From its $300 million debut, to the ousting of its founder, to being acquired by one of Web3’s most prominent companies, this NFT family has been through it all and continues to do so today.
The NFT collection is Moonbird.
These owls prove that NFT collections can go down, but never go out of style—but what are they, what should you know about them, and how did they get to where they are today?
Here’s our complete guide to the 2024 Moonbirds.
What is a moonbird?
Moonbirds are a series of 10,000 Owl NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, created by PROOF Collective. Each Moonbird is designed by Justin Mezzell, chief product officer of PROOF Collective, and incorporates a selection of algorithmically generated features, such as faces, clothing, accessories, and more.
The idea for the series comes from Kevin Rose, an Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of the news aggregation site Digg. He founded the PROOF Collective—a group of NFT enthusiasts like Beeple and Gary Vaynerchuk—as a way to push the NFT industry forward.
At launch, 2,000 Moonbirds are reserved for PROOF Collective members, with 7,875 available for public use and the remaining 125 reserved by the PROOF team for future initiatives.
Moonbirds NFT has a unique staking mechanism called “nesting.” By nesting Moonbird, holders can receive more and more benefits and rewards, but the NFT cannot be sold or transferred during this period. These benefits include early access to future products, community benefits, merchandise drops, and more.
PROOF Collective was acquired by Yuga Labs, founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club, in February 2024. Yuga is now responsible for the management, planning and vision of the entire series.
The history of moonbird
Moonbird was minted on April 16, 2022, with a price of up to 2.5 ETH per coin. Despite the price, all 10,000 Moonbirds NFTs were sold in just two days – secondary market trading was rampant and the series quickly surpassed $300 million in trading volume, making it the largest NFT debut in history.
In May 2022, PROOF released Oddities to Moonbirds, an Ethereum-based collection of 10,000 partner NFTs offered through a nested system.
In August 2022, Moonbirds and Oddities adopted the CC0 license, bringing NFT art into the public domain. This caused a huge backlash because the rights to them no longer belonged to each holder, but were publicly available without any permission. One holder claimed they lost a “six-figure licensing agreement” as a result of this previously unannounced move.
In April 2023, PROOF launched the $TALONS token, earned by nesting moonbirds. The token can then be used to purchase exclusive products, obtain passes, and more.
At the same time, PROOF also launched Mythics, the second Ethereum-based supporting series, containing 20,000 NFTs, which can be obtained by nesting Moonbirds or burning Oddities NFTs.
With three NFT series undermining Moonbirds’ perceived value, a move to the widely criticized CC0 license, and poor reception for the $TALONS token, Moonbirds’ floor price fell from an all-time high of 37 ETH to under 2 ETH within 12 months.
On May 29, 2023, co-founder Kevin Rose stated that Moonbirds’ poor community sentiment will drop further when they “are not as bad in dollar terms as BAYC.” This announcement, which comes at a time when Moonbirds are trading at under 2 ETH and Bored Apes is at 45 ETH, is not well received and will only add to the growing dissatisfaction.
Moonbirds continued its decline, falling below 1 ETH by January 2024.
The rumors became reality, and in February 2024 it was announced that PROOF Collective and all of its NFT collections, including Moonbirds, had been acquired by Yuga Labs, founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club.
In April 2024, Yuga launched Moonbirds Universe, a metaverse-like virtual world planned to be integrated with the existing Otherside metaverse.
This month, Yuga Labs also revoked the CC0 licenses of Moonbirds and Oddities. This move was widely praised. Many people believe that this move is to correct the mistakes made by PROOF when issuing licenses in August 2022 and ensure that holders Image rights reserved to Moonbirds and Oddities.
In June 2024, each Moonbirds NFT will launch with new illustration artwork, and holders can switch between the original pixel-based art and the new hand-drawn illustration style.
Despite the flurry of excitement surrounding the acquisition, Moonbirds has been quiet since the new artwork landed, with no new major developments worth noting. This lack of volatility is reflected in the floor price, with Moonbirds trading at around 0.34 ETH at the time of writing.
What’s next for Moonbird?
Unlike many other so-called “blue chip” NFT series (such as Azuki, Doodles, and Bored Apes), there are no clear plans, instructions, or roadmaps for the future of Moonbirds.
The last major update was the relaunch of the Talons market, which allows users to use TALONS tokens to purchase other series of NFTs, such as Chromie Squiggles, Deadfellaz, and CrypToadz. While Moonbirds does benefit from what’s happening in the broader Yuga ecosystem, the focus of the Yuga team has clearly shifted away from Moonbirds in recent months – at least publicly.
Despite this, Moonbirds’ social accounts continue to grow, building narratives around the Moonbirds and exploring the lore and world around them. As far as evidence that they’re building for the future of the series, that’s all we’ve seen so far.
Yuga Labs is the group behind the series, and we’d be surprised if they lost the idea or motivation to develop Moonbirds less than a year after purchase. Will the Moonbirds universe succeed? Can the Moonbirds recover from their current all-time lows? Only time will tell.
