Brand Activity
McDonalds Lunar New Year Activation
Interactive commercial that leverages AR to showcase 3D art in your living room in celebration of the Lunar New Year
Rolling Loud Music Festival fails to sell out their first NFT collection
LoudPunx NFTs provide global VIP entry into every Rolling Loud Music Festival
Rolling Loud Festival attempted to sell 10,000 NFT’s at a price of 1 ETH but only sold 2,435
Using an NFT for admission just twice would come close to recouping the mint price.
Article Link: https://nftnow.com/features/exclusive-how-rolling-loud-plans-to-bridge-hip-hop-and-web3/
Hermes wins lawsuit against copycat NFT Metabirkins
Mason Rothschild, a California-based digital artist that created and sold the "MetaBirkin”, a collection of 100 NFT’s depicting faux-fur iterations of the iconic Birkin bag. Physical Birkin bags can easily retail for six figures.
This marks the first NFT trademark trial and could set the stage for future lawsuits
Article Link: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c043ba9c-9541-4727-b398-5d3a9ca30cb9
Reddit X Super Bowl Give Away Themed Traits
Reddit teamed up with the Super Bowl and allowed users to pick a competing team’s traits to customize their reddit avatar
Traits are modular and can be combined with other collections, as well as equipped at any time with no gas fees
Over 1 million Super Bowl X Reddit NFTs have been claimed
Article Link: https://decrypt.co/121087/reddit-million-free-super-bowl-nfts-polygon
Lamborghini preps NFT drop
Lamborghini is partnering with VEVE to drop its first digital collectible
Not much more detail is known at this point
Article Link: https://nftevening.com/veve-x-lamborghini-partner-to-drop-automobile-nft-collectibles/?utm_source=os
Amazon Entering Web3 via Gaming
Amazon plans to launch a web3 gaming initiative this Spring
This would be another massive onboarding event
Louis Vuitton NFT Collab
NFTs
Bored Ape Yacht Club’s ‘Dookie Dash’ Gaming is Over
The Temple Run style game put out by Yuga Labs has officially closed
With a reward for best score this activation saw some strong cross pollination between prominent gamers and streamers and the Web3 native audience
In fact, a Fortnite pro logged the top score
Dookie Dash was a financial success for Yuga with the free mint earning over 2 million USD in secondary creator fees
However this is not the end- Yuga has revealed that this is the first step in a process that will take months all building up to the mint of their new “Mech” collection
No one knows the exact nature of future activations though the bar has been set high
Check’s Dynamic NFT Art Project Grabs Web3 Attention
Checks was a free mint in January that explored themes of authenticity and verifiability on the internet
The art’s metadata was updated many times creating an experience for holders (rather than a static piece of art)
Article Link: https://nftnow.com/features/jack-butchers-checks-are-burning-whats-next/
Check’s Website & Overview: https://checks.art/intro
Bitcoin NFTS
A new process on the Bitcoin blockchain effectively allows for Bitcoin NFTs to exist
It’s TBD whether this hype will have legs or is more of a fad
Bitcoin NFTs are inherently less functional than Ethereum smart contract based NFTs and confined to static art as of now
Blur Airdrop ‘Stimulus’ Rewards NFT Traders for Activity
NFT Marketplace Blur incentivized users to buy and sell NFTs on their platform with an airdrop of their new cryptocurrency $blur
The airdrop went live this week providing ‘free money’ to many NFT traders
Many traders immediately sold their drop while the price remained high
Article Link: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/02/15/nft-marketplace-blurs-token-reaches-500m-trading-volume-after-airdrop/
AI News
Google $100B in market cap after it’s Bard presentation (ChatGPT competitor) falls flat
After Microsoft Bing’s integration with ChatGPT, Google is rushing to launch a competing product
Article Link: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/1155650909/google-chatbot--error-bard-shares
While AI will disrupt industries and replace jobs, it may create a new one: The Authenticity Industry
Great thread musing on this subject below
Metaverse and Gaming
Zero10 Launching an AI-enabled feature for users to create their own AR Fashion
After launching its AR Fashion Platform in November, Zero10 is launching Custom Shop, an AI-enabled feature that helps users create AR fashion
Article Link: https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/zero10-wants-to-crack-open-3d-and-ar-fashion-design-for-the-masses
Ready Player Me Launches Generative AI Avatar Creator
Users can tap DALL-E’s generative AI art platform to use text prompts to create their own avatar outfits
Article Link: https://venturebeat.com/games/ready-player-me-launches-trial-of-generative-ai-avatar-creator/
Crypto
Crypto ads are ‘banned’ from the Super Bowl
Jack’s hot take: No crypto companies were buying so why not get a PR win by banning them?
An NFT company ‘Digidaiku’ did have an ad with a QR code that led to their NFT collection (and saw massive sales as a result)
Article Links:
Moonpay and Looksrare announce partnership
Similar to their partnership with OpenSea, Moonpay is introducing an NFT checkout integration with Looksrare that allows anyone to buy NFTs with a credit card.
Article Link: https://news.bitcoin.com/moonpay-and-looksrare-partner-to-bring-convenient-nft-purchasing-to-the-masses/
SEC comes for ‘staking’ and fines Kraken $30M
After the FTX fallout, the SEC is taking aggressive action against cryptocurrencies and is regulating ‘Staking as a Service’ in the US which many exchanges offer
Article Link: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/02/09/us-securities-and-exchange-commission-sues-kraken-over-crypto-staking-services/