Huobi Global, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, has announced a strategic partnership with Gala Games, a blockchain-based play-to-earn gaming platform. The partnership was announced on March 31 in an official blog post by Huobi, which stated that the two companies would work together to develop the Web3 ecosystem.
The collaboration between Huobi and Gala Games will involve investment in and listing of projects within the Gala ecosystem. Gala Games enables developers to create play-to-earn crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) games that allow players to buy and sell in-game items. These in-game items are owned by the players and cannot be modified or deleted by developers without their consent.
The partnership between Huobi and Gala Games is expected to enhance Huobi’s Web3 objectives by allowing it to integrate with Gala’s layer-1 blockchain. This integration will help to improve the underlying on-chain technology, as stated by Jason Brink, the President of Blockchain at Gala Games. He emphasized that integrating its layer-1 blockchain with major exchanges like Huobi is crucial for achieving the desired level of mass adoption.
Huobi has also announced its plans to expand its services in other regions by launching a Visa-backed crypto-to-fiat debit card. This card will be available to Huobi customers residing in the European Economic Area, and is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2023.
The collaboration between Huobi and Gala Games has been well-received by the cryptocurrency community, with many expressing their support for the advantages of the layer-1 blockchain. This partnership is expected to create new opportunities for both companies, as they work together to develop the Web3 ecosystem.
In addition to the partnership with Gala Games, Huobi Global is also pursuing a license in Hong Kong to cater to retail clients. This move comes in light of new regulatory measures being considered by the Chinese special administrative region. With its ongoing efforts to expand its services globally, Huobi is well-positioned to become a major player in the cryptocurrency industry.
Cat themed play-to-earn (P2E) NFT game Nyan Heroes is aiming to save 1 billion cats from euthanization in animal shelters across the U.S.
Nyan Heroes is an upcoming NFT battle royal shooter style game built on the Solana blockchain that will enable players to compete with each other using NFTs depicting animated cats that are used to pilot mech-robot NFTs in the game.
The U.S. based project has been in development since October and the game is set for release in Q4 2022. Its first NFT drop is currently available for hodling and trading on marketplaces such as Fractal.
According to data from Solana Art, Nyan Heroes is the fourth-highest NFT project on Solana in terms of seven day volume and market cap, at $279,000 and $18.2 million, respectively.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Nyan Heroes co-founder and Australian Wendy Huang outlined the firm’s charitable vision moving forward, along with providing a rundown of the upcoming game.
Huang has been involved with crypto since 2016 and has also built a successful career as a content creator ranging from vlogs to DIY videos, pranks and music and has amassed almost 14 million subscribers on YouTube.
Save the cats
Huang stated that her, and fellow co-founder Max Fu’s, love for cats was a key driver behind tying animal-focused charity work to Nyan Heroes. She said they have an ambitious goal of “saving 1 billion cats” from euthanization in animal shelters via charitable donations generated from portions of the project’s NFT sales.
Nyan Heroes revealed their first efforts in this area on Dec. 24, when it announced a $250,000 donation from the proceeds of its first NFT drop to the non-profit Best Friends Society. ‘That was one of the proudest moments I’ve had in this project,” she said.
Crypto saves lives!
Thank you @nyanheroes for your amazing donation of @ethereum for the animals! Their fundraiser raised $250,000 to help cats just like Pumpkin ^ac pic.twitter.com/MTCKEYUTtp
— Best Friends (@bestfriends) January 3, 2022
Best Friends Society provides a “no-kill” sanctuary for orphaned animals and also prevents cat and dog deaths in shelters across the U.S. through its charity work. The group estimates that its “no kill” movement has helped reduce the number of cat and dog deaths in animal shelters from 17 million yearly to around 347,000.
Huang revealed that the game project will be launching a DAO that will give its members voting rights on where Nyan Heroes donations will be allocated in the future.
“We’ll be creating a young hero DAO. And part of that DAOs responsibilities will be deciding where to donate funds to, to which animal shelter and to what causes in that particular realm.” she said.
Related:Play-to-earn game hosts Christmas charity drive for Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Nyan Heroes
Huang highlighted that a major sticking point for P2E blockchain games is sustainability over a long period of time. She said many P2E games are reliant on a continual stream of new users to remain profitable and suffer from players continually cashing out and taking value out of the game.
“We don’t know how many players will be coming into the economy. So we need to realize that building a game is not only about the game play, but about the economic system and how sustainable everything is,” she said.
Huang said Nyan Heroes sustainability model is built off several factors such as introducing an in-game stablecoin to reduce volatility of the its assets, staking rewards on NFTs and a triple A gaming experience similar to Fortnite which has “historically attracted players” who want to spend money on the game:
“The way we address it is to come up with a better game where users will actually want to play the game and inject value into the system to balance out the players that come into the ecosystem to take value out.”
“We keep the in-game token stable so that the value of your in-game items isn’t going to crash and burn. And we feel like that’s what players need to want to stay with a game. You don’t want your in-game items to be worth $1,000 one day and then $10 dollars the next,” she added.
Proudly introducing our new expanded team! With decades of experience in AAA studios like Riot Games, EA, Ubisoft and Respawn, our team is ready to take NH to new heights in 2022!
This is only just the beginning, you are here early.
The amazing team:https://t.co/0cmPgsaigh pic.twitter.com/3R3l18E3gO
Twitch co-founder Justin Kan launched a new blockchain gaming-focused NFT marketplace yesterday dubbed Fractal.
Fractal’s Discord group has since amassed more than 111,000 members, despite only being announced two weeks ago. At the time of writing, it appears that the most significant sale on the platform so far was for a Baby Scoot NFT that went for 4 Solana (SOL) worth roughly $680.
The Solana-based marketplace enables users to buy, trade and hold NFTs used in blockchain games. In an announcement made yesterday, the firm unveiled its first partnered blockchain games, including The Sandbox, Nyan Heroes, Caveworld and Genopets, to name a few.
first of all: we are live https://t.co/y2yO4R7Ty2
— fractal ❄️ (@fractalwagmi) December 30, 2021
As part of the announcement, Kan labeled the 111,000 strong Fractal community as one of the “fastest-growing” in crypto and added that:
“Durable digital assets through NFTs are the future of gaming. We’ve partnered with some of the most innovative gaming companies on the Solana blockchain to bring that future forward.”
“Players are excited about blockchain games and we’re excited about all the new experiences that will be enabled by them,” he added.
In a separate blog post, Fractal also revealed that it would be airdropping 100,000 Fractal NFTs to its members, teasing that they may hold governance rights over the marketplace and in-game provide in-game benefits in the future.
“Fractals will come with benefits both on the Fractal marketplace and within our community. Mysterious and powerful, their full potential is yet to be discovered. Perhaps in the future, they may grant special powers and abilities in your favorite blockchain-based games, or unlock the doors to exciting new worlds ripe for exploring,” the post reads.
Fractal also hinted that it would eventually expand support to other blockchains, with Ethereum likely to be the next in line considering that The Sandbox metaverse project is built on the network.
As it stands, users are currently able to connect Solana-friendly wallets such as Phantom and buy and sell any of the NFTs from Solana-based gaming projects.
Related: Nifty News: Decentraland Times Square NYE party, Mutant Apes go bananas
Speaking with Cointelegraph, Wendy Huang the co-founder of Australian-based Nyan Heroes cited the strong team behind Fractal as a key reason behind the company’s decision to partner with the platform.
“Fractal’s game-centric NFT marketplace has the potential to become the premier hub and aggregator for gamers and gaming communities. The strength of their founding team gives Nyan Heroes further confidence that they could grow into a Steam-like platform,” she said.
French gaming giant Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s new nonfungbile token (NFT) project Quartz is facing strong pushback from the gaming community.
Ubisoft unveiled the Beta launch of Quartz via a brief YouTube video on Dec. 8 that has 214,721 views at the time of writing. The project aims to combine NFTs and blockchain technology with existing Triple-A game titles, and announced Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint as its first game to officially integrate NFTs.
The video introduces Quartz as a platform that enables gamers to “collect the first playable and energy-efficient Ubisoft NFTs” that are dubbed as “Digits.”
YouTube recently changed its policy to hide the number of dislikes a video on the platform gets, however the number can still be accessed by Google Chrome extensions. Upon using an extension, the video currently shows 1,400 likes and 37,000 dislikes which equates to a dislike ratio of roughly 96%.
One of the top comments on the video from user “OperatorDrewski” currently has 2,600 likes with zero dislikes, and blasts Ubisoft’s NFT project as a quick cash grab as opposed to improving the overall gaming experience:
“To me, this is a blatant signal that you’re just milking the Ghost Recon franchise for literally every cent while putting in minimal effort into the actual game itself. Not playing a GR game in the future if there’s this level of degeneracy in the team.”
“You took a solid franchise and absolutely made it a laughing stock,” they added.
This opinion appears to be shared by a significant number of the community, with users on Twitter also lashing out at the firm in response to its latest announcement as they threatened to uninstall the firm’s games and boycott Ubisoft completely.
Because of my personal view of NFTs and not because of the environmemt entirely, I will now proceed to uninstall anything related to you right now and cease further purchases of your games.
That is all. For people that dislike Current Ubi’s marketing, just stop buying.
— Skyeeeely – Lazy VStreamer Cat (@Sukaaaily) December 7, 2021
A Dec. 8 post over on the r/gaming page on Reddit shows a concerted effort to boycott the new NFT project. The post titled “do not support “Quartz”, the new NFT Ubisoft marketplace” from “u/WolverineKuzuri93” currently has 2,500 comments and an upvote ratio of 93% at more than 13,400 upvotes.
The Redditor highlights similar issues to the top commenter on YouTube, noting that:
“We have to stand against this practice. […] This is just another way to nickel and dime players with cosmetics rather than focusing on making quality products with depth. We have to let companies know this is anti-consumer.”
“I’m not entirely against the concept of using an NFT style system for digital games. For example, actually owning your digital copy rather than just a license so you can sell it to another user’s account. That’s actually the future of digital gaming. What I’m against is how Ubisoft are doing it with in-game items,” they added.
Gamer backlash to NFTs
This is not the first time a major firm has been flamed for looking at, or launching into the world of NFTs. Cointelegraph reported last month that community messaging app Discord was forced to walk back its Ethereum-based NFT integration plans, after the gamer community bombarded CEO Jason Citron.
Citron initially teased his firm’s plans via a screenshot of a beta feature showing Ethereum NFT wallet support, however he was promptly hounded with thousands of comments calling on him to abandon the plans along with users threatening to cancel their paid Nitro subscriptions.
Reddit:OpenSea walks back on IPO plan following community backlash
Unlike the case of Ubisoft, where the community appears to be peeved by what they assert is a cash grab, the crypto-skeptics on Discord believe NFTs are a Ponzi scheme and damage the environment due to the energy required to mine cryptocurrencies.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Ubisoft representatives for comment, and will update the story if they respond.
Tokenized sport collectibles projects have raised almost $1 billion in funding in the space of a week.
On Sept. 22 Dapper Labs — the firm behind the Flow blockchain and the widely popular tokenized basketball collectibles, NBA TopShot — announced a further $250 million in a funding round led by tech-focused hedge fund Coatue.
As reported by Cointelegraph on Wednesday, French-based NFT soccer trading card game developer Sorare raised $680 million in Series B funding led by Japanese fintech giant Softbank. The funding round raised the valuation of the firm to $4.3 billion.
The combined funding for the two firms tally’s in at $930 million, marking a significant bet on the sports token sector at a time when some pundits are calling the wider nonfungible market dead due to declining sales volume and floor prices.
Dapper Labs
The latest $250 million round adds to the $305 million and $65 million in funding Dapper Labs has fetched so far in 2021. While the firm didn’t specifically outline its roadmap following the announcement, the firm has teased that there are more projects coming to the Flow blockchain soon.
According to Dapper Labs, the capital will be used to fund further licensed NFT projects across sports, music and entertainment, along with scaling up the NBA Top Shot platform. Earlier this month news broke that Google had partnered with Dapper to support NFT and web 3.0 product development on its blockchain.
Dapper’s NBA Top Shot has been a resounding success since opening to the public in October last year, with data from CryptoSlam showing that the NFTs have generated more than $716 million in sales on secondary markets.
However, it appears that hype for the project has cooled over the past few months, with secondary sales failing to break $50 million in a month since April. That’s less than a quarter of the volume in the peak months for Top Shot NFT trading in February and March, which generated $224 million and $220 million worth of secondary sales respectively.
According to CryptSlam estimates, the most valuable Top Shot moments are the NFTs depicting Lebron James, with the combined market cap of 114,114 James NFTs tallying in at $104 million.
Sorare expansion
Sorare’s whopping $680 million adds to a $50 million Series A funding round in February, marking a meteoric rise for the platform in 2021. Sorare has outlined ambitious plans for the latest funds moving forward.
Within the realm of soccer, the firm’s goal is to partner with the top 20 professional soccer leagues across the globe, along with the top 50 international football associations for both the men’s and women’s teams.
As it stands, the Sorare platform has licensing deals with 177 teams from a total of 36 domestic and international leagues. The firm notched an important milestone earlier this month when it signed a deal with the Spanish La Liga to release tokens for all players from the 20 teams in the league.
The funds will also be used to ramp up marketing campaigns, hire key staff members, open its first U.S.-based office and expand its NFT collectible model into other sporting codes.
The Sorare platform launched back in April 2019. Despite a year’s head start on NBA Top Shot, its NFTs have generated a significantly lower amount with a total of $84.8 million worth of sales on secondary markets.
Sales peaked in March with $15.34 million before cooling down over the next three months. However secondary sales have been on an upward trend in July and August with $8.8 million and $14.8 million respectively. While there are eight days remaining in September, Sorare NFTs have generated $10.5 million worth of sales suggesting that figure may surpass $14 million for the second month in a row.
Readers of high-end fashion magazine Vogue Singapore will be able to fight for a chance to purchase two tokenized front cover images.
The front cover of Vogue’s September issue will feature QR codes allowing readers to sign up for an auction of two one-of-a-kind “virtual-only covers.” While Vogue has revealed that the auction will take place in September, the publication is yet to reveal the exact date of the auction.
Triumphant Awakening, the first of the animated covers up for auction, depicts a gold statuette in front of a blue planet encircled by a rising and setting sun. Vogue said the cover was inspired by its global theme of “New Beginnings” — which links all 27 global editions in September, according to a company statement.
The second cover, The RenaiXance Rising, features an avatar wearing a gown inspired by Singaporean and Malay culture. The token comprises a programmable NFT, with its background changing throughout the day based on what time it is in Singapore.
Virtual cover NFTs: Vogue Singapore
Alongside the two digital covers, Vogue Singapore is also dropping an additional 15 fashioned-focused one-of-one NFTs. A feature of the collection is the “Flame Dress” NFT, as it can be ported and used in the Altava fashion gaming app. The winning bidder will also receive a digital certificate of authenticity, along with sketches of the NFT dress designed by creative director Olivier Rousteing.
Tokenized Tesla autographed by Elon Musk
Autographia, a marketplace for signed memorabilia, will auction off a tokenized photo of a diminutive Tesla Model X replica. The toy car depicted was physically signed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, featuring his signature scrawled across its hood.
Signed Telsa X replica NFT: Autographia
The auction will last for 10 days from Aug. 29 on the HODL Diamond Marketplace. Opening bids will start at 7.5 Ethereum (ETH) — worth roughly $23,700 at the time of writing.
The sale is Autographia’s first move to expand its offerings into NFTs. The image of the toy Tesla will be the first tokenized memorabilia sold by the firm.
Another Animoca investment
Global NFT licensing agency Epik Prime announced on Aug. 25 that Animoca Brands co-led investment into the firm’s $EPIK membership token, which will launch on the Huobi Prime crypto exchange on Aug. 27.
Epik provides licensed cross-chain compatible NFTs that players can use in games and virtual metaverses. The token will be utilized to drive growth in further brand licensing and cross-chain gaming projects centered on NFTs.
In an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman, Yat Siu, stated, “We look forward to expanding our presence in brand licensing, gaming, and metaverse ecosystems.”
Epik claims to be “the first and only NFT company” to secure deals with AAA gaming firms. Epik’s clients include ViacomCBS, Warner Music, Garena, Tencent and Universal.
Animoca Brands is a leading NFT game developer, having launched several successful titles including F1 Delta Time and The Sandbox. The firm was valued at $1 billion in May, with the firm making significant investments in Axie Infinity, Dapper Labs, OpenSea and MLB Champions.
Related: Fox Corporation backs Eluvio’s $100M raise as part of its content plan for NFTs
Weiss takes his entourage to NFTs
Rob Weiss, the American producer best known for his work on the popular TV shows Entourage and Ballers, will executive produce and direct multiple episodes of the upcoming crypto-themed series “Hold On for Dear Life” (HODL) series.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph in March, HODL is a scripted TV comedy centered on the lives of crypto entrepreneurs, developed by Beacon Pictures. The producers are minting NFTs celebrating the show, and plan to tokenize a full episode.
While details were sparse at the time of the initial announcement, an Aug. 25 article from Variety has revealed that Weiss is set to take the reins for a portion of the 10-episode series.
“When I read the ‘Hold On for Dear Life’ pilot, I felt as if I had been transported into a fresh and unique universe where characters spoke about money in a whole new language,” Weiss told Variety, adding:
“The world of currency is rapidly changing, and ‘Hold On for Dear Life’ will both illuminate and entertain at the same time.”
HODL will also be one of the first shows to feature on blockchain-based streaming service Sator. Earlier this month, Sator announced that it had minted the first series of official HODL NFTs on Binance Smart Chain.
The NFTs offer owners the opportunity to provide input on the direction of the show’s story, such as selecting when a charter goes bankrupt or suffers heartbreak.
The NFTs were dropped in partnership with NFT marketplace, Refinable. The tokens have seen little trading since launch, with the “Heartbreak a Character” token receiving a single bid of 0.37 Binance Coin (BNB) worth $182, while “Bankrupt a Character” has had zero bids.
Roundup
Cointelegraph reported earlier today that popular beer company Budweiser appeared to unofficially sanction a piece of NFT art after purchasing it for use on its Twitter profile.
According to OpenSea records, the beer producer purchased a Budweiser-branded rocketship NFT on Aug. 24 for 8 ETH worth roughly $25,704, which is now its official Twitter profile picture.
The head of Facebook Financial and co-creator of Facebook-initiated cryptocurrency Diem, David Marcus, said on Wednesday that the firm is “definitely looking” at possible ways to get involved in the NFT industry, such as providing NFT support in Diem wallets.
Boxing legend Mike Tyson has dropped a series of tokenized collectibles on the heavyweight champion platform of the NFT world, OpenSea.
The 55-year-old collaborated with digital artist Cory Van Lew to launch the “Mike Tyson NFT Collection,” which consists of 11 one-of-one NFTs up for auction, and six open edition NFTs that range from 50 to 250 copies.
The collection was released earlier today. The NFTs depict neon-colored illustrations of iconic moments from Tyson’s career such as knockouts, championship wins and the notorious “ear-biting” escapade.
Tyson’s NFT collection: OpenSea
At the time of writing, there are three one-of-one editions with a top bid of 5 ETH each worth around $16,000, however, the prices are likely to climb fast as the auction doesn’t close until Aug. 24. Tyson also stated on Twitter that the buy now editions all sold out within an hour of launch.
The buy now NFTs sold out in less than an hour even with some tech glitches. Check out the auctions this weekend and how art assassin @coryvanlew created my vision with neon precision #baddestnftcollectionontheplanethttps://t.co/uy20252rGi
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) August 19, 2021
Tyson’s NFT collection was produced by 1ofOne, an NFT creative agency that tailors to A-list celebrities and global brands.
NFTV star
In what could either be a great or bad idea, Australian TV show “The Rebound” which screens on the Nine Network, is auctioning off a tokenized episode that will see the winning bidder become part of the show next season.
World First: #NFT to TV Star. We are selling an NFT of ep.8 @thereboundtv on Crypto
https://t.co/H2Hg67irSR
We call it NFTV Star
The buyer will feature in Season 3 of the show – every episode. #rarible #ethereum #nonfungible #digitalasset
— Steve Sammartino (@sammartino) August 20, 2021
Episode 8 of The Rebound explores crypto-economics, and has been minted in NFT format on Rarible. The NFT was minted yeterday is up for auction now, with bidding set to close in six days, however, there are no current bids at the time of writing.
Along with becoming a regular guest on season three of the show, the winning bidder will also be mentored “in their business or career” as part of the shows’ accelerator program. “This NFT may be your ticket to a new financial trajectory, and maybe even TV stardom!” the description reads.
Lionel Messi looking to score
Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player in history has joined fellow Barcelona FC great Ronaldinho by entering the NFT space.
The drop is dubbed “The Messiverse” and is set to go live on the Ethernity marketplace tomorrow, which is a platform that produces and sells licensed NFTs.
The art depicted in the NFTs was designed by Australian artist Bosslogic, and the drop includes a special edition of 50 copies priced at $10,000 each, a limited edition of 2500 copies at $499 each, and an open edition worth $50 per copy.
Related: Alibaba launches NFT marketplace for copyright trading
The artwork of the $10,000 “Man of Tomorrow” NFT displays a futuristic and bionic-looking portrait of Messi, with a cyberpunk style background. Owners of this special edition NFT will receive an extra unspecified “one-of-a-kind” NFT following the drop.
Buy the #Messi x @Bosslogic “Man From Tomorrow” 75 of 75 #NFT…
Get a 2nd RARE #Messi NFT featuring the original art in his @FCBarcelona #10.
This 2nd NFT IS NOT for sale!!!!
Only “Man from Tomorrow” buyers can claim the “Man of the Past” #NFT. https://t.co/gdJiXe4cNx
— ETHERNITY (@EthernityChain) August 20, 2021
Vine co-founder working on NFT games
Dom Hofmann, co-founder of the now-defunct social media app Vine is working on a new NFT gaming project called “Supdrive.” In the Supdrive discord channel, Hofmann described the project as “an on-chain fantasy console game where the games themselves are NFTs.”
“You can think of it sort of like Artblocks for games. These games all run on the Supdrive Virtual Firmware, a toolkit that allows games to be written in the concise instructions that are gas-friendly and ideal for on-chain storage,” he wrote.
New project alert
Supdrive
On-chain fantasy game console
Coming soon@supdrive pic.twitter.com/ELu9Hvj9ng
— dom (@dhof) August 18, 2021
The Vine co-founder revealed that the first game is called “Origin” and that games developed by the project will have an “old-school arcade-style” similar to Pacman and Asteroid. He hasn’t specified what blockchain he is building on at this stage.
“As the firmware is upgraded, games will gradually become more sophisticated. Perhaps one day we’ll have Super Supdrive or Supdrive 64,” he said.
Roundup
Cointelegraph reported on Aug. 20 that Crypto.com partnered with Italy’s top soccer league, Lega Serie A. The partnership will see Crypto.com’s branding featured during game broadcasts, and the exchange will also launch some new Lega Serie A NFTs.
Earlier this week NFT marketplace SuperRare announced an upgrade named “SuperRare 2.0” that introduces independent storefronts, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), “sovereign smart contracts” and the RARE curation token.
Playboy, the lifestyle and entertainment brand famous for its distinctive logo — among other things, has launched its first collection of five animated NFTs, on a new NFT market placed dubbed “Raretoshi” which is backed by Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain.
The NFTs were unveiled during the lead up to the 2021 Bitcoin Miami conference on June 3:
Announcing Reimagining the Rabbit: Miami, Playboy’s first collection of animated NFTs, featuring @aylaelmoussa @mbsjq @rek0de @JonNoorlander- Debuting 6.3.21 at Bitcoin 2021 on the Raretoshi marketplace. Video credit: Ayla El-Moussa. Learn more at https://t.co/2JkHnyq3J9 pic.twitter.com/fUSCHuvYuS
— Playboy (@Playboy) June 2, 2021
All of the NFTs are one-of-one editions, and include three Miami-themed animations, an animated magazine cover with the bunny logo covering a model, and a tokenized “bunny boarding pass.”
Playboy NFTs. Source: Raretoshi
Collectors can bid for the NFTs using Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) — a type of asset on Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain, with a supply that is pegged 1:1 with Bitcoin.
The highest starting price is 5 L-BTC worth roughly $188,315 for the “bunny boarding pass” — which includes a bonus of a round-trip flight on the Big Bunny jet, anywhere in the U.S., for the collector and 10 other guests.
Bidding activity, however, appears to be non-existent so far, with no bids placed on any of the five artworks at the time of writing.
Olympic standard NFTs
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and nWay — a subsidiary of game developer Animoca Brands — have collaborated to drop a set of Olympic-themed tokenized NFT pins and a video game.
The Olympic themed video game will launch in the lead up to the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games and players will be able to earn free Olympic NFT collectibles if they’re any good.
The animated 3D pins commemorate historic events from the history of the Olympics — and vary in rarity and value. The first set of pins will be available on nWay from June 17, and can be traded on a peer-to-peer marketplace to be launched shortly after the first drop.
Intelligent NFTs
Sotherby’s art auction house claims its auctioning off the first ever intelligent NFT (iNFT), with bids closing June 11.
The one-of-one iNFT dubbed “Alice” depicts an ERC-721 tokenized female Robot, developed by Robert Alice in collaboration with robotics firm Alethea AI.
Tomorrow at 1pm ET, meet Alice, the world’s first intelligent NFT (iNFT) created by @robertalice_21 x @real_alethea for our #NativelyDigital NFT Sale. A self-learning intelligent avatar powered by the world’s most powerful AIs, Alice will answer YOUR questions live. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/uoKHII27BH
— Sotheby’s (@Sothebys) June 3, 2021
“The first iNFT ever made, this iNFT stands at the genesis of a new medium. The collector will add to their collection this historic iNFT which will refine and develop based on their questions,” says the description of Alice on the project’s website “thefirstinft.”
According to the website, it may actually cost the collector to maintain and update the iNFT with the project noting that “depending on collectors’ plans for the iNFT, the associated hosting costs of the API calls to Alethea AI’s GPT-X will pass in full into the care and duty of the collector.”
Alethea AI does however offer a one-time free of charge set up for the intelligent NFT. The auction has six days to go and currently has a top bid of $35,000.
NFTs to raise funds for the Sydney Children’s hospital
A Melbourne-based digital artist who goes under the alias “Hipworth” on Twitter has created a one-of-one NFT which will be auctioned off at the Gold Dinner Gala on June 10 — with all the proceeds going to the Sydney Children’s hospital.
What a brilliant project initiated by @indepreserve. #Australia has a wonderful history in supporting #NFT auctions for charity, as per the @F1DeltaTime donation led by @animocabrands to raise funds for last year’s bushfire recovery efforts.
Please bid to support a good cause! https://t.co/rS5Dbv8Q6R
— Leah Callon-Butler (@leah_cb) June 3, 2021
The NFT has been minted on NFT marketplace Makersplace, and depicts a silver animated queen statue backed by electronic music. Bids can be placed leading up to the event, and currently has a high bid of $1,000.
