NFT Artists, Projects Celebrate Ethereum Merge With Historic Mints

The first transaction of an NFT minted on the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus was confirmed within four seconds after the Ethereum Merge. 

The official timestamp for the Merge was 6:42 am UTC on Thursday at block 15537393. One user quickly paid 36.8 ether (ETH), or $53,403.13 at the time, to purchase an NFT bearing a panda face — symbolic of the Merge — at block 15537394.

Someone just paid 36 ETH in gas to mint this

The first minted NFT on proof of stake pic.twitter.com/zKUKI06EjH

— Cirrus (@CirrusNFT) September 15, 2022

That prompted another Twitter user to ask, “Is Panda the new Ape?” in reference to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. Others called it a “historic” and “epic” move. 

Popular NFT artist Beeple ran with the panda imagery in his own rendition of a proof-of-stake illustration, depicting a giant cyborg panda.

He celebrated the Merge with a second graphic of an Ethereum logo under construction.

While one niche NFT project, VanityBlocks, succeeded in tokenizing the final Ethereum proof-of-work block, another project claims it is the first NFT collection on PoS Ethereum. 

Let the PoS NFTs bloom

Developed “in the pursuit of minimizing our impact on our environment,” the Web3-native lifestyle brand named Bloom consists of 3,003 anime-style avatars. The founders have airdropped them all since the Merge. 

In a Twitter Spaces session on Thursday, the founders mentioned that they chose Ethereum to launch Bloom because of its market dominance.

“At the end of the day, where the most volume is, where the most traffic is, and where the most economic value is — it’s all on Ethereum.” 

gm. (good merge)

We did it.

We’re officially the first ever NFT Collection to mint on the PoS era of Ethereumhttps://t.co/im8MeuuRtN pic.twitter.com/cpynqaDxwA

— BLOOM. (@bloomdotxyz) September 15, 2022

With a 0.5 floor price, Bloom is ranking in the top ten collections with the most trading volume in the past 24 hours on OpenSea, under Mutant Ape Yacht Club but above Otherdeed and Otherside Yuga Labs collections. 

All week, but especially within the last 24 hours, another collection called RENGA has topped OpenSea’s volume board. Launched pre-Merge on Sept. 2, the RENGA project has steadily grown as holders of RENGA Black Box NFTs burn their tokens in exchange for a RENGA profile picture. 

The Black Box collection currently has recorded a post-Merge sales volume of nearly 900 ETH in the past 24 hours and has a market capitalization of 8,874 ETH or $12.6 million, as per NFTGo data.

It is yet to be determined how much more desirable NFTs on PoS may be; now that the network is using over 99% less energy, NFTs have also become greener.

Otherwise, the Merge should have no effect on NFTs minted on Ethereum.

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