Moonbirds Shatter OpenSea Records With $240M Traded Within Four Days Of Launch

Trading volume on NFT marketplace OpenSea hasn’t been this high since January. That’s thanks to Moonbirds, a collection of 10,000 owl avatars that launched on Apr. 16.

Source: @rchen Dune Analytics

The profile-picture collection now boasts a floor price of 20 ETH ($62,000) – eight times its launch price of 2.5 ETH ($7,800).

Sales of the collection accounted for nearly 40% of OpenSea trading volume over the past four days. More than $110M worth of Moonbirds changed hands on Apr. 16 alone.

That’s a lot of volume. Indeed, Moonbirds generated more secondary sales this week than blue chip NFT collections like Bored Apes and Azuki mustered in the past month.

30-Day Volume. Source: OpenSea

Moonbirds is the profile-picture (PFP) collection from the Proof Collective, a “private members-only collective of 1,000 dedicated NFT collectors and artists.”

Proof Collective was launched in December 2021 by entrepreneurs Kevin Rose, Justin Mezell and Ryan Carson. Prominent members include Beeple, whose “Everydays” NFT collection sold for $69 million last spring – still the record for the highest price of a single NFT, discounting wash trades – and VeeFriends creator Gary Vaynerchuk.

The entry-pass for Proof Collective doesn’t come cheap. Sold in December for 1 ETH ($3100), the cheapest Proof Pass now sells for 83 ETH ($257,000).

Thanks to Moonbirds, the pass has more than paid for itself – each Proof Pass holder could mint two free Moonbirds, accounting for a fifth of the NFT collection’s total supply.

Proof Collective made 7,875 Moonbirds available to the public through a Premint raffle and kept 125 for the team.

Despite some grumbling from NFT collectors about Moonbirds’ high mint price, and a few accusations of raffle gaming and allegations of wash trading, the launch went relatively smoothly.

Secondary sales started at around 10 ETH, an easy 4x profit for those lucky enough to win a spot on the whitelist. Prices rose quickly as trading volumes surged, and the floor price hit 20 ETH ($62,000) in a number of hours.

Moonbird holders can access the private PROOF Discord server, receive Moonbird-related drops and attend in-person events. They can also access upcoming PROOF projects, including the PROOF metaverse, codenamed Project Highrise.

On Apr. 19, the floor price of the collection dropped 20% to 16 ETH when some early investors cashed out. Prices rose again after chat show host and NFT investor Jimmy Fallon tweeted about the birds.