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

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Network coverage:
Coverage on Music NFTs, Foundation, FingerprintsDAO, and Art Blocks.

• Sound and Catalog are two of the leading platforms in music NFTs. Catalog issues 1/1 music NFTs, where each release is unique, and Sound issues limited edition NFTs, where each release has several copies. Both platforms were invite-only until last month and are also expanding to independent protocol layers respectively. In total 1,913 editions have been created across both Sound and Catalog, with huge growth in October 2021. Cumulative trading volume is $10.8m; Sound accounts for the majority with roughly $7.7m in volume.

• Digging in, more differences between Sound and Catalog become clear. Catalog leverages Zora for primary sales, whereas Sound primary sales are executed by minting directly. Catalog has little secondary volume, while Sound's secondary is 1.5x its primary, which primarily occurs on Opensea. Primary sales dominate monthly volume, with both projects close to $3m.

• There are 517 creators and 6,520 collectors for music NFTs on both projects. 85% of creators and 97% of collectors stick to one platform. New users grew sustainably from December of 2021 to March of 2022. Then adoption slowed down, and retained users took a grew in proportion.

• Foundation is a creator-first NFT platform, featuring an entirely on-chain NFT marketplace. The project’s NFT volume remains stable despite the market downturn, with over 20k NFTs minted and 5k NFTs sold per month Additionally, Foundation achieved over 72k ETH in volume after launching in February 2021, and has exciting plans in the near future to grow its community of over 85k+ users who have either minted or bid on an NFT.

• Foundation continues to be a strong home for creators despite the market downturn, with over 2,500 unique creators selling NFTs per month. In addition, over 350 creators have earned >25 ETH in sales since the platform launched, including Yatreda (photography), wlop (anime), and Holly Herndon (AI).

• Foundation’s user base continues to find value in the product, as the average number of NFTs minted per user continues to increase as creators find new ways to list, create, and sell NFTs on the platform.

• Founded in 2021, Fingerprints is a global DAO dedicated to collecting, curating, and creating significant blockchain art. It is one of the largest holders of the first “on-chain” generative art on the Ethereum blockchain, the iconic Autoglyphs collection created by Larva Labs. Fingerprints is also one of the largest collectors of prominent artists such as 0xDEAFBEEF, Harm Van den Dorpel, Rhea Myers, Mitchell F Chan, Sarah Meyohas, among others.

• Fingerprints has built a reputable brand through a cohesive curatorial thesis and an ever-growing community around blockchain art. The Fingerprints community currently includes 256 members. As a result, Larva Labs handed over the Discord channel of its Autoglyphs collection to Fingerprints in September of 2022.

• The DAO believes art that is foundational, innovative, and made possible by this new medium is more likely to retain value in the long run due to its uniqueness and substance. These attributes render them inimitable and irreplaceable, qualities present in all art that has stood the test of time. Despite the NFT market crash, Autoglyph’s floor price is still trending up denominated in ETH.