What Are Moonbirds NFTs? Why Are They Crushing Bored Ape/Mutant Ape In Sales?

One of the most anticipated non-fungible token drops of April happened over the weekend. The collection of 10,000 NFTs is breaking sales records and has already surpassed several notable projects. Here’s the latest on Moonbirds.

What Happened: On Saturday, holders of Proof Collective and those lucky enough to win a raffle were able to mint Moonbirds, a collection of 10,000 NFTs from a well-established team.

Holders of the original Proof Collective NFT got two free mints of Moonbirds. An additional 7,875 Moonbirds were minted by people who won a raffle to get a spot on the allowlist to mint one Moonbird for 2.5 Ethereum ETH/USD. The remaining 125 Moonbirds NFTs were minted for the Proof treasury.

Moonbirds comes from Kevin Rose, Ryan Carson and Justin Mezzell. A thread on Twitter from cryptolocity highlights the past history of the team members. Rose is the founder of social media platform Digg. Rose also is credited with helping get Gary Vee into CryptoPunks and previously did a show with Vee. Carson is the co-founder and former CEO of Treehouse.

The first NFT collection from the team called Proof Collective sold out 1,000 NFTs at around 1 ETH each and has had a floor price that hovers around 100 ETH. The owners of the Proof Collective NFTs include some of the top names in the NFT space and many own blue chip pieces like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Over 32,000 wallets registered for the raffle, with less than 25% of those who submitted winning the chance to mint a Moonbirds NFT.

Moonbirds is called “more than just an avatar” on its website.

“They’re a collection of 10,000 utility enabled PFPs that feature a richly diverse and unique pool of rarity-powered traits,” the company’s website says.

Each Moonbirds NFT gives its holder access to a private member Discord and unlocks additional benefits. Holders of Moonbirds will get access to future drops and get entrance to a planned metaverse from Proof.

Called Project Highrise, Proof’s future metaverse will give first access to Moonbirds holders. Moonbirds holders could benefit the longer they hold their NFT when it comes to Project Highrise and if there is ever a token offered from the team, based on previous comments from Rose.

“We want to provide the lion’s share of rewards weighted towards the long-term holders. We see a future where utility and benefits unlock with your diamond hands (wings),” Rose tweeted.

Rose was critical of how ApeCoin APE/USD was distributed to holders of NFTs in the Yuga Labs ecosystem.

“For example, if you held a Bored Ape since day one, you should have been rewarded with more $APE, not the same as someone who just purchased the night before.”

Another feature for Moonbirds is nesting. Holders who nest their Moonbird take part in a feature similar to staking and will gain benefits the longer the NFT is nested. Moonbirds that are sold will lose the benefits they gained and time they were nested and start back over. Unlike traditional staking, Moonbirds will not leave the holder’s wallet. Nesting is expected to go live a few days after the Moonbirds mint.

Related Link: Top 10 NFTs By Weekly Sales Volume: Moonbirds Rockets To Top, Passing Mutant Ape Yacht Club And Bored Ape Yacht Club

Why It’s Important: In its first day of trading, Moonbirds did over 50,000 ETH in sales volume, passing the one-day total (41,000 ETH) that Mutant Ape Yacht Club hit in its launch back in August 2021.

In two days, Moonbirds sales volume stands at 69,041.73 ETH on OpenSea. This total makes Moonbirds the highest sales volume NFT collection on the popular NFT marketplace over the last 30 days, despite only two days of sales history.

Here’s how Moonbirds stacks up for 30-day sales volume:

• Moonbirds: 69,041.73 ETH
• Azuki: 50,699.27 ETH
• Mutant Ape Yacht Club: 36,079.79 ETH
• Bored Ape Yacht Club: 35,053.23 ETH

If you add up the 30 days' sales volume of Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Yacht Club, you get a total of 71,133 ETH. This means that in two days, Moonbirds nearly eclipsed the 30 days sales volume total of two of the biggest and most well-known NFT collections of all time.

Turning to the all-time sales volume chart on OpenSea, Moonbirds ranks 16th and is already ahead of several of the biggest and most well-known NFT collections including World of Women, CrypToadz, CyberKongz, Pudgy Penguins, Sorare and VeeFriends.

Price Action: The floor price for Moonbirds is 20.88 ETH, or around $61,200 at the time of writing.