From a $300 million USD debut, to the ousting of its founder and a takeover by one of Web3’s biggest names, this NFT collection has been through it all – and it continues to roll on to this day.
That NFT collection is Moonbirds.
These owls prove that an NFT collection can be down, but never out – but what are they, what should you know about them, and how did they get to where they are today?
Here’s our complete 2024 guide to Moonbirds.
What is Moonbirds?
Moonbirds is a series of 10,000 owl NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, created by PROOF Collective. Designed by Justin Mezzell, Chief Product Officer at PROOF Collective, each Moonbird fuses together a select number of algorithmically-generated traits, such as faces, clothing, accessories and more.
The idea for the collection came from Kevin Rose, an internet entrepreneur who is best-known as a co-founder of news aggregator Digg. He started PROOF Collective – a group of NFT enthusiasts that included Beeple and Gary Vaynerchuk – as a way to push the NFT industry forwards.
On launch, 2,000 Moonbirds were reserved for members of the PROOF Collective, with 7,875 available to the public and the remaining 125 held by the PROOF team for future initiatives.
Moonbirds NFTs have a unique staking mechanism that’s called ‘nesting’. By nesting a Moonbird, the holder gains increasing perks and rewards – but cannot sell or transfer the NFT whilst doing so. These perks include early access to future products, community advantages, merchandise drops and more.
PROOF Collective was acquired by Bored Ape Yacht Club creators Yuga Labs in February 2024, with Yuga now leading the management, planning and outlook of the collection as a whole.
The history of Moonbirds
Moonbirds were minted on April 16, 2022, priced at a massive 2.5 ETH each. Despite this price, all 10,000 Moonbirds NFTs were sold in just two days – and rampant secondary marketplace trading saw the collection quickly exceed $300 million USD in trading volume, making it the largest NFT debut in history.
In May 2022, PROOF released Oddities, a 10,000-piece Ethereum-based partner NFT collection to the Moonbirds, made available via the nesting system.
August 2022 saw Moonbirds and Oddities adopt a CC0 license, putting the art of the NFTs into the public domain. This caused huge backlash, as rather than the rights going to each holder, they were now publicly available with no permissions required. One holder claimed that they lost a “six-figure licensing deal” as a result of this previously-unannounced move.
April 2023 saw PROOF introduce the $TALONS token, earned by nesting Moonbirds. This token could then be used to purchase exclusive products, get passes to passes, and more.
At the same time, PROOF also revealed Mythics, a second Ethereum-based companion collection with 20,000 NFTs that could be acquired through nesting Moonbirds or burning Oddities NFTs.
With three NFT collections diluting the perceived value of Moonbirds, a move to CC0 licensing that was widely criticised, and a poor reception to the $TALONS token, the floor price of Moonbirds collapsed from an all-time high of 37 ETH to below 2 ETH in 12 months.
Their poor community sentiment would fall further when on May 29, 2023, co-founder Kevin Rose stated that Moonbirds wasn’t “down bad as BAYC in terms of USD”. This statement – coming at a time when Moonbirds were below 2 ETH whilst Bored Apes were at 45 ETH – was met incredibly poorly, and only fuelled growing discontent.
Moonbirds continued to sink, falling below 1 ETH by January 2024. By now, rumours had begun to circle that Rose was looking to sell the collection, and numerous community figures posted public bids to purchase the management of Moonbirds on social media.
Rumour became reality, with an announcement in February 2024 that PROOF Collective and all of its NFT collections – including Moonbirds – had been acquired by Bored Ape Yacht Club creators Yuga Labs.
April 2024 saw Yuga unveil the Moonbirds Universe, a metaverse-like virtual world that planned to integrate with their existing Otherside metaverse.
The month also saw Yuga Labs revoke the CC0 license from Moonbirds and Oddities – a widely praised move that was seen by many to be correcting the mistake made by PROOF in issuing the license in August 2022, ensuring that holders retained the rights to the image of their NFTs.
June 2024 saw new illustrated artwork be introduced for each Moonbirds NFT, with holders able to toggle between the original pixel-based art and the new hand-drawn illustrated style.
Despite the flurry of excitement around the acquisition, Moonbirds has been largely silent since the new artwork landed, with no new major developments to note. This lack of movement is reflected in the floor price, with Moonbirds now trading at around 0.34 ETH as of the time of writing.
What’s next for Moonbirds?
Unlike many other so-called “blue chip” NFT collections – such as Azuki, Doodles, and Bored Apes – there is no clear plan, indication or roadmap for what the future looks like for Moonbirds.
The last major update was the re-activation of the Talons Marketplace, which lets users spend $TALONS tokens on NFTs from other collections, such as Chromie Squiggles, Deadfellaz and CrypToadz. Although Moonbirds does benefit from what’s happening in the wider Yuga ecosystem, the focus of the Yuga team has been decidedly away from Moonbirds in recent months – at least publically.
In spite of this, the Moonbirds social accounts continue to tick along, building a narrative around Moonbirds and exploring the lore and world that surrounds them. In terms of evidence of them building towards a future for the collection, this is all we’ve seen thus far.
With Yuga Labs behind the collection, we would be surprised if – less than a year post-purchase – they have run out of ideas or motivation to work on the Moonbirds. Will the Moonbirds Universe will be a success? Can Moonbirds recover from its current all-time low? Only time will tell.
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