Welcome to the OpenSea digest. Let’s look back through the biggest NFT and web3 news of the week.

Moonbirds Announces $TALON Rewards, Diamond Exhibition, and Mythic Eggs

The popular PFP project Moonbirds released $TALONs, their new rewards system for NFT holders, this week. Moonbirds founder Kevin Rose revealed the plans in an April 17th event, likening it to a points-based credit card rewards system. $TALONs will only be available to Moonbirds holders. Users can earn points daily by staking their Moonbirds NFTs, and $TALONs can then be used within the Moonbirds ecosystem.

Simultaneously, Rose announced two other events: Diamond Exhibition and Mythic Eggs. Diamond Exhibition is the “first curated show for the Moonbirds community,” according to their website. The show is meant to mark the project’s focus on art and celebrate the community by showcasing a range of artists and sharing their stories. The exhibition showcases work from 21 artists, including Beeple.

When the Diamond Exhibition launched on April 27th, some users hit a snag if they held multiple passes. Those users ended up with multiple pieces from the same artist instead of pieces from different artists. The Moonbirds team acknowledged the issue and explained that they were writing a smart contract allowing users to deposit their Diamond Exhibition art and receive a new piece from the collection. They’re calling the event “The Reshuffle.” In addition, they plan to contribute rare art not in the original collection and Moonbirds and Oddities to the Reshuffle that will go out to users.

As for the Mythic Eggs, Moonbirds explained the lore this way: Each Mythic Egg “contains the soul of a Mythic that will be set free by the flames of the Odd God’s Hearth. There are three types of eggs: Legendary, Runic, and Stone. A Legendary Egg can spawn three Mythic forms; it will be down to the minter to decide which form their Mythic will take. A Runic Egg has two potential forms, and a Stone Egg only one.” In early June, eggs can be converted into Mythics via a system in which 50 claimed eggs are selected at random each day to be activated. An activated egg can then be converted into a Mythic at any point.

Bitcoin STAMPS

We’ve previously written about Bitcoin Ordinals and how they’re shaking up the NFT world, but now a new kind of NFT on the Bitcoin blockchain is gaining traction. The Bitcoin STAMPS (Secure Tradeable Art Maintained Securely) protocol uses a different method of getting data onto the blockchain. STAMPS (also styled as just “stamps”) are stored on Bitcoin’s unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). These are the records of unspent Bitcoin when transactions happen. 

In contrast, Ordinals are stored in the witness data. Proponents of Stamps argue that Stamps are more immutable and less prunable than Ordinals, making them more appealing. 

Stamps use Counterparty API for processing speed and to eliminate the need for indexing. Once the decoding is complete, images are uploaded to stampchain.io for use by web applications. 

Stamps launched March 7th, and thousands have been minted, or stamped, since then, which, based on a report, far exceeds the amount of Ordinals minted in the same timeframe after launch. The adoption of both Ordinals and Stamps shows the growing desire for NFT capabilities on the Bitcoin chain.

RTFTK Forging

As a refresher, “forging” is the term for events that allow NFT holders to redeem digital and physical goods. Forging events last for a limited time. Last year, RTFKT did their first forging event with the Nike AR Genesis hoodie and then a larger collection of wearables for CloneX holders. 

Now, RTFKT is back with a Nike Air Force 1 collection featuring limited edition designs by Takashi Murakami that launched on April 24th and will run until May 8th. The 10 designs are viewable on their website. The pre-forging event collection is still available on OpenSea. By purchasing one of these NFTs, you can participate in the forging event that will allow you to redeem the physical sneakers. Before purchasing, be sure to check the RTFKT site to make sure the NFT is still eligible and hasn’t already been claimed or forged. Sneakers are expected to ship in Q4 of 2023, according to the RTFKT site. 

Air Force 1 Posters Airdropped to .SWOOSH Holders

Earlier in 2023, the .SWOOSH community voted on their top Air Force 1s of all time, which were then commemorated with four virtual posters. On April 18th, 106,453 posters were airdropped to .SWOOSH members. Each member had approximately a one in three chance of getting a poster, which would then unlock access to the upcoming Our Force 1 (stylized as OF1) collection that members will be able to use to purchase an OF1 box.

While the lucky one-third of members who received the airdropped will have first access, their team has indicated that all members of .SWOOSH will be able to participate in the general access sale a few days later. With that said, they’ll only have the leftover inventory to choose from. 

Pharrell x Doodles

Last June at NFT.NYC, Doodles tapped world-famous artist and producer Pharrell to be their Chief Brand Officer. A year later, Pharrell’s skate brand, Icecream, is teaming up with Doodles for a capsule collection that will be launched this weekend at the artist’s music festival, Something in the Water. 

The Virginia Beach, VA, festival, which was set to run from April 28th to April 30th and is now experiencing some weather delays due to rain and wind, is scheduled to feature sets from Arcade Fire, Coi Leray, Grace Jones, Jonas Brothers, Latto, Lil Wayne, Maren Morris, and more.

This collection marks the first joint creative venture for the artist and Doodles and brings the NFT collection and brand to a new, wider audience.

Bluesky App Doubles Amount of Users Day Over Day

This week, everyone is talking about Bluesky, the Twitter competitor using decentralization in an attempt to entice users away from “the world’s town square.” Bluesky was originally built as a Twitter side project and became independent from the app in 2022. 

It uses the AT Protocol, a “federated network.” A federated network allows servers to communicate with each other (like email, for example), meaning many sites can run the network instead of one site running the network. This gives users more control and choice over their provider.

According to Bluesky, what makes the AT Protocol unique is the account portability (this is the ability to move your account from one provider to another without losing your data), algorithmic choice (the AT Protocol has an open algorithms mode so you can control your experience), interoperation (AT Protocol uses a schema-based interoperation framework called Lexicon to solve coordination problems), and performance (fast loading at large scales).

So, why is this relevant? This week, the number of users on the app doubled from Wednesday to Thursday. Big names like DeGods and y00ts founder Rohun “Frank” Vora, Rug Radio co-founder and co-CEO Farokh Sarmad, Chrissy Teigen and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined. And it trended on Twitter. While we don’t know what’s next for Bluesky, this could be the beginning of more apps built on the AT Protocol, which could bring web3 capabilities to a new, wider audience.