Category: NFTs

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eBay NFTs Polygon Tezos

Ebay Taps Tezos-Powered ‘OneOf’ to Enter NFT Business

Popular e-commerce website eBay has announced the release of its debut collection of NFTs, a hockey-themed drop in partnership with Tezos- and Polygon-based NFT platform OneOf.

The release marks the marketplace’s first foray into digital collectibles after it had been teasing the concept for some time now:

NFTs a Year in the Making for eBay

eBay officially announced its interest in digital collectibles in May 2021 after CEO Jamie Iannone had foreshadowed the possibility of integrating into the world of NFTs and cryptos. In September 2021 eBay said it would allow the sale of NFTs on its platform and in March this year, Iannone suggested that eBay would start accepting crypto payments later that month.

eBay’s NFT collection will involve digital collectibles of popular athletes such as Canadian former ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Each athlete will have four tiers – green, gold, platinum, and diamond – with the green tier including NFTs as cheap as US$10.

The firm has said it intends to release more NFT collections of high-profile athletes over the rest of the year. Prices of the NFTs range up to US$1,500 and are purchasable via the same fiat payment methods as the platform’s other physical items.

“Through our partnership with OneOf, eBay is now making coveted NFTs more accessible to a new generation of collectors everywhere,” said Dawn Block, eBay’s vice president of collectibles, electronics and home, in a statement. “This builds on our commitment to deliver high passion, high-value items to the eBay community of buyers and sellers.”

OneOf is built on the Tezos and Polygon blockchain, which both use a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Hackers NFTs Scams

NFT Artist Beeple’s Twitter Account Hacked, $438k Lost in Phishing Scam

Digital artist and NFT creator Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, has been targeted in a serial phishing expedition that netted scammers a total of US$438,000.

Hackers Railroad Louis Vuitton Raffle

In a series of tweets over the weekend, purportedly from Beeple, links posted to a fake Louis Vuitton NFT raffle were made to capitalise on a recent real collaboration between Beeple and the luxury fashion brand.

Earlier this month, Beeple designed 30 NFTs for LV’s ‘Louis The Game’ mobile game, embedded as rewards to players. Scammers posted phishing links from Beeple’s Twitter account to fake Beeple collections that seduced unsuspecting users with the promise of a free mint for unique NFTs.

The phishing links were up on Beeple’s Twitter for several hours, with the first netting the scammers 36 ETH, or roughly US$73,000 at the time. The second link snared US$365,000 worth of ETH and NFTs, bumping the total value of the scam to about US$438,000.

Beeple later tweeted that he had regained control of his account and reminded his followers that “anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM”:

Beeple Makes Himself a Scam Magnet

Having created three of the top 10 most expensive NFTs released to date, including one that sold for US$69 million, Beeple has made himself a prime target for hacks. Last November, his installation artwork Human One, paired with an NFT, sold for almost US$29 million at auction. That same month, an admin account on the artist’s Discord channel was hacked, with users losing 38 ETH to a fake NFT drop remarkably similar to the latest exploit.

Earlier this month, Beeple made the news for an entirely different reason, partnering with pop icon Madonna on an explicit NFT collection that possibly raised more eyebrows than it did money.

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Crypto News NFTs OpenSea

OpenSea Launches ‘Seaport’, an NFT Web3 Bartering Protocol

OpenSea has announced the launch of a new marketplace protocol dubbed ‘Seaport’ that will allow its users to barter for NFTs, adding additional payment methods beyond just paying for the tokens with cryptocurrencies:

‘Seaport’ allows users to acquire NFTs in a range of new ways. For example, they can bundle different assets in exchange for NFTs, extending payment methods beyond just crypto:

SudoSwap already allows users to barter for NFTs, but this feature is now becoming native to OpenSea. According to the platform, a user “can agree to supply a number of ETH/ERC20/ERC721/ERC1155 items” in exchange for NFTs.

Tipping Support Also Offered Via Seaport

Adding to its new features, Seaport users can now also specify which criteria, such as certain traits on NFT artwork, or pieces of a collection they want when making offers. OpenSea will also support tipping if the amount does not exceed that of the original offer made:

The NFT marketplace stated that “OpenSea does not control or operate Seaport protocol – we will just be one, among many, building on top of this shared protocol”.

As adoption grows and developers create new evolving use-cases, we are all responsible for keeping each other safe.

OpenSea blog post

OpenSea Rolls Out Wave of New Features

OpenSea continues to evolve and improve its users’ experience. Last month a leak was made public that reveals users will soon be able to trade NFTs on OpenSea using credit cards. Most recently, in an attempt to prevent fraud and plagiarism that hinders the NFT space, OpenSea announced it would be putting measures in place to reduce fraud while improving authenticity.

In a series of blog posts, OpenSea revealed it would be making two changes to the platform: an updated verification and collection badging system, and an automated system to aid in identifying, removing, and preventing instances of “copymints”.

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Ethereum NFTs Polygon Social media

Twitter Rival ‘Lens Frens’ Launches on Polygon, Decentralised NFT Social Platform

Aave has launched a decentralised, NFT-based Twitter competitor on the Polygon network. Lens Protocol is designed to power social media apps such as Lens Frens to rival centralised giants like Twitter.

Lens Protocol is essentially a decentralised social graph that utilises NFTs stored within a crypto wallet to power social media platforms. Users retain ownership of their content, and anyone can build on the protocol.

Faster, Cheaper, Greener

Lens utilises the Polygon network, a sidechain scaling solution for Ethereum. Polygon enables faster, cheaper, and less energy-intensive transactions than Ethereum’s own mainnet, making it more viable for a social network built on a potentially large number of NFT assets:

‘Content Creators Should Own Their Audiences’

Lens Protocol was first teased in June 2021 when Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov tweeted: “Since [Square CEO and then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey] is going to build Aave on Bitcoin, Aave should build Twitter on Ethereum.”

Kulekhov added:

We believe that content creators should own their audiences in a permissionless fashion, where anyone can build new user experiences by using the same on-chain social graph and data.

Kulechov went on to outline his mission statement: “We wanted to create a social media protocol, or essentially a social graph, and create these profiles on the network by tracking relationships on the network and creating an unauthorised way for content to be distributed between creator and audience.”

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Crypto News Football NFTs Sports

Football NFTs Set to Grow German Bundesliga’s Revenue by 280%

NFT deals on behalf of German football league Bundesliga, combined with sticker and trading card licensing, will generate US$179 million in the 2023-2024 season, almost four times the current season’s value:

Three Partnerships to Power Revenue Growth

Bundesliga has partnered up with three different projects. Topps, which has officially licensed Bundesliga’s physical trading cards since 2008, is extending the NFT rights it acquired for the 2020/21 season. Sorare will extend the partnership it undertook in 2021 to create NFTs of Bundesliga players for fantasy football until 2025. And OneFootball has acquired the licensing rights for digital trading cards collections and video-based NFTs of Bundesliga highlights. In total, these NFT partnerships are set to grow revenue by 280 percent:

As a consequence of the pandemic, Bundesliga’s total revenues dropped by almost 400 million euros (US$423 million) across the 2020 and 2021 seasons. The new sources of revenue from the NFTs and collectibles deal is important for all the league’s teams, particularly lower-ranked teams that depend on ticket revenue.

According to Lucas von Cranach, founder and chief executive of OneFootball, “We couldn’t have imagined when we first started working with the Bundesliga that we would build the partnership and achieve official partner status.” He added:

Now as official partner of one of the most innovative leagues in the world, we have the chance to build an even longer-term relationship that gives us the chance to take tens of millions of football supporters from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.

Lucas von Cranach, founder and CEO, OneFootball

The partnerships undertaken by the league mark an evolution in the Bundesliga’s nascent NFT strategy and will provide much-needed additional revenue. Bundesliga’s international chief executive, Robert Klein, said the short-term deals reflect what is a rapidly evolving market.

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Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

Morgan Stanley Says NFTs Could Be Next After UST Collapse

Morgan Stanley has warned that NFTs could be next to collapse after seeing what went down with the collapse of UST.

The US multinational finance giant, which has admitted crypto isn’t just a fad and also recently proclaimed that the metaverse is the next big investment theme, issued its warning to holders of digital assets as the great crypto crash of 2022 continues:

Non-Fungible Tokens Next to Fall?

In a Fortune report issued last week, it was noted that steep declines in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tokens were not associated with the decline in equity markets. Instead, prices were subject to investor “speculation, with limited real user demand”, according to crypto analyst Sheena Shah.

However, such speculation is not limited to cryptocurrencies, with both NFTs and digital real estate in the metaverse affected. Shah noted that most holders bought NFTs with the expectation that they would appreciate, but at the moment that is simply not happening.

Overall, this year has not been kind to the NFT market. Total NFT transaction activity declined from US$3.9 billion to US$964 million from mid-February to mid-March. That’s not to say all NFTs are suffering equally – recent high-profile NFT collections such as Moonbirds, and the metaverse land sale for Otherdeeds, have done major business.

According to Modesta Masiot, finance director at NFT raking platform DappRadar, most NFT trading was centred on “blue-chip” NFT collections such as CryptoPunks. She added: “NFTs look to be entering perhaps one of many maturity stages. We expected this and believe it’s a normal development in such technology.”

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto News NFTs

Another Bored Ape NFT Sells for $200: Costly Mistake or Tax Evasion?

Another Bored Ape NFT has been undersold, this time for just US$200. The crypto community now believes this has become a common practice to evade capital gains taxes.

A Twitter account that reports Bored Ape NFT sales shared the news of Ape #6462 being purchased for only 200 USDC. This NFT has some of the rarest traits in the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) market, and is currently priced on OpenSea at 101.75 ETH, or US$206,000:

Transaction History Inspires Suspicion

While some in the NFT community say this is just another costly mistake, most believe it was a tax evasion manoeuvre. They based this on the transaction history, which shows the buyer’s account was created this month and that the offer for Ape #6462 was accepted minutes after being listed. It also has been transferred five times between different wallets since its mint date:

Bored Ape #6462. Source: OpenSea

Whether tax evasion or just a mistake, this is not the first time a Bored Ape NT has sold for much less than its original value. A month ago, Crypto News Australia reported that a US$350,000 Bored Ape had been sold for just US$115, raising suspicions in the crypto community.

What was more intriguing is that the owner accepted a bid of only 115 DAI – an Ethereum-based stablecoin – for his NFT. Again, most in the NFT community believed the reason behind this was tax-loss harvesting.

Genuine mistakes occur, however. Five months ago, Twitter handle Manaut.eth made a rookie error by misplacing a decimal point in pricing his NFT at 0.75 ETH instead of 75 ETH.

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Crypto News NFTs

Spotify Starts Trialling NFTs on its Platform

Music streaming giant Spotify will soon allow artists to promote their NFTs on the platform, pending the results of a trial rollout.

Starting with a single pilot group of artists, among them American DJ/producer Steve Aoki and English indie band the Wombats, Spotify will test NFTs on the platform on behalf of “selected” US users.

Spotify Won’t Sell NFTs Directly, Nor Take a Cut of Sales

However, Spotify will not sell NFTs directly – users will need to tap through to an external marketplace to make purchases. The streaming platform says it will not take a cut of the sales as part of the test.

According to a Spotify spokesperson:

We routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve artist and fan experiences. Some of those tests end up paving the way for a broader experience and others serve only as an important learning.

Spotify spokesperson

Surveys Meet With Derision on Twitter

Users report that Spotify has also sent out surveys and even offered people compensation for chats with team members about their attitudes toward NFTs and Web3. Some of these survey questions have been met with outright derision on Twitter:

Spotify officially entered the Web3 world earlier this month with the May 3 launch of ‘Spotify Island‘ on Roblox. The move had been flagged back in March when the company posted two job ads related to working with early-stage Web3 projects.

Well might Spotify get on board with Web3, if only to compete with the likes of streaming app Audius, the world’s first fully decentralised music platform. Last year, pop superstar Katy Perry (and others) invested in a US$5 million funding round for the crypto-powered service. Interestingly, one of the other investors happens to be Steve Aoki.

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Crypto News Cryptocurrency Law NFTs OpenSea

UK Court Rules NFTs as ‘Private Property’ Favouring NFT Holders

The High Court of Justice in the UK has ruled to recognise NFTs as private property. The ruling has been hailed as a “landmark” but in reality will not actually change much, apart from helping to combat fraud. NFTs are already treated as private property in the US:

The catch in the ruling is that this conferred private property status does not extend to the underlying content an NFT represents.

OpenSea Caught Up in Case

The court case came about when Lavinia Osbourne, founder of Women in Blockchain Talks, claimed that two Boss Beauties NFTs had been stolen from her MetaMask wallet earlier this year. The NFTs ended up in two anonymous accounts on OpenSea and in an effort to reclaim the stolen property, Osbourne filed an injunction against the NFT marketplace.

A judge overseeing the case ruled that the NFTs were technically property and thereby enabled the court to issue an order requiring OpenSea to freeze the accounts so the NFTs could not be traded or sold.

Since no one knew the identities of the wallet holders, the injunction was granted against “persons unknown”. In a comment regarding the decision, Stevenson Law firm described the ruling as “a draconian remedy”.

Osbourne commented following the ruling:  

Women in Blockchain Talks was founded to open up the opportunities blockchain offers to anyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality or background. This case will hopefully be instrumental in making the blockchain space a safer one, encouraging more people to interact with exciting and meaningful assets like NFTs.

Lavinia Osbourne, founder, Women in Blockchain Talks

UK authorities have been cracking down on the fraudulent use of NFTs, with the country’s first NFT seizure worth US$1.9 million earlier this year having been part of an investigation into an elaborate tax evasion scheme.

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Crypto News NFTs OpenSea

OpenSea Rolling Out Features to Block ‘Copymint’ Bandits

As the NFT garden continues to blossom, issues such as fraud and plagiarism are inevitably hindering trust in the space. To address this, OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is putting measures in place to reduce fraud while improving authenticity:

The marketplace announced in a series of blog posts that it would be introducing two changes to the platform:

  1. An updated verification and collection badging system will broaden the number of creators eligible for verification.
  2. An automated system to aid in identifying, removing and preventing instances of “copymints” – copies of authentic NFT content – will also be put in place.

OpenSea says it will be implementing a new two-part detection system as copies make it more difficult to find authentic content on the platform. It will also use image recognition technology to scan NFTs on the platform and compare them with authentic collections, looking for flips, rotations and other variants.

According to one of its blog posts, OpenSea is “committed to threading the needle between removing copymints and giving space for those substantively additive remixes to prosper”. The marketplace has already started removing offending content and will scale up the removal process in coming weeks.

OpenSea in Troubled Waters

The changes OpenSea aims to implement come at a good time, as the marketplace has suffered various blows to its reputation in 2022. Earlier in the year, a former Bored Ape Yacht Club owner announced he would be suing OpenSea for US$1 million in damages after his Bored Ape was stolen from his crypto wallet. Mintable, another NFT marketplace, also recovered three NFTs stolen in a phishing attack on the OpenSea platform.