NFT Innovation Digest #29

Cover Art: The Legend of ELVIN QI by Lawrence Lee

Most innovative (author's pick)

Paradigm researcher Anish Agnihotri created GateRepo, a tool to token-gate private GitHub repositories. GateRepo enables the user to select an Ethereum ERC20 token to gate access to a private repository, as well as the number of required tokens needed in order to have access.

More:

• The same technology could be used to token-gate GitHub repositories with NFTs, providing an even more flexible solution.

Most discussed

The Pudgy Penguins NFT Collection has been sold to a group led by Luca Netz in a 750 ETH deal. The group bought control of the project, along with the royalties from the original co-founders of the project.

More:

• The sale happened a few months after the project voted out the preeminent controversial founder Cole Villemain, "ColeThereum".

TweetDAO is a new DAO that is selling NFTs which entitle their holders to tweet from the DAO's Twitter account once a day in a social and economic experiment. The DAO's Twitter account was created a week ago and has over 12k followers.

More:

• The result of the experiment is a chaotic mix of self-promotion, memes, and random tweets. The project's floor price quickly surpassed 1 ETH.

Mainstream adoption

ESPN has partnered with Autograph, the NFT company founded by Tom Brady, to mint its first NFT collection. The collection will feature great moments from Brady’s career. Brady will sign 50 tokens in the collection.

More:

• The partnership will launch a second collection to coincide with the 10th episode of the docuseries “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” on ESPN+.

The United Kingdom government has tasked the Royal Mint with developing NFTs. Governmental money manipulator Rishi Sunak and his team of Treasury enthusiasts announced a plan to stay at the cutting edge of crypto, with the first step being to release an NFT via the UK's Royal Mint.

More:

• The second step would be to enter the world of stablecoins to cement the UK's position as a hub for blockchain-based assets.

New products and ideas

Ledger launched the latest version of its hardware wallet Ledger Nano S Plus, with enhanced NFT support. The Ledger wallet will feature clear signing for NFT transactions to ensure the safety of NFT collectors when signing transactions.

More:

• “Billions of dollars in transactions happen via ‘blind signing,’ monthly and those are all vulnerable transactions. Fortunately, the Nano S Plus connected to Ledger Live allows users to see their transaction details when signing, ‘clear signing,’ and users should avoid signing transactions when they can’t see this information,” said Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger.

LooksRare launched its public API, with access to read-only data. With the API it's only possible to fetch data from the marketplace. The platform will be adding more endpoints with new features, such as the support for API keys to provide higher rate limits and write access.

More:

• The API is currently in beta, with limited data offerings. It supports both the Rinkeby testnet and the Ethereum mainnet.

OpenSea started to activate support for Solana-based NFTs. The feature is currently in beta and is currently supporting only 165 Solana collections. OpenSea stated that it's adding support to more collections every day.

More:

• As OpenSea data suggests, Solana NFT collections are being listed and denominated in SOL, the blockchain's native token;
• With the integration, OpenSea now supports 4 networks: Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, and Solana.

Recommended reading

• Gradual Dutch Auctions: This research paper by Paradigm introduces the Gradual Dutch Auction, a mechanism that enables efficient sales of assets with no liquid markets.

New podcasts and shows

• The Delphi Podcast: In this episode, Piers Kicks talks to Will Weinraub, the CEO of OnChain Studios, the team behind Cryptoys, a set of collectible and playable digital toys using NFTs. Will shares details about the story behind Cryptoys, its genesis collection launch, and much more;
• Zima Red Podcast: In this episode, Andrew interviews Eric Golden, who worked at Fidelity for 16 years and recently jumped full-time into Web3. Eric shares his experience of transitioning from TradFi to Web3;
• NFT NOW Podcast: In this episode, the NFT NOW team talks to the world's famous DJ and producer Steve Aoki. Aoki shares the vision and roadmap for his new NFT project A0K1VERSE and shares his views on how Web3 will revolutionize the music industry.

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 2nd - 8th April 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.