Are you a fan of NFTs, or you've just started your NFT journey? Then you need to stay up-to-date with the latest news from the industry. From new projects, ideas, and legal news, this article covers everything that happened last week.
Let's start below.
Contents
📈 Macro - NFT Bucharest brings everyone Together4Victor, the first Open Edition on MultiversX, via Cow Cow;
🗞️ Last week's news - DappRadar, Nexon, Amazon, Ordinals, Spatial, CribX, Zora, Immutable;
💰 Investments/Financing - LandVault, OP3N, Gryfyn;
📣 Projects news/Updates - gmoney, Deadfellaz, Otherside, Y00ts, Lazy Lions, Bicasso;
⚖️ Legal - Resolution of the lawsuit for the world's first NFT, created in 2014;
⚒️Tools - ENS.Vision;
🐈 Veefriends - Veecon 2023;
⚙️ NFTility - RugRadio;
📚 Dictionary - whitelist, SFT;
💸 Sale of the week - How (not) to sell a Punk for free;
📈 Macro
Last week we had a Twitter Space where we had Valentin Dinescu, Victor's father, as a guest, where we learned their life story, which beats the film. By far. What's next? Let's all get involved (or as many as we can) in offering concrete support. How?
The photos above are art, both IRL and digital. During the NFT Bucharest Warm Up, the Cow Cow frens had a blank canvas, and they invited everyone present to contribute in drawing it. Both project representatives and community frens made their mark. Some wrote, and others drew or stuck stickers or even pinned badges. The result was turned into a 1-to-1 digital copy, finely tuned in Cow Cow style. From our point of view, it's a super memory that everyone should have access to. How else but in your wallet, in the form of an NFT!
So, the idea was just beginning. After Valentin's speech on the NFT Bucharest Warm Up stage and last week's Twitter Space, the guys at Cow Cow came up with the idea: how about we mint a collection of NFTs from which ALL funds would be donated to Victor? 100%. Without any commission? (For those of you who don't know yet, Victor was born with a health problem that affects his muscles, and in order to have a chance at a normal life - and even life, he needs a vaccine that costs over $2million. Over the past year, his parents have done everything possible to raise the amount of money needed, and it's been a fight against the clock, and believe it or not, they still need "only" $200k. In less than 2 months).
Going back to the digital image, which is a 1-to-1 copy of the painting we all contributed to, it will be minted as an Open Edition, for 72 hours. At 0.1 EGLD / pc. We're talking about the first Open Edition (there is no limit to how many can be mined for 72 hours) on MultiversX. Cow Cow is the one who kicks off and will buy 100 EOs, for 10 EGLD, and all NFTs will be donated to their community. We'll be contributing too, through Metaventis and NFT Bucharest. And NF-Tim and BHero and Giants and MisterSpread and Sense4FIT and BAXC and many others. Not just by buying Open Editions, but there are more surprises to be announced!
Ah, very important: Everyone who buys an Open Edition will be entered into a raffle to actually win the original painting. Each OE purchased is a ticket to the raffle. 10 OE - 10 chances. And so on!
Ah, just as important: That's not the only surprise. There will be more announcements in the coming days, about other raffles with other prizes that everyone with an OE will participate in!
🗞️ News from last week
DappRadar reports that during this Bear Market, traders recorded over $311 mil in trading volume for virtual worlds in Q1 2023. What were the catalysts? Well, firstly Yuga Lab and their Otherside, by announcing their second trip. Also, Blur was another major cause, with the trading platform injecting hundreds of millions into the NFTs ecosystem. Bubble or MoonBaby? Let us know!
-
Gaming giant Nexon joins Polygon Network for NFT MapleStory Universe game. It is launching a private Supernet for the new game, based on its popular MapleStory franchise.
-
Amazon confirms plans to add digital tokens, an NFT gallery and resale opportunities to their website, according to an email received by CoinDesk. Nikhilesh De, managing editor for global policy and regulation, has received an official email from Amazon confirming the existence of digital tokens and an NFT gallery on the platform.
-
The number of bitcoin signups through the Ordinals protocol exceeded 500,000, and miners earned $2.66 million in fees. Most of the inscriptions are text-based, followed by PNG, WEBP, and JPEG formats.
-
The Spatial 3D social platform has reached the beta stage. It supports gamification and interactive exhibits and offers a Creator Toolkit toolset for developers, including visual scripting, custom avatars, a world-linking system, and the ability to set up quests and rewards.
-
Virtual entertainment and experience company CribX teams up with leading blockchain Polygon to create next-generation blockchain and Metaverse experiences.
-
Zora announces a new feature: users can create and implement their own ERC-1155 contracts for NFT collections. ERC-1155 allows more flexibility for creators, by allowing, for example, to choose between single pieces or numbered editions.
-
Immutable and Polygon Labs team up to revolutionize Web3 gaming. The industry's biggest players collaborate to make the experience more accessible to game developers. In the first step, Immutable is adopting Polygon's zkEVM technology to reduce transaction costs.
💰 Investments / Financing
- LandVault, the company building in the Metaverse, has confirmed a funding round led by Animoca Brand through The Sandbox, Softbank and Kingsway Capital. While the amount of this round was not disclosed, LandVault's goal is to use the funds to continue its Web3 expansion and hubs located on three continents. Over the past two years, the company has innovated Metaverse's infrastructure with partners such as Heineken, L'Oreal and Mastercard.
- Social platform OP3N raised $28 million in its Series A funding round, led by Animoca Brands, and reached a $100 million valuation. Other investors participating in the round include Dragonfly Capital, Galaxy Digital, Republic Crypto and New Enterprise Associates. OP3N aims to facilitate interaction between creators and fans through web3 technology. Founder Jaeson Ma described the platform as "WeChat web3"
- Animoca Brands and Hex Trust have launched Gryfyn, an NFT-oriented custodial wallet. Gryfyn provides a secure and easy-to-use Web3 experience based on the infrastructure provided by Hex Trust. Gryfyn has completed a $7.5 million fundraising round, and Arnoldo Concepción has been announced CEO of the company. Gryfyn has also partnered with our friends at Oveit to make purchasing NFT tickets easy and hassle-free.
📣 Projects news / Updates
- gmoney announces a new drop: ITERATION-03. After the first two drops, gmoney and the 9dcc brand are releasing new luxury baseball caps on ITERATION-03. The cap comes in four colors and with a limitation of only 1600 pieces. It will launch at NFT NYC on April 12 and features Networked Product ™️ technology, making it an interactive and personalized accessory for wearers.
- Deadfellaz, has released "Front Facing Fellaz", a reinterpretation of all the original 10K NFTs. It adds a slight stylistic change, making the characters face forward. The addition of Front Facing will improve the use of digital avatars in various virtual environments. To access each Front Facing version, Deadfellaz owners must enter their token ID number at the end of the IPFS URL, before the ".png"
- More than 7,200 participants explored the Otherside Metaverse in the second tour organized by Yuga Labs. Players were divided into four teams and participated in several fun activities, including collecting blobs. The winning team was led by Jimmy Wong and the team with the most blobs collected was Glacial. The winners will receive a "Winged helmet" airdrop as a reward.
- Y00ts has announced the release of a "bridge" from Solana to Polygon. This move will provide greater liquidity and interoperability for those looking to buy and sell NFTs. This move should make Y00ts NFTs more affordable and provide a better user experience. By migrating Y00ts x Polygonse expects them to gain more interoperability and become more visible.
- Magic Eden, Solana's most popular marketplace for NFTs, is adding support for Bitcoin Hiro and Xverse wallets to allow users to list, buy and sell Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs.
- Lazy Lions and OpenSea are collaborating to launch a series of limited-edition NFTs with an innovative blockchain burning mechanism. Participants can accumulate "Dark Energy" and the top 40 collectors will receive a rare Ordinal Bitcoin priced at 0.001 ETH plus gas. The event starts on March 28 at 4 pm PT and lasts 25 hours.
- Binance expands Bicasso's AI-based NFT service globally. Users will be able to create and own a custom AI-powered image by simply submitting an image such as a profile photo and providing creative instructions. The service will become available for 12 hours from 29 March at 15.00 (RO time) to an additional 100,000 existing and new users on a first-come, first-served basis.
⚖️ Legal
In a groundbreaking decision, U.S. District Court Judge James Cott has dismissed a case centering on a dispute over ownership of Quantum, the world's first NFT created in 2014 by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash. Canadian company Free Holdings had claimed ownership of the NFT, leading to a complex legal battle that ultimately reinforced the primacy of the legal system over the Web3 principle that "code is law". So law beats code!
Quantum, a historically significant NFT, sold for an impressive $1.47 million at a Sotheby's auction in 2021. Six months later, Free Holdings filed a lawsuit against McCoy, claiming that they were the rightful owners of the NFT. The complainant claimed that McCoy allowed his ownership rights to expire between 2014 and 2021. In the meantime, Free Holdings claimed Quantum's blockchain registration on Namecoin. In anticipation of the sale, McCoy and Sotheby's minted Quantum on the Ethereum blockchain, claiming that the original registration was destroyed when the registration expired.
The legal battle over "Quantum" is part of a broader effort to define the rules of ownership of digital artworks. The court was tasked with examining various interpretations of digital ownership in the context of the Namecoin blockchain. Namecoin assigns each token a "name" linked to a public key, which determines ownership. The court considered three main interpretations of what constitutes digital property. These are (i) the token as an asset, (ii) the public key as an asset, and (iii) the creation of a new ledger marking a new NFT that preserves the history of the previous public key.
Judge Cott appeared to favor the second interpretation, holding that Free Holdings had not presented a convincing argument for their right to Quantum. In his dismissal ruling, he said the company had attempted to "exploit open ownership issues in the still-developing NFT field to claim the profits of a legitimate artist."
Initially, McCoy minted Quantum using Namecoin, a blockchain software based on the Bitcoin code, which required him to renew his ownership rights every 250 days or so, but the artist neglected to renew the terms of ownership, which allowed Free Holdings to buy the record and assert ownership of the work itself. The company subsequently accused Sotheby's and McCoy of libel and commercial defamation.
This case highlights the growing intersection between Web3 and the legal system. It provides a clearer understanding of the boundaries of digital property and sets a precedent for future legal disputes over NFTs
⚒️ Tools: ENS.Vision
ENS is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. The goal of ENS is to link human-readable names, such as 'nick.eth', to machine-readable identifiers, such as Ethereum addresses or addresses of other cryptocurrencies.
ENS.Vision is an application built around the ENS system and brings functionality that helps you easily search through specific collections, register, purchase, transfer, renew, or manage multiple domains in bulk.
With ENS.Vision's bulk search tool, you can easily search and export large lists of ENS names. It's simple to use - all you have to do is enter the names you want to search for, and the application will consider newlines, commas and spaces as separators.
It comes with advanced features that make it even more useful, such as the ability to upload a .txt file or add a prefix and/or suffix to each search entry.
If you've found several ENS names available and want to register them, ENS.Vision has a solution that's sure to help: their mass registration tool! It's a quick and easy way to save time as you can register up to 50 names in just two simple steps. ENS.Vision supports MetaMask, Rainbow, Coinbase Wallet and WalletConnect, and the registration process takes less than five minutes to complete. With mass registration, you can save up to 30% on gas consumption compared to the ENS dApp.
ENS.Vision aggregates order books to display the cheapest listed name on any marketplace. You can also list and sell ENS names directly on the marketplace or buy from other marketplaces through ENS.Vision.
The ENS.Vision platform is designed to be easy to use and user-friendly for anyone who wants to manage their ENS name more effectively. Its mass search and registration tools can save you time, effort and fees, and its marketplace simplifies the process of buying and selling ENS domains.
🐈⬛ Veefriends
We were telling you last week about Burn Island, meanwhile, we have the winners of issue #2, most of the 165 Book Games Tokens have been auctioned, which seems a lot when you look at their price, but when you look at the size of the 125k collection, things look different. And if the VeeFriends page hadn't been attacked in the last 3 minutes of the auction there would probably have been even more tokens bid. _Bad actors _are everywhere, a DDoS attack generated a spike in activity to over 10k hits per minute, making the page inaccessible to some users. The team is working to avoid this in the future!
VeeCon 2023 ticket registration has started, and it is mandatory for access to the event. The first 2000 who register are guaranteed access to the opening concert of the event! The full registration procedure can be found on the blog.
⚙️ NFTility
Today we want to talk about Rug Radio. For the quality and variety of its content, for the resilience and passion with which those in the ecosystem are building in the spirit of web 3 culture, we think it is one of the most important projects at the moment.
The most important collection is Rug Radio - Genesis NFT, made up of 20k tokens. Each NFT in the collection generates $RUG tokens daily, based on rarity, as follows: Standard = 5 tokens, Scarce 1 & 2 = 7, and Rare 1 & 2 = 11. In addition, the number of tokens generated increases with the length of time the NFT is held by the holder. Could this be the reason why only 0.4% of NFTs are listed?
The $RUG token can be used within the ecosystem, the first use being to access RugDAO and can be exchanged for the $RDAO token at a parity of 1800:1.
RugDAO is the place from which activity across the platform is governed, is represented by a board elected by public vote every 6 months, and is responsible, among other things, for the administration and distribution of RugBank funds.
RugBank is the DAO's treasury and 10% of all funds vested daily go to them. These funds go to the Learn to Earn program and content creators. Here you can see the full list of contributors and the type of content created.
Rug Radio came about at a time when a lot of (pseudo) Anything to Earn projects were doing rather harm to the whole space, and the fact that they're still around and growing steadily is a sign that they can become what they set out to be: the first fully decentralized media platform.
Until next time, we wish you all the best in choosing your sources of information.
📚 Dictionary
- whitelist - a list that a limited number of people have access to early on mint an NFT, before it becomes available to everyone. The projects do two things this way: 1) create a little FOMO and 2) reward the most engaged members of the community;
- SFT - semi-fungible token. It is also a kind of NFT, except that instead of being non-fungible it is semi-fungible, i.e. it is both fungible and non-fungible. That is to say a kind of both king and thief. At some point, they are fungible but have among their properties the quality of having upgrades and changing their attributes.
💸 Sale of the week
Brandon Riley, an NFT collector, recently purchased a CryptoPunk (#685) for 77 ETH (~$135,000), but inadvertently sent it to a burn address. 🤦🏻♂
Brandon was trying to use the NFT as collateral to get a loan on NFT.fi, but entered the wrong address. That's also a kind of sale too! 😅
This incident is a reminder that we need to double-check the address we want to send something to. We can't stress this enough!
Don't be Brandon!
Find us:
Creative Tim
Metaventis
