NFT Review 19 - Starting Fires
Snoop Dogg reveals secret identity, Artion threatens OpenSea, biggest NFT sale on Kusama, 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,
Last week, Yearn founder Andre Cronje launched an open-source and fee-less NFT marketplace called Artion on the Fantom blockchain, with plans for rollouts on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and other blockchains on the way.
Originally tagged as a vampire attack on OpenSea—the biggest NFT marketplace by a large margin—Andre dispelled the tag, explaining that Artion will not charge for minting, listing, and selling NFTs for the life of the project, but that they (he and his team) encourage forks to take it and add a token, and that the code is designed to make adding fees and tokens simple.
In effect, Artion is a marketplace that is actively inviting a vampire attack on itself – and, by proxy, an attack on OpenSea.
One may wonder if this is another attempt at a talented developer drawing users from Ethereum-based dApps. But it is not, not exactly. It is a reaction to the ecosystem, an attempt to fix something that is somewhat broken.
That is a tweet by a developer who claims to have taken a look at the token contracts for every major NFT marketplace, checking how well they adhered to the ERC-721 standard. Couple that with the executive scandal from last week and you see that it is imperative to the health of the ecosystem that there are worthy competitors to every market leader. This is the only way to avoid callousness that arises from comfort.
When asked why he and the rest of the seven-person Artion team would spend months building a high-potential project for which they will receive no clear compensation, Cronje said he is motivated by the ripple effects, adding:
“I like building open protocols and then seeing wtf people can do with it, I like starting fires.”
As citizens of the decentralized web, we surely can relate to Andre’s sentiment. We also like to start fires, if not we wouldn't be here.
Until next week, have a great read.
— NFT Review
👨🏼🎨 RMRK Artist Spotlight: Yumi Arts and Her Kitty Paradise
On this episode of RAS, we chatted with Yumi Arts, the creator of Kitty Paradise, a collection of adorable and fun animated cats.
Her collection is a testament to the fact that even in a crowded niche (pixelated art), there is room for innovation. Although drawn using such a limited art medium, her Kitties are all so diverse from each other. More amazing are their differences in emotional stance despite the emotionally muted nature of pixel art. Some Kitties seem happy while others seem angry; some are playful while others are serious; etc. I mean, there's even a kitty with a lightsaber. All in all, it's a fantastic display of artistic vision and control.
📬 NFT News from Kusama & Polkadot
The RMRK token has been listed on Kucoin for trading.
The RMRK token is the first Statemine token to be listed on a CEX and is now tradable!! trade.kucoin.com/RMRK-USDT #statemine #kusama #kucoin $ksm $usdt $rmrk @kucoincom @KuCoinUpdates
» RMRK core developer Yuri Petusko hosted a webinar to walk users through building a RMRK 2.0 NFT project.
MathWallet released a guide on how to access RMRK NFTs using their wallet.
Visit the Kabocha Collection VR space to view Kabochas for the first six parachains, Gavin Wood, and Kusama. There is also a little history about Yayoi Kusama.
Bruno Škvorc, founder of RMRK, and Valentine Kitchenzky, creator of the THC collection, engaged in an in-depth conversation about RMRK 2.0 NFTs with Jay Chrawnna.
Kodadot released a new report on the progress of their ecosystem and team.
Moonsama, the first NFT marketplace on Moonriver, launched, selling out its first NFT collection in 30 minutes.
Only 2 weeks (8th October) left to submit a climate-action-themed piece to Unique Network’s #DigitalArt4Climate Art Competition.
Kanaria (home of NFT 2.0) has netted over 8,790 KSM (~ $3m) in sales volume over the last 7 days, and 13,495 KSM (~ $4.5m) in total since trading started less than 3 weeks ago.
» Super Founder #7 was sold for 1,250 KSM (~ $420,425), making it the most expensive bird sale in Kanaria’s short history.
» Mr. Poop was sold for 24 KSM (~ $8,218), making it the most expensive item in the Kanaria universe.
🗞 NFT News from Ethereum and Beyond
Dapper Labs—the firm behind the Flow blockchain and the widely popular tokenized basketball collectibles NBA Top Shot—announced a further $250 million in a funding round led by tech-focused hedge fund Coatue.
Sushiswap’s coming NFT platform, Shoyu, will be curated at launch: 10 artists featured per week for the first 10 weeks.
Axie Infinity updated its breeding fee policies.
Sorare raised $680 million in Series B funding led by Japanese fintech giant SoftBank. The funding round raised the valuation of the firm to $4.3 billion.
» Sorare launched legend NFTs in a move beyond fantasy football.
Snoop Dogg revealed himself as NFT kingpin Cozomo de’ Medici.
Aavegotchi has now notched +1.5M transactions on Polygon.
Bookblocks has partnered with a New York-based organization to help women in Afghanistan have access to education amid the Taliban takeover.
If you’re interested in building your own NFT collectibles project, these resources from MyCrypto and manifold.xyz co-founder richerd will help.
Biconomy, a multichain relayer network, has integrated with Showtime, a user-owned NFT social network.
DappRadar has released its listings of the top 30 grossing NFT marketplaces of all time in terms of total sales, with all thirty NFT projects combined having grossed a total of more than USD 11.53 billion.
Twitter announced that it will let its users send Bitcoin to any account with a BTC wallet.
Wormhole Network launched an Ethereum↔Solana bridge which enables users to exchange assets (tokens and NFTs) from both networks in a cross-chain fashion.
Crypto.com NFT signed a partnership with DeFi the Game for collections with globally celebrated athletes.
Decentraland announced the launch of their play-to-earn incubator.
jin over at Webaverse is cooking up some crazy cool interoperability functionalities.
TIME's NFT collection sold out in one minute, bot activity suggested.
Ethlings, a Polygon-based NFT project, is shuttering operations.
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!