About the editor: Spencer Noon is Co-founder & General Partner at Variant.

Network Coverage
Coverage on Foundation, Sound, and SuperRare.

• Foundation is an NFT platform building the new creative economy. Its market share among crypto art platforms has been increasing dramatically over the past year - during February, Foundation had over 65% volume market share among other crypto art platforms. Additionally, the project achieved >57k ETH in volume after only 13 months and has exciting plans in store to continue growing the community, which consists of 55k+ users who have either minted or bid on an NFT.

• Sales from collections continue to see significant monthly growth as volume nearly doubled from January to February. Creators such as @gharliera (illustration), @yatreda (video/photography), and @cmtatt (animation) all saw greater than 50 ETH in primary sales over the past 30 days.

• The number of monthly unique collectors with a purchase continues to be at near-record levels. This trend speaks to the supply of exceptional creators who mint on Foundation, as well as to the continued high collector engagement on the platform.

• The one metric that matters most at Sound is the number of artists that can make a full-time living off of their music alone. Since launching in December 2021, Sound onboarded over 60 artists and generated over $850k in proceeds that have been paid directly to artists - an average of ~$14.2k per artist .

• Secondary trading volume is approaching $1m and has outpaced primary volume. Sound has seen particularly higher demand for artists who consistently engage with their community & reward their supporters (led currently by @pussyrrriot, @CallMeLatasha and @Soulection).

• Sound reached over 1,000 unique collectors of Sound records, driven by artists bringing their fans to web3 and Sound. This trend is expected to accelerate as the project onboards additional artists and as awareness of music NFTs continues to expand.

• In February, total trading volume on SuperRare passed $230m. The platform has seen a strong start to 2022 with the biggest auction of all time occurring on January 2nd: the 1630 ETH sale of ‘All Time High in the City’ by XCopy to rarecollector3000.

• SuperRare is the leading curated marketplace for 1/1 NFT art. In February, $3.35m was paid out to the artists on the platform. 96% was the result of primary sales of the NFTs from artists to collectors, and 4% was secondary sale royalties.

• SuperRare is governed by a DAO comprised of $RARE token holders. The DAO votes on proposed improvements to the network and protocol; it also deploys funds from the community treasury. In February, the DAO earned $1.1m in trading fees.