Non-fungible tokens seem to be gaining more and more popularity among users. NFTs literally blew up the cryptocurrency market in 2021. And despite a 98% decline in trading last year, the popularity of NFTs keeps growing in 2023.
NFT collections issued by world-famous artists and opinion leaders attract special attention from the public. Celebrities are tokenizing literally everything: music, photos, artwork, and more. We’ve compiled a list of the most interesting NFT collections released by famous artists.
Mila Kunis
Mila Kunis has already launched several successful NFT projects. One of them is a series of tokens initially released on the Solana blockchain. However, they “moved” to the Avalanche network eventually. The tokens allow their holders to create a storyline for the animated web series The Gimmicks. The project was created by Kunis’ production studio Sixth Wall in collaboration with Web3 studio Toonstar. The series is about several professional wrestlers who have lost their popularity and are now trying to regain their former glory. The project looks interesting, however, as of early March 2023, it’s been showing minimal signs of life. Only seven episodes of The Gimmicks have been released, so it’s hard to gauge its commercial success.
The series is inspired by another NFT project Mila Kunis was a part of, the animated series Stoner Cats. She did the voice-over for it together with Ashton Kutcher and Jane Fonda. Stoner Cats NFTs were released on Ethereum based on the series. The tokens open access to watch six exclusive episodes. According to public sources, NFT sales raised $8.4 million for the series creators.
Steve Harvey
Renowned American comedian, screenwriter, and actor Steve Harvey released a collection of three NFTs on Ethereum on the Rarible marketplace in 2021. The tokens contained:
- A GIF animation of “Excuse Me” in a single copy;
- A digitally autographed photo of himself in triplicate;
- A GIF animation of a snippet of a performance at the Classic Show Throw in 112 copies, 95 of which were soon “burned.”
Despite Steve Harvey’s popularity, the collection was, mildly speaking, not very successful, and that’s why most of the tokens were burned. In the end, eight copies of the performance token were purchased at 0.1 ETH each. Three copies of the autograph were sold for $1,294, and the “unique” GIF animation cost the buyer $9,289 and he couldn’t resell it, although he tried. All of the proceeds were donated to the Steve & Marjorie Harvey Foundation.
Lindsay Lohan
American actress Lindsay Lohan released her single Lullaby, which was written in collaboration with DJ Manuel Riva, as an NFT. The asset was sold for $85,484 on the decentralized NFT marketplace FansForever. The token was issued on the Tron network, and its sale was informationally supported by Justin Sun.
A month earlier that year, Lindsay began actively “taking an interest” in cryptocurrencies, “investing” in Bitcoin, and “trading” NFTs, but all her messages betrayed a complete lack of understanding of what she was talking about at all. So, the “successful sale” of the tokenized single is more like a situational PR of the Tron network in front of the millions of fans of the “Disney star” on Twitter. By the way, this was also the largest sale in the history of the FansForever platform.
The Chainsmokers
The members of the famous musical duo The Chainsmokers released the album “So Far So Good” as an NFT. In all, 4,998 tokens were created on Polygon. The tokens, originally placed on the NFT platform Royal, aren’t just collectables but give fans access to exclusive bonuses:
- 1% royalty on album sales;
- access to The Chainsmokers’ collector-only Discord channel;
- an opportunity to meet the duo in person.
The smart contract managing secondary NFT sales will donate 7.5% of each transaction to The Chainsmokers. The duo plans to donate these funds to the songwriters of the album. According to OpenSea, the collection’s total trading volume was 78 ETH (~$127,000). Data here and below is as of the time of writing, i.e., February 27, 2023.
Paris Hilton
Socialite Paris Hilton released an NFT collection titled “Paris: Past Lives, New Beginnings” on Ethereum on the Origin Story marketplace. The collection was created with the vinyl toy brand Superplastic. The tokens contain images of the artist herself and Dayzee, Superplastic’s virtual superstar. As a matter of fact, Paris Hilton is an investor in the Origin Protocol, one of whose services is Origin Story. Even the Paris Hilton NFT website is more of an advertisement for Origin Protocol and its services than for the “creativity” of the celebrity.
All the tokens from the Superplastic collection were sold out, but there’s no information about the starting price of the “artworks,” and the secondary market has zero excitement about these tokens. However, Paris Hilton’s main success in the NFT market conquest happened earlier when she cooperated with the artist Blake Kathryn. Their “joint” NFT work “Iconic Crypto Queen” sold for $1.1 million on Nifty Gateway in 2020. Later, the NFT collection “Planet Paris” was released, featuring two more tokens — “Legendary Love” and “Hummingbird in my Metaverse” in addition to the aforementioned work. They were minted in 11 copies, each selling for $10,000. They were sold out.
Bill Murray
Bill Murray’s NFT collection is a unique autobiographical project that tells the story of the legendary comedian. Each of the 1,000 “story” tokens contains unique content — the author’s exclusive anecdotes and written life stories, membership in the closed Discord community, generative art created by the actor, and invitations to closed events with his participation.
Origin NFT #000, which contained a “ticket” to grab a beer with Bill Murray, stood out in the collection. Moreover, the artist David Grizzle is to paint a photorealistic picture, made with acrylic paints on canvas, depicting the token’s owner sitting with the actor. It’s worth noting that the token holder will be able to keep the picture. Origin NFT #000 was sold at auction in August 2022 for 119.2 ETH, which was approximately $185,000 at the time of the auction.
The collection is originally placed in pieces on Coinbase NFT. The first installment of the NFT Original Bill (OB) sold out in less than half a minute in July 2022. Fans paid nearly $1.4 million for the tokens.
Grimes
Canadian singer Grimes, a.k.a. Claire Elise Boucher, released the NFT collection “WarNymph Collection Vol. 1” on the online auction Nifty Gateway, earning $6 million. The collection consisted of ten works created by the artist in collaboration with her brother, digital artist Mac Boucher. Some of the artwork was accompanied by the singer’s previously unreleased tracks — Mars Theme, Ærythe, and Anhedonia. The tokens were released on Ethereum and sold out in less than 24 hours.
The “Death of the Old” tokenized video was the most expensive in the collection — it sold for about $389,000. However, most of the sales came from two tokens — “Earth” and “Mars,” each of which was issued in thousands of copies and sold for $7,500 each. The contents of the tokens were animated illustrations with original music. A total of 700 tokens were sold during the initial offering for $5.18 million. Today, they’re being sold again on Nifty Gateway for $350 and $600, respectively.
Steve Aoki
Steve Aoki, a world-renowned DJ, managed to launch several high-profile NFT projects. Dominion X is the key one. It’s the name of a character who first appeared in NFT form in a collaborative project with digital artist Antoni Tudisco, “Dream Catcher.” The project was released on Nifty Gateway and brought the creators $888,888.88.
The musician decided to make the character the centerpiece of the series. Seth Green, with whom they specifically founded Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, supported him in this endeavor. 500 NFTs from the Welcome to Dominion X collection released in August 2021 sold out in seven seconds. The funds raised were used to make a short film, Dominion X: Level 1. A month later, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios announced the release of 4,000 NFTs from the Replicant X collection to fund the release of Dominion X: Level 2. It’s planned to be a pilot episode of the series, and the rights will be offered to major distributors such as Netflix.
Filming the episode will be interactive. The creators of the project launched the platform Shibuya, where NFT holders will be able to send tokens for staking and get the right to vote during production on possible plot developments.
Donald Trump
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, known for his negative attitude toward cryptocurrencies, to everyone’s surprise, announced the Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT collection on December 15 on the Truth Social network. The collection consists of 45,000 NFTs depicting Trump in various unusual outfits: golf attire, hunting gear, a superhero costume, and others.
The tokens were issued on Polygon and are sold for $99. Buyers automatically enter a sweepstake that includes prizes such as a one-on-one dinner, a Zoom call, a round of golf with the former president, and many others.
According to the OpenSea platform, the collection brought in nearly $4.5 million for its creators in less than 24 hours after going on sale. At the time of writing, the Trump Digital Trading Cards had grossed more than $19.6 million.
Snoop Dogg
American artist Snoop Dogg is a big NFT collector, hiding under the pseudonym Cozomo de’ Medici, whose personal collection was valued at $17 million in September 2021. In 2021, Calvin, his real name, and artist Chris Cold released his first NFT “Decentralized Dogg” on the SuperRare platform. The art component of the token is a 3D collage of ten different portraits of the musician depicting various stages of his life. An exclusive soundtrack he wrote especially for this project was attached as a bonus.
In 2022, the artist teamed up with Billy Ray Cyrus for the single “A Hard Working Man.” The musical release was accompanied by the launch of the NFT project of the same name, which included a great deal of everything: from exclusive content to concert tickets and all sorts of discounts. The tokens were scheduled to be released at the end of February 2023, so the actual results of the minting aren’t available yet, however, the collection has already caused a stir.
Snoop Dogg actively promotes NFTs in other ways as well. For example, he releases tokenized NFT marijuana in the MOBOLAND Metaverse or physical NFT desserts at the Bored & Hungry diner in Los Angeles. What’s more, the musician had a music video for a joint track with Eminem in the summer of 2022. The clip was created in collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club and is half-animated, making the performers turn into monkeys from the BAYC collection.
In short, more and more artists recognize the potential of blockchain technology as an alternative to traditional business models and PR techniques. Platforms for recording and sharing multimedia content based on distributed networks provide celebrities with new ways to make money and interact with their fans. So, we’ll probably hear about more famous NFT projects in the future. However, they’ll be less speculative, which was a characteristic of the “first wave” of the NFT boom.
