A collection that once sat upon a perch high above the blockchain space following a $300 million USD debut has had a dramatic fall, and is now in the hands of one of the biggest names in Web3.
That NFT collection is Moonbirds.
Despite the collection effectively rebuilding from scratch, it carries on today with its potential still untapped. What are the Moonbirds, what should you know about them, and how did they get to the position they are in today?
Master the topic, as we explain the past, present and future of Moonbirds in 2024.
What is Moonbirds?
Moonbirds is a collection of 10,000 NFT owls on Ethereum. Created by PROOF Collective, and designed by Justin Mezzell, each Moonbird merges a number of traits, such as faces, clothing, accessories and more.
The brainchild of the collection is Kevin Rose, an entrepreneur who is best-known as a co-founder of news aggregator Digg. He started PROOF Collective – a group of NFT enthusiasts that included Beeple and Gary Vaynerchuk – as a way to push the NFT industry forwards with innovative new projects.
At the time of its launch, 2,000 Moonbirds were reserved for PROOF Collective members, 7,875 were available to the public, and the remaining 125 were held by PROOF for future initiatives.
Moonbirds NFTs feature a unique staking mechanism called ‘nesting’. By nesting a Moonbird, the holder gains levels of perks and rewards – but is unable to sell or transfer the NFT whilst it is nesting. These perks include exclusive community insights, priority access to future products, merchandise drops and more.
PROOF was acquired by Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs in February 2024, with Yuga now leading the management of the collection as a whole.
The history of Moonbirds
The Moonbirds NFT collection was minted on April 16, 2022, priced at a colossal 2.5 ETH each. Despite this, all 10,000 Moonbirds NFTs were sold inside two days – and excited secondary trading saw the collection exceed $300 million USD in trading volume, making Moonbirds the largest NFT debut in history.
In May 2022, PROOF released Oddities, a 10,000-piece partner collection on Ethereum, made available via the nesting system.
August 2022 saw Moonbirds and Oddities given a CC0 license, which saw the art of the NFTs enter the public domain. This caused big concerns, as rather than the rights to each NFT going to its holder, the art was now publicly available to use with no permissions required. As a result, one holder claimed that they lost a “six-figure licensing deal.”
April 2023 saw PROOF introduce $TALONS, earned by nesting Moonbirds. This token could be used to purchase exclusive products, earn passes to events, and much more.
At the same time, PROOF revealed Mythics, a second companion collection on Ethereum, with 20,000 NFTs that could be acquired through nesting Moonbirds NFTs, or by burning Oddities NFTs.
With three NFT collections perceived to be diluting the value of Moonbirds, an unpopular CC0 license, and a poor reception to $TALONS, the floor price of Moonbirds tanked from an all-time high of 37 ETH to below 2 ETH in just 12 months.
This would fall even further when on May 29, 2023, Kevin Rose stated that Moonbirds wasn’t “down bad as BAYC in terms of USD” on a Twitter Space. This statement – said at a time when Moonbirds were below 2 ETH whilst Bored Apes were around 45 ETH – was heavily criticised, and only grew the discontent around the management of the collection.
Moonbirds continued to plummet, falling below 1 ETH by January 2024. Rumours began to circle that Rose was looking to sell the collection, and numerous community figures began posting public offers to purchase the management of the Moonbirds collection.
After much speculation, an announcement was made in February 2024 that PROOF Collective and all of its NFT collections – including Moonbirds – had been acquired by Bored Ape Yacht Club creators Yuga Labs.
Yuga moved quickly, announcing the Moonbirds Universe in April 2024 – a metaverse-like virtual world that would integrate with their existing Otherside metaverse.
This month also saw Yuga revoke the CC0 license from Moonbirds and Oddities – correcting what many believed to be PROOF’s mistake in issuing the license back in August 2022. This ensured that, moving forward, holders retained the rights to protect and use their NFTs in any way they see fit.
June 2024 saw Yuga introduce new illustrated artwork for each Moonbirds NFT, with holders able to switch between the original pixel-based art and the new hand-drawn illustrated styles on the fly.
Despite these exciting developments, Moonbirds has since been largely silent ever since. This lack of activity is reflected in the floor price, with Moonbirds now trading at around 0.47 ETH at the time of writing.
What’s next for Moonbirds?
Unlike many other “blue chip” NFT collections – such as Azuki, Doodles, and Bored Apes – Yuga have yet to communicate a clear plan for the future of the Moonbirds collection.
The last major activity was the re-activation of the Talons Marketplace, which lets users spend $TALONS to acquire NFTs from other collections, such as Chromie Squiggles, Deadfellaz and CrypToadz. Although Moonbirds benefits from being a part of the Yuga ecosystem, Yuga’s focus does not appear to have been on Moonbirds in recent months.
Saying that, the Moonbirds social accounts are still somewhat active, slowly building a narrative around the lore and world of the Moonbirds – but in terms of evidence that the collection is actively being worked on, this is unfortunately all that we currently have.
With the power of Yuga behind the collection, we would be surprised if – less than 12 months after buying the collection – they’ve already run out of ideas for its future. The Moonbirds collection certainly has potential – but can it return to the heights it once had? Let’s see what happens in 2025.
Riding crypto waves since 2012, bridging digital and physical worlds through prose.