The Moonbirds project skyrocketed to the moon at its mint, going to nearly 40 ETH, a 1,400% increase, in the first week, a record for NFT pfp projects.
In my book Creators Take Control, published by Harper Business, I discussed the Moonbirds, and the great speculation in prices for NFT projects during the boom. Here’s a graph from my book showing how quickly the floor price of Moonbirds hit nearly 40 ETH, compared to when the Bored Apes did:
Comparison of NFT floor prices days after mint: Moonbirds v. Bored Ape Yacht Club
But, as you can also see from the graph above, the floor price for Moonbirds starting dropping rapidly after about 90 days. This occurred on August 4, 2022 when the Moonbirds’ team suddenly–with no input from the community–switched their NFT license from a commercial license to a CC0 license. Some owners were upset.
From that point on, Moonbirds hasn’t recovered. As the graph below shows, Moonbirds’ floor price has lost 95% of its value from its high in April 2022. Today, the floor price is down to 2.1 ETH.
Moonbirds floor price all-time (Coingeck)
Of course, most NFT projects faced a steep decline in their floor prices during the crypto winter, which is still ongoing.
But Moonbirds was considered one of the blue chip projects, at least in the same category as Doodles and CloneX. And it had $50 million in reserves, a luxury that few NFT projects have.
According to the analysis of Wale.Swoosh, Moonbirds made several bad decisions or missteps that led to its decline. His thread is well worth a read.
Fanny packs, CC0 license and $50M in a failed bank:
How Moonbirds went from the next BAYC to the most fudded NFT project in Web3 🧵👇
Wale.Swoosh’s analysis is astute. The sentiment on Moonbirds has soured, probably even more so than it has with Doodles and CloneX, its two closest peers that also face challenges.
In this crypto winter, it’s quite possible that Moonbirds would have fallen to where it has, even if the team had avoided the missteps. On the other hand, the revival of Pudgy Penguins provides at least one major success story during the crypto winter that shows it can be done.
