NFT Review 14: A Word of Caution
NFT Review 14: A Word of Caution
Visa apes into Punks, 1,000 ETH for one generative art piece, Bit.Country <> Ethereum bridge, SuperRare unveils $RARE, and more.
NFT Review is a weekly newsletter covering NFTs in the Web3 ecosystem on Polkadot’s side of the woods. The newsletter is put together by Bruno Škvorc and gbaci.
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Looking for a primer on NFTs? This should be the last introduction you’ll ever need.
Dear NFT enthusiast,
With more spectacular sales in the digital-dust-collecting NFT space announced every week, we feel it imperative to issue a word of caution to genuine collectors and speculators alike. If the value of a thing is only driven by its possible future price and not by its usefulness, then one would be wise to be careful before aping in. In the summer of 2017, many crypto early adopters were high off the euphoria of tokens going up by over 2000%. A few short months later, the bear came along and drove the enthusiasm away, leaving only fear, empty accounts, and broken hearts.
This line of reasoning was inspired by the news that a relatively new on-chain avatar project generated close to 1,000ETH (~$3,329,830) in weekly sales. Browsing the project website reveals its unique selling point:
an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities. While projects such as Cryptopunks have attempted to bootstrap digital community and identity, (the project) attempts to bootstrap identity, community, governance and a treasury that can be used by the community for the creation of long-term value.
At first glance, it seems very interesting. But then upon closer inspection, the question becomes: what is the purpose of this on-chain avatar community (and all others)? Is there a philosophy that binds them together? Do they have a collective goal beyond increasing the floor price of their NFTs? What service do they offer to the ecosystem and the world at large?
Why is this important? For one thing, it helps you to understand where the value of the project lies. Because, if there is a market run and the fantastic floor price crashes, what will make the value rebound to its all-time-high assuming people get over the euphoria of the current moment?
Looking beyond these individual concerns; When certain projects employ the word community in an attempt to rope people into a faux-ponzi scheme, it poisons the waters for genuine teams and projects who are building real innovative solutions.
We aren’t saying don’t buy, we’re only saying think about what you’re buying and why you’re buying it, and know that it’s highly probable that we are in an NFT bubble that could crash.
Thank you for reading and have a great week.
— NFT Review
📬 NFT News from Kusama & Polkadot
PromoTeam released commemorative NFTs on Singular to celebrate the first Kusama auctions.
RMRK created a new Twitter account that posts updates on the status of the protocol.
Boson Protocol had an interview with BitDotCountry CEO Ray Lu to find out how the Bit.Country Metaverse differs from other decentralized metaverse platforms & what kind of activities visitors can participate in.
Bit.Country built a bridge to Ethereum. The bridge will allow transferring the assets from Bit.Country to Ethereum and vice versa.
Unique Network CEO Alexander Mitro talked about their UN partnership and future plans on Coindesk TV.
UN-LUX, a fresh new collective from London is hosting their first “Takeover” event which will lead guests through a secret location in Central London over a series of art exhibitions, live music, and theatrical performances.
XyloDrone (a member of the group who has netted multiple sales on her Parallel Worlds collection on Singular), will showcase a series of fine art prints and paintings that can be exclusively purchased as an NFT via RMRK’sSingular. Register for the event here.
🗞 NFT News from Ethereum and Beyond
Cryptovoxels is hosting a Scripting Contest centered around games to “make the world more interactive and more fun.”
Payment giant Visa has joined the NFT craze by shelling out $150,000 in ETH for a CryptoPunk.
Axie Infinity activated its dedicated Axie Esports server and, in doing so, onboarded over 30+ Esports tournaments, offering 5,500+ $AXS in prizes.
A “full set” of Series 1-5 NFTs created by artist 0xDEAFBEEF just sold for 2,275 ETH (~$7.5 million).
Fidenza #313 by artist Tyler Hobbs sold for 1,000 ETH, or just over $3.3 million at the time of purchase. Incredibly, the artwork was last sold for just 0.58 ETH (~$1,400) on June 11 shortly after being minted.
Rarible introduced App Mining, a program to incentivize projects building atop Rarible’s new decentralized infrastructure via $RARI token rewards.
Since the start of August, NFT marketplace OpenSea has surpassed $1.2 billion worth of volume.
OpenSea now supports buying and selling NFTs with Bancor’s native $BNT token.
P2P NFT trading dapp swap.kiwi now lets users add ETH to their NFT swaps.
Crypto-forward DJ Steve Aoki has secured funding to create a pilot for his NFT TV show, Dominion X.
Boxing legend Mike Tyson has dropped a series of NFTs on OpenSea.
Programmable art platform Async Art open-sourced its “Unstoppable Auction” NFT smart contract
Cryptoart platform Foundation released a private sales feature.
Cryptoart platform SuperRare unveiled its $RARE curation token and the SuperRare DAO.
Australian TV show The Rebound, which screens on the Nine Network, is auctioning off a tokenized episode that will see the winning bidder become part of the show next season.
Dom Hofmann, co-founder of the now-defunct social media app Vine, is working on a new NFT gaming project called Supdrive. In the Supdrive Discord channel, Hofmann described the project as “an on-chain fantasy console game where the games themselves are NFTs.”
Alibaba has launched a new marketplace allowing trademark holders to sell NFTs representing licenses to their copyright.
NHL ice-hockey legend Wayne Gretzky launched an NFT collection on NFL star Tom Brady’s NFT marketplace, Autograph.
That’s all for this week, see you in the next edition! Got some links to share with us, artists to feature, NFTs to sell, jobs to promote, or events to popularize? Get in touch with Bruno or gbaci!