Maybe we are all living too rationally, so when we see the collapse of rationality or the shattered life of emotions, we will feel a logical dizziness. The people inside are like a puddle of water splashed on the ground. You know they used to be good, they were good, but now they are all soil and garbage, inseparable.

- Raymond Carver

"Azuki's parent company software engineer has sold Azuki #52, sparking community discussion."

"BAYC floor price has dropped below 30 ETH, MAYC floor price has dropped over 20% in the last 24 hours."

"Not Larva Labs founder: Willing to testify that Azuki co-founder Zagabond and others are involved in fraud."

After Azuki's new NFT series went online, problems such as disguised increase in circulation, rough workmanship, and confusing pricing caused an earthquake in the NFT market, which plunged NFT players into despair. Some veteran players even said, "I'm dead, NFT is dead, Azuki is dead."

According to the NFTGo market data, as of July 5th, the total market value of blue-chip NFTs in the past 7 days has dropped to $6.03 billion, a decrease of 4.27%. The trading volume has also dropped to $193 million, a decrease of 14.79%. Azuki's series of actions have made the entire market start to pay attention to the future direction of blue-chip NFTs. Are blue-chip NFTs facing their "death knell"? How should blue-chip NFTs retain market confidence? Odaily interviewed two senior professionals in the NFT industry on this matter. The following is the interview record, with appropriate deletions made without changing the original meaning.

"In the long run, purely PFP NFTs will inevitably return to zero." said Shi Er, co-founder of NFTScan, to Odaily. PFP NFTs account for $3.7 billion in total NFT market value, but in terms of liquidity, PFP NFTs only account for 20.58%, while IP accounts for 28.98%, games account for 19.95%, and utility NFTs rank fourth, accounting for 15.15%.

"Because they lack intrinsic value support. If you must find a way out for them, it would be to digitize IPs, build cultural brands, create community ecosystems, and then combine with some business models to capture value." said Shi Er. He still holds Doodles NFT, which shone at last year's NFT.NYC conference. First, it appointed musician Pharrell Williams as the Chief Brand Officer, and later Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian's venture capital firm Seven Seven Six (776 Management) led Doodles' first round of financing. At the conference, the spokesperson announced that Doodles will continue to interact with brands, artists, and other projects in the future, creating a vibrant NFT ecosystem.The categories will be more diverse, such as music albums and wearable items, etc.

But as of the deadline for submission, Space Doodles still remains unchanged from the previous PFP and has not added the previously promoted "social attributes of the metaverse".

Bowei, the COO of NFTGo, told Odaily that according to NFTGo's data, the number of Yuga holders has been decreasing, indicating that some holders have indeed lost confidence. However, Yuga's trading volume still exceeds 50% of the market, and holders have stabilized by the end of June. Early OGs are accumulating, so the core community's confidence is still there. I also found that this downturn was due to some addresses coordinating with market sentiment and maliciously shorting the market through the NFTFi platform or algorithmic trading, so it's not too bad.

Bowei currently holds MAYC, Otherdeed, 10KTF's GTAG, and a little penguin in the Yuga series. Yuga Labs was founded in 2021. Its first product is BAYC. Because it believes that NFT and the metaverse are still in the "primitive stage" of society, it takes the "ape" as its image. The inspiration for BAYC also comes from CryptoPunks. However, the innovation of BAYC is that the CryptoPunks development team owns the copyright to the avatar images, while BAYC gives the commercial rights of the avatar images to the holders and the community. This move has also brought BAYC into the mainstream and increased the value perception of the holders. It can also be used for commercial purposes.

As of July 6th, from the perspective of NFT holders, 80.85% of people own 1 BAYC NFT, and 13.98% of people own 2-3. Overall, the holdings are relatively dispersed. In terms of holding period, 44.96% of people hold 1 Y or more, and 29.21% of people hold it for 3 months to 1 year. Unlike other NFT projects, this indicates that BAYC has high loyalty and strong community stickiness among its holders.

Source: NFTScan

Otherdeed is a metaverse project launched by Yuga Labs in April 2022. The official website describes a grand metaverse story where NFTs such as MAYC, CryptoPunks, and World of Woman can be turned into playable characters in Otherdeed.

The future is uncertain, and it's hard to say if metaverse will completely materialize due to technological and market adoption factors. However, based on the current situation, metaverse is still some distance away from actual implementation.

CryptoPunks, as the flagship NFT project, has consistently dominated the NFT trading rankings. As of July 6th, CryptoPunks accounts for 14.41% of the total market value with 448,575.6 ETH. However, in March 2022, Yuga Labs announced the acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP from Larva Labs, including the brand, art copyrights, and other intellectual property rights, and granting all commercial rights of these two NFT series to the holders.

Art Blocks is a special presence in these TOP Collections. As of July 6th, the floor price is 0.027 ETH, but it ranks third with a market value of 141328.92 ETH, accounting for 4.54%. Established in 2020, its operating principle is to generate the final artwork using the hash value generated during the transaction.

Art Blocks has sparked a wave of generative art in the NFT world. Generative art is a form of art created using algorithms, rules, and computational systems. Its characteristics usually involve randomness, recursion, and feedback loops to generate unique and unpredictable results.

Some people call Art Blocks a "generative art vending machine," but I prefer to call it a "mathematical and scientific romance generator."

Azuki team members once said, "Azuki's dream is to have a big IP, big enough to have a series of animations, and even possibly games and various peripherals." From its establishment in early 2022 to now, over a year has passed, and they have released a new NFT.

Perhaps to restore market confidence (of course, it cannot be ruled out that it is a visible package), DeGods founder Frank has announced a new roadmap. I have to admit that the graphics look pretty good, but it's a bit vague.

Another eye-catching package, Proof and Moonbirds co-founder Kevin Rose tweeted on July 4th, outlining the development and future plans of Proof and Moonbirds during the past period. It's the same old story with no new progress, just trying to make their presence felt.

"The future of NFTs should be grounded in specific business scenarios, such as Uniswap's LP NFT, computing power NFTs, equity NFTs, NFT PASS, gaming NFTs, and identity NFTs. These are the valuable ones," Shier stated. Bowei also believes that digital assets need virtual world scenarios to be effective, and virtual scenarios need to bring positive externalities to be effective. These positive externalities can be spiritual consumption or improvements in business efficiency.