Moonbirds: The NFT project of Kevin Rose in the bear market broke all records

Since its first appearance on the scene on April 16, PROOF Collective‘s long-awaited Moonbirds community has attracted nearly $500 million in sales, including over $200 million in sales in the first 48 hours on the market alone.

To date, the project is ranked eighth among the best-selling collections on OpenSea in terms of all-time sales. His success despite the bear market earned him the NFT blue chip title.

So, what are Moonbirds? Why is the NFT community trying to get their hands on them? Who is the creator of the collection? You have questions, NFTmetria has the answers.

Also watch our video review:

Moonbirds Official Links

• Official website: https://www.moonbirds.xyz/
• Twitter @moonbirds – over 208K followers,
• Discord @proof – over 19K subscribers.

Moonbirds in numbers

• The NFT project was launched on April 16, 2022,
• Open for sale 7875 non-fungible tokens from the collection were sold out within 48 hours of release, which brought the creators 19687 ETH (over $60 million at the time of sale),
• A few days after the launch, the collection had already reached over 100,000 ETH (approximately $300 million at the time) in secondary sales,
• The primary sale was made at a price of 2.5 ETH, then at the peak the average price reached 44.8 ETH in April, and now the auction is going at a price of 10-15 ETH,
• Total sales exceeded 324k ETH (approximately $520 million),
• Market capitalization is $145.25 million,
• Floor price is 1.3 ETH,
• The most expensive NFT was purchased by The Sandbox team for 350 ETH ($1.03 million at the time of purchase),
• The NFT smart contract includes a 5% royalty to creators,
• The project ranks eighth among the top collections on OpenSea in terms of all-time sales.

Information (including exchange rates) is at the time of writing

What are Moonbirds?

Moonbirds is an NFT collection of 10,000 unique owl avatars with rare features like mohawks, blindfolds, and fiery eyes. The project was launched on April 16, 2022 in accordance with the ERC-721 standard on the Ethereum network.

Each non-fungible token grants the user access to an exclusive closed PROOF Collective membership club, where they can get additional benefits.

Even though the collection consisted of 10,000 pieces, only 7,875 characters were available to the public. The NFT community was concerned about the limited release of Moonbirds, citing availability issues. Indeed, the much-touted collection sold out within 48 hours of release.

How is Moonbirds NFT collection distributed?

The collection contains a total of 10,000 NFTs. And the entire stock was divided into three main parts.

1. 2000 pieces have been reserved for members of the Proof Collective to be minted prior to the general sale. Since the Proof Collective ecosystem has a total of 1,000 members, each token gives its holder two free NFTs. This was a nice deal if you were one of the few members of the Collective who had more than one Proof NFT membership pass (entrance to an exclusive club cost from 40 ETH).
2. Shipment 7875 pieces has been released to the general public through a whitelist. This list consisted of the lucky winners of Proof’s massive lottery. To do this, potential collectors had to have 2.5 ETH (the price of one NFT) in their crypto wallet at the time of entry.
3. In addition to the reserves and giveaway, the last 125 pieces have been saved by the Proof Collective admins for use in future collaborations, marketing and more.

Moonbirds attributes

The NFT collection contains 8 characteristic attributes that make this or that NFT rarer and more unique.

1. Background

There are 10 types of backgrounds in total. The most popular background is green (1744 avatars have it). And the rarest colors are Jade Green, Glitch Red, Enlightened Purple, Cosmic Purple (each of them has 6 owls).

2. Beak

There are 3 types of beaks – short, medium and long. The last of them is the rarest (1612 tokens have it).

3. Body

There are 17 types of bodies in total. The most common is Crescent (3538 avatars have it). And the rarest attributes are Jade, Glitch, Enlightened, Cosmic (each of them has 6 owls).

4. Eyes

There are 11 types of eyes in total. Open eyes are the most popular (2536 avatars have them). And Diamond is the rarest (165 NFTs own this attribute).

5. Eyewear

There are 12 types of eyewear in total. Of these, the most common is the eyepatch, 201 tokens have it. And the rarest are Half-moon Spectacles (they are present in 75 pieces)

6. Feathers

There are 18 types of feathers in total. Most often you will meet red ones, there are 1842 of them. And least of all Legendary Guardian and Legendary Brave (there are 4 of them each).

7. Headwear

They are the most varieties – as many as 37 species. The most frequent Moon Hats (383 pieces), the rarest Gremplins (57 pieces).

8. Outwear

There are 8 varieties in total. The most popular Hoodie Down (295 avatars have it). And the rarest is Hero’s Tunic (it is found in 120 NFTs).

For example:

• Owl #3904 (one of the rarest and most expensive) has an enlightened purple background, an enlightened body and legendary crescent feathers. This combination has been recognized as one of the most unique. The rarity rating of a particular character is 21 out of 10,000. Therefore, it was sold for 305 ETH.
• In contrast, owl #7433 has a yellow background, long beak, crescent body, open eyes, and brown feathers. This is a common combination; the rarity rating of a particular character is 9843 out of 10000. Therefore, it is now sold for 11 ETH.

What is nesting?

The Proof Collective team has come up with something new by creating a nesting or nesting feature. An investment is essentially a staking crack, a common feature for crypto tokens that allows you to earn rewards (or income) by pegging them to a platform. However, in this case, you keep the Moonbirds in your wallet and the rewards are not crypto tokens.

Instead, hosting your Moonbird, rather than hosting or selling it, will equalize your nest, and higher-level holders (also known as long-term holders) will earn higher returns in the PROOF community, including “expanded drops and prizes.” The initiative was only launched in April 2022, so we don’t have a clear idea of ​​the future benefits. But this may deter some owners from parting prematurely with their owls.

Who created the Moonbirds?

The collection was created by renowned American Internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose as part of his newly formed Proof Collective, a private NFT collective of 1,000 collectors and artists. Before joining Moonbirds and becoming a big name in Web3/NFT, Rose had already established himself as an internet celebrity, investor, podcaster, and founder of news aggregator Digg, among other ventures.

To be sure, a large number of Proof developers and members contributed to the final product. One such contributor is Justin Mezzel, co-founder and CEO of the Proof platform, who is also the artist behind the bird’s distinctive pixel art style.

Ryan Carson, former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Moonbirds, also played a major role on the project team. While his controversial departure from the project at the end of April to create his own NFT fund stirred up the community, it only added to the excitement around the project.

NFT membership club PROOF: What is it?

Essentially, PROOF is a private group of 1,000 NFT collectors and artists. Owning a PROOF Collective NFT comes with various benefits, one of which was the ability to mint two Moonbirds during launch.

PROOF was launched in December 2021 and originated from the PROOF podcast hosted by Kevin Rose about the NFT industry. To gain access, members have a unique PROOF Collective. This token is the key to an exclusive community, including access to PROOF private Discord, personal events, NFT collaborations, podcast, free airdrops, and other perks.

PROOF’s mission is to bring together the most innovative minds in the NFT community, including early collectors and strategic decision makers. PROOF members own a collective of 153,940 non-fungible tokens, including over 800 Bored Apes, nearly 500 MeeBits and 148 CryptoPunks, according to the official website.

NFT holders who want to get involved in the community better prepare their crypto wallets because PROOF Collective NFTs are traded on OpenSea at a whopping 40 ETH minimum price, or roughly $52K. The original mint was sold at a Dutch auction for a minimum price of 5 ETH or $14,000 at the time.

How did the Moonbirds become blue chip NFT collection?

The buzz around the project was overwhelming. Moonbirds flew straight out of the mint and made some of the more famous NFT PFPs look like child’s play. His shake-up of the NFT space is phenomenal, his fame has caused a major ripple effect.

After its launch, 7,875 of the 10,000 non-fungible tokens raffled off (through the lottery) were taken off the shelf within two days. The creators earned 19,687 ETH, which at that time was estimated at about $60 million. The collection continues to bring millions to holders in the secondary NFT market.

The Moonbirds’ affiliation with the PROOF collective made him an instant hit. When PROOF Collective NFTs hit the market, they cost 1 ETH each. Despite a slow year 2021, PROOF Collective subscriptions started to slowly rise to double digits and exceeded 100 ETH before the launch of the collection. The combination of FOMO (fear of missing out) and the NFT fame associated with Moonbirds blew the value of the project sky-high.

Why are Moonbirds popular and expensive?

The popularity of the collection is due to the support of Kevin Rose and his Proof Collective, a group of well-known NFT collectors. Members include investor Gary Vaynerchuk and popular NFT artist known as Beeple.

In addition, each NFT provides holders with access to:

• Exclusive PROOF Discord community and related rewards. In addition, valuable insider information and advice from real crypto investors are published there.
• First bets on the upcoming PROOF metaverse project, Project Highrise.
• Additional rewards that increase as holders hold their non-fungible tokens. PROOF calls this process “nesting”.
• Future airdrops. The next one is rumored to be in early 2023 called Moonbird Mythics.

Moonbirds Roadmap

According to the PROOF team, they are used to promising less and delivering more. Therefore, they do not have such a public roadmap for the project. The only thing that can give an idea of ​​the future plans is their presentation of Future PROOF.

Moonbirds Ecosystem Projects

At the moment, all projects of the team are in development. And all owl owners are patiently waiting for various events that Proof is talking about.

Among the first projects we expect:

• Collection of Moonbird Mythics. Their minting began in July 2023.
• The PROOF metaverse, codenamed Highrise.

Unfortunately, there is currently no deep understanding of the essence of projects, their concept and usefulness on the market. Therefore, we will expect news from the team of creators.

How much do Moonbirds cost?

On the chart below, you can see the dynamics of price changes since the creation of the collection. As you can see, the highest price peak occurred the next week after the release. Then the average price was 38.5 ETH. What followed was a cyclical downturn. Further in July, the average price rose to 28 ETH.

And today you can buy Moonbirds for a minimum of 1.3 ETH ($2K at the time of writing). On average, the price varies from 1.2 to 5 ETH.

Most expensive Moonbirds sales

1. The Sandbox metaverse project bought Moonbirds #2642 on April 23, 2022 for 350 ETH ($1.03 million at the time of purchase).
2. #3904 sold on April 23rd for 305 ETH ($905K at time of purchase)
3. #5079 sold on April 30 for 300 ETH ($820K at the time of purchase)
4. #5602 sold on April 23 for 299 ETH ($877K at time of purchase)

Where to buy Moonbirds?

The initial mint ended within 48 hours of its start. Therefore, now they can only be bought in secondary markets. Currently, they are holding an impressive level of 10-13 ETH and have a stable volume of sales. You can see all the items available for sale on their page only on the marketplaces:

• OpenSea,
• Rarible,
• Looksrare,
• Blur,
• X2Y2.

How to buy Moonbirds?

The popularity of the collection and the benefits it brings are good reasons to buy it. You can purchase Moonbirds just like any other non-fungible token.

Here are the simple steps you need to follow to buy non-fungible tokens:

1. Open the official website of the marketplace.
2. Authorize your crypto wallet on the trading platform.
3. Add the necessary ETH funds to your wallet to buy tokens.
4. In the search field, type the name of the collection, and in the window that opens, select the token you like.
5. Click the “Buy” button or make an offer to add NFT to your wallet.

Latest news about Moonbirds NFT project

This extensive review would be incomplete if we did not touch on important news about the project itself. So, below are the largest of them.

$1.5 million NFT theft

The success of a project always generates not only a strong community, loyal followers and influential investors, but also, unfortunately, scammers. Recently, verified Twitter accounts have been hacked, after which the scammers rename them to Moonbirds and provide a link to fake contests. Anyone who follows it and authorizes their crypto wallet on the next site is left with a zero balance.

So, it happened with the collector under the nickname DigitalOrnithologist. A fraudster stole over 100 non-fungible tokens from him, including 29 Moonbirds. The total cost is estimated at about $1.5 million.

The identity of the fraudster was quickly figured out, and a couple of weeks later he returned everything stolen to the previous owner.

Moonbirds will store NFT art on the chain

In August 2022, PROOF announced that it was completely moving its blue-chip collection “on-chain”, allowing images to be fully contained within the underlying smart contract.

In a community live stream called Future PROOF, Harry Thomas, PROOF Product Director, explained that the new approach will mean that in the future, the NFT’s visible image will be “built from the contract itself from art layers that will be stored on the blockchain”

We’ve talked about putting the birds ‘on chain’, so what I’m here to tell you today is that they’re not only going to be ON chain, they’re going to be put IN chain.said Harry Thomas, director of product at PROOF

Thomas explained that their Ethereum-based NFTs will be different from most other non-fungible tokens, which are simply tokens that indicate where images are stored off-chain.

Moonbirds made all of their NFTs public

Previously, ownership of the Owl gave its holder all intellectual property rights (similar to BAYC, MAYC projects). And for many investors, this opportunity is key when choosing a project for investment.

However, as a major change for the popular project, Kevin Rose, the founder of Moonbirds, announced on Twitter on August 5, 2022 that both Moonbirds and Oddities (both projects in the PROOF ecosystem) will be moving to a CC0 license.

1/GM.

Today, we’re announcing that @moonbirds and @oddities_xyz are moving to the CC0 public license.

We believe this move honors and respects the values of the internet and web3 and starts a new and important phase of the project. 🧵…

— Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) August 4, 2022

In a nutshell, CC0 stands for “rights not reserved”, giving anyone the ability to use your token art for anything. For example, someone can create a clothing brand with your Moonbird logo, make millions of dollars, and they won’t owe you a cent.

In this new future true ownership is determined by what is recorded on the network, as it should be, and not by a record held by a government or a corporation. Rose said in a tweet

This landmark announcement comes just days after renowned crypto artist XCOPY announced that they are going to retroactively apply CC0 to all of their existing artwork. Of course, with the exception of their joint works.

The news was received with mixed reactions by the community. What amazed people in the community is that the announcement was made without any discussion with the owners. Several people have bought Moonbirds at five and six figures in hopes of using them commercially. In the extreme, the announcement resulted in one owner losing a six-figure licensing deal.

Moonbirds Mythics NFT collection begins minting

In July 2023, the team announced the launch of the Moonbirds Mythics derivative collection of 20,000 tokens. At the same time, this collection was announced a year ago; all this time it was created and worked out the details.

Moonbird Completes On-Chain Migration: Introducing Chromie Squiggle

In September 2023, the team has made history by completing its on-chain migration, marking a significant milestone in the world of NFTs. To celebrate this achievement, Moonbird collectors can now unlock a vibrant new background – Chromie Squiggle!

The Future of Moonbirds

Despite its wild success, the collection has fallen on hard times, causing concern in NFT circles. The controversial departure of one of its co-founders, Ryan Carson, in April 2022 caused an uproar in the community. Some have called his departure to create his own non-fungible tokens fund deliberate and damaging to the project.

However, another co-founder, Kevin Rose, quickly tweeted and assured the owners that everything was under control and that the project was going according to plan.

However, the Moonbirds continue to bring in heavyweights in the industry to help shape their future. The PROOF team is seriously focused on building and empowering their community, and the pace of the project continues unabated.

Therefore, its future success largely depends on the exclusivity of the private PROOF community.

Should you invest in Moonbirds?

Against the backdrop of a bearish cycle, sales data is not encouraging – this is true. But if you’re looking for a promising digital investment, Moonbirds is potentially a viable option. The fact is that the cryptocurrency market is essentially a space of news feeds, big names, liquidity and partnerships. And this is exactly what distinguishes Kevin Rose and the Proof Collective. That is, for this authoritative community, this NFT collection is a movable project into which a large amount of money, effort, time and labor is invested.
But remember that investment is, first of all, a thorough personal investment analysis of each NFT project.

Opinion of NFTmetria

At its core, Moonbirds is a simple collection of pixelated owls. And in general, the project is quite young, it was released only in April 2022. But at the same time, it made a lot of noise despite the negative sentiment in the crypto market at the time. And all thanks to what? The community followed well-known influencer Kevin Rose, the reputable Proof Collective and his concept. This is a great example of the power of a particular person and the rule of the market “success breeds more success.”

But the big question of the project was the decision of the team to switch to the CC0 license. Such a move changes the entire concept of the project as a whole, and, therefore, caused a lot of anger from the holders. And it is understandable – this decision demonstrates the lack of connection with their audience and, therefore, the loss of trust on their part.

In addition, the promises of the creators of the collection are promising. And how they implement it and in what time frame – we just have to see.