The ETH 2.0 Merge Starts in Less Than a Week 😯 | Ember Nuggets #43

Nugget #1: DigiDaigaku, an NFT project, goes from stealth launch to hottest project

DigiDaigaku is an NFT project on ETH that is a 2K female anime collection. The project dropped on August 9th, 2022 via free mint with little hype or coverage (stealth launch). The anime characters will be present in an upcoming game.

The project was launched by Time Break, the brainchild of two gaming veterans. The most interesting part is how this quiet project launch went meteoric over the past week. It was relatively unnoticed on OpenSea to start, with typically only a few hundred thousand in trading volume and a couple of $1MM+ days sprinkled in. This was up until August 29th, when volume surged to a little under $4MM.

The project is notable in many respects. First, it had no upfront revenue (free mint), rather the team held on to some NFTs as compensation. The main source of funding has come from a private investment round that was announced yesterday where the team raised $200M. Second, the project was able to achieve a 12.5E floor within 3 weeks in a bear market and with a relatively high 10% royalty (which, by the way, has generated ~$800K on secondary). The last and most important is the vision of the team to build Web3 gaming leveraging their network and exposure from Machine Zone and others. It will be interesting to see how the project performs over a longer time horizon, but for now, everyone is excited about a potential airdrop over Labor Day weekend.

Do you think DigiDaigaku should be added to our NFT Index?

Nugget #2: ETH Merge Time and Dates Confirmed

The ETH Merge will take place on September 6 at 11:34 AM UTC. The upgrade will be split into two upgrades, Bellatrix and Paris. Bellatrix occurs on 9/6 while Paris will happen between September 10 - September 20.

To be safe, make sure you are not actively trading or transferring funds during the network upgrade, especially on September 6.

The ETH Foundation shared the following image in regard to The Merge:

It's all finally happening! How do you think ETH will do post-merge?

Harsharn Singh

Ember Fund

Focus on NFT/DeFi

@HouseofHarshy