Web3 Round Up 2-12-24
A roundup of activity in NFT, Metaverse, Gaming and AI
Brand Web3 Activity
Disney NFTs Sell Out in Seconds
On February 7th Disney Pinnacle released a limited collection of digital pins on their O&O NFT marketplace that sold out in seconds
Disney’s platform is currently in early access and only available to those who signed up via a waiting list
The marketplace platform was built in collaboration with Dapper Labs and utilizes the Flow blockchain (minimizing gas fees and abstracting the crypto elements)
Disney has explored web3 in the past, usually via licensing their IP to projects such an FUNKO digital collectibles, among others
Article links:
https://x.com/DisneyPinnacle/status/1755276797200199921?s=20
Disney Invests $1.5B into Epic Games
Disney has made a whopping $1.5B investment into Fortnite’s parent company Epic Games
Epic Games has a wide portfolio of self published games, a popular game store that allows other publishers to sell their games, and of course the widely used Unreal Engine which is utilized by artists, game designers, architects, and a whole bevy of creatives
Disney and Epic have a history of collaboration with Disney owned IP such as Marvel, Tron, and Star Wars, popping up in the Fortnite universe over the last several years
This investment will see Disney receiving an equity stake in Epic Games and the two companies will collaborate on more games using the Disney IP as well as working on what’s being called “an entertainment universe” where players will be able to play, watch, shop, and engage with the Disney universe
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G-Shock and Doodles Put Out Limited Watch Collection
G-Shock is taking another swing at the web3 world after their last collection failed to mint out
They will be collaborating with the once dominant collection “Doodles” to release a limited edition collection of physical watches
The collection will be available to the public for two hours in Tokyo and then released online, but only to Doodle holders
The collection is expected to also have a brief window of purchase somewhere in the US but that has not been confirmed at this time
Neither have any sort of digital extension of the collaboration
Doodles have surged 62% on the news of this collaboration
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ENS Partners with GoDaddy to Merge ENS/DNS Domains
ENS is the company behind .ETH addresses
They have been a trailblazer in the space for many years and just announced a partnership with GoDaddy, the popular domain registry and website hosting company, to allow any web address to also be used as a crypto wallet
How it works is a domain (.com or .net) can now be tied to an ENS(.eth), allowing the domain to now interact with crypto apps, wallets, and more
GoDaddy has added this feature to their domain dashboard so all domains registered with GoDaddy can take advantage of this new feature and what’s even more exciting: it’s all free and there are no fees
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Mastercard, Moonpay and UEFA team of For NFT Enabled Activation
Mastercard is launching an NFT enabled trivia activation that has some great prizes for the soccer fans out there
Fans can claim a free NFT from the Mastercard enabled site “Pass to Priceless” 30 minutes before every UEFA game in the upcoming season
NFT holders will get to participate in a token gated trivia competition. The NFT pass will only be claimable by Mastercard holders
Players who participate and guess correctly will be awarded “Match Tickets” and the player with the most digital tickets on April 30th will be awarded real tickets for the champion’s league final at Wembley Stadium
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Native Web3
Web3 Social Protocol Farcaster Gains Adoption From Crypto Twitter
Farcaster is a web3 social protocol that has launched a Twitter clone app called Warpcast
Warpcast has a couple key differentiators:
The main function that has attracted the crypto community in swathes is called “Frames”
Frames allow a users to mint NFT’s, buy and sell currencies, read external posts, and answer surveys all without ever needing to leave the Warpcast platform
This seamless integration of diverse siloed experiences within the platform addresses a persistent challenge faced by traditional Web2 social media platforms.
On January 1st Farcaster had roughly 1,500 users however, after the first version of Frames released, that number has shot to 20,000 users
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Magic Eden Assembles ‘Creators’ to Support its Marketplace Launch
Magic Eden has been on a tear recently: adding a slew of new features, announcing a loyalty program, and an upcoming token drop
They have just unveiled their latest endeavor, 'The Creator’s Alliance'
While details at this point are scarce, it seems as if the major collections across Ethereum and Solana have pledged to support and use the upcoming royalty enforced marketplace currently being built in collaboration with Yuga Labs
If this collections will become exclusive to the new Magic Eden x Yuga marketplace remains unknown.
Currently announced collections are Degods, Pudgy Penguins, Doodles, RTFKT, Adidas, Animoca brands, Azuki, Chimpers, Veefriends and much more.
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Bored Ape Restaurant Expanding
NFT intellectual property was one of the many things that were speculated on during the infamous bull run
The premise was that as these collections grew in popularity, owners of these popular NFTs would be able to cash in on brand licensing deals or use the NFTs themselves to help launch businesses
While there have been a couple of cases of notable success in this realm, the vast majority of NFT IP ended up being useless
Bored and Hungry were one of these early successes; launching during the bull run, an owner of a Bored Ape opened a Bored Ape themed restaurant in Long Beach
Somehow it has managed to survive the bear market and is now expanding to Korea and the Philippines! The doors to the permanent restaurant in Seoul will open Feb 7th and the Philippines location is already open
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Solana Adds New Feature in Hopes of Attracting More Game Creators
On February 5th, Solana Labs released what it’s calling “The Gameshift Tool Suite”, with the intended purpose of making it easier for game developers to integrate functionality onto the Solana Blockchain
The most exciting feature seems to be an out-of-the-box custom NFT marketplace for in-game assets
These marketplaces include things such as royalty support and the ability to trade NFT’s for USDC
Developers can also shift already existing in-game items into NFT’s seamlessly.
Other features include credit card support, interoperability between marketplaces, dynamic NFTs, asset lending, and more
Article Links:
GMoney Takes Out Biggest NFT Enabled Loan
Popular Crypto influencer GMoney has borrowed approximately $1M leveraging iconic crypto punk PFP as collateral]
The loan runs for 6 months and GMoney will pay roughly $68k in interest if he wishes to secure his NFT
G Money credits the Rolling Stone article from 6 months ago that proclaimed NFTs were now worthless as the primary motivation for taking out such a large loan against a digital asset
G Money took out the loan for another reason: to shine a light on the crypto-specific capabilities of NFT lending protocols
For example, anyone who owns an NFT of value can use an NFT lending platform
You don’t need proof of identity, you don’t need a credit history, you don’t even need a bank account
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Binance Enables Bitcoin NFTs
Binance is launching an in-app marketplace that will allow users to partake in the Bitcoin NFT craze currently gripping the industry
The marketplace will also allow users to trade coins minted on the Bitcoin blockchain as well
While many celebrate the success of Bitcoin ordinals and the artists/ projects behind them there is an unfortunate consequence to the Bitcoin Blockchain being used in this way
Recently the price to send Bitcoin has shot up and even hit a 2-year high earlier this month
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AI News
Google Replaces Bard with Gemini
The latest competitor to ChatGPT is an upgraded Google Bard
Here’s Gemini is distinct from Bard, in it’s own words:
Essentially, Gemini is an upgrade to Bard. It's built upon the foundation of Bard and shares many of its features and capabilities. However, there are some key differences:
Underlying model: Gemini utilizes a more advanced model called Gemini Pro compared to Bard's original model. This allows for:
Improved reasoning and planning: Gemini can better understand context and draw connections between different pieces of information
Enhanced understanding: It's trained on a wider dataset of text, code, images, and audio, leading to a deeper understanding of the world and language
High-fidelity image synthesis: Gemini can generate more realistic and visually appealing images
Overall, Gemini represents an evolution of Bard with more advanced capabilities and broader integration into Google's ecosystem
AI is Being Used to Translate Ancient Scrolls
2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius erupted and crushed the town of Pompeii
Around 1800 papyrus scrolls survived and offer us a glimpse into what life may have been like in Pompeii
The only problem is that in the past as researchers have tried to unravel these scrolls they have crumbled to dust, or the writing simply vanished when exposed to the elements
Thanks to 21 year old SpaceX intern Luke Farritor and two colleagues, we now have a path to unlocking the information withheld in these brittle scrolls
By utilizing advanced CT scans of the rolled scrolls to reveal some of the writings, those scans were then fed to an AI that Luke designed to translate the writing
After a painstaking process they managed to translate around 5% of one scroll.
While 5% may not sound impressive, this breakthrough will set the groundwork for a much more rapid translation of the remaining scrolls
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Roblox Adds Major AI Feature to Their Platform
Roblox is one of the biggest games in the world, enjoying players from various countries… now, thanks to AI, they can and understand each other a bit better.
Roblox has rolled out a real time AI translation function that allows 16 languages to be translated between players in real time
It is now feasible to not even know if the player you are talking to is a native English speaker or not, funnily enough this would be something extremely useful in the real world!
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Metaverse / Gaming
Shrapnel Set to Launch Beta on the Epic Game Store
Shrapnel is an upcoming free-to-play first person shooter that utilizes blockchain technology, tokens, and NFT’s
While the final release will be free to play, if you would like to participate in early access that will cost you
Players can purchase an extradition pack that will allow them them take place in an upcoming Beta hosted on the Epic game store
While the game does incorporate those web3 elements, the cofounder has confirmed that if players would rather not interact with that side of the game they wont be forced too
In the future players will be able to customize maps and skins and mint and sell them in the games marketplace.
Article links:
https://www.techradar.com/gaming/pc-gaming/shrapnels-first-early-access-build-will-be-playable-this-week-via-the-epic-games-store
Mobile Game Offers Airdrop to Players
Heroes of Mavia may be one of the most widely played web3 games - and it was only released January 31!
The most likely reason may be that it’s almost impossible to see the web3 connection via the game and the game is available in all major mobile app stores
Upon release it quickly shot up the charts of multiple countries app stores and amassed over 1 million downloads in under 24 hours
For those who were aware of the web3 elements, if you were on of the first 100,000 users to sync your wallet via the games website and linked it to your account you were given 12 Mavia tokens which would roughly be $70 at time of writing
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Serum City is a F2P Game but Only for Apes
Serum City is a fun and uniquely web3 game that has recently been released
It is token gated but free for owners of either a Mutant Hounds, Bored Ape, Mutant Aps and Mutant Cartel Oath
In future seasons more collections will be included, but for now anyone who wishes to play who does not own one of those NFT’s must buy the game pass off of someone else
Serum City was not built in collaboration with Yuga Labs - rather it utilizes the decentralized commercial rights given to people who own Yuga assets
Furthermore, the entire game also runs on ape coin, the currency of Yuga’s ecosystem
While Serum City was not built with Yuga Labs, the developers are now working in partnership with Yuga for future releases
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Crypto
MetaMask Integrates with Robinhood
Popular web3 browser wallet MetaMask has integrated into the online trading platform Robinhood
The integration allows MetaMask users to purchase digital assets via RobinHood’s order book and RobinHood users can transfer their currently on platform crypto assets to MetaMask, allowing for much more flexibility and use of these assets
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Solana blockchain has another outage
The Solana Blockchain has exploded in popularity in recent years becoming the 5th biggest crypto currency by market cap currently
However, Solana has long been criticized for not truly being decentralized with the possibility of technical bugs being able to effectively shut off the blockchain
This has happened in the past and as recently as last week when Solana went down for over 5 hours
The reason why the blockchain suffered its outage is highly technical and the Solana Labs team worked diligently to ship a fix in a timely manner
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