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Links for the Top 25 drops are HERE.

10 NFT drops I’m watching in February 👀 

Quantum Cats 

February 1 – @quantumcatsxyz

The lead-up to the Quantum Cats mint has been quite the rollercoaster. 

At the highs: euphoria around the 1/1 Sotheby’s sale, where a buyer paid over $250,000 for a single “rare” cat. 

At the lows: a mood killer of a broken mint experience followed by two back-to-back delays. 

Yet, when all is said and done, there’s still a good chance that this becomes the second highest-grossing Ordinals mint of all time with $13 million in potential sales (a bit lower than Yuga’s $16 million from Twelvefold last year). 

Check out our full preview here to learn more about why there’s so much hype. 

Struggle for Pleasure by Harm van den Dorpel

February 1 – @harmvddorpel 

Van den Dorpel was making digital art long before NFTs were ever a thing. 

And with his newest collection, he wants us to embrace all that is blurry. 

The pixelated animations highlight the mind’s tendency to add extra meaning to low-resolution images. 

You might find that the “struggle for pleasure” here is just you struggling with the fact that you never get to see those underlying images behind the blur (hint: there aren’t any). 

There’s also a musicality to these “pixel paintings”. As I found in our preview, the viewing experience pairs well with the song that the collection is named after. 

Ordinals Gang

February 5 – @ordinalsgang 

I shall keep it real with you, O Dearest Readers, I don’t normally get hot and bothered by “low inscription” ordinals. 

Like, I recognize why it can be exciting to some, and floor prices suggest that many do value them highly, but I also think there’s a lot of confusion between what is actually “historical” versus what is simply “old”. 

And in the case of Ordinals Gang there really isn’t much else going on outside of that chronological imprint. 

However, three-digit-inscription collections still don’t come around every day. And soon enough there won’t be any more left to sell, which I do think makes this a special moment in a way.

Ridge Regression by Pierre Casadebaig

February 6 – @pircasa

Following sellouts in late 2022 and early 2023, French artist Pierre Casadebaig will make his third release on Verse with a 128-supply minimalist collection that passes my wall test with flying (albeit black-and-white) colors.

In Ridge Regression, the artist’s algorithms visualize France’s peaks and valleys in their rawest form, using real elevation data from official websites.

The result? A set of undeniably aesthetic works that appeal to fans of minimalism, nature, and ink wash painting.

To top it off, each winning bid comes with a physical A5 plot, shipping cost included (nice touch), enabling fast-pass access from website to wall.

The Auntieverse by Niceaunties

February 6 – @Niceaunties

Fun fact: Niceaunties began making AI art only 12 months ago. 

Yet in that time, she became the breakout artist from Fellowship’s Daily auction series, where she consistently showed up in most of the best-selling 1/1 mints throughout 2023. 

And now she’s arriving at her biggest solo show yet: 1,000 still images sold via English and Dutch auctions with 0.1 ETH min reserves.

Worldbuilding is a huge part of her work, and Auntieverse specifically revolves around “a surreal world where suppressed beings could exist freely”. 

These beings are mostly older women (aunties) who are often either making food, eating food, or merging directly with food in chaotic dreamlike settings. 

Bright Moments Paris Collections

February 7 – @brtmoments

The Bright Moments 10-city world tour ends this April in Venice, Italy – three years after it began in March 2021. But before saying their arrivedercis, they’re en route to Paris for this month’s 19-artist collection.

This Paris Collection is made up of two sub-collections, one featuring seven AI artists while the other showcases new work from twelve generative artists.

The artist roster shows that BM is still one of the biggest galleries in the space, featuring some of the hottest artists (as well as some of MoS HQ’s favorites), like Roope Rainisto, Richard Nadler, Harm van den Dorpel, and Martin Grasser.

Reflection by Pindar Van Arman

February 7 – @vanArman 

Van Arman wants to show that AI is capable of human-like emergent creativity. 

He says he’s been thinking about this since 2006, and he has finally found the answer in Reflection. 

The collection uses a novel technique where robots constantly ask themselves “how to make the painting better”, and you can see videos of what that looks like in action here. 

In this case, the robots created 9 acrylic canvas pieces, painted in layers, which were then used to produce 999 NFTs (completely onchain).

Heuristics of Emotion by Jeres

February 8 – @heyjeres

What would it look like if we could watch an AI learning how to feel emotions in real-time, like watching an adolescent awkwardly struggle to parse pubertal feelings?

Well, according to Heuristics of Emotion, it would involve a lot of glitches and colors. Checks out, frankly.

This upcoming 1,000-supply generative collection by LA-based artist Jeres releases on Verse, following a March 2023 sellout on the platform as well as an Art Blocks sellout in September.

Also of note, this will be Verse’s first ever Solana drop, and it offers both artist and collector curation, both interesting market choices.

Untitled Bitcoin Drop by Jack Butcher

February 8 – @jackbutcher

The artist floodgates from ETH to BTC have opened up, and who better to take a stab at Ordinals than Jack Butcher (our top artist for 2023) with his upcoming 500-supply Bitcoin Checks collection (exact name TBA).

While not groundbreaking, they stand on their own as Bitcoin artifacts given their early inscription numbers (~20k) and the fact that this is the artist’s first BTC drop.

The first release will be an exclusive claim for single check holders (30+ ETH current price tag on those), which makes this a little less exciting in terms of accessibility, but there are still a lot of details left to be announced.

Proscenium by remnynt

February 14 – @remnynt

Give the gift of generative art this Valentine’s?

15 years in the making, this art drop will finally see the light of day through none other than the Art Blocks platform.

In making the 400-supply Proscenium, remnynt (a.k.a. Jimmy Griffith) created a map of blank 3D structures upon which paint drops bounce and add color. These structures are then flattened to 2D, but the paint bounces retain their original shape and placement.

You can read more about that in his essay but, in practical terms, this makes for some interesting and fun outputs with a great deal of texture, which I could see collectors digging.