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Dear Bankless Nation,
It’s now been one whole year since 
Ethereum conducted its Merge upgrade!
It was an incredible technical feat, but also a game changer for NFTs because it dropped Ethereum’s energy usage massively.
Now, the annual energy consumption of Ethereum’s current Proof of Stake (PoS) system is already 3,000,000% lower than Ethereum’s last year of energy consumption under Proof of Work (PoW).
Some normies still cling to the misconstrued idea that “NFTs are killing the environment,” but in actuality the new Ethereum and its growing L2 and L3 landscapes are pointing the way to a future where much of culture becomes de-physicalized via NFTs.
That’ll be a win for the planet, which needs any break it can get from physical waste and IRL overactivity, and it’ll be a win for Ethereum, which is now virtualized and ramping up for the world with scaling solutions.
In the meantime, we keep creating on Ethereum and leading by example. Thanks for reading and being along for the journey everyone, have a great weekend ✌️
-WMP
📊 The big picture
Over the past week, the floor-based market cap of the NFT space slid from 8.56 million ETH to 7.99 million ETH for a 6.65% drop ⤵️
🔝 7D top collections by volume
📰 General news
- Frame, a new L2 for NFTs, has arrived.
- Gaslite Drop unveiled an efficient ERC721 airdrop tool.
- LooksRare introduced YOLO, a Chainlink-powered game where players deposit and play for ETH and NFTs in shared prize pools.
- mint.fun launched Season 2 of its !fundrop campaign.
- Snag, a platform for custom web3 marketplaces, revealed its V2 system.
- TITLES added support for
Zora Network.
🏆 Digital collectibles
CryptoPunks introduced Punks As Told By Punks, a documentary.- Cool Cats will be featured in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
- Milady Maker has become embroiled in a power struggle between the founder and co-founders.
- The SEC charged Stoner Cats with conducting an unregistered securities offering.
🎨 Cryptoart & music
- Jack Butcher revealed Vincent Van Dough as the artist of Opepen Set 018.
- Jan Robert Leegte is releasing Web via FingerprintsDAO on September 20th.
- Sound added profile song highlights.
🎮 Decentralized gaming
- Axie Infinity released new features in Project T.
- Lattice is holding a playtest for its Sky Strife strategy game next week.
- Pixels, a web3 game, is migrating to Ronin.
🌐 Virtual worlds
- Decentraland is hosting the 1st Metaverse Architecture Biennale Sept. 21st-24th.
🪙 NFTfi
- nftperp launched a V2 Paper-Trading Competition.
🎆 Mint spotlight: Nakamigos CLOAKS
Nakamigos stormed onto the NFT scene earlier this year, and now the project’s looking to mix things up by releasing its first expansion collection, CLOAKS, next week. Both an early access and a public mint are slated for Thursday, September 21st, with the former being free for Nakamigos holders and the later costing 0.05 ETH a pop. Releasing a new 20k character collection is a bold move in bearish times like these, so it’ll be interesting to see how the drop plays out.
🙇 New insightful reads to level up your web3 knowledge!
1. WASD on Shoshin’s gameplay ♟️
2. Mike Selig on the SEC v. Stoner Cats 😾
3. Punk 6529 on the Three Address Protocol 🛅
✨ My NFT tool of the week: Bankless Claimables
The Bankless Product team just introduced Claimables, your crypto rewards tracker. In short, this new resource helps you discover and claim onchain goodies, from airdrops, to POAPs, to NFT mint allowlists. If you’re worried about missing out on your wallet’s powers, this is one easy way to stay plugged in. Sign up as a subscriber on Bankless.com to unlock this and the Airdrop Hunter tool!
😜 The SEC’s doing a killer job, just not in a good way…
