Category: NFTs

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum Gaming Metaverse NFTs Stablecoins Stratis

Stratis (STRAX) Token Soars 160% Amid NFT, Gaming and Stablecoin Announcement

Ethereum-based, decentralised blockchain platform Stratis has witnessed its native token STRAX rocket 103 percent in one 24-hour period this week, cooling off from a rally that at one point reached 160 percent.

STRAX took off minutes after the project announced a series of updates, including a new ticketing system via which NFTs will be used to validate entry to venues and distribute rewards at events.

Stratis has also foreshadowed several new blockchain-powered video games set to hit its mainnet later this year, along with issuing an update on its launch of a stablecoin pegged to the British pound called Great British Pound Token (GBPT).

PwC to Provide Audit Services for New Stablecoin

The platform is currently working with Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) to complete regulatory registration and expects the partnership to be ongoing with PwC providing auditing services for the GBPT stablecoin’s implementation.

According to the Stratis announcement, “With entities like Visa increasingly willing to accept stablecoin payments, there’s a huge opportunity to simplify cross-border and wholesale payments using blockchain technology.”

Prior to this week’s STRAX price rally, the team behind the protocol teased the upcoming launch of Sky Dream Mall, a new metaverse project powered by the Stratis blockchain:

STRAX Defies Market Conditions

All of which is in clear defiance of the current bear market and the onset of the so-called ‘crypto winter’. These are arguably the most positive developments in the sector since April, when blockchain-based music platform Opulous saw the price of its token, OPUL, rally 175 percent after it announced DeFi staking, CEX listings and S-NFT sales.

You’d have to go back even further to find another one-day performance to rival that of STRAX this week. In February this year, the utility and governance token for the DEX Injective Protocol rallied more than 100 percent in a single day following the listing of Cosmos (ATOM) perpetual futures on the platform.

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Blockchain Crypto News eBay NFTs

eBay Expands NFT Foray With ‘KnownOrigin’ Marketplace Acquisition

The world’s largest e-commerce enterprise, eBay has extended its reach into the world of digital collectibles and blockchain by acquiring Manchester-based marketplace KnownOrigin.

The move comes only a month after eBay released its debut NFT collection in partnership with Tezos and Polygon-based NFT platform OneOf.

Timing Right for KnownOrigin

KnownOrigin enables artists and collectors to create, purchase and resell NFTs via blockchain-enabled transactions. Co-founder David Moore said in a statement that the company was built to “empower creators and collectors by giving them the ability to showcase, sell and collect unique, authenticated digital items”.

Moore added:

As interest in NFTs continues to grow, we believe now is the perfect time for us to partner with a company that has the reach and experience of eBay.

David Moore, co-founder, KnownOrigin

eBay Continues Digital Exploration

It was just over a year ago that eBay began allowing its users to buy and sell NFTs, at a time when the market exploded. Its foray into collectibles shows continued interest in leveraging cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to improve its operations, and eBay has even begun looking into integrating crypto payment options.

Jamie Iannone, eBay’s chief executive, said in a statement:

KnownOrigin has built up an impressive, passionate and loyal group of artists and collectors, making them a perfect addition to our community of sellers and buyers. We look forward to welcoming these innovators as they join the eBay community.

Jamie Iannone, chief executive, eBay
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Doodles E-commerce NFTs Payments

Shopify Releases New Crypto Features Including NFT-Gated Storefronts

E-commerce giant Shopify has announced it will introduce new crypto-centric features to its platform including allowing brands to give NFT holders exclusive access to gated products and experiences, a feature Shopify refers to as ‘tokengating’:

The tokengating feature will be made available for both online sales and in-person purchases at bricks-and-mortar stores. Tokengating on Shopify is currently in closed beta and is available only to select merchants.

How Will Tokengated Stores Work?

According to Shopify, store owners will be able to easily create a tokengated store in the Shopify app or add the feature to a physical store. Customers will need to connect their crypto wallet to verify ownership of a required NFT before they can purchase or access gated content, products or experiences.

Shopify says this model will help retailers more easily turn enthusiasm for their brand into sales by recognising and rewarding brands’ biggest fans and giving them access to exclusive content. 

NFT Gating May Increase Brand Engagement

Tokengating will likely appeal to NFT collection creators looking to increase brand engagement and monetisation, allowing them to move beyond simply selling NFTs and into selling real world products. 

Evan Keast, co-founder of the popular NFT collections Doodles, says tokengating offers NFT holders a chance to access exciting new brand experiences:

As an ambitious community-driven project, we’ve placed a strong emphasis on setting the standard for unique NFT collector experiences. By partnering with Shopify on tokengated merch, we surprised our holders and gave the ownership of a Doodle a whole new meaning. 

Evan Keast, co-founder, Doodles

Tokengating isn’t Shopify’s first foray into the world of NFTs and crypto. Last month the platform announced a partnership with Crypto.com that allows merchants to accept zero-fee payments in more than 20 cryptocurrencies. And in December 2021, Shopify introduced functionality allowing merchants to mint NFTs directly from Shopify.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs Social media

Bored Ape Yacht Club Rocked by Video Claiming ‘Racist’ Ties

Philip Rusnack, aka Philion, has released an hour-long investigation on his Philion YouTube channel alleging racist and alt-right connotations among the memes, language and symbols used in Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collections.

Many of Philion’s points are supported by prior evidence uncovered by anti-BAYC NFT commentator Ryder Ripps.

Anti-BAYC Hashtag Trends on Twitter

The ‘BURNBAYC’ hashtag is trending on Twitter as the Bored Ape Yacht Club – a giant of the NFT world – faces its accusers. BAYC has been condemned by Philion as “one massive alt-right inside joke”, with comparisons drawn between Bored Ape caricatures and Asian and black people, alongside the identification of Nazi symbolism.

This isn’t the first accusation made against BAYC over claimed racist undertones. Ryder Ripps lit the coals earlier this year after publishing a Twitter thread and creating the domain gordongoner.com specifically to highlight this problematic imagery:

Yuga Labs, the creator of BAYC, has responded by stating that the project logo (a monkey’s skull) merely suggests that the project’s Apes are “bored to death”, and that the term “Apes” refers to its team, not humans in general. However, the sheer quantity of alt-right and racist imagery and symbolism found across its collections adds up to a potentially compelling case against BAYC.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Bored Ape Yacht Club has been a gold mine for many an investor in the past, with one Aussie chancer reportedly turning US$300 into US$5 million in May this year. However, BAYC has not escaped the crypto collapse, with its floor price plunging below US$100k this month. As at June 16, the Bored Apes floor price stood at US$88,000.

In light of the concurrent crypto market downturn, it is possible that BAYC may find it difficult to recover from such lows in the wake of these latest negative allegations.

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Crypto Exchange DeFi NFTs Uniswap

Uniswap Users Will Soon Be Able to Buy NFTs Directly on its Web App

Uniswap Labs announced on June 21 that it had acquired the NFT marketplace aggregator Genie, and plans to integrate NFTs into its products starting with the Uniswap web app:

The integration of NFTs into the popular decentralised exchange means users will soon be able to buy and sell the assets across most major marketplaces using Uniswap.

Uniswap Labs also plans to incorporate NFTs into its other products, including its developer APIs and widgets, which it says will make Uniswap “a comprehensive platform for users and builders in Web3”.

Airdrop for Genie Users

As part of its acquisition of Genie, Uniswap Labs will be launching an airdrop of USD Coin (USDC) to historical Genie users. In a tweet, the company said the airdrop would be open to any Genie users who had used the platform more than once before the snapshot was taken on April 15, along with any user who holds a GENIE:GEM NFT.

The airdrop is planned to launch in August and will be claimable by eligible users for 12 months.

Not Uniswap’s First Foray into NFTs

This is not the first time Uniswap Labs has dabbled in NFTs. In 2019, the company launched Unisocks, a platform where users could purchase a $SOCKS token that could then be redeemed for one real pair of limited edition socks. Uniswap Labs also helped to pioneer on-chain generative SVG images with the development of its Uniswap V3 NFT positions technology.

In its statement about the Genie acquisition, Uniswap Labs expressed its belief that NFTs are simply another way of generating value in the Web3 economy and are not separate from the ERC-20 tokens Uniswap has previously focused on:

We see NFTs as another format for value in the growing digital economy – not a separate ecosystem from ERC20s – and they’re already an important gateway to Web3.

Uniswap blog

Highs and Lows

Launching in late 2018, Uniswap was one of the first – and is currently one of the largest – decentralised exchanges on the Ethereum blockchain. In February 2021, the volume of Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) trading on the platform hit an all-time high following Tesla’s purchase of large amounts of Bitcoin.

More recently, in April this year a class-action lawsuit was launched against Uniswap alleging the decentralised exchange had been involved in the sale of unauthorised securities.

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Australia Ethereum GameFi Immutable X NFTs

Australia’s ‘Immutable X’ Launches $500 Million Fund to Accelerate Web3 Game Development

Immutable, the Sydney-based company behind the NFT-focused Ethereum scaling solution Immutable X, has announced the launch of its new US$500 million developer and investment fund:

The so-named Immutable Developer and Venture Fund will help accelerate the growth of Immutable X by providing grants to, and investing in, the most promising projects building on the protocol, with a particular focus on fostering the growth of Web3 game development.

New Fund to Supercharge Adoption

The fund will provide investment and grants in both cash and crypto, with crypto funding in the form of Immutable X’s native token, IMX.

The ventures side involves partnerships with several large VC firms including BITKRAFT, Animoca, AirTree, GameStop and others. The fund will look to invest in the most promising projects building on Immutable X, providing them with the necessary resources to help them scale and launch successfully.

Grants will provide developers with financial support tied to project milestones, as well as technical and educational support to help them realise their project goals. Drawing on its experience in blockchain-based game development, Immutable X will provide guidance to grant recipients to support them to transition to blockchain gaming:

We’re taking the lessons learned from building two of the blockchain’s biggest games – Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians – and hiring the smartest people from Web2 studios like Riot Games to make entering the NFT gaming world simple and rewarding for gaming studios.

James Ferguson, CEO and co-founder, Immutable

Web3 Gaming Presents Huge Opportunity

James’s brother Robbie Ferguson, president and co-founder of Immutable, sees Web3 gaming as an enormous growth area moving forward that Immutable X will be well placed to benefit from with the launch of this fund:

Gaming is bigger than movies and music combined, and is compounding by 10 percent every year. With the knowledge we have from building two of the blockchain’s biggest games in-house, we’re going to be providing the funding, expertise and infrastructure needed to grow this to a trillion-dollar ownable economy over the next decade.

Robbie Ferguson, president and co-founder, Immutable

Immutable X Focuses on Gaming

Founded in Sydney in 2018, Immutable X was designed specifically to bring scalability and affordability to Ethereum’s NFT ecosystem. The protocol is fast – able to process up to 9,000 transactions per second – and has zero gas fees and is carbon neutral. 

Immutable X works by leveraging StarkWare’s zero-knowledge proof technology, which allows it to ‘roll-up’ thousands of transactions on its own network separate from Ethereum, and then commit them to the Ethereum blockchain in a single transaction.

Immutable X has had a busy few months, having raised $US200 million in its most recent funding round in March and in May partnering with gaming company Kongregate to launch a US$40 million developer grant fund.

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Crypto News NFTs

TAG Heuer Launches Smartwatch to Display NFTs on Your Wrist

Have a favourite NFT you want to show the world? TAG Heuer is giving consumers the opportunity to wear their NFTs on their wrist. The update follows the luxury watchmaker brand’s recent acceptance of cryptocurrency as payment in its American online store:

Watch Can Frame Any Digital Image

TAG Heuer announced its Connected Calibre E4 smartwatch this week. The exciting part? The watch will allow consumers to display their NFTs on its face, as the digital wallet on an NFT owner’s phone can be synched with the smartwatch to display hexagonal JPEG and GIF versions of any NFT.

For interested consumers who don’t have NFTs to display, the watch face can also frame standard digital images.

The move from TAG Heuer reportedly follows discussions with blue-chip NFT communities such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks. It also comes shortly after the watchmaker’s announcement that it will now accept Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and nine other cryptocurrencies as payment on its US website.

Putting NFTs on Display

There has been an increase in interest of late from NFT owners eager to display their prized art, and several companies are working on solutions to meet this desire. In January, Netgear came forward with plans to alter its Meural digital art frames so they might cater to NFTs. Originally conceived to display personal digital photos, the technology behind the Meural canvases will be modified so NFT owners can display their purchases on the virtual walls of their space.

More recently, Sony entered a partnership with Theta Labs to bring interactive 3D NFTs to life. The project will be executed via a decentralised video streaming/delivery network. The network will be accompanied by its own native crypto asset (THETA) and will also function for 2D NFTs.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Ethereum NFTs

Bored Ape NFT Floor Price Plunges Below $100k Amid Crypto Collapse

As the cryptocurrency market experiences one of the biggest downturns in its history, NFTs are feeling the heat as much as crypto coins, if not more so.

The standout red flag is that floor prices of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, at one time the market’s most valuable, have plunged below US$100,000, down 80 percent from their all-time high (ATH).

Crypto Winter Chills Demand for NFTs

BAYC NFTs reached a floor price of almost US$450,000 on April 29, the collection’s ATH. Floor price refers to the average cost of a product. According to data from NFT Price Floor, the current floor price of Bored Apes is 76 ETH, or US$88,000:

BAYC floor price. Source: NFT Price Floor

Throughout 2021 and early 2022, Bored Apes enjoyed great success in the NFT market, becoming one of the top-selling collections with sales north of US$1.5 million for a single Bored Ape NFT. Last month, an Australian investor managed to turn US$300 into a whopping US$5 million after buying a particularly rare Ape for what amounted to 0.01 percent of its value at the time.

Other NFT Projects Fall Hard

Due to the market sell-off that started a few months ago, NFTs in general have seen a steady decline in sales volume. The sales volume of CryptoPunks, another popular collection, has dropped nearly 70 percent in the past 30 days, according to data from OKX. Other popular collections such as Azuki and Moonbirds are doing it harder, down 86.40 percent and 91.65 percent respectively.

A few months before the massive market sell-off, Bored Apes creators Yuga Labs acquired the commercial rights to two of the most popular collections on the market, CryptoPunks and Meebits.

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NFTs OpenSea Scams

OpenSea Announces New Security Features to Protect Users Against Scams

In response to a rash of recent stolen and plagiarised NFTs implicating its platform, OpenSea has announced the launch of a new feature that will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from view on its marketplace.

Fresh Investments in Safety Measures

Just last month, OpenSea suffered a security breach on its main Discord channel that allowed hackers to promote a fake YouTube partnership with the NFT platform. As a result, OpenSea has announced investments in theft prevention, IP infringement, scaling review and moderation. It also intends to reduce critical response times in high-touch settings, as foreshadowed by the project’s co-founder and CEO, Devin Finzer:

Self-Detection Technologies to Combat Fraud

OpenSea will use “critical auto-detection” technologies for copyright breaches and other instances of fraud. According to Finzer, removing such elements from the platform will improve its overall performance and will also prevent unsolicited advertisements and potential frauds on open blockchains being seen on OpenSea.

As the NFT boom broke out last year, business at OpenSea increased accordingly until frequent hacks and frauds left many investors dissatisfied with the platform’s efforts to compensate victims and combat theft. Last month, OpenSea rolled out measures to reduce fraud while improving authenticity.

This latest round of safety measures arrives just as demand for NFTs is dropping off and the cryptocurrency market in general is in a downward spiral, though they will be nonetheless welcome.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Cryptocurrency Law Hackers NFTs

Anon Hacker Gets Served with Restraining Order Via an NFT, a World First

In a world first for both the crypto space and the legal profession, a defendant in a hacking case has been served with a temporary restraining order by means of a non-fungible token (NFT).

International law firm Holland & Knight served the defendant on-chain using a “service NFT“. The hacker, who cannot be named, stole US$7.94 million in digital assets from a hot wallet belonging to LCX, a Liechtenstein-based fintech company.

Method Approved by NY Supreme Court

The service method was approved by the New York Supreme Court and “is an example of how innovation can provide legitimacy and transparency to a market that some believe is ungovernable”, according to LCX.

The hack, which took place in January this year, saw assets including Ether, USDC, Sandbox and more stolen from LCX, whose blockchain tracing specialists were subsequently able to identify the addresses of the hacker’s wallets.

LCX has been working with law enforcement authorities in Liechtenstein, Ireland, Spain and the US to trace the funds, which were initially appropriated via Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer protocol for concealing the digital trail of blockchain transactions. LCX traced the funds and wallets through what it describes as “algorithmic forensic analysis”.

Could Legal Precedent Save NFTs?

Perhaps this legal first could be the saviour of NFTs. Earlier this month, crypto analytics firm IntoTheBlock reported that Ethereum transaction volume was down 80 percent on the same period last year due in large part to plummeting interest in NFTs. Google search data showed a concurrent 75 percent reduction in searches for the term NFT, contributing significantly to the drop in transaction volume.