Animoca-backed Forkast Labs creates S&P 500 of NFTs

Media and web3 infrastructure player Forkast Labs created a suite of index trackers for digital assets, which measure data from different parts of the sector in real-time. 

These include trackers called the Forkast 500 NFT, Forkast SOL NFT Composite and Forkast ETH NFT Composite, which are meant to be the crypto equivalent of stock market indexes such as the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite, which track equities. 

Forkast Labs emerged in January this year following the merger of media company Forkast.News and NFT tracker CryptoSlam. The pair are portfolio companies of software investment giant Animoca Brands. At the time, Forkast Labs’ editor in chief and co-CEO Angie Lau, who is a former Bloomberg anchor, said part of the mission statement of the pairing was to regain trust in crypto. 

“The world is speeding towards a digital economy, but the traditional metrics often only give a myopic view as they are largely fragmented, price-centric and incomplete,” said Lau in a statement. 

Randy Wasinger, founder of CryptoSlam, said the undertaking has been something of a “passion project,” and is a result of work done collecting data since around 2018. “We had the same vision of what was needed in the digital economy,” he said of the tie-up in an interview with The Block. “We want this to be accepted first as the source of truth,” he added. 

A flagship NFT index

The Forkast 500 NFT will be the flagship index, and is intended to act as a proxy for the entire NFT market. It is powered by billions of on-chain data points indexed, organized and updated in real-time, the company said. The index includes up to 500 eligible smart contracts on any given day, from blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Cardano, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Cronos and others. The data set for the Forkast 500 NFT begins at Jan. 1 2022. The methodology can be found here.

“By deploying standard methodologies, Forkast Labs can provide a deeper and more substantive view of fundamental performance of digital assets. These tools can help every investor and participant to navigate the digital economy with greater clarity,” said Lau. 

The team also intends to expand the product offering in the future. That could include breaking out sector-specific data such as a measure of virtual real estate or fashion NFTs.