NFTs In A Nutshell: A Weekly Review
It was a long week for NFTs. There was an abundant amount of chatter around potential hackers, Dapper Labs raised another round of capital, and a Bored Ape signed an agency deal.
As always, we’re taking a look back at the last seven days of activity around NFTs. Let’s dig in.
This Week’s Non-Fungible Token News
Snoop Dogg: A Mysterious Collector Of NFTs?
It was quite a week for the Snoop D-O-G-G. It all started with suspicion that Snoop was a increasingly well-known NFT Twitter personality, Cozomo de’ Medici. He has engaged with NFTs previously, so it is certainly within reason. Cozomo’s OpenSea account is reported to have an account value north of $17M.
By the end of the week, Snoop had partnered with ‘The Sandbox,’ an Ethereum-based metaverse platform. The announcement came with the news of Snoop’s latest NFT collection, a “private party pass” that includes VIP access to events, NFTs, and player avatars. It’s a new generation of fan engagement.
Dapper Labs Latest
Dapper Labs, creators of Top Shot, CryptoKitties, and the broader FLOW blockchain, have raised another $250M this week. The funding round was led by Coatue, with new investors in the round including BOND and GIC. The funding values the firm at over $7.5B.
Meanwhile, the formal press release around Dapper’s partnership with soccer league LaLiga hit the streets as well. We first covered Dapper’s partnership with LaLiga a month ago when reports first emerged.
TIME Magazine NFTs
TIME Magazine was the latest traditional media publication to dig in deeper with NFTs this week with their newest NFT project, ‘TIMEPiece.’ The project received substantial scrutiny, as just under 5K NFTs came and went within sixty seconds, leaving many in the broader NFT community believing that bots were at play.
Gas prices reached insane highs, hitting around 9,000 gwei at one point. The end result was roughly 700 holders in total of the released pieces.
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Bored Ape Jenkins New Deal
Alright, so NFTs signing Hollywood deals isn’t anything completely out of left field at this point. Let’s add another to the list.
Bored Ape NFT ‘Jenkins The Valet’ signed a deal with powerhouse talent agency CAA this past week. In August, Jenkins released “The Writers Room,” an NFT series that leads holders down a “choose your own adventure” storyline.
The news comes less than 30 days after CryptoPunks creators Larva Labs signed a deal with competing agency UTA.
Ethereum has been the main driver for NFTs to date, however as TIME's latest release showed, high-volume demand can lead to sky-high gas prices, which is less than desirable for casual consumers. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com
NFTs Experiencing Hackers, Or More To The Story?
There was an uptick of chatter this week around prominent NFT players about potential hacking behavior on OpenSea accounts. One OpenSea and MetaMask user claimed that a hefty-sized account of NFTs was hacked, including a piece from Damien Hirst, an ArtBlocks piece, and more.
The news spread to a degree that others had suggested that airdropped NFTs were the potential root of the behavior. However, others have noted that this is simply not possible, and that the initial users reports were simply a result of user incompetence.
The Latest Charitable NFT Project, Helping Afghan Women Access Education
It seems like each week we hear about a new project with a charitable focus that is at it’s core. This past week, our sister network NewsBTC covered the latest NFTs that are donating 100% of income to education access for women in Afghanistan.
About a month ago, we also covered an NFT project that delivered humanitarian aid in Afghanistan with each sale. Big respect to those creating NFTs with great intentions.
Sorare Joins The Fundraising Party
Dapper Labs isn’t the only fundraising NFT firm over this past week. French startup Sorare raised $680M in it’s Series B round – a number that puts the company’s valuation around $4.3B.
Sorare has been building a fantasy soccer platform with roughly 180 club partners to date. The platform also recently secured a deal with the aforementioned LaLiga, leaving some potential questions around where NFT rights will be drawn between Dapper Labs and Sorare.
Twitter’s Authenticating NFTs?
Could the next ‘blue check’ be a legit-check on user NFTs? If you pay attention to crypto, you probably heard about Twitter’s integration of Bitcoin and Lightning Network in the platform’s latest Tips update.
Why stop there? With this move came quite a bit of buzz that NFT authentication was potentially in the cards for Twitter. Yes, that means that the constant “saving your NFT on my hard drive” jokes might be at risk.
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OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Taylor Scott, @Khareem Sudlow