Is Mahji Brother shopping too? Why did Gitcoin Presents commemorative NFTs suddenly become popular?

Written by: Nancy, PANews

On March 9, the decentralized donation platform Gitcoin launched the Gitcoin Presents commemorative series NFTs, which sparked a market rush after minting was halted. Even "Brother Maji" Huang Licheng joined in the frenzy, indicating the level of excitement.

The Gitcoin Presents NFT began minting on March 1 using an Open Edition model at a price of 0.05 ETH, meaning there was no limit on the number of NFTs a user could mint. As of the early morning of March 9, the NFT concluded minting with a total of 9,221 NFTs, each accompanied by two articles on quadratic funding by Gitcoin co-founders Kevin Owocki and Scott Moore.

Among them, 9,209 NFTs are standard versions, while the remaining 12 are limited editions personally signed by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin (V God), sold through a Dutch auction. This NFT sale raised a total of 390 ETH (over $780,000). Of this, 70% will be allocated to Gitcoin, 20% will go to the Plurality Institute, and the remaining 10% will be distributed to Metalabel.

The Gitcoin Presents series NFTs are presented in the form of album covers and are issued in collaboration between Gitcoin and Metalabel, aimed at commemorating V God’s contributions to the innovative Web3 fundraising and quadratic funding concepts. Gitcoin is one of the representative platforms using the quadratic funding mechanism, having funded over $70 million for open-source Web3 tools and projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. Metalabel, founded by notable figures such as Yancey Strickler, co-founder of the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, and Rob Kalin, founder of the e-commerce site Etsy, aims to help creators tokenize their works using Web3 technology.

As early as 2018, V God, along with Harvard scholar Zoe Hitzig and Microsoft’s E. Glen Weyl, published a paper titled "Radical Markets: Utopian Ideas for a Neutral Society," which discussed new funding methods to provide cryptographic funding for public goods needed by decentralized ecosystems while avoiding "free-rider" behavior.

Although V God did not personally promote the NFTs, the Gitcoin Presents series NFTs triggered a buying frenzy in the secondary market. According to OpenSea data, as of the time of writing, Gitcoin Presents has generated over 6,900 ETH in sales, with nearly 3,600 unique wallet addresses holding the NFTs, of which whales and blue-chip holders account for 10%. The floor price also once approached 0.6 ETH, although it has since retreated, it still represents an increase of over 8.6 times the original price. The limited signed version of the Gitcoin Presents NFT was sold for a high price of 52 ETH on OpenSea, showcasing V God’s influence.

It is noteworthy that, aside from the address starting with "0xb6c," which minted over 8% of the total supply of NFTs, the well-known Taiwanese artist "Brother Maji" Huang Licheng also purchased over 800 Gitcoin Presents within a few hours and subsequently resold them on the NFT trading platform Blur, possibly related to his efforts to boost Blur airdrop points.

Data source: Nansen

"This raised over $700,000 for public goods funding and provided people with new discoveries of great creative works using record formats, which is an exciting new way for creators to publish and fund their works," Metalabel stated in an interview with Decrypt.