PROOF Collective: exclusive NFT community by Kevin Rose

Do you want to join the NFT project which involves famous influencers and celebrities from all over the world? Meet PROOF Collective! Enthusiasts like Gary Vee, who owns VeeFriends, and rich NFT artist Beeple, who became mega-popular after selling his NFT creation for $69 million at Christie’s, are showing active interest in the community. But that’s not all. The PROOF Collective name is associated with such successful brands as Moonbirds, Emotes @emotesnft, Grails @emotesnft and others. The founder of this NFT project is Kevin Rose, one of the main influencers in the Web 3.0 space, formerly a senior product manager at Google and creator of Digg, one of the first news aggregators.

Today PROOF Collective is one of the confident leaders in the Web3 industry. However, not everyone knows the background of this project. In our review, we will try to fill this gap and tell you in detail about the history and potential of this NFT project.

PROOF Collective Official Links

• Official site https://www.proof.xyz/collective
• Twitter @proof_xyz – over 103k followers,
• Discord @proof – over 13k members,
• Instagram @proofxyz – over 1k followers.

What is PROOF Collective?

PROOF Collective is an exclusive NFT community that includes top collectors and artists. Most of them prefer to remain anonymous. According to the information provided on the official website, as of February 23, 2023, the members of this elite club own the following assets:

• CryptoPunks – 115 tokens,
• Bored Ape Yacht Club – 203 tokens;
• Moonbirds – 2,005 tokens;
• ArtBlocks – 2,836 tokens;
• Oddities – 1,738 tokens;
• Grails – 1,128 tokens.

There are 1,000 NFTs in total, each of which is an entrance ticket to a private virtual club. Owning this NFT gives owners the following benefits:

• The right to access a private Discord channel,
• Early access to podcasts, IRL events and others.

The PROOF Collective considers information to be its main asset. Its members own the most popular NFTs and are actively searching for new opportunities and high-profile projects. Being a media company of a new type, the project produces and releases its own digital masterpieces (just think of the sensational projects Grails and Moonbirds, about which we will talk below). To date, the project platform features the work of such well-known NFT artists as Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Refik Anadol, Killer Acid, Dmitri Cherniak, Justin Aversano and others.

PROOF Collective in numbers

• The NFT project was launched on December 11, 2021.
• Mint of the collection was carried out in the form of a Dutch auction. The starting price was 5 ETH, and then it decreased by 0.25 ETH every 10 minutes. Most of the tokens were sold for 1 ETH.
• The NFT project is ranked 79th among the best collections in terms of sales of all time on the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea.
• The total volume of secondary sales exceeded 33k ETH (over $62 million at the current exchange rate).
• Floor price is 7 ETH (about $13k).
• Average sales range from 6 ETH to 8 ETH.
• The most expensive sale is the purchase of the NFT on April 23, 2022 for 139.69 ETH ($414k at the time of the sale).
• A total of 927 unique holders (93%). This is one of the highest rates on the market today. This shows extremely low chances of whales interconnection within the project. Thus, the risk of artificial project management from the inside is minimal.
• Only about 2% of the collection (23 pieces out of 1,000) are for sale, among them the offers range from 14.95 ETH to 100 ETH. This shows that almost all holders see the project as a great investment prospect and are not in a hurry to part with their assets at a lower price.

Data (including exchange rates) are given at the time of publication of the article (June 25, 2023)

Who created the PROOF Collective?

The PROOF Collective was launched on December 11, 2021 after its co-founder Kevin Rose @kevinrose started building a tight-knit community of Proof Podcast listeners. Kevin refrained from making grandiose promises to the members of the new club, but clarified that he wants to create a group of collectors for future NFT experimentation. The only thing guaranteed was the right to access a private Discord channel for more than 3 years.

The scale of the co-founder’s personality deserves to be described in more detail. Kevin Rose is an outstanding person in the field of IT entrepreneurship. In 2007, he was recognized as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35, according to the MIT Technology Review TR35.

Few people know that Kevin Rose in the early 2000s was the inspirer of such a project as Digg, which served as a news aggregator. Digg was an impetus for the development of many of today’s Web2 titans, among them Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.

In addition to Kevin Rose, the following people contributed to the creation and development of the project:

• Designer Justin Mezzell @JustinMezzell,
• Ryan Carson @ryancarson, founding member of PROOF Collective and serving as COO. He left the project less than two weeks after the launch of the Moonbirds collection to start his own NFT venture fund known as 121G.fund. Some users considered this incident a rugpull. Carson is known to have raised 200+ ETH profits from Moonbirds before abruptly leaving PROOF Collective.

In response to the wave of criticism against Ryan Carson, Kevin Rose posted the following tweet:

I had an internal policy not to purchase any moonbirds until after rarity counts were out to the public. I can't control someone clicking a button to purchase, but I can put stronger controls in place for all future drops. e.g., no employee purchases for 7-days.

— Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) April 25, 2022

Still, we must give credit to Kevin Rose. He didn’t make a big scandal about Carson’s departure, but, on the contrary, acted as a gentleman, thanking him for his contribution to the project and wishing him good luck in his future endeavors.

• Ryan LeFevre @MeltingIce, engineer involved in the development of the project. At the moment he is the Director of Engineering of PROOF Collective and Moonbirds.
• An individual named Punk 9059 @punk9059 has been appointed as Director of Research of PROOF Collective.

PROOF Collective Idea

As we already mentioned, the most valuable asset for representatives and authors of the community is information.

The goal of the project is to provide people with really useful information so that they can decide which digital art items they should collect and which artists they should pay attention to. In the world of stock trading, there are specialized organizations whose main task is to collect data and make informed research reports based on it. Kevin Rose approves

The mission of project is to become such an organization in the world of NFT.

Thus, any member of the club gets a unique chance to become an owner of insider information. Thanks to it he/she will be able to make the right choice and invest in the project which will bring tangible and stable profits.

Why is PROOF Collective popular?

The NFT project has gained wide popularity, and there are good reasons for this:

• Inviolvement of famous people. In addition to Gary Vee, Beeple, Tyler Hobbs, and Mike Shinoda, famous artist Justin Aversano, known under the pseudonym Twin Flames, bought his pass for 0.001 ETH. Aversano is a famous person in the NFT world. He is co-founder and CEO of Quantum Art @QuantumNFT. This is the platform that curates and sells NFT. Through a tight collaboration of influencers, the platform raised $7.5 million in funding in February 2022 led by True Ventures through partner and well-known NFT enthusiast Kevin Rose.
• Focus on the development of the metaverse. The authors of the collection do not hide their intention to create their own metaverse project Highrise. Kevin Rose has yet to reveal all the secrets associated with Highrise. However, it is already becoming clear that this metaverse will be a bridge for cross-community communication.

Moonbirds will give holders the ability to step into the PROOF metaverse which is called “Project Highrise.” The only thing we know right now is that it will be Proof’s take on the metaverse.

— Martin Hyu (🥃,🦉) (@themartinhyu) April 2, 2022

• Striving for expansion and inclusiveness. In July 2022, it became known that the Proof brand donated 400 Moonbirds Oddities NFTs to seven communities dedicated to attracting new users to the Web3 universe.

• Also, as a result of fundraising, which was supervised by the Andreessen Horowitz venture fund, the team managed to raise $50 million. The authors of the project were going to use these funds to develop the PROOF ecosystem.

Today we announced PROOF has raised a $50 million Series A led by @a16z crypto with participation from @sevensevensix @trueventures @Collab_Currency @FLAMINGODAO @svangel and @garyvee. More info here https://t.co/h3Bq0BjL6B

— PROOF (🥃,🦉) (@proof_xyz) August 30, 2022

PROOF Collective Roadmap

In March 2022, Kevin Rose, Justin Mezzell, and Ryan Carson hosted a joint live stream that detailed the future of the PROOF ecosystem. It was a highly anticipated event.

The authors presented the main milestones for the development:

1. Deep Dives. A weekly 3-5 page PDF report. Reports are created exclusively for members and contain useful information related to a specific upcoming project or author.
2. Weekly Highlights. The NFT project moderators were supposed to choose special curators from among the community members. These curators would weekly select the most valuable information from the relevant branches of the digital world and share it with others.
3. PROOF Academy. A series of programs whose main goal is to provide expert advice on key topics. The Academy was supposed to include 101 courses on Layer 1 vs Layer 2 solutions, the secrets of tax strategies for NFT investors, as well as effective ways to use DeFi.
4. PROOF of Conference. This is a massive NFT conference that was scheduled to take place in May 2023. Just a week ago, Kevin Rose announced the cancellation of the event due to low interest in it.

5. Moonbirds Utility. The authors shared their plans for expanding the utility of the Moonbirds collection. As conceived by the developers of the project, community members were to receive two Moonbirds tokens each for free, and the remaining 8,000 would go on sale shortly thereafter. Moonbirds owners should also have been given limited access to the Discord channel.
6. Highrise Project (development of the Highrise Metaverse). The authors did not provide detailed information on this point, limiting themselves to hints.
7. Announcement of the second season of the Grails project (see below for more on that).
8. In August 2022, another stream took place, during which Kevin Rose shared plans to launch the Moonbird Mythics PFP collection, which will consist of 20,000 items.

9.  Plans for a $PROOF token were also announced.
10. Among other things, the PROOF Collective planned to create the Moonbirds DAO which will oversee brand licensing and creative user empowerment in order to further develop Moonbirds. This project is still under development, but the team has already invested $2.6 million in it.

11. The Roadshow. The team recently announced a planned European tour for its members. The event, called The PROOF Roadshow, will feature IRL meetings and a cultural program for club members. It is scheduled to take place in October of this year. The travel plan is already known:

Save the Dates: PROOF is coming to Europe from October 7 – 16! Join the team and local PROOF Collective members, @moonbirds, and @oddities_xyz for intimate gatherings in Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, and London! Stay tuned – the invite link will be posted tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/GAm6nBH4eG

— PROOF (🥃,🦉) (@proof_xyz) September 12, 2022

PROOF Collective Ecosystem

The PROOF Collective project has created a large-scale investment, social and cultural ecosystem which includes the following subprojects:

Grails

Grails is the first official PROOF Collective project to create seasons, each with 20 artists presenting 20 of their works (in varying numbers) for minting. The only exception so far was Season 2, where 25 works from 25 artists were presented.

NFT holders get the opportunity to mint one work at a time. The cool thing is that no one knows the names of the authors during the minting. As soon as the minting window closed, PROOF would broadcast it live to show the artists. This is what it looked like with Season 3, for example:

To date, 3 Seasons have been held, in each of which holders were able to mint the work of the following famous artists:

Season 1 (March 2022):

• Gary Vaynerchuk,
• Alexis Ohanian,
• One of the early versions of the historical Autoglyphs collection from Larva Labs,
• Claire Silver,
• Mike Shinoda,
• Hackatao,
• Tyler Hobbs and others.

Season 2 (August 2022):

• Coldie,
• Kjetil Golid,
• Alpha Centauri Kid,
• Snowfro,
• Nadya Tolokonnikova,
• Justin Aversano and others.

Season 3 (January 2023):

• Killer Acid,
• Reuben Wu,
• Alpha Centauri Kid,
• Seerlight and others.

Moonbirds

On April 16, 2022, the Moonbirds collection, a kind of extension of the PROOF Collective project, was launched. This collection of 10,000 PFP tokens in the form of pixel owls has become the blue chip. Moonbirds have a certain level of utility, for you can nest them and receive rewards for doing so, both in real life and in the digital world.

In August 2022, the organizers also granted rights under the CC0 license, which allows to use the assets for any purpose, including commercial one.

To date:

• The volume of secondary sales exceeded 254k ETH (about $422 million),
• Floor price is 6.35 ETH (about $10k),
• The most expensive Moonbirds token #2642 was sold for 350 ETH (about $1 million).

Moonbirds Oddities

The author of the Moonbirds Oddities is the artist Gremplin @gremplin. Oddities tokens were given to holders of nested Moonbirds via an airdrop in June 2022.

To date:

• The volume of secondary sales exceeded 31k ETH (about $52 million),
• Floor price is 0.95 ETH (about 1.6k dollars),
• The most expensive Oddities token #5249 was sold for 30 ETH (about $47k).

Divergence

The PROOF Collective enhanced their creativity with the acquisition of the Divergence Web3 engineering team led by Arran Schlosberg @divergencearran and Angharad “Harri” Thomas @divergenceharri.

How much does PROOF Collective cost?

The PROOF Collective was launched on December 11, 2021. The minting of the collection was carried out in the form of a Dutch auction. The starting price was 5 ETH, and then it decreased by 0.25 ETH every 10 minutes. Most of the tokens were sold for 1 ETH. And how are things now?

To visualize the price dynamics, we made a slice of the average price for 1 NFT:

• In January 2022: 25 ETH,
• In June 2022: 76 ETH,
• In September 2022: 44 ETH,
• In December 2022: 33 ETH,
• In February 2023: 15 ETH.

Now (June 25, 2023) the minimum price is 7 ETH. On average, the latest sales range from 6 to 8 ETH. And the total volume of secondary sales amounted to more than 33k ETH (about $62 million).

The most expensive sales of PROOF Collective

NFTs of the collection do not have an individual appearance and individual numbers, since each of them is a token, an entrance ticket to a private community.

The most expensive sales are as follows:

• On April 23, 2022, a token was sold for 139.69 ETH ($414k at the time of sale),
• On April 24, 2022, a token was sold for 129.79 ETH ($379k at the time of sale),
• On April 22, 2022, a token was sold for 125 ETH ($370k at the time of sale),
• On April 22, 2022, a token was sold for 119 ETH ($355k at the time of sale),

Where to buy PROOF Collective?

Currently, PROOF Collective can only be purchased on the secondary market, on such marketplaces as:

• OpenSea,
• X2Y2,
• LooksRare.

How to buy PROOF Collective?

1. Remember that initially you need to connect your crypto wallet with self-storage to the marketplace of your choice.
2. Next, find the official collection using the search bar on the marketplace.
3. Analyze and choose the NFT you want to buy; click on it and then on the “Buy” button.
4. Or you can bet on the token you like. Make sure you leave enough ETH for gas or transaction fees. If the seller approves your bid, the deal goes through.

Should you invest in PROOF Collective?

If you have the desire and opportunity to join one of the most prosperous NFT communities as for today, the answer to this question arises by itself. Nevertheless, we still advise you to make a thoughtful analysis of the project and think of all the pros and cons. Pay attention to the following features of PROOF Collective:

• The project offers exclusive information to its members, so they can invest in profitable startups and keep up-to-date with the latest news of the NFT world.
• The creators’ interest in developing their own metaverse promises a terrific experience for all members in the future.
• The authors of the project hold events aimed at informing the community about their plans. This speaks volumes about the reliability of the project.
• The status of an exclusive, private and prestigious community with some of the main influencers and participants of the NFT market.

In any case, do your own in-depth analysis and research when investing in NFTs, and then make your own decision.

Opinion of NFTMetria

PROOF Collective is not just another elite NFT club. In this case, membership provides access to a source of invaluable information, which can be the key to future prosperity. Joining the PROOF Collective project also guarantees communication with the creative personalities who drive the NFT industry forward, a lot of experience with modern digital art, and access to future exciting adventures in the Highrise metaverse.