Category: NFTs

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Blockchain NFTs Solana

Number of Daily Active Solana (SOL) Accounts Surges 300% Since Last Upgrade

A new report has found the estimated number of daily active users on the Solana blockchain has surged around 300 percent since the last network update in September 2021.

SOL daily active accounts. Source: OurNetwork

The report from OurNetwork – a substack newsletter that covers the Solana ecosystem – used Solana’s unique daily active signers figure as a proxy for daily active users: this figure peaked at 299,000 in late January but has since dropped off to around 232,000.

Unique signers peaked at 299,000 in late January, but tapered off a bit to 232,000 after the network’s most recent bout with degraded performance. Solana’s long-term uptrend has recently been bolstered by its two top wallets – Solflare and Phantom – launching their own iOS mobile apps, along with strong consumer participation in the Solana NFT market. 

OurNetwork report

Solana Ecosystem Sees Sustained Growth

This increase in Solana daily active signers follows a general long-term uptrend in usage of the blockchain since mid-2021. The NFT market in particular has been a strong driver of growth for Solana. Since the June 2021 launch of the Metaplex protocol, the number of unique NFT owners on the network has grown from 28,000 to almost 2.5 million:

SOL unique owners. Source: OurNetwork

User Growth Despite Outages, Security Concerns

Somewhat surprisingly, the growth in Solana users continues fairly consistently despite relatively frequent and major disruptions to the network. 

Already, in the first two months of 2022 Solana has seen multiple outages either due to DDoS attacks or the network being over-taxed by legitimate users.

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Canada Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

KPMG Canada Buys World of Women NFT

Less than a month after adding Bitcoin and Ethereum to its balance sheet, the Canadian branch of accounting multinational KPMG has followed up by purchasing a non-fungible token (NFT) from the World of Women (WoW) collection.

KPMG Also Buys ENS Domain Name

The NFT, Woman #2681 (see below), was purchased on February 13 for 25 ETH (about US$73,000) before being transferred to a separate wallet. The company also revealed it owns kpmgca.eth, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain name designed to make wallet addresses easier to use.

WoW #268. Source: OpenSea

WoW is a community that celebrates representation, inclusivity and equal opportunities for all, though its promotional focus is on female artists, who currently account for a tiny minority of NFT art sales. WoW also supports women-focused and, more recently, global ecological causes.

The signature WoW collection features 10,000 first-edition NFT artworks of diverse, inspiring, and powerful women living on the blockchain. Many of their female avatar art pieces have become prized collector’s items.

‘On the Cusp of Change’

“Women are underrepresented in the [crypto] world, which makes us proud to make our first NFT acquisition [from] a collection that supports women,” says KPMG partner Nancy Chase. “We hope that our purchase draws more women into a sector that’s on the cusp of changing how we interact with one another in the future.”

Actor/producer Reese Witherspoon, whose media company Hello Sunshine partnered with WoW last month. Source: variety.com

WoW has surged to the top of the NFT charts since launching in November, and now commands an 8.5 ETH (roughly US$24,000) floor price on secondary marketplace OpenSea. The project has benefited from promotion by A-list actor/producer Reese Witherspoon, whose media company Hello Sunshine partnered with WoW in February.

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Crypto News E-commerce NFTs Payments

Ebay CEO: We May Accept Crypto Payment This Month

E-commerce giant eBay may start accepting cryptocurrencies soon, according to CEO Jamie Iannone, who says the company is considering adding cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange and “other forms of payments” as soon as next week.

This comes a few months after eBay changed its policies allowing the trading of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), though it has yet to make an official announcement.

So even without announcing anything or doing anything, people started trading NFTs on a platform. It reminded me of many years ago when people just started selling cars when we didn’t even have a vehicle business at that point. So we’re seeing the same type of thing [with NFTs].

Jamie Iannone, CEO, eBay

eBay Targeting Younger Audiences

Iannone revealed that eBay is focusing on the younger generation who are actively selling sneakers on the platform. As cryptocurrencies and NFTs appeal to Gen Z, the multinational is considering expanding its list of available form of payments.

We’re appealing to the younger generation, where they’re coming in selling their sneakers, becoming collectors on the platform, and they’re building new marketing capabilities.

Jamie Iannone, CEO, eBay

There’s actually already a way to buy on eBay using crypto through a service called Bitrefill, where you can use your Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and more to buy eBay gift cards, and then use them to purchase products from eBay directly.

NFTs and Crypto Now Part of Everyday Life

The rise of NFTs and decentralised finance (DeFi) is now seen everywhere, from retail traders and crypto-savvy people to real estate companies and fashion brands entering the metaverse and creating their own NFT collections.

This week, Crypto News Australia reported that Decentraland will host the first Crypto Fashion Week, gathering the elite of the fashion industry including Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and many more.

German manufacturer Puma also entered the metaverse last month in the wake of its sports apparel rivals Nike and Adidas, renaming itself Puma.eth on Twitter.

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Crypto News Decentraland Fashion Metaverse NFTs

Decentraland to Host World’s First Metaverse Fashion Week

Fashionistas and crypto enthusiasts are coming together to celebrate Decentraland’s first World Metaverse Fashion Week, with the participation of elite brands in the industry including Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, and more.

The event takes place from March 24-27 on property owned by Tokens.com’s subsidiary, Metaverse Group, with Decentraland as host.

Fashion is a key driver of interest in the Metaverse and we are pleased to have such a high calibre of brands participating in the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week. The event provides brands the opportunity to showcase NFTs and virtual products while expanding their consumer reach to a new demographic.

Andrew Kiguel, Tokens.com CEO and co-founder (Business Wire)

Crypto Fashion is Here to Stay

The rise of the Metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has called the attention of not only hungry investors and financial institutions, but also several fashion brands.

A glimpse of how the future of style might unfold was provided almost exactly a year ago by Crypto Fashion Week, a celebration of on-chain digital fashion that brought together designers, artists and brands to showcase their products.

A number of brands have since committed to investing in the future of digital fashion. One of them is Ordre, a global online wholesale company based in Byron Bay, Australia, that raised US$9 million in Series B funding to expand its fashion services and accelerate the development of its blockchain-based platform and NFT technology.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs South Africa

Hand-Drawn Nelson Mandela Paintings to Be Sold as NFTs

Bonhams in London is set to auction off a set of five paintings minted as NFTs from the hand of former South African president Nelson Mandela. The collection, entitled “My Robben Island”, consists of five watercolour paintings that depict the 18 years Mandela spent incarcerated on Robben Island, a now-inactive offshore prison near Cape Town.

‘The Motivation’ Behind Mandela’s Art

Mandela completed the five paintings after stepping down from the presidency in 1999. The collection also features a piece called “The Motivation”, a handwritten text that explains his visualisations of the harsh prison island where he served his time during the South African struggle to end Apartheid. All six of the works include Mandela’s signature.

It is true that Robben Island was once a place of darkness, but out of that darkness has come a wonderful brightness, a light so powerful that it could not be hidden behind prison walls, held back behind prison bars, or hemmed in by the surrounding sea … The most fantastic dreams can be achieved if we are prepared to endure life’s challenges.

Extract from ‘The Motivation’, by Nelson Mandela
Robben Island cell. Source: The Guardian

Makaziwe Mandela, daughter of the former president, said the watercolours, all of which were painted in 2002, represent “the triumph of the human spirit”. She added that offering the artworks as NFTs was a way to reach new audiences: “My dad was all about creating an accessible society. This is a way of democratising his art.”

Robben Island church. Source: The Guardian

NFTs to be Sold on Nifty Gateway

Giles Peppiatt, director of modern and contemporary African art at Bonhams, has said that the digital arts reach “new audiences that probably don’t go to art galleries and museums”.

These are people who live a lot of their lives through their phones, through the internet, and who have large amounts of money at their disposal – and they are collectors. They are becoming a more and more important part of the art market.

Giles Peppiatt, director of modern and contemporary African art, Bonhams

The paintings will be offered at auction on March 9 on the Nifty Gateway NFT platform, over a six-hour period at a fixed price of US$3,495 for the entire collection, or US$699 for an individual work. Hopefully, the works will fetch prices far beyond the likes of Gary Vee’s hand-drawn doodles, which sold for US$1.2 million last year. But if you’re not convinced they will, you could always short the NFTs.

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Blockchain Crypto News NFTs Solana

Weekly NFT Sales Continue to Slide, Interest Down 45% in Past 30 Days

In a sure sign that the non-fungible token bubble has burst, if only temporarily, interest in NFTs has almost halved in the past month.

Worldwide Google Trends (GT) data shows that interest in NFTs plunged by 45 percent in terms of internet searches. During the second week of January, the search query “NFT” sat comfortably at 100, the highest trend score a query can register on GT. This week, however, the data shows an overall score of just 55.

Sales Down Almost 30%, Solana the Only Gainer

Overall sales slipped by 29.35 percent last week, translating to losses of more than 7 percent. Out of 12 different NFT-supporting blockchains, Solana was the only gainer in terms of sales during that period. Rounding out the top five were Ethereum, Ronin, Flow and Avalanche.

The biggest seven-day sales losers included Binance Smart Chain (down 76.68 percent) and Avalanche (-54.56 percent). Topping the sales list, according to cryptoslam.io, was 3Landers with US$40.8 million, followed by Tubby Cats ($35.9m), Invisible Friends ($32m), Mfer ($23.7m) and Bored Ape Yacht Club ($23.68m).

OpenSea Tops Marketplace Sales

Dappradar.com statistics indicate that OpenSea was the top NFT marketplace in terms of sales last week, followed by LooksRare, BloctoBay, Ronin’s Axie Infinity, and Solana’s Magic Eden.

Many continue to question the value of NFTs, with the tokens serving no purpose besides being able to be bought or sold. Thus owners tend to hold onto NFTs in the hope their value increases. In October last year, Singapore-based decentralised derivatives exchange SynFutures launched NFTures, a product that allows users to short, or bet against, the future prices of NFTs. Hopefully a few got on board ahead of this latest slump.

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Crypto News NFTs Scams

Users Left Fuming After $70 Million Pixelmon NFT ‘Rug’ 

Non-fungible token (NFT) project Pixelmon has gravely disappointed investors who pooled US$70 million after releasing NFTs nowhere near the quality promised in their pitch images. This resulted in falling floor prices where some investors ended up calling it “pretty much a rug pull”.

Some Investors Paid up to $10k Per NFT

Pixelmon was a highly anticipated NFT project that had many investors pouring in money, some of them paying up to US$10,000 for their NFTs. The RPG adventure game uses creature NFTs for players to explore, battle and train with, but after introducing the project as “the first AAA quality game in the NFT space” and raising $70 million, the project under-delivered in a big way:

Pitch Images Paint a False Dawn

Pitch images used for advertising the project bore no relation to what was presented. After Pixelmon delivered its genesis NFT collection earlier in February – just two months after launching the project – the 8,079 NFTs were sold in a Dutch auction format with bidding opening at 3 ETH (US$9,489 at the time). With every NFT selling out within the hour, the project raised a staggering 23,055 ETH, worth US$61 million at current prices.

Twitter users have since openly shared their memes regarding the project after seeing the 3D NFTs that were minted. It wasn’t just the lack of quality that seemed to be a problem, some also looked unfinished while others were acting in peculiar ways:

Following the auction, the price of Pixelmon NFTs on the secondary market had dropped around 60 percent from the original 3 ETH mint price and is now at a 0.36 ETH floor price on OpenSea. This caused early investors who minted the NFTs and held them to lose a considerable amount of money.

Developers Admit They Messed Up

A message was shared with the Pixelmon Discord where the project founder Syber stated that “we made a horrible mistake”, referring to the botched reveal:

The Pixelmon team admits making “a horrible mistake”. Source: Syber

In the message, Syber also stated it would use US$2 million to fix the issues faced by the project. Various users remained disgruntled, since that amount is only 3 percent of what they had gathered and could actually be used to develop a AAA gaming title.

The importance of doing your own research is crucial, especially when investing in a project whose founders are undoxxed (they have not revealed any personal information about themselves). This Twitter user summed up the feelings of the majority:

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Crypto News NFTs

Seller ‘Rugs’ Sotheby’s, Cancels $30 Million Auction At Last Minute

This week’s much-anticipated Sotheby’s auction of 104 CryptoPunks NFTs, dubbed Punk It!, was cancelled after the seller reneged on the sale and turned the non-event into a sick joke on Twitter:

Seller Only Succeeds in Rugging Bidders

Pseudonymous collector 0x650d facetiously tweeted “nvm, decided to hodl”, later posting a meme implying he was “taking punks mainstream” by “rugging” Sotheby’s. While no actual funds were lost, the collector did pull the proverbial rug from under bidders’ feet.

This stunt comes just over two weeks after the famous auction house announced the sale, which it estimated could have generated US$20 million to US$30 million.

Robert Leshner, creator of DeFi protocol Compound, tweeted that it was a “sad day for digital art collectors”:

In an apparent attack of conscience and a vain attempt to save face, 0x650d later tweeted that he had pulled out of the auction because of Sotheby’s exorbitant commission fees.

Stunt Blows Up in Seller’s Face

That drew an almost instantaneous withering response from @RugRadio founder Farokh.eth: “Bro you suck stop acting like you rugged Sotheby’s lmao you made everyone look stupid. Even the press here is laughing at us because of you stop hiding the guilt behind dumb ass memes.”

There was no shortage of support for Farokh’s comment. One tweet summed up the reaction of the NFT community:

The entire episode was also a bad look for Sotheby’s, which launched its own NFT marketplace – Sotheby’s Metaverse – in October 2021.

Categories
Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

Monster Energy Files Metaverse and NFT Trademark Applications

According to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the beverage manufacturer Monster Energy has filed a total of four applications to date, including for a variety of metaverse and NFT-related trademarks.

Although this is not the first time Monster has entered the crypto space, it does mark its debut appearance in the metaverse and NFT space. In a similar vein, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) last week filed applications with the USPTO and is hinting at an NFT marketplace. Fast-food behemoth McDonald’s has also set out plans for a virtual restaurant within the metaverse after submitting 10 trademark applications to build a “virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods”.

Monster Goes Big on Food, Beverage and Apparel NFTs

According to a tweet from Mike Kondoudis, a USPTO licensed attorney, Monster Energy has filed applications relating to “NFTs, downloadable virtual food, drink and clothing, stores featuring NFTs and virtual assets, and a marketplace for virtual goods and NFTs”.

The first trademark application relates to downloadable virtual goods comprising, but not limited to, beverages, food, supplements, sports, gaming, music and apparel. According to this filing, these goods will be “authenticated by NFTs”. The application extends to computer programs facilitating blockchain data interactions.

Monster Marketplace Also in the Works

The second filing includes retail and online stores services authenticated by NFTs, as well as an “online marketplace for buyers and sellers of virtual goods”. The third application details entertainment services related to virtual apparel. Finally, the fourth application consists of providing online software to facilitate the transmission of digital assets between users powered by blockchain.

If Monster’s applications were to be approved, it would mark its second foray into the crypto space, after partnering with SmartFi last month. Under the terms of the agreement, SmartFi would become the official cryptocurrency platform for the Monster Energy AMA Supercross – a popular American motorcycle racing series.

Categories
Blockchain Gaming NFTs

Warner Music Partners with Splinterlands Team to Create Blockchain Games

Warner Music Group (WMG) has announced a partnership with blockchain gaming developer Splinterlands to allow WMG artists to create their own blockchain-based video games.

WMG Enters Web 3.0

The partnership will centre on creating P2E (Play-to-Earn) and “arcade-style” video games for mobile devices. Selected WMG artists will be allowed to launch their own blockchain-based games, thus creating another form of revenue and engagement with their fanbase.

Oana Ruxandra, executive vice-president of business development and chief digital officer at WMG, said the partnership represents a “massive opportunity” for the P2E industry:

I don’t think we can underestimate how massive the opportunity around P2E gaming is. Our partnership with Splinterlands pulls focus to our artists and their music as we all work together to develop and maintain tokenised games. As we build, we will be unlocking new revenue streams for our artists while further solidifying fans’ participation in the value created.

Oana Ruxandra, chief digital officer, Warner Music Group

P2E Industry on the Rise

Founded in 2018 by Jesse Reich, Splinterlands is the originator of a blockchain video game of the same name where users battle 1:1 and buy, sell, and trade cards, in similar fashion to Sorare.

Warner Music Group is a leader in the music industry. They are innovating the music industry to meet the standards set by Web 3.0 community members. We’re thrilled to be working with them and I look forward to new collaborations at the intersection of gaming, music, crypto, NFTs, DeFi, and blockchain.

Jesse Reich, founder, Splinterlands

The P2E industry is booming as more video game developers integrate blockchain to power innovative features such as in-game cryptocurrency, native tokens, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and much more.