Sotheby’s Golden ‘Goose’ Sale and Mercedes Benz Puts NFTs in Motion

This week, Sotheby’s announced the next sale of rare NFTs from bankrupt 3AC’s coveted collection seized by liquidators in July 2022. The highlight of this sale is Dmitri Cherniak's “The Goose,” which is expected to fetch a golden sum.

Meanwhile, Mercedes Benz has released a new NFT collection inspired by its luxury cars in motion and Nike is bringing its digital drip to the EA Sports gaming ecosystem.

You’re reading The Airdrop, our weekly newsletter where we discuss the biggest stories across Web3. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

This Week's Alpha

Golden goose: Sotheby's is set to auction off another round of prized NFTs seized from bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital on June 15. The second sale of digital art from the "Grails" collection will feature 37 works from generative artists like Dmitri Cherniak, Tyler Hobbs, Jeff Davis and more.

• Big ticket item: The highlight of the upcoming auction is Dmitri Cherniak's Ringers #879 (often referred to as "The Goose"), which has an estimated sale price of $2-3 million. It was purchased by 3AC co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies in August 2021 for about $5.8 million.
• Liquidation tally: Earlier this month, the first set of NFTs auctioned from the Grails collection brought in $2.4 million, and Teneo reported the private sale of another group of works from the Grails collection brought in over $3 million. So far, the Grails collection liquidation sales have brought in more than $6 million, and look on track to beat estimated total sales of $9.8 million once complete.

Rise of the 'Maschine': Digital art organization Fingerprints DAO is partnering with Dutch artist Harm van den Dorpel and German car manufacturer Mercedes Benz on a new NFT collection that plays on themes of velocity and perception. The 1,000-edition generative art collection is supported by Mercedes-Benz NXT, the car manufacturer’s new Web3 arm that focuses on digital collectibles and virtual experiences. It will be available through the Fingerprints DAO’s website via a rebate Dutch auction on June 7.

• Set in motion: Mercedes-Benz NXT engaged in the collections’ co-creation with Harm van den Dorpel, who created and trained a neural network to create outputs that look like an object in motion.
• On the radar: The brand plans to release more collections in the future, including additional core collections, standalone satellite projects and third-party peripheral projects.

Just SWOOSH It: Nike is bringing its .SWOOSH NFTs to the EA Sports gaming ecosystem, allowing EA Sports fans “to express their personal style through play." While details are sparse, the partnership will focus on creating "immersive experiences" and "new levels of customization” within the EA Sports ecosystem.

• Slower-paced sales: The announcement comes at the heels of .SWOOSH’s first NFT sneaker collection released last week, which raked in $1.9 million in sales, according to Polygonscan. The drop was plagued with delays and technical issues, and only 97,627 of the Our Force 1 boxes were sold from the total inventory of 106,453 – surprising, considering that most popular Nike physical sneaker releases often sell out in minutes.

Projects on the Rise

Fewos

Who: NFT artist Fewocious

What: Fewocious, aka Victor Langlois, started creating colorful works of art in his early teen years before slowly building a reputation for himself in the digital art space. Now at 20, he has been dropping snippets of his upcoming profile picture (PFP) collection called “Fewos,” which pays homage to the “Frankensteins, Misunderstoods and Humanoids” of the world. Each NFT, minted as ERC-6551 tokens, is composed of hand-drawn traits that were converted into 3D art.

When: The NFTs will be available to mint in August via the FewoWorld website. You can learn more about the artist and the upcoming collection here.

In Other News

Decent exposure: Getty Images released a new collection of images as NFTs titled “Exposure” through digital marketplace Candy.

China’s Web3 plans: The Beijing International Science and Technology Innovation Center in China has released a Web3 white paper promoting the development of new internet technologies.

Hong Kong x Huobi: Crypto exchange Huobi announced that it was joining the Hong Kong Virtual Assets Consortium (HKVAC) to support Hong Kong’s Web3 growth.

Non-Fungible Toolkit

This week, a dubious NFT project called Pixel Penguins was promoted by crypto influencer Andrew Wang to his thousands of followers on Twitter. The project, which claimed to be raising funds for a digital artist with cancer, turned out to be a scam.

As the crypto space has evolved, so have the methods that scammers use to prey on unsuspecting investors. And while NFT trading has grown, bad actors have found new ways to steal digital assets and obfuscate funds.

Here are the most common types of NFT scams and how to avoid them.