Art Blocks Curated Series 1 NFTs Rise Amid Bear Market

🌅 Welcome!

Chaos continues in the aftermath of FTX’s downfall. SBF has tweeted an ambiguous thread and small FTX withdrawals appear to be going through for some users with no official announcement from the team. 

Today, we dive into the recent price rally of Art Blocks collections, and our Research team examines two gaming projects that managed to end October on a positive note.

This is the Delphi Daily. Let’s dive in.

🚨 In Case You Missed It

• FTX lent customer assets to fund risky bets made by Alameda Research. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) told investors Alameda owes $10B to FTX.
• SBF apologizes and posts an ambiguous tweet thread claiming FTX’s balance sheet maintains assets that are more than its liabilities.
• Small and disorderly batches of withdrawals from FTX start going through with no official announcement from the team.
• Tether begins freezing USDT owned by FTX at the request of law enforcement agencies.
• U.S. SEC and Justice Department are investigating FTX US for potential violations of securities laws.
  

📊 Art Blocks Curated Series 1 NFTs Rise Amid Bear Market

• During the last week, floor prices for Chromie Squiggles and Construction Token NFT collections have reached a new all-time high at 16.8 ETH and 12 ETH respectively. Other collections in Art Blocks Curated Series 1 have also seen price increases.
• In the last 30 days, Chromie Squiggles (+23%), Genesis (+106%), Construction Token (+69%), Dynamic Slices (+99%), and Elevated Deconstructions (+176%) have outperformed other NFT collections such as Fidenza, Ringers, BAYC, and Punks.
• Art Blocks remains the leader in generative art NFTs. There are now 68 Curated collections and 8 Curated series. The six NFT projects mentioned above are part of the Art Blocks Curated Series 1.
• Chromie Squiggles is arguably one of the most popular collections in Art Blocks. While some of the other collections in this series may not be as prominent, they are likely to see higher demand than other projects that are not associated with Art Blocks.

⚡ October Gaming Insights

• October saw a drop in monthly unique wallets (MUW) across the top 10 gaming projects. However, Trickshot Blitz and Planet IX managed to end the month on a positive note.
• At its core, Planet IX is a gamified DeFi protocol where the main mechanic has players collecting land parcels called PIX (among other NFTs and resources) that can be combined and staked for IXT token rewards.
• The idle staking game went on-chain in November 2021, but players had to wait until October of this year for staking to go live. Staking is most likely the primary catalyst that led to the increase in wallet activity.
• However, the project also announced a strategic merger with ArcadeNFT. This partnership aims to bridge the two communities and provide utility to ArcadeNFT holders within the Planet IX ecosystem.

• Developer Joyride Games’ mobile play-to-earn title Trickshot Blitz (TB) had an eventful month. The number of daily unique wallets (DUW) interacting with the dApp increased by 270%, taking it from 7th to 2nd place.
• Joyride Games, which also has another game in the DUW top-ten charts (Solitaire Blitz), raised $14M over two rounds of funding. This funding was to help develop tools such as the recently launched Joyride wallet to help third-party developers integrate blockchain tech into their games and onboard more players.
• TB is built on Flow’s L1 blockchain developed by Dapper Labs and launched on Apple and Android devices in August. It is a free-to-play casual title, where players compete to win matches of eight-ball pool.
• It differs from similar mobile games in that players are rewarded in RLY tokens that can be immediately exchanged for fiat currency.
• For more on the gaming landscape, Delphi members can read our Delphi Pro report here.

🐣 Notable Tweets

Update on FTX Withdrawals

I know I said I’ll take a break off Twitter but new development from @FTX_Official

– Jason Choi (@mrjasonchoi) Nov 10, 2022

Overview of the FTX Debacle

FTX was the world’s 3rd largest crypto exchange.

Today it’s said to be insolvent and in the midst of an acquisition by Binance.

Here’s everything you need to know about Alameda Research and the collapse of FTX:

👇

– jonwu.eth (@jonwu_) Nov 09, 2022