NFT
Since the Sui blockchain‘s mainnet launch on wednesdayan active one NFT community is already starting to take root, with marketplaces dropping projects that have sold out and collectively generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions — albeit with some early hiccups.
The layer-1 blockchain developed by Mysten Labs has been billed as a “Solana killer’ by some, but Solana has one of the liveliest NFT markets around, second only to it Ethereum. Sui attracts traders, but it’s too early to tell if the network will support a thriving space or if the initial hype will quickly cool down like it did on networks like Aptos And Near.
Thursday’s fall Fuddiesa set of 10,000 Sui profile photos (PFPs) depicting cartoonish owls in various poses and styles is the biggest drop yet. But the marketplace that hosted the drop faced post-coin technical difficulties, leading to backlash from both collectors and NFT traders and Web3 Builders on competing blockchain networks.
Speedy Sui Blockchain is officially launched on Mainnet
Fuddies debuted on novice marketplace Linking– which has Mysten Labs helped promote– and offered its NFTs for 95 SUI (about $125) to users who were added to a pre-launch allow list. After that, the public sale started with a Dutch auction format, with the initial price of 300 SUI (about $395) gradually falling to 150 SUI (almost $200) before selling out.
However, buyers hoping to flip the Fuddies NFTs for a quick profit quickly grew frustrated when Clutchy’s secondary marketplace didn’t work as intended.
To all marketplaces on SUI
Feel free to DM me for a free Airtable or Google Sheets NFT marketplace template
— SheetFu (@ChartFuMonkey) May 4, 2023
Some Ethereum and Solana NFT collectors took the opportunity to challenge the new rival’s marketplace due to technical issues. Clutchy already had it delayed the scheduled Wednesday NFT mints after I had problems after launching the Sui mainnet.
However, it didn’t take long for the secondary marketplace to kick in – and so far Clutchy is reporting about 605,000 SUI (about $792,500) in trade for Fuddies in about 24 hours. As the developers noticed on Twitterthat is more than the total amount of NFT trading on the Ethereum scale network Polygon during the same period, per data of CryptoSlam.
Fuddies just passed the entirety of @0xPolygonLabs in 24 hour sales volume and @SuiNetwork didn’t even have to pay us to launch on their chain pic.twitter.com/DhvBwpaMNs
— Fuddies (@FuddiesNFT) May 5, 2023
However, it is by far the largest NFT project on Sui to date. Another NFT project that hit Clutchy yesterday and sold out, the Sushi themed Sushihihas only made about 10,900 SUI (about $14,300) in secondary trades since the coin.
However, Clutchy is not the only Sui NFT marketplace that is live. Souffl3a marketplace that started life Aptos last fall, has also expanded to Sui, but the flagship project so far has not been a sales sensation. The largest Sui project at Souffl3 is Sui tridentwho has accumulated just under $65,000 in trades in the past 24 hours.
However, projects launch and sell out, with drops like Fuddies and Suishi both reselling on Clutchy, and Depthos and Sui G00dies reselling. On the other hand, the current price floor, i.e. the price of the cheapest publicly traded NFT in the project, has fallen below the public coin price, to 118 SUI (approximately $155).
Prior to mainnet launch, founder and CEO of Clutchy Jacob “Dizzy Lizzy” Lawless told Decrypt that the market had “seen tons of interest from influencers, investors, creators and spectators.”
Given the gold rush on Ethereum, Solana and recently with Bitcoin Ordinals when the earliest NFTs shot up in value on every platform, there was always an eagerness among creators to be the first out of the gate with projects in a new chain. Likewise, savvy collectors try to get their hands on assets that have early provenance, which could increase their value in the future.
We saw that recently with the debut of Aptos last October, saw that an increase in trading volume that coincided with a dip in sales of Solana NFT. Like Sui, Aptos is built around the Move programming language, so there are similarities – and it helps explain why, say, Souffl3 has moved to Sui and bills itself as the “NFT market on the move”.
Aptos NFT fever quickly calmed down, but the initial buzz was huge. For example, the Aptos Monkeys NFT project generated about $2.3 million in trading volume in about 24 hours in October, just over a week after the Aptos mainnet went live. Sui has yet to match that kind of spike, but it’s only been a few days since the mainnet rollout.
Aptos lures away Solana NFT traders and makers – will it last?
There is excitement among Sui makers about the chain’s ability to enable more advanced capabilities than some other chains, such as dynamic NFTs that update in real time. There is a clear advantage to this blockchain based video gamesfor example, with weapons or armor that improve over time and may become more useful or valuable in the process.
And gaming could end up being one of the biggest drivers of NFT momentum on Sui, with a string of notable early titles like the Overwatch-esque hero shooter Bushia Walking Dead game and tank game Panzerdogs (a Solana transplant) will be released in the coming weeks.
Bushi brings a samurai twist to Overwatch’s Hero Combat
“I feel like there are still a lot of interesting experiments going on, culminating in a new wave of NFT and dapp innovation,” pseudonymous Web3 project advisor Dabbler told Decrypt. “The launches are inspired by lessons learned by early movers with a number of different takes.”
She pointed to other possible NFT use cases ahead for Sui, including a project called Sui Name service (Suins). It is similar in approach to the popular Ethereum name service (ENS), but with domain names associated with both NFTs and smart contracts (containing the code that powers decentralized apps), which Dabblerer suggested would allow users to “communicate with greater confidence and security”.
🌈Welcome to the world of SuiFrens!✨
SuiFrens are a demonstration of Sui Move capabilities, bringing to life the composability, extensibility and dynamics of digital assets on @SuiNetwork.
👉https://t.co/ov3WR1zeoV👈#BuildOnSui pic.twitter.com/Pys3cKyok5
— Mysten Labs (@Mysten_Labs) May 3, 2023
“One of the main reasons we decided to build on Sui [is] because the technology provides a platform for innovation,” said Lawless of Clutchy. He added that the Move language “significantly lowers the boundaries for makers to innovate through dynamic NFTs,” potentially unlocking more types of use cases and engaging apps and experiences.
However, just a few days after the launch of the Sui mainnet, such innovative projects and applications may still be a long way off. For the time being, the projects that will be launched this week mainly look and feel like derivative knock-offs of collections on other chains.
Yet it is a small but engaged community turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars in PFPs something– and we’ll see if the early buzz grows into something that can really scare competitive NFT ecosystems.