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Recently I purchased 2 profile banner NFTs from the ‘Punkscape’ NFT collection. Punkscape is a banner NFT project enabling owners to own the space at the top of their profile page on major social media platforms.
Avatar NFTs dominate the industry at the moment, and rightly so. They provide humans with a personalised face for their digital identities on major social platforms. After the profile picture, a profile banner is the other main mechanism for someone to showcase their digital identity.
This post was initially going to be about 2 NFT collections, ‘Punkscapes’ and ‘Midnight Breeze’, and how they are potential investment opportunities as two of the leading PFB NFTs, and while this is true, the discovery of the Twitter account @YearOftheBanner and associated website YOTB.io has uncovered a nice list of banner NFT projects to choose from. The data aggregator is tracking 23 banner NFT projects in total.
A theme of banner NFTs is that their reputation and subsequent price performance are heavily influenced by blue-chip PFP owners, based on which banner they use. We are seeing collaborations forming, most notably with CryptoPunks and Moonbirds holders using Punkscapes as banners and Azuki holders using Midnight Breeze as banners. As avatar NFT collections continue to be released and gain traction with mainstream users, there is an opportunity that banner NFTs can grow in-stride with avatar NFTs in the coming few years.
Notable Banner Projects
Alotta Money’s Twitter Headers is the original PFB collection launched in 2019. The collection has a small supply of 42 and a low historical trading volume of 42 ETH in total. [Website; Twitter; OpenSea]
Rug Radio is a decentralised media platform whose Genesis NFTs were rectangular in shape and designed for use as banners. [Website; Twitter; OpenSea]
Punkscapes are pixelated banners that double as gif files that can be interactive with. Another innovation is the ‘Punkscape builder‘ application that allows for customisation of your banner to include NFTs from major collections and also those in your wallet. As a data point on price, the #2 rarest in the collection was purchased 3 days ago for 2 ETH, giving the market a current upper bound for prices on rare Punkscapes at a few ETH. The project is created by a reported talented team led by Jalil and Hearsay. [Website; Twitter; OpenSea]
Midnight Breeze is a “seed round project” that is raising funds for the artists’ long-term project TideEstates. The project was created by Dutchtide, founder of Dutchtide Studio. Dutchtide is an independent artist from the Netherlands focused on Japanese anime art. [Website; Twitter; OpenSea]
Upcoming Project
EtherealStates is a pre-launch banner art project from pixel artist @GenuineHumanArt. [Twitter]
Long Term
Hypothesising into the future, two entrants into the banner NFT space could be photography NFTs, as well as banner projects on non-Ethereum blockchains.