Non-Fungible Thursdays: What Happened in NFTs This Week? [June 2, 2022]
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Non-Fungible Thursdays: What Happened in NFTs This Week? [June 2, 2022]

CoinMarketCap looks at the most exciting events in the NFT space — from the Solana community scamming a hacker to recover stolen NFTs, to a Netflix series launching an NFT scavenger hunt.

Non-Fungible Thursdays: What Happened in NFTs This Week? [June 2, 2022]

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Interest in NFTs appears to be dropping amid a general bearish sentiment in the wider crypto market. Meanwhile, the total trading volume of Solana NFTs briefly overtook Ethereum over the past week.

From recovering stolen loot to a thriving market for NFT gaming in India, here’s a rundown of some of the hottest NFT news over the past week.

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Hacker Gets “Scammed” as the Solana Community Comes Together to Recover Stolen NFTs

Hacks and phishing attacks are not particularly new in the NFT space. As a matter of fact, hardly does any week go by without a hacking incident. And given the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, stolen funds or NFTs are often as good as gone forever. However, in a rather interesting turn of events, a small NFT community has been able to recover stolen NFTs from a hacker.

As with most phishing attacks in the NFT space, the incident began after the hack gained control of the Discord server for the cross-chain gaming development studio Uncharted NFT. This led to a loss of 25 World of Solana NFTs and over 150 SOL tokens from 109 users’ wallets. The biggest victim lost over 25 rare collectibles.

In response to the attack, two community members hatched a plan to dupe the attacker. They reached out to the dev parent to increase the royalties on each sale to 98% from the original 5% while advising other members to be on the lookout for market listings.

As expected, the hacker decided to cash out two days later, and, unknowingly, stepped into the trap. The stolen items were listed on Solana’s NFT marketplace Magic Eden, giving the community the chance to buy 15 of the said items. Another user purchased the remaining 10 items.

The team quickly pinged the user who had purchased the remaining items and he accepted to cooperate with the community.

“Hi! You sniped WOS NFTs that are stolen goods. I am the owner of the project and royalties are set at 98%. Join World of Solana Discord for a refund you won’t be able to sell them,” read the ping.

“This intervention required constant monitoring and coordination by the community,” the team said. Ultimately, the stolen items were recovered and returned to the victim.

“Moral of the story is to always use a burner wallet and be careful when minting,” said the team. “Our community is small, but together we are very strong!”

Prada Launches NFT Collection

Along with its Cassius Hirst Timecapsule apparel drop, Prada will be releasing its first independent collection of digital collectibles. The luxury Italian fashion brand will now join the likes of Gucci, Balenciaga, and Balmain who have already dipped their toes in the NFT waters.
“From June 2nd Prada Timecapsule customers will have the chance to become the first owners of Prada NFT by purchasing a Timecapsule product which also sees NFT gifted,” the company tweeted on Monday.

The inaugural 100 Ethereum-based NFTs will be given as a free airdrop to people who purchase physical merch from Prada’s latest apparel drop in collaboration with Cassius Hirst, son of artist Damien Hirst. In addition to giving extra exclusivity to buyers of the physical shirt, there is the possibility that NFT holders will receive additional Prada NFTs at a future date, alongside other perks and VIP experiences.

Similar to the Prada x Cassius Hirst unisex button-down shirts, which come in black or white, the NFTs are GIFs of a black or white pill capsule. Each collectible will be tied to the number associated with the physical shirt.

Prada’s Timecapsule initiative was launched back in December 2019. Through 2020 and 2021, the fashion brand would release a limited-edition bowling shirt on the first Thursday of every month, available for just 24 hours. The exclusive items are typically 50 editions that are then delivered in a custom package to buyers.

That being said, all those who had purchased the physical Prada Timecapsule since its launch in 2019 will be gifted corresponding NFTs at a future date.

Prada’s latest move in developing its Web3.0 strategy taps on the Aura Blockchain Consortium, a multi-nodal, private blockchain that aims to fight counterfeits and ensure provenance for luxury brands.
Meanwhile, the company also created a new community server on Discord, Prada Crypted. The utilities of the NFTs will be revealed in due course on the server.

Global Interest for NFTs Drops by 70%, Google Trend Data Reveals

2022 began on a rather high note for the NFT market, with leading NFT marketplace OpenSea hitting a new all-time record in its trading volume. However, it appears that the interest in non-fungible tokens has continued to drop since then, crashing to new lows in May 2022 in the face of the general crypto market crash.

According to data from Google Trends compiled by Be[In]Crypto, interest in NFT-related topics dropped across the globe.

For clarity, the interest over time is graded on a scale of 0 to 100 based on the number of Google searches in NFT-related content. A value of 0 or close to 0 suggests that there is little to no interest in the sector. On the flip side, a value of 50 and above means that people are interested in learning more about NFTs.

As per the data, the term “non-fungible token” was at 26 in the last days of May, representing a 74% drop from its peak value of 100 in January 2022.

At the beginning of the year, the trading volume of the top NFT marketplaces reached an all-time high of $16.54 billion. Comparatively, this figure has dropped to around $4 billion in the last days of May, a 75% decline from January’s volume.

The majority of the top NFTs that contributed to the January milestone have seen a drop in sales. For instance, the sales volume of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs was around $200 million, a 41% drop in four months. Similarly, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Axie Infinity saw sales volumes of approximately $252.33 million and $126.49 million, respectively. These figures were drastically slashed in the second quarter of the year.
While MAYC saw around $163.96 million in trading volume in May, Axie Infinity recorded a meager $6.6 million, a whopping 94% decline from its January figures. Nansen’s NFT-500 index reflects a similar story as well.
However, other metrics to assess the NFT market show a different story as mentioned by Martin, a Data Journalist at Nansen in a Tweet thread.

We see that weekly user count is holding steady at ~250K users and transactions per week have rebounded strongly from a low of ~290K to over 600K currently. Buying activity has also had a strong recovery to ~55K buyers per day after setting a low of 16K on 12 May. The number of weekly active projects based on sales count is on a rise across every category except projects with over 10K sales a week, suggesting that buyers' interest is starting to spread to a wider range of projects and the market is becoming more long tail.

All of these charts and dashboards are available for FREE to all Nansen Lite subscribers. If you want to stay on top of all things NFT, sign up for a Nansen account today!

India Is the Most Popular Hub for NFT Gaming

In a recent survey conducted by Finder, it was discovered that India, Hong Kong, and the UAE are the top three locations for NFT-based play-to-earn (P2E) games.

Given the hype around NFT gaming, many people in developing countries have turned to play-to-earn games as a way to generate extra income. According to the study, 34% of the Indian respondents agreed to have played a P2E game. Hong Kong and the UAE are behind with 29% and 27%, respectively.

Finder, in its NFT Gaming Adoption Report, revealed that play-to-earn games are becoming quite popular among several users around the globe. Specifically, those aged 18-34 are leading the charge and are more likely to interact with the NFT gaming space.

India is currently a global leader in NFT gaming. One in three respondents from the region admitted to having played a P2E game. China’s special administrative region, Hong Kong, is also surprisingly another leader. Meanwhile, France and Sweden were at the bottom with 6% and 4%, respectively.

Elsewhere another study by DappRadar revealed that blockchain-based games raised $2.5 billion from investors in Q1, 2022. Assuming the momentum is sustained, the data acquisition and analysis company predicts that total investments could exceed $10 billion by the end of 2022.

Netflix’s ‘Love, Death + Robots’ Series Returns With an NFT Scavenger Hunt

Love, Death + Robots, a popular animated Netflix show, has made its way back to the big screen but this time with an added twist of an NFT scavenger hunt.

Developed in collaboration with Web3 studio Feature, the scavenger hunt includes nine QR codes scattered across the show’s social media pages, videos, billboards, and episodes of the sci-fi series. Viewers will be able to scan the said codes with their phones to access the NFTs that will be displayed in their OpenSea accounts.

Sadly, the new feature is only available to US customers through a MetaMask or Coinbase wallet. Users will also have to pay the gas fees to mint the NFTs they get from scanning the QR code. And according to the show’s OpenSea account, the floor price of each NFT is 0.003 ETH, or about $6.

The NFTs appear to be images from the animation series. As of press time, the collection had recorded over $36,000 in trading volume, with nearly 30,000 owners.

This is not the streaming service’s first foray into the world of crypto. Last month, the company released “Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King,” a documentary on the mysterious death of the CEO of crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotton.

Solana Briefly Overtakes Ethereum in Daily NFT Trading Volume

Although Ethereum is still the undisputed king of the NFT market, rivals like Solana have been slowly chipping at its market share. In April, a new Solana project became the most-traded collection on OpenSea, surpassing other Ethereum NFT collections like Meebits and VeeFriends. Over the past week, another Solana-based project has broken into the ranks of Ethereum, generating more money than Ethereum-based projects in a 24-hour span.
Per data from CryptoSlam, the secondary market sales of Solana NFTs generated nearly $24.3 million between Tuesday and Wednesday last week. Ethereum, on the other hand, saw $24 million in sales during the same span.

While the difference in figures between both blockchains seems modest, this is the first time that the smaller Solana market is overtaking Ethereum in terms of dollar amount generated in a 24-hour window. Data on CryptoSlam reveals that Solana NFT sales were up by 436% from the previous day.

The spike in activity was largely due to the launch of Trippin’ Ape Tribe, a collection of 10,000 NFT profile pictures of ape illustrations. The project launched on Magic Eden on Tuesday and its secondary market sales skyrocketed following the mint. Notably, Trippin’ Ape Tribe was responsible for more than $14.5 million of the 24-hour Solana sales volume. Consequently, it became the most popular collection within that window, beating every other Ethereum and Solana project by a wide margin. Comparatively, the runner-up was Ethereum’s Bored Ape Yacht Club, which saw just $3.5 million in sales.
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