A new NFT collection ‘Moonbirds’ which was launched on Saturday, has garnered plenty of attention. The 10,000 piece NFT collection has become the top collection by sales volume in the past 7 days as well as 30 days at a value of $291 million.
The collection features computer-generated pixel owl avatar NFTs which had a mint price of 2.5 ETH per NFT at the time of launch. The collection was sold out on 16th April. Since then the floor price has skyrocketed to 18 ETH on secondary markets such as OpenSea.
Moonbirds are utility-enabled profile picture NFTs and feature a richly diverse and unique pool of rarity based traits. One of the NFTs, Moonbird #7963 fetched the ninth-largest sale in the week at a price of 135 ETH.
Moonbirds esteem comes from the group behind it, the Proof collective. The proof collective is a group of 1,000 NFT collectors and includes well-known members of the NFT field such as Mike Winkelmann, also known as the Beeple.
The collective’s founders are Kevin Rose and Justin Mezzell. Kevin Rose is also a venture capitalist at True Ventures, which focuses on blockchain startups and hosts crypto podcasts.
Membership to the coveted Proof collective was priced at 1.99 ETH in December 2021. However, currently PROOF Collective has a minimum price of eye-watering 90 ETH on Openea.
For the Moonbirds launch, the public entered a raffle which guaranteed access to mint, or create Moonbird NFTs. Every raffle winner could mint one NFT. Proof members could also enter the raffle, however they were also guaranteed two Moonbird NFTs for every Proof membership NFT owned.
Out of the total 10,000 Moonbird NFTs, 7,875 NFTs were allocated to the raffle winners. 2,000 NFTs were allocated to the Proof members. 125 NFTs were for distribution by the Moonbirds team.
Moonbird NFT holders will be able to “nest” their NFTs to “accrue additional benefits as total nested time accumulates”. This means that the NFT holders will receive benefits, upgrades and airdrops over time.
Kevin Rose said that the money generated by the Moonbirds sale will be used to “build a new media company”. Some see this as a turning point for the NFT marketplace, wherein it is used not only for selling art but also for raising funds.
However, the Moonbird drop was not free of controversy. Many thought that the price of the NFTs was being manipulated by members of the Proof collective.
The collective team was accused of “wash trading”, a play where the seller is on both sides of the transaction, to create an artificially high value of the asset. The collective was also accused of nepotism by offering free membership NFTs to family and friends.
Regardless of all accusations, the bird collection has snatched the attention of every NFT collector over the weekend. Currently it stands at the second place for collections by sales volume in the past 24 hours.
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