The renaissance in avatar art is the beginning of humans owning their digital identity in the digital age. It has started with one’s image (avatar), one’s name (Web3 domain name), their creations (art, writing, music, video, etc.) and will grow into far more. It’s also increasingly looking like humanity is gearing up to use avatars as vehicles to step into the many virtual worlds that are being created and then participate in metaverse commerce.
Profile-picture (pfp) or Avatar NFTs have been a major trend since the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in late Apr. 2021 and in the last 12 months we have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of avatar collections launch. Among those many collections are around 40-50 collections that comprise the most valuable 500,000 avatars currently in existence.
Per their 2021 Form 10K, Coinbase has approximately 89M verified users and approximately 11.4 monthly transacting users. Per a Dune Analytics dashboard, OpenSea has 1.6M registered users and approximately 450K monthly active traders on Ethereum. Given their influence, these two companies provide a good barometer for humanity’s shift from Web2 to Web3. If we assume that crypto is slightly larger than those two estimates thanks to the many blockchains that are out there, we essentially have 500K to 1M individuals investing in the first 500K-750K avatar NFTs to be created.
It’s plausible to envision a future world in which 2D and 3D avatar generators are in abundance and commonly used by all of society to create identities and communities. Due to this, it’s plausible that there will eventually be millions of avatars to accommodate the billions of internet users. Owning your first avatar as a child or teenager could become as common as getting one’s first email address or bank account.
Outside of financial value, there are social benefits for large NFT collection holders as newly released applications often integrate the larger collections into their experience first, thereby giving access to those holders first. This is already being experienced in crypto and should continue as the multitude of virtual worlds and games are launched in the coming years. Owning one of the top 500,000 avatar NFTs could be significant for social life in the future. Of course, the top 500K avatars won’t always be the same forever, and I anticipate seeing many new unreleased collections perform well and become blue-chip in the future, similar to the recent success of Moonbirds.
As investors, we can participate either by investing in already existing projects that align with our interests or by preparing for the release of a future unknown collection and mint a new NFT created by a well-vetted team.
Below is a selection of larger avatar collections, with many names not included.
| Collection | Supply |
| CryptoPunks | 10,000 |
| BAYC | 10,000 |
| MAYC | 18,800 |
| BAYKC | 9,600 |
| Azuki | 10,000 |
| Clone X | 19,200 |
| Moonbirds | 10,000 |
| Doodles | 10,000 |
| Meebits | 20,000 |
| Cool Cats | 10,000 |
| CryptoToadz | 7,000 |
| World of Women | 10,000 |
| CyberKongz | 5,000 |
| Pudgy Penguins | 8,900 |
| mfers | 10,000 |
| Lazy Lions | 10,000 |
| World of Women Galaxy | 21,100 |
| SupDucks | 10,000 |
| Gutter Cat Gang | 12,000 |
| Gutter Clones | 28,000 |
| Chain Runners | 10,000 |
| Anonymice | 10,000 |
| Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult | 9,400 |
| MetaHero | 10,000 |
| CryptoCoven | 9,800 |
| Wassies by Wassies | 9,500 |
| Tubby Cats | 20,000 |
| You by BFF | 10,000 |
| Wicked Craniums | 10,800 |
| DystoPunks | 2,100 |
| Milady Maker | 10,000 |
| Wanderers | 8,900 |
| Solana Monkey Business | 10,000 |
| On1 Force | 7,800 |
| Karafuru | 5,600 |
| Creature World | 10,000 |
| Fluf World | 10,000 |
| 3Landers | 10,000 |
| CyberBrokers | 10,000 |
| BEANZ | 20,000 |
| Kaiju Kingz | 6,100 |
| Coolmans | 10,000 |
| Akutars | 15,000 |
| Total | 484,600 |
👉 Related content: Gutter Cat Gang & Gutter Juice, NFT Worlds (WRLD), Metaverse Round-Up, A Dive into Metaverse Land 👈