NFT Innovation Digest #27

Cover Art: Orange Is The New Black by Bard Ionson

Most innovative (author's pick)

TokenTraxx is an innovative music curation vehicle that is trying to empower musicians and fans. The platform will work directly with the artists and provide tokenized songs, albums, and merchandise controlled by the creators.

More:

• TokenTraxx launched its native $TRAXX utility token on March 21. The token will be the economic base of the music platform. On March 28 the open beta of the platform will go live.
• “Our mission is to empower artists to easily tokenize songs, albums, and merchandise, thereby revolutionizing the way fans engage with the artists they love” – Co-Founder, Miles Leonard.

Most discussed

Yuga Labs posted a trailer on Twitter teasing the rumored BAYC gaming experience "Otherside", created in partnership with Animoca Brands. The trailer features other popular NFT projects such as CryptoPunks, CrypToadz, World of Women, Meebits, Cool Cats, and Nouns.

More:

• APECoin will serve as the underlying currency for Yuga Labs' metaverse and marketplace and other transaction points.

Bored Apes from the NFTX vault were borrowed to claim $1.1M of APECoin. The unknown user took a flash loan to borrow five apes while claiming the airdrop and repaying the NFTs in a single transaction.

More:

• APECoin was not airdropped based on a snapshot of the BAYC holders, enabling anyone holding the NFT to claim the airdrop.

Mainstream adoption

Time magazine released its first full magazine issue as an NFT. The issue featured Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The NFTs were airdropped to select TIMEPiece holders and genesis LIT community wallet holders.

More:

• The issue will be hosted through a decentralized protocol that will enable holders to read the magazine in its entirety as an interactive NFT;
• TIME also announced that it hired its first-ever VP of Web3 Operations, Will Ban. The role will be focused on operationalizing the publication’s Web3 vision.

Universal Music's Web3 label, 10:22PM, has acquired Bored Ape #5537 for 125 ETH (~$360,000). Ape #5537 will serve as the manager for 10:22PM's virtual band, Kingship.

More:

• Kingship will produce music and participate in virtual concerts in the Metaverse;
• The band consists of four virtual characters, one mutant ape and three bored apes, all from the collector Jimmy McNelis’ personal holdings.

New products and ideas

Video game retailer GameStop launched the beta version of its NFT marketplace on the Ethereum Layer 2 Loopring. Users can set up their profiles, make deposits to Loopring, and be prepared for the marketplace launch soon.

More:

• Along with Loopring, the marketplace will support Immutable X, another Ethereum scaling solution, while GameStop also announced a $100 million token incentive fund for game developers.

The game studio behind PUBG game series, Krafton, will develop games on the Solana blockchain. Krafton has partnered with Solana Labs with plans to work together to develop and market NFT-driven games on Solana.

More:

• PUBG has generated over $7 billion in revenue to date via in-game purchases. Krafton has not yet announced if it's going to bring the successful franchise to Web3;
• “Krafton will continuously see ways to work closely with blockchain companies like Solana Labs as we work toward establishing our Web 3.0 ecosystem,” said Hyungchul Park, Krafton’s Lead of Web 3.0 Roundtable.

Recommended reading

• Everything you need to know about CC0: This Zima Red article explores the concept and landscape of CC0 IP NFTs, the most liberal type of copyright licensing;
• Inflation in GameFi and Traditional Game: This research by ResearchDAO explores the differences in inflation mechanisms between traditional games and GameFi and the results of applying Web3 game mechanics to traditional games.
• Building Expansive NFT Universes: CC0, Fidelity, & On-Chain Bundling: This article by Simon de la Rouviere dives into the components of NFT creative universes such as CCo licensing, fidelity and metadata, and directing expansion.

New podcasts and shows

• FTX Podcast: In this episode, Tristan Yver talks to the Parallel team, a Sci-Fi Trading Card Game that uses NFTs to give players ownership of their cards and other game assets. The episode covers Parallel's genesis and lore, its game design, mechanics, and play-to-earn economies;
• Proof Podcast: In this episode, Tyler Hobbs, one of the most famous Art Blocks artists, walks Ryan Carson through his creative process for the photorealistic generative image of "Wall" in Grails by Proof Collective;
• The Delphi Podcast: In this episode, Renz Chong, CEO of BreederDAO, an NFT asset factory for blockchain games explains BreederDAO's business model, $BREED tokenomics, and critiques of the guild model and guilds.

Save the date

• 20th - 23rd June: NFT NYC is the leading annual NFT event, don't miss it!

NFT space in numbers

The values below are from 18th-25th March 2022. Source: DappRadar.

Top Marketplaces

Top Sales

Top Collections

*Most of the sales in the collection occurred on the LooksRare marketplace and may be the subject of wash trading.