Free-to-Mint NFT Hit The Saudis Becomes Second Most Traded Collection on OpenSea over Past Week

A new free-to-mint NFT project called The Saudis has become the second most traded collection on major marketplace OpenSea over the past seven days.

At the time of writing, the collection has notched over ETH 7,000 (USD 7.4m) in trading volume over the past week, only second to popular NFT collection CryptoPunks which has scored ETH 9,574 (USD 10m), according to rankings by OpenSea. 

On Sunday, the collection even briefly became the number 1 project in terms of volume over the past 24 hours, attracting more than ETH 4,000 in trading volume. 

The Saudis is a collection of 5,555 NFTs programmatically generated from over 80 possible traits, according to its website. In terms of artwork, the collection appears to be inspired by CryptoPunks. The collection launched on July 9 and sold out within hours.

The project’s floor price (the cheapest item in an NFT collection) is currently set at ETH 0.67 (over USD 700) after peaking at around ETH 1.3 (roughly USD 1,650) on Saturday.

Similar to other free-to-mint hits, the project’s momentum is fueled by its vocal army of social media users, many of whom are creating Saudi Arabia-inspired meme videos to spread the project’s hype.

Notably, the project’s hype has relatively cooled down over recent days. The collection had a trading volume of ETH 474 over the past 24 hours, down by around 65%. 

Meanwhile, the rise of The Saudis has not come without controversy.

Over the weekend, the project announced that it will block 217 of its NFTs, which were owned by OpenSea user Rightblock, from being sold on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces. The team accused the user of being a “hacker.”

The Saudis is the latest hit NFT collection that comes just a month after another free-to-mint project Goblin Town made waves across the NFT market with its performance. In a month, Goblin Town sales dropped 60%, the floor price slipped almost 4%, while the number of owners increased 30%, per data from Cryptoslam.

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