Zima Red - Metaverse, NFTs, Web3, AR, VR, AI

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⬇️ Is the bottom in?

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⬇️ Is the bottom in?

Welcome to goblintown

Trevor Grant
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Andrew Steinwold
Jun 7, 2022
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⬇️ Is the bottom in?

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Zima Red gives readers the weekly pulse on the biggest news around NFTs. Join our community and take the journey with us by subscribing here:


📰 Top story

Former OpenSea employee gets indicted for insider trading

Nate Chastain has been arrested and charged with wire fraud and money laundering. The charges carry with them a max penalty of 20 years in prison. This means he can get 40 years for front-running Jpegs.

What happened:

Nate was an early employee at OpenSea and the company’s head of product. His position gave him some insider knowledge regarding which NFT collections would be featured on the front page of their website.

He would buy a few NFTs from those collections and then flip them once after the price went up. This process allowed him to routinely bank a 2-5x profit per flip.

Nate secretly did this for a couple of months using random OpenSea and wallets. His efforts weren’t enough as all it took was one blockchain sleuth smart (or bored) enough to track his wallet activity…

Twitter avatar for @0xZuwu
0xZuwu.eth 🧪 @0xZuwu
Hey @opensea why does it appear @natechastain has a few secret wallets that appears to buy your front page drops before they are listed, then sells them shortly after the front-page-hype spike for profits, and then tumbles them back to his main wallet with his punk on it?
11:28 PM ∙ Sep 14, 2021
12,267Likes2,751Retweets

After getting busted, Nate admitted to his wrongdoing and lost his OpenSea shares.

The case seems pretty singular to Nate’s - not the kickoff of a wide regulatory crackdown on NFTs that many initially thought.

Twitter avatar for @SHL0MS
𒐪 @SHL0MS
@thenftattorney maybe i'm naive but seems like 99% of people employed in crypto aren't trading on information they're directly responsible for determining
Image
6:24 PM ∙ Jun 1, 2022
25Likes2Retweets

📉 Andrew’s Market update

This is a new section of Zima Red where we synthesize and share Andrew’s thoughts on the NFT and crypto markets. You can follow these thoughts and musings live on Twitter.

Is the bottom in?

Macro/crypto market billionaire thought leadooooor Arthur Hayes says that the crypto market prices have bottomed out. But have they?


Well, two things are true:

  1. The market is 100% controlled by the Fed's actions

  2. The Fed is doing two of the most bearish things it can do which are:

    • raising rates

    • continuing with quantitative tightening

With that being said, NFTs are holding up surprisingly well. While they are obviously being devalued in USD terms, many have held steady or even increased in base crypto terms (ETH, SOL, etc.) This is a great time to be loading up on crypto that you are bullish on long-term.


🔮 PfP’s and Collectibles

Goblintown mewns

After the Terra collapse, Crypto Twitter formally announced that we have all collectively entered into “Goblin Town” (we’re not sure who exactly coined the term but we’re going to give credit to Sassal bc that’s the first place we heard it.)

The markets going to goblintown essentially means that they are going to be down 80%+ akin to past bear markets - hence going straight to goblintown.

Twitter avatar for @AndrewSteinwold
Andrew Steinwold @AndrewSteinwold
On the bright side, I learned a new term: "Goblintown"
10:52 PM ∙ May 9, 2022

Out of the goblintown meme, goblintown.wtf began minting. It had no road map and an anonymous team. All anyone knew was that it was CC0 and free to mint 1 + gas.

Due to the project’s timing, execution, and solid smart contracts, many speculated that it was being led by NFT veterans. Rumors began to circulate about its founders as being anyone from Beeple to Yuga Labs.

The meme stuck and Goblin Town has already done an incredible 30K+ ETH in volume.


🕹 Gaming

Method gaming guild

Method, one of the world’s most renowned World of Warcraft guilds has entered the world of NFT gaming.

Twitter avatar for @MethodMetaGuild
Method MetaGuild (MMG) @MethodMetaGuild
Introducing Method MetaGuild! We aim to be the biggest blockchain gaming guild dedicated to content creation and esports 🔥 With @Everyrealm, we’re merging the world of esports and metaverse gaming Find out more about our Guild in👇 #MMG #Gaming medium.com/@social_11069/…
medium.comLegacy Esports Team Method Joins Forces with Metaverse Investment Team Everyrealm to Launch Method…Method, one of the longest-running and most established esports organizations, and Everyrealm, a leader in metaverse innovation and…
4:00 PM ∙ Jun 1, 2022
120Likes35Retweets

Dr.Disrespect’s gaming studio is collaborating with Polygon

Dr.Disrespect’s Midnight Society game studio is collaborating with Polygon to develop a trading platform for in-game items.

  • Midnight Society launched an NFT Founders Access Pass & received over 400k signups in 7 days

  • All applicants received a survey asking if they believed that in-game items should be directly owned by gamers - 97.5% said yes.

Gala games strike a partnership with Epic Games

Blockchain gaming platform Gala Games has reached a deal with Epic Games to publish Gala’s titles on the Epic Games store. This partnership will expose the 194M+ Epic Games store users to Gala games and web3 gaming. Gala’s battle-royale title, GRIT, will become the first to hit the Epic Games store.

Andrew on Realvision

Andrew came on Realvision to chat about:

  • Introduction to crypto back in 2013

  • First blockchain start-up in the Middle East

  • Another startup tracking property taxes using blockchain (fill in blanks here)

  • Lessons learned from the Polynexus Capital crypto fund

  • The expansion of niches within Crypto

  • Entry into NFTs back in 2017

  • NFT gaming

& why NFTs will become the world’s largest market…

Twitter avatar for @RealVision
Real Vision @RealVision
Gamers seem to hate #NFTs, but is that really a bad thing? Listen to what @AndrewSteinwold says here 👇
8:53 PM ∙ May 31, 2022
23Likes5Retweets

🎶 Music

Kanye enters web3

Later has come.

Kanye has filed for 17 new trademarks around his YEEZUS brand including NFTs and blockchain currencies in addition to amusement parks, toys, & campaign buttons.


🌐 Virtual Worlds

What makes digital real estate valuable?

Scott Kominers from the a16z Crypto team wrote a great piece on how to evaluate digital real estate. You can read the full thing here.

Takeaways:

Digital real estate has conceptually been around for decades - We just call it “ad space” right now.

Blockchain technology facilitates a huge shift in digital real estate ownership - The biggest land barons of digital real estate are currently the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Blockchain technology brings ownership to the people.

Valuable metaverse land will be worth MUCH more than valuable physical land - metaverse land will get way more “foot traffic” than the world’s busiest IRL streets.

The metaverse won’t be winner take all - Different metaverses will be used for different things.


⬇️ More great stuff

Zora API

Twitter avatar for @ourZORA
ZORA @ourZORA
ZORA API is here. The Most Powerful NFT API. Retrieve NFT data for any ERC-721 token: ↳metadata ↳sales ↳mints ↳search ↳transfers and so much more. Start building: api.zora.co
6:49 PM ∙ Jun 1, 2022
456Likes102Retweets

ENS’ has a record-breaking month

Twitter avatar for @ensdomains
ens.eth @ensdomains
May 2022 was a record month for ENS 🎉 - 365k new .eth registrations (total ~1.36m names) - $9.6m in protocol revenue (all goes to the DAO) - 3,900 ETH in fees (up 1,300 ETH from last month) - 57K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 439K) - 10,500 ETH of OpenSea vol
May 2022 was a record month for ENS 🎉

- 365k new .eth registrations (total ~1.36m names)
- $9.6m in protocol revenue (all goes to the DAO)
- 3,900 ETH in fees (up 1,300 ETH from last month)
- 57K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 439K)
- 10,500 ETH of OpenSea vol
3:19 PM ∙ Jun 1, 2022
637Likes210Retweets

NFT.NYC side events

Avalanche put together a great repository of NFT.NYC side events

Check it out


🎙 Zima Red Podcast

Mack is the founder of Big Head Club, an NFT production studio. Mack was also on the Axiom Zen team which was the company that created CryptoKitties and the company that eventually became Dapper Labs.

Our conversation has it all, we discuss:

  • How the ERC721 standard was created

  • The ideation and launch of CryptoKitties

  • The creation of Dapper Labs

  • His NFT production studio Big Head Club

  • How the Oni Ronin NFTs are pushing the boundaries

  • The issues with the NFT space

  • Why he is not a huge fan of Play-to-Earn

  • And so much more

An awesome conversation with someone who is not afraid to speak their mind!


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⬇️ Is the bottom in?

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