NFTs Weekly News #11 - Ecosystem: Opensea vs Blur vs Creators
The NFT market has been in the news recently as the competition for the top spot between marketplaces has intensified. Blur has launched its own token in the form of an airdrop, and it quickly became the largest marketplace for trading NFTs, surpassing $100 million in volume in 24 hours.
Read our articles to find out more news about the global NFTs ecosystem!
Contents
π Macro - Blur vs. Opensea vs. creators;
ποΈ Last week's news - TripAdvisor for NFTs, Custom POAPs, Digital Rights in Metaverse;
π° Investments/Financing - Superplastic & Amazon;
π£ Projects news/Updates - Yuga Labs, Cow Cow, Mocaverse;
βοΈ Legal - Digital bonds & Siemens;
βοΈ Tools - Floor App;
π Veefriends, by FreeFly - Burn Baby, Burn;
βοΈ NFTility, by Mtk - Jeremy Knows;
β nftX, by Alex CΔlin - About Calileo;
π Dictionary - AR, VR;
πΈ Sale of the week - Power to Fidenza;
π Macro
OpenSea and Blur, the largest NFT marketplaces were featured in all the headlines and articles this week. But in the battle for the top spot, it's becoming clear that the most to lose are the creators and even the sustainability of the entire ecosystem.
The story in a nutshell: Blur marketplace has launched its own token in the form of an airdrop worth at the time of writing around $400 - $500 million. Although only a few months old, Blur has quickly become the largest marketplace for trading NFTs, surpassing $100 million in volume in 24 hours. Why? Because it has no fees and royalties for creators are optional. As for airdrop, the folks at Blur most likely artificially pumped up NFT prices through all the wash-trading done by all the airdrop speculators. Yes, obviously we did that too. We listed NFTs that we weren't necessarily thinking of selling (but even if they did sell, we weren't crying for them) and placed bids on other NFTs that we didn't necessarily want to buy.
Opensea's answer? At least for a "limited period" they are canceling their fees (which were 2.5%) and putting in optional royalties while leaving them at a minimum of 0.5%.
Royalties, along with ownership, are probably the most important of the selling propositions that most of us use when we are preaching NFTs. It's one of the biggest reasons creators launch an NFT in the first place.
Recently, most marketplaces have switched to a royalty-free model, but OpenSea had resisted heroically.
It seems that OpenSea's moves are having the effect they wanted: to get back to the top in terms of volumes. But at what cost? We know, when there is competition, only the customer wins. In theory at least. Because in this situation, creators can also be considered customers. Of a better ecosystem. The value of NFTs is not just about communities. Creators contribute at least equally. All the big projects and brands, the creativity of the artists, and the constant work of the teams involved (we mean the serious ones) have been accelerated and sustained by these royalties. All those who play or produce content for which in the classical world they don't get royalties or have them cut a lot have been delighted to learn that there is still another possibility.
The NFTs ecosystem, most likely, is not so strong right now to remain unaffected by whatever happens to it. And royalties, if not the most important thing to the NFTs story, are certainly (or at least were) one of the strength pillars!
ποΈ News from last week
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gmoney is changing the rules of POAPs by customizing them. You already know about the POAPS we keep telling you about. "Proof of Attendance Protocol", those digital badges that confirm (by swearing on the blockchain) attendance at an event. Usually, every fren gets the same POAP. Imagine going to a conference (NFT Paris for example) and instead of connecting with other frens via Twitter, you give them a POAP with your own details.
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Bran Straley, a former executive at Amazon and Starbucks has launched Thred, a platform that helps users discover new NFT collections as well as provide reviews of them. In short, a Trip Advisor for NFTs.
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Digital Rights in the Metaverse!? Has anyone wondered if human rights apply in the Metaverse? Or if they are in the form they are intended for the real world? The Metaverse lawyer thinks that a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights in Virtual Environments should be considered. Because the current form certainly doesn't cover the situations in the Metaverse.
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PROOF, the company behind Moonbirds cancels "PROOF of conference", its first IRL flagship conference, citing "considerably less interest than anticipated".
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Recently, the Blur platform allowed users to redeem their 'care packages' and therefore $BLUR tokens, generating a significant increase in trading activity, over $430 million in the last 30 days. Following this event, Blur encouraged users to lock the Opensea platform, prompting OpenSea to announce major changes to royalties for creators. Thus, creators of #NFTs will not be able to earn royalties from both platforms at the same time.
π° Investments / Financing
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Unagi, the gaming company behind Ultimate Champions, has announced a $5 million funding round. The French startup is preparing to expand its NFT fantasy sports platform beyond football, into basketball. After a private token sale for $4 million to Binance, this time the round was equity-based, led by a VC from Finland.
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Superplastic raises $20 million in expanded Round A led by Amazon. Investors include Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Sony Japan, and Animoca Brands. The company founded in 2018 creates "synthetic celebrities." They could soon be featured in the upcoming Amazon Primes video series, "The Janky & Guggimon Show." Both characters have +1 million followers on Instagram. The characters created so far by Superplastic appear everywhere: in social media, music, gaming, luxury collectibles, fashion, entertainment, NFTs, or live experiences. The company has already collaborated with brands such as Epic Games' Fortnite, Gucci, Mercedes-Benz, Tommy Hilfiger, Christie's, J. Balvin, Paris Hilton, Post Malone, and The Weeknd. So far Superplastic has raised a total of $58 million.
π£ Projects news / Updates
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Yuga Labs are accused of illegally trademarking the logo of their NFT collection, Bored Ape Kennel Club. The image was originally released by a company specializing in drawing tutorials for kids and beginners.
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A Bored Ape owner burned his original Ethereum monkey (valued at $169K) only to resurrect it as the Phoenix bird, and to add it to the Bitcoin blockchain. Yuga Labs says the new monkey isn't legitimate. What else could they say? Jason Williams, who burned his monkey says it will be fun to see how the story develops. What else could he say?
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Animoca Brands postpones Mocaverse mint amid latest news coming from Opensea.
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Giants, is preparing to launch the game in private beta on devnet.
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Unstoppable Domains and Opera come with a new gift: a free .nft domain based on your Twitter handle. You can claim it here.
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Cow Cow project was sold out in 4 minutes. The number of holders grew from 1.25k after the mint, to almost 2k after 5 days.
βοΈ Legal
Some important, pioneering things are happening at the confluence of blockchain and commercial law. In today's seminar, I'll be talking to you about tokenized bonds. Classic, but also green.
(Bonds are financial instruments whereby their issuer borrows a sum of money, under certain conditions specified in the issue prospectus, from interested investors. I.e. a loan in the form of a security.)
1.Siemens becomes one of the first companies in Germany to issue a digital bond on a public blockchain (Polygon, to be precise), in accordance with the German electronic securities law, eWpG (the unabbreviated form - Gesetz ΓΌber elektronische Wertpapiere - makes me think of this).
The bond is for EUR 60 million ($64 million) and matures in 1 year.
According to the announcement from February 14th (some celebrate Valentine's Day, others issue $64m digital bonds on the blockchain), the bonds were sold directly to 3 investors (DekaBank, DZ Bank, and Union Investment). Siemens said this process allowed the transactions to be executed much faster and more efficiently than traditional bond issuance methods. Well, hell yes!
The payments were made by classic methods, as the digital euro was not yet available at the time of the transaction. The transaction could be completed in only two days.
As an idea, in Germany, it is possible to issue digital bonds on blockchain from June 2021, when the German Electronic Securities Act comes into force.
2.Hong Kong has successfully offered the first inaugural issue of tokenized green bonds for approximately $101 million (HK$800 million). The Hong Kong government partnered with the Bank of China and HSBC to use Goldman Sachs' tokenization platform to issue this bond on a private blockchain, also with a 1-year maturity.
But this bond is very special because it is the first tokenized green bond issued by a government worldwide and will be used to finance green projects.
If you find it boring to read about this legal stuff, that's normal. Have a nice day π
βοΈ Tools: Floor App
Floor is a mobile app available on both iOS and Android where you can see all your NFTs in one place, discover your next favorite collection and monitor your collections activity.
Currently, to access the Floor app, you need to have an invitation which is in the form of an NFT. This condition makes the app seem more exclusive and mysterious. If you want to get an invite, then you can download the app and request one, or you can ask on Twitter or Telegram Metaventis. Who knows, maybe one of your friends or a fren in the community has an invite available.
Once you've accessed the app you'll be able to see all your NFTs and keep track of them in one place. I personally find it one of the best solutions to estimate the value of your portfolio. The price estimation is based on the floor price of your collection, so it won't take into account the rarity of your NFTs.
A few things I like about the Floor app would be that it is designed to track NFTs from multiple wallets, has a friendly interface and has a quick setup process.
πββ¬ Veefriends
VeeFriends introduces Burn Island, a deflationary platform through which currently only NFT holders in the VeeFriends ecosystem can choose to burn certain tokens, and in return will have access to other rare NFTs, physical collectibles, or unique events.
Most likely tickets for VeeCon will be airdropped earlier this year, before March 22nd. In addition, the team is also looking into the possibility of introducing a delegation system, allowing a third party designated by the ticket holder to attend the event.
Jeremy, one of the project's most active fans, joins the VeeFriends team! For a year and a half, he has been constantly and fully informing the community about everything that is going on in the project, both on Twitter, through podcasts but also through a platform specially designed by him via SMS notifications. An extraordinary man who I had the opportunity to meet at VeeCon last year together with Florin. Congratulations JeremyKnowsVeeFriends!
βοΈ NFTility
Hi! From the moment FreeFly first sent me a link to the project I'm writing about today, I could only think of one thing: it's up to each of us to build utility, on any plane, for any audience, in infinite forms, with huge gamification potential.
The collection in today's post is not important, it is in fact a well-intentioned project, forced to end its work, but the concept behind it is priceless.
It's Jeremy Knows, a collection created by the eponymous character, avid fan, and, more recently, VeeFriends member. The JK NFTs are primarily "service-based", with owners getting a few features such as SMS alerts, whitelists for future projects and "Burn for Service".
This last utility caught my attention the most. Because BfS can mean almost anything: Burn for Charity, Burn for Time, Burn for Training, Burn for Acting, Burn for Cuddling (yes, there is such a thing as a professional hugger)...only the imagination can limit this list.
Jeremy's collection has not been a success, compared to the expectations the NFT niche has created for us so far. The initial services will cease, but the token-burning function remains active. If you're curious, you can take a look at how people have used it so far.
This concept has the potential to create one of the most handy bridges between web 2 services and blockchain technology. If you haven't thought about how you could surprise your customers so far, maybe after this article some ideas will start to emerge. You can share them with us here.
Until next time, I wish you inspiration!
β nftX
In the context of the latest announcement by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the world's most used social network, it seemed appropriate to write about the Calileo project, which aims to be a decentralized, scalable social network built on the MultiversX chain.
Like other social networks built on blockchain, Calileo aims to eliminate the monopoly of the existing and rather centralized ones, giving content creators freedom over their own content and helping them to monetize their work much better and transparently.
It also proposes the integration of NFTs (which can be in the form of articles, photos or videos that eventually provide access to exclusive content and various benefits) and smart contracts (which could lead to transparent and immediate monetization), support for creators, customizable experience for the premium version, proof-of-humanity (video verification of users, log in via herotag), community support for content creators by integrating the subscription option (fiat & crypto).
Ethos is the collection of NFTs launched by Calileo to raise the necessary capital to develop the project, but also to grant various benefits to the first supporters of the project, depending on the rarity of the NFT owned, including lifetime access to the Premium version (called in this case Moon Membership, otherwise available on a subscription basis).
Recently, Calileo announced the reduction of the NFT collection from 10k to 3k (the last batch will be minted on March 2nd) and the upcoming launch of the Alpha version of the platform which will be accessible to NFT holders with Moon and Diamond Membership traits. Over the years, Calileo has partnered with Combased, High Street Wolf, BAXC.
Never forget to DYOR!
π Dictionary
- AR/Augmented reality - Augmented reality is an interactive experience based on the combination of real-world and virtual-world elements. Sort of a combination of IRL & Metaverse.
- VR/Virtual reality - Virtual reality is an artificial computer-generated world that simulates reality so well that the user can feel almost physically present in both real and imaginary places.
πΈ Sale of the week
Fidenza number #157 by Tyler Hobbs sold for 390 ETH. $650k+. Less than a month ago it had been purchased for 125 ETH! What, is this how you guys drew when you were younger? Fidenza's are created using a generative algorithm (art created automatically, based on code). Yes, he's probably small in his early childhood years too!
Find us:
Creative Tim
Metaventis