In arguably the most hotly-anticipated artwork reveal of the year, the Mekaverse NFT collection will unveil its artwork this evening at 7pm CET.
The Mekaverse NFT collection has been touted as one of the most hyped projects of the year by the NFT community, and for good reason – the collection boasts a max capacity Discord server with 250k members, 214k Twitter followers and a 6.4 ETH price floor even before the artwork has been seen.
The saga started on August 30 when the project opened its Twitter and Discord accounts to the public for the first glimpse at the Gundam-inspired artwork.
Since then, Mekaverse Mania has swept the NFT space and has attracted NFT collectors old and new to the project – prompting a sense of ‘FOMO’ and eagerness to be the first to own one of 8,888 Mekaverse NFTs.
Now, ahead of the artwork reveal at 7pm CET, NFT collectors have worked themselves into a frenzy and are snapping up unrevealed Mekaverse NFTs for over $20k each – an incredible amount considering the project still retains the placeholder image from the minting process.
Welcome to the #MekaVerse 🌐
8,888 unique Mekas who need Drivers. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/txlV5Rjyps— MekaVerse (@MekaVerse) August 30, 2021
The mania phase truly started when the raffle process opened for the public on October 6, which acted as a call to every NFT collector in the space.
The collection decided to open a ‘raffle’ to incentivise a fair minting process which involved users signing up with a wallet on the Mekaverse website and ‘registering’ interest in buying either one or two NFTs.
In total, an estimated 172k total wallets were registered for the raffle, with 661,737 unique users visiting the website to try their luck at the minting ‘lottery’.
Then, 24 hours later, the NFT community descended on the website once again to find out if they had won the chance to mint.
The lucky winners then minted their Mekaverse NFTs – which cost 0.2 ETH each – and took to Twitter to ‘flex’ their mints to their followers.
Following the mint, OpenSea sales soon started to flood in. A price floor of around 4 ETH was established, with minters looking to ‘flip’ their NFTs for an early profit.
As time went on, the demand for the NFTs became even greater, with many now willing to pay upwards of 6.4 ETH (22k) for an unrevealed artwork.
Since its mint, The collection has dominated the volume charts on OpenSea having reached an incredible 20k ETH ($70m) in trading volume in the week since its launch.
The collection has even overtaken the popular Cool Cats in the 30-day volume chart – a sign that Mekaverse Mania has truly overtaken the NFT space.
OG's Silver Squad ⚔️
Who’s hyped for the reveal tomorrow? 🤖💎 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ZSQQi9KjN6— MekaVerse (@MekaVerse) October 11, 2021
Despite the hype and furore surrounding Mekaverse, the project has also come under a fair share of controversy from the NFT community.
The community shared how savvy users used bots and ‘gamed’ the raffle system to get allocated mints on multiple wallets, which caused a certain amount of disdain towards the project.
Additionally, there have been alleged concerns regarding a copyright dispute from Gundam Genuine and Mekaverse’s use of similar artwork.
Eyebrows have also been raised over how the project has become a ‘whale’s playground’ – where only those with large amounts of ETH are able to buy one.
Twitter user ‘Iam0xB0B‘ – who owns 56 Mekaverse NFTs – took to Twitter to say that whales with large amounts of ETH were collecting as many as possible pre-reveal.
However, the project currently boasts 5,467 unique holders, equalling a 61% distribution of NFTs. Ironically, this makes Mekaverse one of the most fairly distributed NFT collections on the market despite the heavy demand and high price for one.
It’s now unclear what direction Mekaverse will take due to the massive hype and expectations already garnered by the project.
The reveal tonight is again expected to draw massive crowds to the space, with excitement for the first look at the rarest pieces reaching fever pitch.
Despite the excitement, many in the NFT community anticipate that the price may fall following the reveal as buyers make their own judgements on the artwork and the possibility of obtaining a ‘rare’ disappears.
Conversely, the Discord channel remains full of optimism regarding the potential success of the project – with some even speculating it could, in time, be the one to dethrone the long-standing dominance of ‘blue-chip’ NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.