Category: NFTs

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Australia Events NFTs

NFT Music Marketplace ‘Serenade’ Raises $6 Million Backed by Hugh Jackman

After launching an artist/fan-centric NFT platform last year, Australian music technology company Serenade has now announced its raising of US$6 million in a round of funding backed by several high-profile investors, including Australian actor Hugh Jackman:

Still Early Days For Music NFTs

The funding round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from AngelList, Boost VC, and others. Serenade was launched with the aim of allowing musicians to retain the copyright to their work. The platform allows artists to upload their music and mint it as an NFT, which can then be sold on the platform.

As the artists retain the copyrights, they can also set the price. Proceeds from sales on the platform are split between Serenade and the artist, with the company taking a 10 percent cut of each sale.

Serenade founder Max Shand has said the mission of the platform is to “enable artists to build closer relationships with fans while creating dynamic new revenue streams”.

Serenade has already collaborated with music bigwigs at the Brit Awards 2022. The result is the Genesis NFT collection, 13 NFTs that celebrate the Awards’ 13 winners:

NFTs are a new and exciting way for artists to monetise their work. Serenade provides artists with a simple and efficient way to mint and sell their NFTs, while also providing buyers with a one-stop shop for buying NFTs.

Hugh Jackman, actor

In the words of Serenade CEO and co-founder John Palfreyman, “We believe that NFTs are going to be a key part of the music ecosystem.” Echoing a comment made by A-list actor Hugh Jackman, he added: “They provide a new way for artists to monetise their work and connect with their fans.”

The seed funding will be used to grow the team at Serenade and launch new features on the platform. Although Serenade is still in private beta, it plans to launch publicly later in the year.

NFT Marketplaces Popping Up Left, Right, and Centre

As the NFT market continues to boom, many are trying to cash in on the craze while it lasts, and this has led to the proliferation of new NFT marketplaces. In January, Crypto News Australia reported on the launch of LooksRare, which has since exploded in sales volume. Even the New York Stock Exchange is considering getting on board the NFT train.

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Crypto News Metaverse NFTs Payments

Mastercard Files 15 NFT and Metaverse Trademarks

Mastercard has filed 15 NFT and metaverse trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office, according to an April 11 report.

The 15 applications include several crypto-related technologies Mastercard plans to tap into. As per the report, the payments giant is looking to create a digital community for its users, NFT-backed multimedia, marketplaces for trading digital assets, e-commerce, virtual reality, and more.

An additional patent will add the Mastercard name to a wide range of social events in the metaverse and other virtual worlds, including concerts, sporting events, travel experiences, fine dining events and festivals, among others.

2022 Trademark Applications Exceed Past Two Years

Interestingly enough, the number of US NFT trademark applications filed this year has surpassed those over the past two years:

This is another forward step for Mastercard as it seeks to further expand its reach in the digital assets world. In February, the company announced it would offer crypto and NFT consulting services, and possibly help to develop CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies.)

Security Remains a Priority

Prioritising security for its users is a must for Mastercard – a reason why the company decided to acquire blockchain forensic firm CipherTrace to help keep users safe and enhance its operations in the digital assets space.

Mastercard is also looking to make NFT purchases as easy as buying on e-commerce sites. As Crypto News Australia reported in January, it has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to allow customers to use their debit/credit cards on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Coinbase Crypto Exchange Crypto News NFTs

Coinbase Set to Launch 3 Animated Bored Ape-Themed Short Films

Crypto exchange Coinbase has issued a casting call to all Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT holders who’d like to see their simians featured in an upcoming animated series of short films.

The production, a three-part series titled The Degen Trilogy, designed to tie in with the exchange’s long-rumoured NFT marketplace, has called for submissions up until April 13.

Missed Out? There’s Always Part Two or Three

Ape owners who make the casting cut will receive a licensing fee of US$10,000 in ApeCoin or bitcoin, according to the film’s website, and those who miss out may be eligible for the remaining instalments of the proposed trilogy:

The film is set in the 2020s in a “chaotic” New York City where “for the first time, digital goods and services have outpaced all other indicators as a measure of value in the market”, according to the prologue.

As the old system crumbles, whole new realms spring forth from the ashes. (…) Enter the Degens. A new class of social adept, versed in the constantly re-invented tools of an ever accelerating economy.

Prologue, The Degen Trilogy

Coinbase Admits Project May Not Make Any Money

While Coinbase has said that it is unlikely to profit from the series, any proceeds would be donated to an as-yet unnamed non-profit organisation. The company added that the point of the trilogy is to “reward and connect with our communities through projects that bring the ethos of Web3 to life: collaboration, transparency, and opportunity”.

The first episode will be released at the NFT.NYC conference, scheduled to take place from June 20-23, with parts two and three to follow over the subsequent year. A Coinbase wallet is required to access the film’s website, although not to view the films.

Last week, director Kevin Smith was excoriated on Twitter after announcing his next film would be launched as an NFT. And late last year, BlockbusterDAO announced its intention to relaunch the Blockbuster brand as a film streaming service with future plans for movie financing and production.

With signs of NFT fatigue beginning to set in, it will be interesting to see whether any of these projects gets off the ground:

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto News Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs

Bored Ape NFT Owners Launch ‘Bored & Hungry’ Pop-Up Restaurant

Curious punters queued around the block as the world’s first Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)-themed pop-up restaurant opened in Southern California, US, on the weekend.

Bored & Hungry, on 7th Street in Long Beach, Southern California. Source: tubefilter.com

In partnership with Houston rapper Bun B’s Trill Burgers and Belief Burgers, Bored & Hungry calls itself a “smash burger-themed concept” where customers can buy fast food using Ethereum or ApeCoin.

As the proud owner of BAYC #6184, which he bought for US$267,000 on March 1, food entrepreneur Andy Nguyen used his Ape’s IP to create the restaurant’s brand:

NFTs ‘More Than Just a JPEG’

“The goal is to give back to the growing Web3 community and open the doors to those who want to learn more about the NFT world,” Nguyen said. “Our job is to […] show people that you can create a brand/business out of this IP, taking away the stigma of, ‘It’s just a JPEG’.”

Filled with Bored Ape and Mutant Ape images (Nguyen now owns four Apes), Bored & Hungry is on busy 7th Street in Long Beach and will compete with several other fast-food franchises. The grand opening attracted people of various ages, colours and genders, all looking to experience what’s claimed to be the world’s first NFT restaurant (that title actually belongs to New York’s Flyfish Club, founded by Gary Vee).

The commotion also piqued the curiosity of several passersby, some of whom asked what it was about. One wag standing in line was quick to respond with the following soundbite:

Crypto, capitalism, and hamburgers – what could be more American than that?

Bored & Hungry customer

In December, Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs joined forces with Adidas to enter the metaverse, the sports apparel giant having bought its own BAYC NFT in a show of good faith. And what are we to make of last month’s decision by Yuga to acquire the commercial rights to two of the most popular NFT collections on the market, CryptoPunks and Meebits? Watch the NFT space to find out.

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DAO NFTs Sports

WAGMI United DAO Completes Acquisition of Crawley Town Football Club

The crypto sports brand WAGMI United has acquired Crawley Town Football Club, but the “pioneering purchase” is already proving to be controversial among its fans.

They Shoot, They Score!

WAGMI United is now the first cryptocurrency company to own a football club after it announced the acquisition of the Crawley Town Football Club, based in West Sussex, England, via a press release. WAGMI – which stands for “We’re All Gonna Make It” – is a new brand that exists between the “intersection of crypto and sports”. WAGMI United last year failed in its takeover bid of another English club, Yorkshire’s Bradford City, which has aimed to rely on NFTs as an ownership model.

The group now says it wants to “empower fans to take a personal stake in telling their team’s story and shaping its future” at Crawley. Ziya Eren, the club’s chairman and owner, and chief executive Erdem Konyar are set to exit the board, with WAGMI co-founder Preston Johnson and Eben Smith taking over.

Johnson has said, “Crawley Town Football Club is a club with more than 125 years of rich history that we revere and respect. However, a conventional approach to ownership hasn’t worked and the club is losing hundreds of thousands of pounds while its fans suffer through year after year of uninspiring results on the pitch.

We’re going to shake up the status quo, try out some new ideas, and build a worldwide community of fans new and old that can be excited to cheer on the Red Devils together – stretching from West Sussex to anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Preston Johnson, WAGMI co-founder

The pair say they want to harness the power of Web3 to expand the club’s global fanbase and open up new revenue streams, such as selling NFTs that give “fans” influence over the way the club operates.

Supporters of Crawley Town Football Club are, however, a little apprehensive and have taken to Twitter to express their reservations:

DAOs Try to Take Over Sport

This is not the first time a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) has tried to buy a sports club, though WAGMI has succeeded in its attempt. Earlier in the year, another DAO, ‘BuytheBroncos DAO’, tried to purchase US National Football League (NFL) team the Denver Broncos for US$4 billion.

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Arbitrum Crypto News DeFi Ethereum NFTs

Ethereum Rollup ‘Arbitrum’ Releases Update to Reduce Gas Fees by 50%

Arbitrum, Ethereum’s largest rollup solution with over US$2 billion total value locked (TVL), has announced the launch of Nitro, a major update that reduces gas fees by half on Arbitrum’s network.

According to an official announcement from Offchain Labs – the company behind the rollup – Nitro is an advanced rollup stack that can do Arbitrum’s interactive fraud proofs over WASM (WebAssembly), an experimental low-level programming language:

The Arbitrum Nitro upgrade was under development in October 2021 by the Offchain Labs team. In essence, Nitro is a fully built-out scaling infrastructure that uses WASM instead of today’s custom-designed language and compilers.

Arbitrum is 90-95 percent cheaper and faster than Ethereum (gas fees on the rollup are usually around US$0.50 or $1). However, the integration of Nitro will further lower gas fees while increasing the throughput.

Today, we throttle Arbitrum’s capacity, but with Nitro we’ll be able to release those controls and significantly up our throughput. And while Arbitrum today is already 90–95 percent cheaper than Ethereum on average, Nitro cuts our costs even further.

Offchain blog post

Arbitrum Making Waves in DeFi Sector

Arbitrum is Ethereum’s largest optimistic rollup. Rollups are a technology used to scale the Ethereum network by taking the transaction data out of the mainnet to execute it on the rollup-specific blockchain. The transaction result is then bundled up and sent back to Ethereum, so Ethereum node validators can verify whether the data is valid.

Arbitrum has collaborated with a handful of high-performance DeFi protocols – a few months ago Crypto News Australia reported that Tornado Cash had integrated with Arbitrum to allow the Ethereum-based crypto mixer to enjoy Arbitrum’s cheap gas fees and high throughput.

Arbitrum also hosts NFTs (non-fungible tokens). A month ago, Crypto News Australia also reported that roughly US$1.4 million worth of Smol Brains – the most popular NFT collection on Arbitrum – had been stolen in an exploit, as confirmed by Arbitrum’s NFT marketplace TreasureDAO.

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Crypto News NFTs

Star Trek Fans Push Back Against ‘Tone Deaf’ NFT Launch 

Many ‘Trekkies’ have taken to social media to criticise the release of Star Trek™ NFTs for being contrary to the spirit of the iconic TV and film franchise.

The NFT collection, issued by Paramount via the RECUR marketplace on April 9, featured “algorithmically generative starships” at US$250 a pop, with more than 8,000 sold during the 24-hour sale.

While RECUR had urged people to “boldly go into the unknown” by getting involved in the NFT launch, a large number of fans felt the move was “highly illogical” – if not in direct opposition to Star Trek’s values – and were quick to bring out their Picard facepalm GIFs: 

The brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, the original Star Trek™ television series aired in the late ’60s and has since spawned multiple spinoffs and had a huge impact on popular culture – it’s particularly well-loved for its optimistic portrayal of a utopian future free from bigotry and materialism.

Sale Did Not Live Long or Prosper

The NFT drop had mixed success for Paramount. Reports say the ‘Admiral Pack’, which contained 5,000 unique Constitution or Constitution Refit starship NFTs, sold out within minutes. However, just 3,000 of a potential 150,000 of the ‘Captain Pack’ featuring other starships were snapped up during the 24-hour public sale. 

The environmental impact, quality of the images, and the high cost of the NFTs on offer were points of contention for many.

Some fans shared publicly that they’d declined the chance to be paid to promote the NFT drop, while others suggested that negative feedback was being hidden:  

NFTs Prove Hit-and-Miss For Brands

The Star Trek™ collection is not the first NFT release from a brand that’s been deemed exploitative and resulted in community backlash. Australian airline Qantas encountered pushback when it recently issued a digital collection of memorabilia, and fans were so unenthused by Liverpool FC’s NFT launch that less than 6 percent sold in the first week.

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Crypto News NFTs Secret Social media

Director Kevin Smith Slammed on Twitter After Announcing First-Ever NFT Minted Film

Filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy) and his co-producers have partnered with blockchain platform Secret Network to launch Smith’s latest project, a horror anthology titled KillRoy Was Here, exclusively as an NFT.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith. Source: JoBlo.com

This represents the first time a movie will be minted as a non-fungible token, though the news has been roundly greeted with derision from sections of the Twittersphere displaying obvious signs of NFT fatigue.

Is This the Real Kevin Smith?

“Unless I am wrong, NFTs are still bad and wrong and useless and a scam, and literally bad for the environment,” tweeted @SiggyRod. “Is this Kevin Smith posting or a representative from a contract he was unaware of?” Others were far less polite:

Other, more succinct reactions included: “gross”, “no”, “please stop”, “this is the bad place”, “insanely disappointing”, “bad look, Kev” and the almost poignant “this makes me sad”.

A rare voice of reason amid the tumult – albeit suspiciously seeming to be aligned with the project – belonged to @TorBair, who tweeted:

On Twitter, we can expect animosity towards NFTs. If this is you – PLEASE look into this more deeply. Secret NFTs are NOT the same as any NFTs that have come before. We’re trying to establish a real connection for artists with audiences.

@TorBair via Twitter

Privacy Preserved on Secret Network

Secret Network, the first blockchain with data privacy by default for smart contracts, allows users to build and use applications that are both permissionless and privacy-preserving. This unique functionality protects users, secures applications, and unlocks hundreds of never-before-possible use cases for Web3.

Last year, Secret launched NFTs from another indie filmmaker who first made his name in the ’90s: Quentin Tarantino, whose Pulp Fiction collection spawned controversy and lawsuits.

However, Smith’s Secret NFTs won’t be based on dusty old film artifacts. Instead, the project will mint 5,555 NFT collectibles, each serving as an exclusive pass to watch the film and access bonus features. Secret NFTs are configured with hidden information that can only be viewed by each respective NFT owner.

The NFT launch will take place in Q2 on Secret’s Legendao platform. For further information, visit: legendao.io/artist/kevin-smith.

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Axie Infinity Binance Crypto News DeFi GameFi NFTs

Binance Leads $150 Million Round to Reimburse Ronin Attack Victims

Following last month’s record-breaking hack of the Ronin network, responsible for Axie Infinity transactions, Binance has led a funding round to help reimburse affected users.

According to an announcement this week by Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis, a funding round was led by Binance with other venture capital firms – including Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm – to help reimburse funds lost in the US$625 million Axie Infinity hack.

Community to the Rescue

The hack is the biggest decentralised finance (DeFi) hack on record and has done a lot of damage to the Axie Infinity ecosystem Sky Mavis has created. Axie is the best performing blockchain game in the space, having processed 10 times more all-time volume than the next biggest NFT game.

We have seen the tremendous work and growth of the Sky Mavis team since working together on the Axie Infinity project on Binance Launchpad. We strongly believe Sky Mavis will bring a lot of value and growth for the larger industry and we believe it’s necessary to support them as they work hard to resolve the recent incident.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO, Binance

Proceeds of the funding round along with funds on the Sky Mavis balance sheet will be used to ensure that all affected users are reimbursed. According to the post, “The Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks.”

The post also stated that “the 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain undercollateralised as Sky Mavis continues to work with law enforcement to recover the funds”.

If the funds are not fully recovered within two years, it has been decided that the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury.

Sky Mavis post

Increasing Ronin’s Security

Following the attack, Sky Mavis started the process of implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.

On March 23, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised, leading to the record-breaking hack. With the support of Binance, the Ronin chain has now been able to expand its validator set from 5 to 21 – increasing the security of the network – according to Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.

There have been only a few cases where affected users were reimbursed, especially in a case as large as this. With Axie being the biggest NFT game, major players have come together to help the project get back on its feet. Last year, Rari Capital also reimbursed up to US$25 million after being hacked.

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Crypto News Institutions Metaverse NFTs

HSBC Bank Launches Metaverse Fund For Wealthy Asian Clients

HSBC, a British multinational investment bank with assets worth over US$2 billion, has launched a metaverse fund for its wealthy clients in Asia, starting with Hong Kong and Singapore.

The Discretionary Strategy portfolio, to be managed by HSBC Asset Management, will reportedly focus on investing in the digital sector, particularly in five segments: infrastructure, computing, virtualisation, experience, and interface.

We see many exciting opportunities in this space as companies of different backgrounds and sizes are flocking into the ecosystem.

Lina Lim, managing dIrector, HSBC

HSBC is joining the NFT train, which now has top-notch passengers on board from all kinds of industries, especially in the tech field. Crypto News Australia previously reported how a US$69 billion metaverse deal would make Microsoft the world’s #3 gaming company in revenue terms.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time HSBC has pushed into the metaverse. A few weeks ago, Crypto News Australia reported that HSBC had bought a considerable amount of LAND in Sandbox – a blockchain-based metaverse – so esports and gaming fans can connect.

You’re Still Not Allowed to Buy Crypto

Crypto Twitter had a mixed reaction to the news. Some claimed it was a big move by the investment bank that could further expand adoption and awareness of blockchain technology and NFTs. However, some are still frustrated over HSBC’s deliberate decision of suspending the purchase and withdrawal of cryptocurrencies on crypto exchanges: