Moonbirds raised $200 million in 6 hours

What Moonbirds can teach us about building a community

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

When the Crypto Punks NFT collection came out, I didn’t see it as a big deal. “Why is it so pixelated?”, was my first thought. Then Jay-Z bought a Crypto Punk for $120k. The next thing I know, the NFT market, which had been asleep since CryptoKitties in 2017, was on fire. Soon after, The Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) released its collection of 10,000 NFTs. The BAYC NFT membership grant access to an eccentric lifestyle of activities by the decentralized community. The apes have different levels of rarity traits, which cause the apes with the laser eyes to be more valuable than the apes with the closed eyes. On release, these NFTs were selling for less than 1 ETH, now they sell for upwards of $2.3 million. Tom Brady bought BAYC #3667 for 133 ETH, Madonna bought BAYC #4988 for 180 ETH, and Justin Bieber bought BAYC #3001 for 500 ETH. Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) is a 20,000 collection project that derives directly from BAYC. BAYC owners give a mutant serum to their BAYC NFTs to create Mutant Apes. MAYC is valued at $900 million.

Rap Battle: Bored Ape Yacht Club Vs. Crypto Punks

It’s safe to say that the NFT market has exploded in the past year. Recently as I scrolled through my Twitter feed, all I see is Moonbirds, Moonbirds, Moonbirds, Moonbirds, Moonbirds…etc. I am tagged nonstop in their stuff, and I guess this is a situation where they won. I checked them out and knowing nothing about Moonbirds I decided to write this article. Why not? If their community is so active, might as well see what they’re up to, right? I made no assumptions about the project, didn’t care if it was a big or small project, but the community piqued my interest. Full disclosure, I don’t own a Moonbird, so I don’t have any incentive to pump up the project. Similar to the other articles I write, I'll give a factual overview and then provide my opinion at the end.

Moonbirds is owned by a company called Proof Collective founded by venture capitalist Kevin Rose, who is affiliated with True Ventures. Kevin focused mainly on Blockchain companies during his time at True Ventures. The position allowed him to develop many valuable connections within the Blockchain space. The value that the Moonbirds project generated is mainly based on the reputation of Kevin Rose and his team. They made headlines for Proof Collective’s first NFT collection called Grails which was made in collaboration with Larva Labs, the creators of Crypto Punks. The Grails collection has 1000 NFTs, which consist of 20 artists who created 20 unique works of art. Each artist's fan base and following, gave Proof Collective even more notoriety, which then created this massive audience for Moonbirds. The Grails project was by all metrics very successful, so there was already an incentive to be part of this new project. The prices on the Grails collection range from about 3 ETH to 200 ETH. Moonbirds is Proof Collective’s second project. Shortly after minting, Moonbirds generated over $200 million in revenue, the price per mint was 2.5 ETH & the floor price is now at 20 ETH. The floor price of an NFT Collection is the lowest price that an NFT can be sold for. Moonbirds made $70 million off the mint alone. Proof Collective is co-creating this project with their very active Discord server. Their roadmap includes Airdrops, Events, and Tokens. They also provide the opportunity to stake your Moonbirds NFT. So far the most expensive Moonbird is auctioning for 1500 ETH which is about $4.6 million.

Let’s go a layer deeper. How exactly did Moonbirds raise all this money? As I mentioned before, it’s all built on the success and reputation of Kevin Rose. He is a blockchain-focused venture capitalist who has access to a lot of connections and resources. Surveying the social media accounts associated with Proof Collective after the massive success of Moonbirds. Proof Collective’s official Twitter account has 53k followers, Moonbirds official Twitter has 165k followers, and their founder Kevin Rose has 1.6M followers.

What’s my final deliberation? I don’t see this as a win for the little guy. I don’t like the art, the road map is super basic, and the entire value of this project is based on one guy’s reputation that he got from his cushy VC job. There’s no David vs. Goliath victory here. Let’s be honest, this is a rich person who is connected to other rich people, and they all pumped this project to the moon. These JPEG NFTs as memberships have been done already. There is nothing new here, this is just a rinse and repeat of Crypto Punks & BAYC. ERC721 Smart contracts are not limited to JPEGs, Smart Contract technology is too exciting to be limited to a use-case that is so boring. "My NFT project is going to give you access to events and celebrities", I’m not impressed. Let’s innovate! If you read these articles expecting me to worship Tech CEOs like Elon Musk or Venture Capitalist like Kevin Rose, you’re missing the point of blockchain! We’re not ancient Romans searching for new Gods to worship. I love blockchain because of its ability to cut out the VC firms and fundraise within our community. Crypto wasn't developed to make rich people richer, it was developed to even the playing field. Moonbirds just doesn’t excite me.

Where is our entrepreneurial spirit? Where is our thirst for innovation? The NFT as images use-case was a cool party trick 5 years ago when CryptoKitties did it. I keep waiting for another use-case for NFTs and I keep getting 10k variations of cats, dogs, monkeys & owls. Boooring! I’m here for the future. I want to see these fundraising opportunities used to build flying cars and Smart cities. Furthermore, I want to see holograms and sustainable energy solutions…not another, “Our use case is that you get to meet celebrities”, what am I? 7 years old? You think I care about meeting Miley Cyrus or Hillary Duff? My final verdict - boring! Two thumbs down. 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. I just rolled my eyes so hard, it got stuck looking at my brain. “I didn’t know how spacious it was back here.”

Was I too harsh? I feel like I have become old man yells at Cloud. “Back in my day, we had Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision for the future, you punk kids!” Seriously, all this money in the NFT space and every project is the exact same. Billions of dollars are being raised, and where is that money going? Blockchain is the most innovative space, where is the innovation? We are supposed to be competing against Mark Zuckerburg, Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk, not fawning after them like groupies. Definitely not begging for their approval. Meta is taking 50% revenue from every app that gets sold on their VR platform. Where is the Blockchain equivalent, giving creators another choice? There are all these NFT avatars, why don’t we create a pipeline that plug our 3D NFT avatars into different metaverses with character rigging already figured out. A billion-dollar industry! Am I too idealistic? Do I sound like a cult leader? I’m just disappointed. Everyone is Agent Smith from the Matrix disguised as a hipster monkey. I would roll my eyes again, but it’s still stuck in the back of my head, “Ooh, that’s where that memory went.”

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If you like what you read and would like to support Medallion XLN’s growth, send a Moonbird 😉, any of your favorite NFTs or ERC20 tokens to medallionxln.eth. Who knows, I might even write an article about it.