Many are questioning the value of the JPEGs. What’s so special about them? Why are big names like The Sandbox, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and NFT advocate Gary Vee hopping on board? With a shocking floor price of 23.4 ETH ($49,000) at the time of writing, for a simple two-dimensional Owl profile pic, your confusion is valid.

So… WTF is Moonbirds NFT? Let’s take a step back first.

Moonbirds NFT is more than PFP art—it’s a portal to an exclusive community built by web3 entrepreneur Kevin Rose.

And this community, called PROOF Collective, is only fully available to 1,000 artists and collectors, like Beeple, who were willing to pay top-dollar for the PROOF Collective NFT pass. By the way, by top-dollar, I mean minting the pass at 5 ETH in December of last year or paying 67.4 ETH today. Crazy, isn’t it?

Alright, let’s take a step back. There are quite a few moving components here, and it’s best to get a complete picture before diving deep into the Moonbirds NFT collection.

Kevin Rose is famous for his role in NFTs and web3. He’s an avid fan of tech, and he’s known for his founding role in firms like social news site Digg and apps Zero and Oak. He was a General Partner at Google Ventures, and he’s currently a partner at VC firm True Ventures.

This guy is addicted to pioneering the future of web3. He’s been deemed the Top 25 Most Influential People of the Web by Time Magazine, and that’s just a blip in the long list of accolades he’s accumulated over his career.

People love Kevin Rose. He launched the PROOF podcast a couple of years back, covering NFT news and interviewing NFT artists. His knowledge and advice are invaluable to his listeners, which is why people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for entry into his private community. It’s a no-brainer for them.

The PROOF Collective hosts a range of perks and goodies. Membership includes:

• Early access to podcast episodes.
• Access to the community’s Discord.
• IRL meetups.
• Exclusive drops.

Now, is the membership pass worth a ridiculous amount of money? Probably not. But hey, value is in the eye of the beholder, right? And if you got a couple thousand to spare, why not?

So again, what’s Moonbirds NFT?

As aforementioned, purchasing a Moonbirds NFT grants you entry into the PROOF Collective Discord… but only in the Parliament channels. 

The Parliament community has access to Moonbird-related drops, IRL meetups, and upcoming PROOF projects. So it’s just like the PROOF Collective benefits but to a lesser extent.

This is where it gets interesting. Yuga Labs, the team in charge of BAYC, is building “The Otherside” metaverse, with ApeCoin funding the initiative. The PROOF team is doing something similar, but with their version of a metaverse. They’re calling it “Project Highrise,” and they vowed to make it unique from its competitors.

Purchasing one of 10,000 Moonbirds NFT, then nesting it, unlocks early access to the metaverse initiative.

Nesting is new to the NFT world, and it’s a utility only offered by Moonbirds NFT at this very moment. Basically, it works like this: instead of staking your NFT and thus removing it from your wallet, you can lock up your Moonbird in your wallet. As soon as it’s “nested,” and as time goes on, you’ll accrue additional utility within the PROOF Collective. 

The longer you have your Moonbirds NFT nested, the higher tier levels you’ll reach. 

The higher tier levels you reach, the more benefits you’ll be provided in special drops and rewards.

Got it? In short, nesting provides incremental utility over time instead of yielding cryptocurrencies like staking. It also keeps your Moonbirds NFT in your wallet, unlike staking.

Where are we getting at with this drop?

The Moonbirds NFT drop was monumental, no doubt about it. As voiced by Daniel Tenner on Twitter, better known as @swombat.eth in the NFT-verse, “Kevin and Ryan have been very clear that they’re raising money, that they’re not ‘selling art’, that they’ll treat the money as funds to build a product, etc.”

Rose sees the Moonbirds NFT mint as “working capital” to deliver value to the community holistically. First, it’ll be through nesting, then, it’ll be through products like Project Highrise. But what sparks our interest is his vision for a “multi-decade journey to build a new media company.“

Although this has already been accomplished with Yuga Labs’ ecosystem and Larva Labs’ DTC marketplace, it wasn’t in their blueprint when they launched the project. Yeah, they may have had ideas here and there, but nothing was concrete. Everything was done on the fly.

Rose knew the proceeds from the Moonbirds NFT drop would be a form of crowdsourcing. Instead of pitching to VCs and angels for funding, he knew he could use the pool of capital created by passionate followers to drive the vision of a media company—that is, a media company built by the community, for the community.

Unfortunately, there was a small bump in the road in the project’s release. COO Ryan Carson left the project only a week in to focus full-time on a new NFT fund. Fans were disappointed, and some even jumped ship. 

The issue at hand? Carson swept over 200 ETH of Moonbirds NFT before rarity numbers were unlocked and prior to the rampant increase in the floor price. 

All eyes were on Carson for insider knowledge. Clearly, there were two reasons why he dumped over $580,000 into the project. He either believed in what he helped build and put his words where his mouth was, or used insider knowledge to invest in the project. Either way, it looked unethical.

Something was also not quite right. Carson’s constant and speculative price talk of Moonbirds NFT, especially leading up to launch, is typical of scam artists. Why care about the price of a project you’ve built if you believe in it long-term? You know it’ll rise; it’s just a matter of time. BAYC and CryptoPunks are examples of this.

But, if we’re being honest with you, most forgot about the news. Rose is still on board, and Carson is still a shareholder. Moreover, trusted and respected NFT influencers like Loopify are optimistic about their future. Rose handled the ordeal like a pro, and his transparency is valued by the space.

So, all in all, the future for Moonbirds NFT looks bright.

FAQ