NFTs are down, but not out yet. Going back to the 2021 bull run, when the weird NFTs sold for bewildering prices, to NFT of a key sold for $1.6 million (1,000 ether) on Monday. As with most big money NFT transactions in recent months, the key has to do with the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
yuga Laboratories, the company behind BAYC, has been running an experiment with integrating gameplay and narrative into an NFT mind for the past two months. One story, “The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey,” began in December with a (very) short film. He sees Jimmy open up the space-time continuum by taking “atomic shit”. From the portal comes an anachronistic ape presenting a mysterious key, a key Jimmy accidentally swallows. He runs to the bathroom to excrete it, but passes out instead.
That led to the game, an infinite runner called Dookey Dash. Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT were airdropped with a Sewer Pass NFT that allowed them to play Dookey Dash, in which, like apes, they go through a sewer system to try to find Jimmy and retrieve his key. rear. TRUE. (He Sewer Pass’s own NFTs were selling for thousands of dollars: there has been $65 million in volume since they were airdropped to BAYC holders on January 16).
Dookey Dash was set as a three-week competition. The leaderboards closed on February 8, with unspecified rewards awarded based on the highest scores. Unsurprisingly, the highest score was earned by an esports professional: an 18-year-old Brit named Kyle “Mongraal” Jackson, famous for his Fortnite streams. On February 15, Mongraal’s Sewer Pass NFT was transformed into a key, he Jimmy’s ass key.
On Monday, Mongraal announced his decision to sell the NFT key for 1,000 ether, which is currently worth $1.6 million. “I agreed to sell the key for 1000 ETH to @AdamWeitsman”, the esports pro tweeted. “A super nice guy and delighted that the sale came to him.”
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are tokens on the blockchain that certify ownership of a digital asset. They hope to be to digital items what a deed is to a parcel of land. Most NFT sales are for profile photos, like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is a bit like the digital equivalent of a Rolex (or, more often, bought on speculation).
The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey is a multi-phase experiment, with Dookey Dash and the NFT key being only the first part. Yuga has hinted that it will all lead to a new collection, but he has yet to say what that collection will look like or how the NFT key will fit. It is likely that will connect to Othersidethe company’s next metaverse MMORPG.
The subject of speculative mania for much of 2021, NFT securities began tumbling along with cryptocurrencies last May when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to combat inflation. Other speculative assets have fallen, too: Tesla and Netflix are down around 50% from their 2021 peaks. Crypto critics see the fall in bitcoin, ether and NFTs as the beginning of the end, while advocates bet prices will catch up. new heights once the economy stabilizes.