ICYMI - Last week in crypto: Web3 World Cup
We back up, baby 🏆
Last week saw a flurry of new arrivals into the Web3 space with Nike announcing its newly-launched dot SWOOSH NFT marketplace, CR7 releasing his first NFT collection on Binance, and the numerous NFT collections and Web3 games launched in conjunction with The FIFA WORLD CUP 2022™.
In other events, the inaugural Gam3 Awards hosted by PolkaStarter was announced to hold on December 15th, while DappRadar reports shows that Web3 remains resilient as user activity grow despite current economic conditions.
Nike launches .Swoosh NFT Marketplace
Last week, Nike launched a new NFT marketplace called .Swoosh, marking its most recent entry into the nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse spaces.
Nike stated that its "first digital collection" will debut on the Web3 platform in 2023 while .Swoosh is still in the beta stage, with the remainder of 2022 being committed to expanding the platform and user base.
About .SWOOSH
.SWOOSH is a platform for @Nike's virtual creations, for them to be more accessible and to onboard the next millions into the wonderful world of web3 and digital assets.” - @ycxcRTFKT stated in a tweet thread announcing the launch.
Digital footwear, clothing, accessories, and other collectibles will be among the "virtual creations" that will be made accessible the next year. Additionally, some will grant access to advantages like real-world products and events.
Members can participate in a community challenge after the launch of the first collection for the chance to co-create a virtual good with Nike.
The challenge winners will be eligible for an undisclosed amount of royalties on the virtual good they helped co-create, according to Nike.
Nike Virtual Studios' general manager, Ron Faris, wrote on Twitter that the platform would assist "onboard the next millions" into the "amazing world of web3 and digital assets," while Swoosh provides a "portal into a new digital arena."
“We are shaping a marketplace of the future with an accessible platform for the web3-curious,” he added.
Nike joined the metaverse game in 2021 by purchasing the virtual footwear and collectibles company RTFKT. Nikeland, a virtual realm, was also introduced.
Although all three initiatives for the corporation employ the same tools and technology, SWOOSH, they are all distinct projects.
2022 FIFA World Cup NFTs kicks off in style
Following the 2022 FIFA World Cup's opening on November 20 in Qatar, a number of businesses have started introducing Web3 games and publishing NFT collections.
Earlier last week, Adidas released a World Cup advertising trailer on Nov. 14 that features Lionel Messi and other players along with Indigo Herz from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
Herz was seen on a cereal box of “Indigoooooals.”
On September 17, 2021, the global footwear company acquired Indigo Herz, or BAYC #8774, for 46 ETH, or about $58,500 at the time.
Holders are granted full intellectual property rights by Yuga Labs to exploit the characters in commercial projects.
Major credit card issuer Visa earlier this month unveiled five NFTs with a soccer theme and World Cup goals of well-known players that will be auctioned off on November 1. All of the money raised during the auction, which ran through November 8th, was given to a UK-based charity.
At the FIFA Fan Festival, which kicked off at the start of the World Cup, the payments company is also offering fans the ability to design their own NFTs on a virtual field.
Budweiser and FIFA also collaborated to create Budverse X World Cup, a live scoreboard NFT collection, which was announced on October 14.
The NFT will follow and track the progress throughout the FIFA World Cup, according to the OpenSea description. Once users mint their world cup team.
Also, FIFA revealed on Nov. 9 that there will be at least four Web3 games available for fans to play during at the World Cup.
Inaugural Gam3 Awards to honor the best Web3 games of 2022
A statement made on November 14 stated that the first-ever Gam3 Awards, a new Web3 gaming awards ceremony organized by Polkastarter Gaming, would be held on December 15.
The awards ceremony aims to honor this year's top Web3 games, spotlight their creators, and highlight blockchain as a positive development for the gaming sector. By encouraging game studios to nominate and honor their own employees, developers, and experts across specialities who represent the future of Web3 gaming, the Gam3 Awards want to honor the next generation of Web3-gaming builders.
The event will feature a jury made up of over 30 gaming and Web3 thought leaders, ecosystem partners, and media outlets, and will be simultaneously broadcast on Polkastarter Gaming's Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter accounts.
A portion of the $300,000 in prizes from sponsors including ImmutableX, Blockchain Game Alliance, Machinations, Naavik, and Ultra will go to the first Gam3 Awards winners.
For the purpose of honoring the best game developers and content producers within the Web3 gaming ecosystem, the event will bring together industry leaders, ecosystems, and media sources. An official who spoke with the press stated that Bitkraft, a venture capital firm, would also be joining as a partner and jury member.
Each game will be evaluated by judges based on a variety of factors, including the basic loop, graphics, accessibility, replayability, enjoyable features, and overall playing experience. According to categories such "action game," "mobile game," "adventure game," "casual game," "RPG," "shooter game," "graphics," "strategic game," "card game," etc., winners will be chosen.
Web3 and blockchain-based games seem to be becoming more and more popular and doing fairly well, despite the ongoing bear market. Blockchain games and metaverse projects raised $1.3 billion in the third quarter of 2022, according to the analytical platform DappRadar. In September, 912,000 daily Unique Active Wallets (UAW) interacted with the smart contracts of games, according to research conducted by the company. This accounted for nearly half of all blockchain activity tracked by DappRadar across 50 networks.
Binance's First-Ever Global Ad Campaign Highlights Ronaldo NFTs
In celebration of Cristiano Ronaldo's first non-fungible token (NFT) launch, Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, has launched a new worldwide marketing campaign.
On Friday, Binance criticized "bad players" as the legendary footballer's first NFT collection was unveiled.
The CR7 NFT Collection is the first release in a line of drops honoring Ronaldo's history. The seven animated statues that make up the NFTs, which debuted exclusively on Binance's NFT marketplace on Friday and are arranged into four rarity levels, represent iconic moments from his career.
The 45 most valuable NFTs will be put up for auction for 24 hours, with the starting offer for the five rarest NFTs being 10,000 BUSD (BUSD is a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin).
The NFT tiers offer special benefits including free "mystery boxes" for new sign-ups, an individual message from Ronaldo, autographed goods, and guaranteed access to future drops.
According to Ad Age, the 60-second commercial is airing on TV, web, and social platforms in 74 nations and 28 different languages. The move comes after Binance's main rival and cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy last week due to financial difficulties.
Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the CEO of Binance and a well-known opponent of Sam Bankman-Fried, the previous CEO of FTX, briefly pondered intervening to salvage FTX but finally decided against it.
Binance made a subtle jab at the failing exchange even though it did not directly address the FTX problem.
"There are bad players in our industry, but it’s important to know that there are also creators and innovators, who are working hard to build valuable products and services in Web3," He Yi, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Binance, told Ad Age.
DeFi, NFT Remains Resilient Despite FTX Implosion: DappRadar
The crypto market is primed for more losses as a result of the devastation caused by FTX's collapse. However, Web3 is still resilient, according to a recent research by DappRadar.
Services that are centralized lose out. The decentralized finance (DeFi) industry has also been damaged as the contagion spreads. However, it looks that user activity in the sector is reverting to its levels from the previous quarter.
The State of DeFi
The total value locked (TVL) across DeFi platforms has decreased by almost 20% since the beginning of the month, from $83 billion to $65 billion, according to a recent Dapp Radar analysis. The market leader Ethereum's TVL decreased 14% from $51 billion on November 1 to $41 billion in mid-November.
The largest liquid staking service provider on the network, Lido, has seen a rise in ETH staking returns of over 10.6%, making it the highest yield ever seen. However, stETH no longer has a peg to ETH and is trading at 0.9883 at the moment of writing.
Tron's TVL decreased from $6.1 billion to $4.6 billion, while BNB's TVL also experienced a similar fate and was down 14%, hitting $7.3 billion. Avalanche, Polygon, and Arbitrum, among other networks, also had a decline in TVL of 25.06%, 8.76%, and 10.26%, respectively.
However, the Solana blockchain is the greatest loss in terms of TVL in USD, with its TVL plummeting by almost 65% from a staggering $1.65 billion to $585 million.
On the plus side, despite the FTX incident, the decentralized apps (DApp) market is still thriving. According to the research, the number of unique active wallets (UAW) in the market fell by 11.67% in November, averaging 1.9 million dUAW. In contrast, the overall volume of transactions only decreased by 0.28% to around 26 million.
On the other side, DeFi UAW reached its high on November 9 and 10, coming close to 500,000 UAW each day. The FTX unraveling happened concurrently with this. However, statistics indicated that DeFi activity has returned to its 400K dUAW levels from the prior month.
According to Dapp Radar, the ensuing crypto exchange catastrophe that led to its bankruptcy seems to have had little impact on gaming dapps, with its UAW soaring on November 10 all the way to 900,000.
While this was going on, the activity in the gaming chains EOS, Hive, Wax, Ronin, and IMX generally stayed unaffected and did not experience any notable swings.
The State of NFTs
Dapp Radar pointed out that socio-economic variables rather than a decline in collector interest are responsible for the NFT market's underwhelming trade volume. The sales count decreased by a little over 24% in the first two weeks of November. The majority of blockchains have seen a decline in NFT trade volume since the beginning of the month.
The daily NFT trading volume for Ethereum fell from $17 million to $4.4 million, a 73.75% decrease. Flow figures fell by 67% in the same time period. The daily NFT trading volume for Polygon also started the month at $307,830, and by November 13, it had dropped by 67% to $101,375. The daily volume of NFT trading for Polygon also dropped from $235,794 to $114,465.
 |
|