#️⃣1️⃣ Does being first still matter?
#️⃣1️⃣ Does being first still matter?
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:
🎙Zima Red Podcast
Dilip Das - High-Frequency Trader Turned Web3 Builder - Zima Red ep 114
Dilips insane background playing poker, being a high-frequency trader, working with Jed McCaleb at Stellar (For those who don’t know, Jed is the founder of Mt Gox and Ripple)
Market structure and how to generate an edge
Algorithmic NFT trading
How web3 games will have to battle against advanced bots
How NFTs are the “real estate” of the metaverse
The potential for NFT lending markets For all those that want to learn about market structure, alpha, HFT and more
Greg Isenberg - Late Checkout: The Berkshire Hathaway Of Community-Based Products - Zima Red ep 115
Greg Isenberg is the founder of Late Checkout which is a product studio, design agency, and fund
Greg’s background in founding and selling multiple companies
Why community-based businesses are the best
Why people connect with IP, brands, and characters
How to build a great product
Why design is ultra important in web3
How Late Checkout is the Berkshire Hathaway of community-based products
Winston Robson - WeMeta: Virtual Worlds Analytics Platform - Zima Red ep 116
WeMeta is a virtual land marketplace that has a deep focus on data and analytics.
How data science can be used for NFT alpha
How virtual worlds will survive and thrive on engagement
How discoverability drives value
How NFTs are access points that enable open-ended functionality
How early we are and what potential these platforms have
📈 Market
The NFT market is coming back(?)
After reaching a local top in January, the NFT market volume declined through February and early - March. It appears that the market may now be beginning to course correct.
While the trading volume is down from January, the number of trades and unique traders is increasing, pointing to a maturing market.
“All in all, the market is consolidating and is primed for an excellent year”
- Pedro Hererra, senior data analyst at DappRadar via Decrypt
Q1 NFT market stats:
$12.13 billion in trading volume
27.7 million total NFTs were traded across all platforms
📰 Mainstream
Bored Ape themed restaurant
The Los Angeles-based restaurateur, Andy Nguyen, has leveraged the IP of his Bored Ape NFT and two Mutant Ape NFTs to launch a Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed restaurant in Long Beach, California called Bored and Hungry.
The restaurant is a Smashburger-themed pop-up featuring Bored Ape branding throughout its interior and cups, wrappers, etc. Bored and Hungry gives exclusive perks to BAYC & MAYC holders like free food and merch. The pop-up is also accepting both ETH and ApeCoin as payment in addition to credit/debit.
Mt.Gox NFTs
The founders of what most consider to be the OG bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox, are airdropping NFTs to its former users. The exchange’s users were famously collectively robbed of 25,000 BTC ($400,000 then… ~$8 billion now…).
To be eligible for the airdrop you need to go through a verification process to prove you were an Mt.Gox user from 2010 to 2014.
An exhaustive list of notable brands that have launched NFTs
Most brands are merely experimenting with NFTs and are yet to fully incorporate them into their business models. Although true, this list shows that these experiments have been plentiful.
Remember the McDonald’s McRib NFT or the Dave and Busters Coin?
👤 Social
The first omnichain NFT launches
The Gh0stlyGh0sts collection included a total of 7,710 NFTs that were free to mint on all Layer Zero compatible blockchains including Ethereum, Binance, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, Fantom, and Optimism.
Layer zero
A Canada-based company, LayerZero Labs, developed an omnichain interoperability protocol called LayerZero. LayerZero’s goal is to allow dApps and NFTs to operate across multiple blockchains
Gh0stlyGh0sts
An NFT from this collection can be fully moved across different chains, the first to be able to do this.
The project is Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
The NFT’s background reflects the chain it was originally minted on
Its border changes to its current chain
1 more thing
Collectors usually go crazy for NFTs labeled as the first in a particular category. However, Gh0stlyGh0sts appear to be off to a slow start for whatever reason. This begs the question of if the narrative around being first is actually overplayed now.
Check out this dashboard for stats on the collection.
🎮 Gaming
Sorare and Major League Soccer (MLS) strike a partnership
The deal will open up NFTs of MLS players to Sorare’s 1.5M registered managers.
The collection will launch this spring
Sorare believes that MLS fans represent America’s youngest and most tech-savvy demographic
Axie Infinity: Origin
Despite suffering one of the largest hacks in the history of crypto, over $600M, the Axie team still released Axie Infinity: Origin on April 7th.
The game is free-to-play and mint to be more accessible
The original Axie Infinity game has more than 1.5M DAUs but requires significant startup costs that price out many new players.
P2EAnalytics launches with a Crabada marketplace tool
Crabada is the largest P2E game on the Avalanche network, accounting for ~16% of the chain’s gas fees as of March 2022.
Gaming/metaverse recap thread of threads
🌎 Virtual Worlds
Decentral Games suffers exploit + continues its mobile rollout
The hack allowed unverified addresses to be added to the daily ICE drop.
The exploiter was able to take advantage of the illegitimate ICE airdrop for 14+ days
The exploit is now patched.
The Decentral team is also onboarding community volunteers to test its mobile rollout of ICE Poker.
ICE Poker represents ~30% of Decentraland’s daily activity
🎨 Art
The Bitcoin 2022 Miami Renaissance Art Gallery
🎶 Music
Lyrical Lemonade makes web3 debut
The leading Hip-Hop curator, Lyrical Lemonade, made its web3 debut with a genesis collection of 500 utility NFTs granting:
Whitelist spots for every future L3MON release
Access to Lyrical Lemonade’s annual Summer Smash music festival for 3 years
Access to exclusive Lyrical Lemonade merchandise drops
Private Discord access
💸 Funding
Sky Mavis ($150M) - Funds to reimburse those affected by the Ronin validator hack. Led by Binance with participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm.
GOALS ($15M) - A blockchain-based version of FIFA. The round included participation from Northzone, Cherry Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, Gerard Pique, and Nicolas Julia.
Polemos ($14M) - A global ‘Play-to-Earn’ Guild. Includes participation from Delphi Digital, QCP Capital, Framework Ventures, GoldenTree Asset Management, IOSG Ventures, and LD Capital.
Dank Bank ($4.2M) - A NFT trading platform for memes and viral videos. Participation from Mechanism Capital, SamsungNext, Balaji Srinivasan, Morningstar Ventures, Starry Night Capital, Kyros Ventures, and Cryptopathic.
OnePlanet ($3.35M) - Helping to build NFTs on Terra. Participation from SkyVision Capital, SNOW, Pala, Hashed, Animoca Brands, Galaxy Interactive, Edimus, GT Capital, HYPESALT, and Verse2.
📚 What we’re reading
FWB - In the Future of Fashion, Everyone gets paid
Fast Company - How Epic Games is changing gaming—and maybe the metaverse
Harvard Business Review - How DAOs Could Change the Way We Work
Miles Jennings/a16z - Decentralization for Web3 Builders: Principles, Models, How
🐦 Tweet check
👀 Alpha
Cryptohunt - Every crypto project ranked, explained, and reviewed. Still in private beta.
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