Even as reports of a frigid crypto winter dominate the headlines, one would hardly be able to tell given the continued growth of the community. In seeming defiance of the gloom & doom news cycle surrounding the ecosystem, first-time entrants like Gamestop, Ebay, and Ferragamo continue to spark optimism in still-bustling NFT communities.
We released AnChain’s 2022 Q1 map of the NFT Twitter community in February and today are proud to unveil our updated (and much expanded!) Q2 map.
The Q1 map — which featured 1.6K accounts that shared 475K following/followers relationships between them — may be found below and was effectively bifurcated into artist and collector sections (Q1 interactive map; blog post):
The Q2 map — which features 6.1K accounts that share 3 million following/followers relationships between them — may be found below (continue reading to learn more about what each colored community indicates!):
Here are the 1.6K accounts from the Q1 map highlighted among the expanded Q2 map:
Alternatively stated/viewed, most of the 1.6K accounts from the Q1 map (73%) were algorithmically determined (Louvain method) to be part of the pink community within the Q2 map (accounts that were added from Q1 to Q2 maps are highlighted below):
We can even view the Q1 accounts within the Q2 map while applying Q1’s communities (i.e., BAYC=green, CryptoPunks=orange, NFT Gaming/Cryptoart=purple, NFT Artists=yellow; red accounts are Q2 additions):
Note how central the Q1 BAYC (green) and CryptoPunks (orange) communities are within the expanded Q2 map.
Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC, announced in March 2022 that they were acquiring the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs (we released our Q1 map — where the BAYC & CryptoPunks communities formed the core of NFT Twitter — a month prior to the acquisition being announced).
Isolating Q1 accounts within the Q2 map and then reapplying visual clustering results in a map that looks very similar to our Q1 map — only this one reflects the addition of 20K relationships among the 1.6K accounts that occurred after we collected our Q1 data:
Most Influential Accounts
In graph theory and network analysis, various centrality algorithms may be used to detect a node’s (Twitter accounts, in this case) ability to spread information efficiently.
We opted for the eigenvector centrality algorithm to determine the most influential accounts within our Q1 map.
For ranking influence within our Q2 map, we’re instead opting to use (the much simpler) in-degree centrality.
Simply stated: the account being followed by the largest number of accounts from the Q2 map will result in it being determined the most influential (second-most followed=second-most influential, third-most followed=third-most influential, etc.)
Here are the 100 most influential NFT Twitter community accounts (top 20 per community, not overall):
Do you have any guesses as to what each colored community may indicate based on their most influential accounts, respectively?
Community Identification
Pink: Core NFT 1 (Yuga Labs, artists)
As was mentioned earlier, most of the 1.6K accounts from the Q1 map (73%) were algorithmically determined to be part of the pink community within the Q2 map.
Hence, we’re going to categorize this community as being Yuga Labs (BAYC & CryptoPunks dominated the collectors section of our Q1 map) and artist-focused.
Light Green: Early NFT (Dapper Labs, BAYC, Pixel Vault)
While the Core NFT 1 community certainly includes many BAYC-focused accounts, the BAYC-focused accounts in the Early NFT community tend to be less connected to CryptoPunks and artists.
More broadly speaking, accounts in the Early NFT community represent some of the earlier projects in the space (defined here as launching prior to June 2021).
Dapper Labs, for example, is the NFT company behind CryptoKitties (November 2017; the world’s first-ever ERC-721 token), Flow Blockchain (beta mainnet went live in May 2020), and NBA Top Shot (October 2020), among others. Dapper Labs was founded by Roham Gharegozlou (@roham) in March 2018.
BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) launched in April 2021; Pixel Vault launched their flagship property, PUNKS Comic, a few weeks later in May 2021.
CryptoPunks, launched by Larva Labs in June 2017, has a strong presence in both the Core NFT 1 (pink) and Early NFT (light green) communities towards the center of the map, similar to BAYC:
Red: Core NFT 2 (PFP collections beyond Yuga Labs)
Whereas the Core NFT 1 community skews heavily towards PFP collections from Yuga Labs (BAYC, CryptoPunks, Meebits), the Core NFT 2 community reflects a much broader set of PFP collections:
Dark Green: Gutter Cat Gang
The Gutter Cat Gang community is relatively removed from the Core NFT 1 (pink) and Investors/Builders (blue) communities – while sharing some connectivity with the Early NFT (light green) and Core NFT 2 (red) communities:
Blue: Investors/Builders (ETH & SOL)
The Investors/Builders community is Ethereum heavy towards the top (section adjacent to the pink, Core NFT 1, community) and Solana heavy towards the bottom:
Note how Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin), who has referred to the BAYC collection as “gambling” on “$3M monkeys” doesn’t follow much of NFT Twitter!
Takeaways/Conclusion
Effectively, our Q2 NFT Twitter map is bifurcated into NFT and NFT adjacent sections:
Included in the NFT section are the Early NFT (light green), Core NFT 1 (pink), Core NFT 2 (red), and Gutter Cat Gang (dark green) communities.
Yuga Labs’ dominance of the NFT section (they form the heart of NFT Twitter!) is not surprising. BAYC/Yuga Labs heavily dominated our Q1 map of the NFT Twitter community, and Yuga Labs’ dominance among our Q2 map has been strengthened by their acquisition of the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections.
Echoing their social media dominance, Yuga Labs showed they are in a league of their own recently at NFT NYC via their annual festival, ApeFest — which, on the final night, featured Snoop Dogg and Eminem.
Something else we can see visually that should not come as much of a surprise is that Ethereum builders/investors have more connectivity to the NFT section than Solana builders/investors.
Ethereum, after all, is still the dominant blockchain with regards to NFTs (though Ethereum continues to lose NFT market share to Solana).
And finally, here are the most influential accounts across the five biggest NFT Twitter communities:
Explore the Q2 interactive map of the NFT Twitter community here!
If you enjoyed this post or discovered any interesting insights on the map, we’d encourage you to share it across the socials and to follow us on Twitter (@AnChainAI) to ensure you don’t miss our next one!
