NFT Debrief - February 2023

GM! Welcome to our monthly coverage of NFTs and the metaverse. This month:

• Bitcoin Ordinals blow up, with more than 100,000 Ordinals inscribed onto the Bitcoin network
• Cool Cats shifts their strategic direction and redesigns their logo
• We dive deeper into the meteoric rise of Checks NFTs

🚨State of the Market

NFT market volume on Ethereum continues its uptrend from last month, recording monthly transaction volume of over $1B in January. This is a level not seen since June 2022. Blur accounted for 46% of January’s total NFT volume, surpassing OpenSea’s 40% share. Blur’s airdrop finally took place on Valentine’s Day, with over $300M worth of BLUR tokens distributed to traders and creators.

OpenSea is feeling the heat from Blur, announcing 0% marketplace fees for a limited amount of time. They also moved to a minimum of 0.5% optional creator earnings for all collections without on-chain enforcement and updated their operator filter to allow sales using NFT marketplaces with the same policies.

Other notable developments:

• Coinbase NFT paused creator drops to focus on features and tools that creators have requested. Coinbase signaled that they are not shutting down the NFT marketplace, and more developments will be announced in the future.
• The English Premier League announced a 4-year licensing partnership with Sorare, allowing fans to buy and sell licensed digital collectibles from one of the most popular sports leagues in the world.

• On January 21st, software engineer Casey Rodarmor launched Ordinals, which made individual sats (a unit of Bitcoin) trackable and effectively turning them into NFTs. Inscription is the process of linking content data with individual sats. This has sparked a heated debate in the Bitcoin community, with some embracing the new upgrade and others vehemently rejecting Ordinals.
• The growth in Bitcoin Ordinals has led to a corresponding surge in fees on the Bitcoin network. On January 30th, the daily fees spent inscribing Ordinals was $682. By February 11th, this had skyrocketed to over $73,000, a 100-fold increase.
• At the time of writing, the Bitcoin network had seen more than 100,000 Ordinal inscriptions. Users are inscribing images, videos, audio, text, etc., on-chain, with certain inscriptions like Ordinal Punks already fetching sky-high prices via OTC trades.
• For a deeper dive into Ordinals, you can read our PRO report here.

• Last month, NFT lending platforms on Ethereum witnessed a surge in weekly borrowing volume. As of February 6th, BendDAO has taken the lead in the NFT lending space with 53% volume share, with NFTfi trailing behind at 37%. BendDAO has been steadily growing its market share since Q1 2022.
• With a full suite of services, including instantaneous NFT-backed loans, a wide range of NFT collateral options, and the option for buyers to make NFT