CyberKongz, a project of unique and randomly generated 2 and 3D NFT social avatars has steamed to the top of the ETH burn leaderboard in the last 24 hours. The NFT project started as a collection of 1,000 unique NFTs in March 2021 but has surged in demand recently. Resulting in CyberKongz dethroning NFT marketplace OPENSEA and the leading decentralized exchange, Uniswap, in terms of ETH fee burning. At the time of writing CyberKongz minting has caused over 1,432 ETH or around $4.6M in Ethereum to be burnt in the last 24-hours.
Users minting the CyberKongz NFTs forced gas prices to jump significantly with an average transaction reaching its highest level since May at around $25. Importantly, using the Etherscan gas tracker we see gas prices are still over $20 for more complex operations such as smart contract interactions through the decentralized exchange Uniswap. Moreover, CyberKongz burnt more ETH than both platforms combined in the last 24-hours. As reported last week, the ETH burn rate has become a major focus since the London upgrade and EIP-1559 came into force on the 6th of August 2021.
According to OpenSea, there are now 3,000 NFTs in the collection with more than 600 owners and a floor price of 1.27 ETH — or around $4,150. The most expensive CyberKong at the time of writing was the first in the collection, which was being offered for the huge price of 10,000 ETH, or $33 million. Clearly, speculators have gone in on the new NFT collection hoping to turn a fast profit on the latest NFT avatar project.
NFTs take center stage (again)
As Ethereum hit block 1,265,000 last week it pushed its London upgrade with the long-awaited Ethereum Improvement Proposal known as EIP-1559. Since that moment the news around Ethereum has focussed on the burnt rate of ETH in the immediate aftermath of the upgrade. A key metric in most people’s minds. At the time of writing the burn rate is 3.23 ETH per minute with a total burnt amount of 51,568 ETH or $168,470,077.
The EIP essentially changed the algorithm tied to the base fee per gas in the protocol and it now burns the base fee per gas. The reason this excites Ethereum advocates and the wider community is a belief that this action will essentially make Ether a deflationary asset over time. Indeed, since the upgrade went live we have seen the price of ETH increase by 27.8%, dragging the entire altcoin market with it.
Moreover, the fact that NFT projects are pipping DeFi projects right now in transaction numbers and therefore their respective ETH burnt rate indicates that the NFT market is not cooling anytime soon. In fact, people seem more eager to participate in the latest collections having perhaps increased their own education about the asset class this year.
Newsletter The above does not constitute investment advice. The information given here is purely for informational purposes only. Please exercise due diligence and do your research. The writer holds positions in ETH, BTC, ADA, NIOX, AGIX, MATIC, MANA, SAFEMOON, SDAO, CAKE, HEX, LINK, GRT, CRO, SHIBA INU, AND OCEAN.
