Take extra caution if you’re looking to buy a nested bird on an NFT marketplace, as any attempted purchase will result in a failed transaction and wasted gas spent by the user.
Who created Moonbirds?
Moonbirds was created by PROOF, a Web3 media company backed by True Ventures and led by renowned serial entrepreneur and Digg co-founder Kevin Rose. PROOF uses royalties from secondary Moonbirds sales, including funds from its $58 million mint, to reinvest in the project and bolster the developer team.
Previously, the team launched the exclusive NFT membership project PROOF Collective, a dedicated (and private) NFT community for collectors and artists.
Just two months into its existence, Moonbirds left quite the mark at NFT NYC. For conference attendees, PROOF-sponsored events were one the hottest tickets in town.
The company is expected to make an even bigger splash at upcoming events like Art Basel, SXSW, and its own PROOF of Conference.
Just like other pfp NFTs, Moonbirds have traits with varying levels of rarity. All in all, there are eight NFTs tied for the rarest in the collection.
What unites them are their ultra rare Legendary feathers, and the absence of other features such as a beak, eyes, headwear, outerwear, and eyewear.
The collection of 10,000 PFPs pulled in 69,000 ETH, approximately $207 million USD in total sales. Crypto Briefing initially reported that the highly-anticipated project would hit at least $66 million USD in sales. The actual sales surpassed estimations and even boasted a floor price of 21.3 ETH, approximately $64,000 USD.
Moonbirds landed itself on the leaderboard when it dropped on OpenSea, placing itself in the top spot for the last 30 days ahead of Azuki and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Moonbirds garnered ample attention leading up to the release, marketing itself as “the official PROOF PFP.” PROOF Collective is described as a private community led by Rose and Ryan Carson where the cost of the membership is at least 99 ETH.
According to Moonbirds’ official website, NFT owners will have full intellectual property rights.
How Many Moonbirds Are Available for Purchase
Out of the 10, 000 Moonbirds, 2,000 were made available to PROOF Collective NFT holders via a free mint, 125 were distributed to the Moonbirds team, and the remaining 7,875 were minted for 2.5 ETH each by those who won an allowlist spot in a public raffle. As a result, the Moonbirds team raised nearly $66 million from the allowlist mint based on current market pricing.
Moonbirds NFTs are available for purchase on like Opensea.
The floor price of the NFT on OpenSea is 23.9 ETH with about 140,000,000 volumes traded.
MBIRD, the foundational currency, allows holders to participate in Moonbird’s governance structure. The digital asset can be mined by staking or giving liquidity.
This floor price is still high, but it slid a little from 32 ETH since Boardroom last reported on the collection in our last NFT Sales roundup.
Growth and leadership challenges
Rose has always been transparent about his plans for PROOF and Moonbirds. He detailed in a YouTube video that proceeds from the first Moonbirds collection will be used to build a new media company.
But even in the name of transparency, PROOF has already had to make some leadership changes following some ineffective financial decisions made by one of its key leaders.
On April 25, the same day that PROOF announced new fundriasing, co-founder and COO Ryan Carson announced that he was stepping down to focus on his NFT investment firm, the 1.21 Gigawatts fund.
PROOF calls this process “nesting” — Moonbirds’ version of NFT staking — by which holders lock up their assets in exchange for passive crypto income, potential rewards, and other benefits. While Moonbirds are within their nesting period, they can’t be sold on secondary marketplaces.
“As soon as your Moonbird is nested, they’ll begin to accrue additional benefits,” Moonbirds’ official website reads.
“As total nested time accumulates, you’ll see your Moonbird achieve new tier levels, upgrading their nest. Upgraded nests enable enhanced drops and rewards.”
Moonbirds’ floor price on OpenSea is 28.9 ETH, or roughly $80,700.
Rose, including the recent market downturn, which he sums up as “risk showing itself” in the midst of a very long journey away from fiat currencies.
“If nothing fundamentally about the mechanics behind the scenes has changed, which I guess obviously is not the case when it comes to something like UST or Luna, but if everything else is sound in terms of the technical infrastructure behind the scenes for Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever it may be, then I’m just of the mindset that I don’t ever really think about going back out to fiat at any point,” Rose says.
The broader pullback in crypto markets has accompanied a more modest retreat in public markets over the past couple weeks, but while plenty of venture firms have seemed to be taking a hit, last week’s aggressive retreat knocked firms with substantial crypto holdings particularly hard.
This was Carson’s first time mentioning he was involved in said fund.
Coindesk reported that Carson’s NFT portfolio is worth $1.2 million.
2/ I’m also passionate about investing in NFTs and I’d like to spend more of my time focusing on that. The right thing for PROOF is to bring on a COO that has vast experience hyper-scaling companies and I want to see that happen.
— Ryan Carson (@ryancarson) April 25, 2022
Naturally, the NFT community did some digging to find out the deeper reason behind Carson’s controversial exit, which came after he purchased $580,000 worth of Monnbird NFTs, some rare, on launch day from a secondary marketplace. Needless to say, that sounds like a conflict of interest.
An investor’s dream in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) world is to get their hands on extremely valuable NFT sets. This could be in the form of popular collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) or the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT sets, which has now been reserved for the world’s elites.
Besides the increase in their respective floor prices, these exclusive NFTs also come with additional real-world privileges such as access to exclusive airdrops, backstage passes at events, and more.
Moonbirds, on the other hand, still presents some opportunity for smart investors in search of an elite NFT set comparable to the BAYC. This is because its floor price jumped from 2.5 ETH to 20 ETH in just 5 days following its inception, representing a 700% rise.
About MoonBirds
Moonbirds launched on Ethereum’s network on April 16th, 2022, under the ERC-721 standard.
Holders can nest their funds: lock them up in exchange for passive crypto income, prospective incentives, and other benefits. Moonbirds cannot be sold on secondary markets while they are in the process of nesting.
Where to Buy MoonBird
Since all Moonbirds were minted, the best place to get them is on a secondary NFT marketplace like Opensea.
Follow these steps to buy a Moonbird NFT from Opensea:
- Link Your Wallet To buy a Moonbird NFT on OpenSea, connect a browser-based cryptocurrency wallet.
A suitable wallet for this purpose is MetaMask.
- Fund Your Wallet After connecting your wallet, you’ll need to get some ETH or WETH (Wrapped Ether). On OpenSea, the majority of NFTs are bought and traded with Ether, the Ethereum network’s native token.
