From Blue Chips to “Blue Sadness”: A Review of Moonbirds’ “Six Sins”
Review of Moonbirds' "Six Sins"
Author: @whaleswoosh
Translated by: Xiaofei
This article focuses on how Moonbirds went from the highly anticipated next BAYC to being the most hyped and severely underperforming NFT project in Web3. (Editor’s note: According to Blurdata, the floor price of Moonbirds was 2.05 ETH at the time of writing.)
Recently, Moonbirds and its co-founder Kevin Rose once again became the focus of the NFT market due to some controversial comments made by Kevin on Twitter (Editor’s note: Kevin talked about BAYC and said that if priced in USD, BAYC’s drop from its high point is even greater, and that we should not just blame Moonbirds. This “provocative” comment has caused dissatisfaction in the community). I think it’s a good opportunity to review how Moonbirds and its parent company PROOF ended up in this “everyone is shouting” situation.
Moonbirds started out with great prospects, with tens of thousands of people signing up for their presale at a price of 2.5 ETH, and its founder Kevin Rose was hailed as the “NFT guru.” In the following days and weeks, the floor price soared to 40 ETH (worth about $120,000 at the time), and since then, it has fallen more than 95%. This drop is greater than any other blue-chip NFT project of the same period.
- Multichain: The team was unable to contact the CEO and obtain the n...
- Entangle Protocol: A Yield Optimizer for Liquidity Staking Tokens
- Vertex Protocol: Multi-functional DeFi Protocol on Arbitrum
In my opinion, there are six main reasons for this:
1. Ryan Carson, former COO of PROOF, left the project a few days after the presale, which was not accepted by people. His performance has damaged the reputation of PROOF. (Editor’s note: Ryan Carson launched the NFT fund 121G before announcing his resignation, which was criticized by the community. He was once again criticized for using his position to buy rare Moonbirds, although he later clarified that he bought them after the public sale. In February of this year, his new project Flux was also questioned by multiple investors for its transparency.)
2. Moonbirds proposed the concept of soft staking, which was a great idea in itself, but the nesting rewards did not meet expectations, and the prizes (socks, waist bags, etc.) were also not as expected.
3. Moonbirds initially adopted a holder license system similar to BAYC (in simple terms, the rights belong to the holders), but in August 2022, the team decided to switch to CC0 (Creative Commons, an open license, Mfers is also of this category). The decision was sudden and there was no prior consultation, leaving holders feeling betrayed.
4. Earlier this year, PROOF suddenly cancelled the much-anticipated PROOF conference and then abandoned the Highrise and Moonbirds tokens for the metaverse plan. Such flip-flopping, in the eyes of the public, has erased its project vision.
5. PROOF has nearly 50% of its total reserve funds deposited in bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank. Although the funds are currently safe, this 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 had a high starting point and a full narrative, but continued operational mistakes and a lack of understanding of NFT market dynamics led them astray in many subsequent steps.
So, is Moonbirds completely finished? I don’t think so. We have seen many crypto projects make a comeback, and theoretically, Moonbirds has everything it needs, but succeeding again is clearly not easy.
