Author: @whaleswoosh, Compiled by: Planet Daily
This article focuses on how Moonbirds went from being the highly anticipated next BAYC to becoming one of the most hyped and ultimately severely underperforming NFT projects in Web3. (Odaily note: According to Blurdata, the floor price of Moonbirds is 2.05 ETH as of the time of publication.)
Recently, Moonbirds and its co-founder Kevin Rose have once again become the focus of the NFT market due to some controversial remarks made by Kevin on Twitter SBlockingce (Odaily note: Kevin talked about BAYC and said that if priced in USD, BAYC has fallen even further from its high point, and that it is unfair to just blame Moonbirds. These “hate-mongering” remarks have caused community dissatisfaction). I think it’s a good opportunity to look back and see how Moonbirds and its parent company PROOF ended up in this “everyone’s shouting” situation?
Moonbirds had a very promising start, with tens of thousands of people signing up for their presale at a price of 2.5 ETH, and its founder Kevin Rose was even hailed as the “NFT guru”. In the following days and weeks, the floor price skyrocketed to 40 ETH (worth about $120,000 at the time), and since then, it has dropped by more than 95%, a larger drop than any other blue-chip NFT project of the same period.
- Bitcoin Inscription Breaks Ten Million, Protocol Founder Retreats from the Public
- Evening Must-Read | Besides BRC20, there are also Layer2 solutions like RGB for Bitcoin
- Mempool: In addition to BRC20, Bitcoin also has Layer2 solutions such as RGB.
In my opinion, there are six main reasons for this:
1. Ryan Carson, the former COO of PROOF, left the project a few days after the presale, which was not well received by people. His behavior damaged PROOF’s reputation. (Odaily note: Ryan Carson launched the NFT fund 121G before announcing his resignation, which was criticized by the community. He was later criticized again for using his position to buy rare Moonbirds, although he clarified that he bought them after they were publicly sold. In February of this year, his new project Flux was also questioned by multiple investors for transparency issues.)
2. Moonbirds proposed the concept of soft staking, which is a great idea in itself, but the nesting rewards did not meet expectations, and the rewards (socks, waist bags, etc.) did not meet expectations either.
3. Moonbirds initially adopted a holder-permission system similar to that of BAYC (in short, ownership belongs to the holder), but in August 2022, the team decided to switch to CC0 (Creative Commons, open license, Mfers are also such), which was sudden and not consulted in advance, and holders felt betrayed.
4. Earlier this year, PROOF suddenly canceled the highly anticipated PROOF conference, followed by abandoning the Highrise and Moonbirds tokens for the metaverse plan. Such inconsistency has led the public to believe that its project vision has disappeared.
5. PROOF put nearly 50% of its total reserve funds in the bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank. Although the funds are currently safe, it has raised questions about financial responsibility, such as poor communication and risk management.
6. Overall, the key issue may be the huge gap between expectations and reality. Moonbirds started too high, the narrative was too full, and the continuous operational mistakes, along with a lack of understanding of the NFT market dynamics, led them to take many wrong steps in the future.
So, is Moonbirds completely done? I don’t think so. We have witnessed the resurgence of many cryptocurrency projects, and in theory, Moonbirds has everything it needs, but succeeding again is clearly not easy.
Like what you're reading? Subscribe to our top stories.
We will continue to update Gambling Chain; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!
