The current litigation between Yuga Laboratories Inc. and Ripps et al. has brought attention to the intellectual property and trademark rights that are associated with the NFT industry. In a separate case involving Yuga Laboratories and securities fraud, Fallon is a co-defendant with Paris Hilton. During his program, Fallon disclosed that he had purchased a non-fungible token (NFT) issued by the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Notwithstanding this, Fallon’s legal team asserts that their client is not a party to the lawsuit involving Yuga Laboratories and Ripps and has nothing to do with the aforementioned case.
Collectors now have a new option to acquire rare pictures in NFT format as a result of a cooperation between Getty Images and Candy Digital. Beginning on March 21, customers will be able to make purchases of the NFTs on Candy Digital’s website. Prices for the NFTs will range anywhere from $25 to $200. The United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Japan are just some of the locations where consumers will be able to purchase the new release.
With the purpose of providing real-time insights into the digital asset ecosystem, Forkast Labs has introduced a number of NFT indexes, one of which is the Forkast 500 NFT index, which evaluates the performance of digital assets on 21 different blockchains. These indexes attempt to give a more complete measure of the health of the NFT economy, which is difficult to determine using standard market rankings based on prices, sales, and transaction volumes. These indices aim to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the health of the NFT economy.
The trade volume on the NFT market surpassed $2.04 billion in February, representing a 117% increase from January’s figure of $941 million, indicating that the sector is expanding. Its expansion is attributable to Blur, a developing market that just overtook OpenSea in trade volume. This month alone, Blur eclipsed OpenSea. Even while there are indications that a positive trend is developing in the market, the NFT area is still in the process of evolving, with new possibilities and legal conflicts forming.
Major League Baseball (MLB), an American professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world is looking for an expert in Metaverse and Web3.0-related innovations as it looks to expand its current presence in the emerging ecosystem.
According to the details shared on LinkedIn, the MLB job title is “Licensing Manager- Digital Games, NFT, Metaverse.” The hired professional will be undertaking many tasks including the development and execution of partnership strategy in expanding digital portfolio areas including, NFT, Metaverse, wearable technology, and AR/VR strategy.
While this job description already suggests the league association is ready to go all out in the Web3.0 space, the profession will also be tasked with identifying partnerships with marketplaces, tools, and platforms to create best-in-class product experience for baseball fans to access and engage with the league’s expanding digital collections.
While the entire clamor for the metaverse is just building momentum, MLB’s involvement in the space has been quite emphatic. Besides inking a partnership with Candy Digital back in January, a linkup that opened it up to start selling NFTs at the time, MLB is also the official baseball partner of Sorare.
As reported by Blockchain.news in May, the Sorare partnership positions the MLB to help create teams with NFTs representing Major League Gaming players. The created team can then be used to enter tournaments through which the players’ real-life performance is automatically reflected in the game.
Like many Web2.0 organizations, the hiring move from the MLB is considered a bold step and a worthy investment that can generally help in advancing the course of Web3.0. While the role has already seen as many as 108 applicants according to the LinkedIn update, the MLB has not come out to announce it has filled the role as of the time of writing.
The Fame Lady Squad (FLS), a nonfungible token (NFT) avatar project purporting to have been created by an all-female team, is set to re-launch today with a new team after it was uncovered that three Russian men were behind the project earlier this month.
SO EXCITING!! pic.twitter.com/V1LKgIU34c
— Cadboros (@cadboros) August 23, 2021
The project’s NFTs depict cartoon female avatars, with the tokens having generated $1.9 million worth of total sales since launching on OpenSea Marketplace in mid-July.
The FLS website previously listed three team members named Cindy, Kelda and Andrea who all had female avatars.
On Aug. 10, Fedor Linnik, the co-creator of NFT project Neural Pepe, tweeted that he had collected “enough proof” to connect three men to the project on Aug. 10, specifically outing the pseudonymous developer “D Mefi” as one of FLS’ creators.
I’m the person who started all the fuss @FameLadySquad and @queenship_ project. I have enough proof to state that FLS was created by 3 males who are also behind a whole bunch of abandoned NFT projects.
And their “signature” convinces me Queenship is also their product. Thread/
— Fedor Linnik (@FedorLinnik) August 10, 2021
Following the accusations, Russian developer Max Rand also confessed to working on the project via Twitter on the same day. The FLS Twitter account also confirmed the news but failed to name the third member of the team.
After facing public backlash, the FLS founders reportedly conducted a poll on Twitter asking the community if they should hand over the project’s smart contract to a new owner — to which more than three-quarters of respondents voted in favor.
FLS stated they have handed the smart contract over to the well-known NFT proponent, “digitalartchick.” Digitalartchick has since passed the project onto a team of women including NFT collector Ashley Smith and NFT advisor Daniel Davis.
Yeah, let’s all please have a *HUGE* round of applause for @digitalartchick. There would be no #ladyrelaunch without her fierce ways. Thanks girl. pic.twitter.com/QofiHmpnnZ
— Fame Lady Squad (@fame_ladies) August 24, 2021
The FLS website is offline at the time of writing.
MLB to hit NFTs out of the park?
As part of its partnership with NFT sports collectible platform Candy Digital, Major League Baseball is issuing NFTs dedicated to 30 MLB stadiums.
The latest drop went live on Aug. 23 and depicts a digital illustration of the PNC Stadium which is home to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The collection includes an open edition up for sale until Aug 28, and a one-of-one up for auction that is set to close on the same day.
MLB’s PNC Park NFTs: Candy Digital
The one-of-one currently has a top bid of $3,050 and the highest bidder will receive two tickets to an MLB game at the stadium, a player meet and greet, the first pitch at a game, a framed print, and a stadium.
The MLB partnered with Galaxy Digital-backed Candy Digital in June, and this is the third drop of the MLB stadium series so far. The duo has also launched collections dedicated to baseball legend Lou Gehrig, and 2020 world champions the LA Dodgers.
Related: Altcoin Roundup: Here’s a few things to consider when buying NFTs
Kobe Bryant NFTs
An NFT auction dedicated to the late NBA legend Kobe Bryant is set to go live on the marketplace Cryptograph tomorrow.
The collection spans eight one-of-one NFTs depicting pictures of Bryant captured by Hollywood photographer Davis Factor in the 1990s. According to Cryptograph, all the revenues from the sales will go towards TheMamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation.
The foundation is a non-profit that is dedicated to helping “underserved athletes and young women in sports.” The organization was founded in honor of Byrant and his daughter Gigi after they passed away in January last year.
Kobe Bryant x Davis Factor NFT: Cryptograph
AI-generated avatars fetch big prices
The developers behind EtherRocks — tokenized pet rocks that have fetched as much as $610,000 each amid the recent NFT bubble — have launched a new nonfungible avatar project featuring synthetic human faces that have been generated using artificial intelligence.
Nftsprites comprises a series of 100 unique synthetic faces, with holders seeking prices of between 16.5 Ether ($55,100) and 100 Ether ($334,000) for secondary sales. The NFT feature uncanny animations in which the synthetic faces move and appear to mouth speech.
Twitter user “Larry0x,” a smart contract developer at Delphi Digital, dismissively described the Nftsprites as “the lowest-effort NFT project” he has encountered, asserting that the synthetic faces were freely taken from another website.
if true, then this is the lowest-effort NFT project I’ve seen. you literally just go to https://t.co/exiJbXvL6H and right click-save. a new NFT!
— THE_LARRY (@larry0x) August 24, 2021
Roundup
Cointelegraph reported on Aug. 20 that in response to the current crisis in Afghanistan, consulting firm Visualize Value launched a series of NFT “care packages”, which are aimed at being sold at the estimated cost of covering a single family’s emergency needs for a month.
Credit card giant Visa also made headlines this week after it purchased a CryptoPunk for $150,000.
