what is this new collection and how could it have grown so much in such a short time? Let’s take a deeper dive into Moonbirds.
Table of Contents
- What are Moonbirds NFTs?
- Who created Moonbirds?
- Details of the Launch
- The Controversy around Moonbirds NFTs
- Why are they so popular (and expensive)?
- What Moonbirds offers collectors?
- licensed under CC0
- Where to buy and sell Moonbirds?
- Conclusion
What are Moonbirds NFTs?
Moonbirds is a collection of 10,000 NFTs launched on April 16, 2022. It was created by prominent American Internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose as part of his recently established Proof Collective , a private members-only collective of NFT collectors and artists. Prior to Moonbirds and becoming a prominent name on Web3/NFT, Rose had already established himself as an Internet celebrity, investor, podcast host and founder of news aggregator Digg , among other ventures.
Who created Moonbirds?
Moonbirds was born from an idea by Kevin Rose, although there were certainly a host of developers and general Proof members who contributed to the final product. One of those members is Justin Mezzell , co-founder and CPO of the Proof platform, who is also the artist behind Moonbirds’ signature pixel-art style.
As the thousands of NFTs within the collection present a wide variety of attributes, Mezzell and the rest of the art team created hundreds of unique random visual strokes to produce a series of generative NFTs. Ultimately, they follow in the footsteps of pixel art predecessors like CryptoPunks and CryptoSkulls, as well as PFP powerhouses like Bored Apes .
Details of the Launch
The Moonbirds XYZ website is your ideal destination for discovering the fundamental information about the new NFT collection. Members of the PROOF Collective can discover many interesting perks with the Moonbirds NFTs. However, membership in the PROOF Collective is not affordable.
The average price for Proof NFT was almost 2 ETH in December 2021. As of now, the minimum price for membership in PROOF Collective is around 40 ETH. Members can receive privileges such as access to events, collaborations like Moonbirds NFTs, and the private Discord group chat. So, did the founders create Moonbirds only for PROOF Collective members?
At the time of the launch of the Moonbirds NFT collection, the website opened up a raffle. Any individual could participate in the raffle for minting or creating the NFTs at the time of launch. The Moonbirds website states that each raffle winner received the opportunity to mint one Moonbirds NFT at a price of 2.5 ETH. The Moonbirds non-fungible tokens raffle was also accessible to PROOF Collective members.
In addition, the PROOF Collective members also received the guarantee of minting two Moonbirds for each of their Proof NFTs. Following the launch of the Moonbirds NFT collection, the 10,000 Moonbirds sold off quickly. The raffle winners received 7,875 NFTs, while the PROOF Collective members received 2000 NFTs.
The Controversy around Moonbirds NFTs
The launch of Moonbirds NFTs and their unprecedented growth in popularity introduced a new phenomenon in the NFT landscape. However, the raffle on the Moonbirds XYZ website turned out to one a formidable source of controversy. First of all, many people brought forward accusations about the use of bots to manipulate the results of the raffle.
In addition, the model followed for the minting process also pointed to many suspicious concerns. For example, PROOF Collective members received the guarantee of at least two Moonbirds NFTs for each Proof NFT. At the same time, the developer team also reserved around 125 NFTs from the Moonbirds NFT collection. These highlights in the minting process of the Moonbirds NFT collection create doubts regarding impartiality.
The controversies around Moonbirds non fungible tokens gained momentum from allegations of using bots to manipulate the results of the raffle. Crypto researchers have pointed out that some people leveraged bots with more than 400 accounts to attack the raffle. A major share of the community has an opposing viewpoint on the same, albeit with doubts regarding fairness in the minting process. Furthermore, some individuals have also suggested that the developers and team members reserved Moonbirds with rare traits, which would have higher prices in the future.
Why are they so popular (and expensive)?
This year, we have only seen a few collections (e.g., Azuki and Doodles) cause significant ripple effects throughout the NFT ecosystem. However, Moonbirds has served to blow almost every other established PFP collection out of the water with its unprecedented rise to prominence.
Just days after its launch, Moonbirds had already reached over 170 000 ETH in secondary sales volume. This of course after the project plundered around 19,687 ETH from the public sale of the aforementioned 7,875 lottery NFTs.
In its journey to break NFT weekly volume records, Moonbirds helped illustrate the stranglehold that both NFT MFPs and prominent NFT influencers have on the market. In essence, Moonbirds is a simple collection of owls with pixel art, but it is the project’s affiliation with Kevin Rose and the success of Proof Collective that is really driving the Moonbirds market.
To illustrate this importance, we should look no further than the explosive increase in Proof Collective membership NFTs, which more or less marked the beginning of Proof NFT operations.
Mass Proof Passes minted on December 11, 2021, with each of the 1000 NFT initially sold for 1 ETH each. Billed as a subscription pass to all things Proof, the bulk passes have been marketed to give cardholders access to a private Discord, early access to Proof podcast episodes, in-person events and other projects (including Moonbirds).
The minimum price of the group passes experienced slight fluctuations throughout the rest of 2021, so it began a slow double-digit increase, reaching a minimum price of 30 ETH in February. before skyrocketing to around 120 ETH a week after Moonbirds’ launch day.
If there’s one thing that has become evident in the NFT space over the past year, it’s that success has been proven to breed more success. Anecdotally, once a project (Bored Apes) or an artist/influencer, such as Beeple or GaryVee (both members of Proof Collective), gains notoriety, the value of their projects and collections is likely to be assessed accordingly.
Similarly, once a project begins to take off, a combination of influential cosigners and FOMO (fear of missing out) acts as a call to action for NFT enthusiasts to purchase tokens from that project and claim their position as members. and seemingly prestigious community. This is the hype cycle of the NFT market.
What Moonbirds offers collectors?
However, it’s not just the affiliation to success that has helped the Moonbirds collection skyrocket. Aside from the typical PFP NFT roadmap promises, the Moonbirds collection offers a wide range of incentives to its collectors.
Perhaps one of the most unique and notable “utilities” offered to Moonbirds collectors is the ability to put an NFT, or “Nest,” as the project’s developers call it, into play. Nesting a Moonbirds NFT involves locking up the NFT (making it unmarketable) without the need to transfer it to a vault for safekeeping.
But why would you want to lock your Moonbird? Because doing so will start a process where your Moonbird NFT will accumulate additional profits, reach new levels and even upgrade your nest to be more profitable, which in turn will generate even more advanced rewards and bounties.
In addition to the benefits of Nesting, Moonbirds owners also have priority access to future Proof NFT projects, the upcoming Proof Metaverse. And all of this comes after Moonbirds NFT holders actually own all the commercial rights to the NFT IP (intellectual property) they own.
This means that Moonbirds owners can take the art associated with their own NFTs and create a complete brand around it; reproduce and financially benefit from its use at their convenience. Given that intellectual property has been a major point of contention throughout the NFT space in the past, the Moonbirds crew seems to have positioned themselves well for any future copyright disputes that may deter collectors from joining the Moonbirds community.
Licensed under CC0
Since the beginning of july the floor price has dropped from more than 30 ETH to less than 15 ETH
And it is not the latest news to put it in the public domain that will raise its floor price.
The founder of the Moonbirds project announces that the NFTs in his collection are now licensed under CC0, the most permissive Creative Commons license.
In other words: anyone can now make commercial use of the illustrations of both collections (Moonbirds & Moonbirds Oddities) they can be freely distributed, expanded and marketed even without the owner’s permission.
more info in our article: Moonbirds, 50% off in one month
Where to buy and sell Moonbirds?
Currently, Moonbirds can trade on most major Ethereum NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea, LooksRare, Rarible, etc. However, Moonbirds are not cheap and, as of April 28, the minimum price for any available Moonbird is 30 ETH.
However, it is possible that the investment will eventually pay off. Just as we have seen Bored Apes and CryptoPunks continue to grow in popularity, Moonbirds will surely see a similar ebb and flow, and the Moonbirds team seems committed to building the project for the long term.
Currently, Moonbirds is well funded, as 100 percent of the proceeds from the project’s primary sales went directly to Proof’s holdings with plans to expand the project team and launch new products. With five percent of all secondary sales set aside for project development and the fact that the founder of Reddit is now involved , it looks like things are looking up for this coveted collection of pixel art owls.
Conclusion
The ever-growing world of NFTs has started focusing on blue-chip and high-end projects in a radical shift from a fragmented approach. At this time, the launch of Moonbirds NFTs has created quite a stir in the NFT landscape. At the pricing of almost 11 ETH for one Moonbird NFT, they are definitely something to look out for.
Moonbirds NFT collection plans on introducing the benefits of NFT staking with the nesting feature. At the same time, granting NFT holders complete ownership of IP rights of their NFT and carbon offsetting are unique benchmarks for future NFT collections. Learn more about the Moonbirds NFT collection and how they can serve as vital tools for empowering the NFT landscape.