ICYMI: Last Week in Crypto - Yuga Labs go for Ordinals, Magic Eden launch Mint Madness, Polygon roll-out Zero Knowledge
It's a bird🛸, It's a plane🚀, It's Web3🤑
Last week, on-chain data revealed that NFT trading sales in February surpassed $2bn for the first time since the LUNA crash. Yuga Labs announce a new collection set to launch on Bitcoin, Near Protocol built a Blockchain Operating System aimed at improving user experience, and the NFT TV show “Krapopolis” set to release a third season.
Yuga Labs Jump on “Ordinal Hype”, Announces New Art Collection on Bitcoin
The buzz surrounding Ordinals is growing, and NFT behemoth Yuga Labs wants to join in. The studio is currently planning to introduce a collection of generative artwork on Bitcoin.
Yuga Labs is expanding to Bitcoin, — in contrast to expectations.
A new NFT collection will be released on the Bitcoin blockchain, according to a blog post published yesterday by the studio that created the well-known Bored Are Yacht Club NFT collection.
The project, Twelvefold, was described as a 300-piece collection of experimental generative art. Yuga Labs stated that it would use the Ordinal protocol in Bitcoin to engrave the artwork onto individual satoshis, giving each one a unique identity. There are 100 million satoshis in one bitcoin, the smallest currency unit.
The generative art collection, according to Yuga Labs, would investigate "the relationship between time, mathematics, and variability" present in satoshis. The design of Twelvefold, with its combination of highly rendered 3D elements and hand-drawn features, would serve as a visual allegory for Bitcoin's data cartography, as it was further clarified.
“All of these choices are a departure from what’s expected from Yuga,” wrote Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano. “But, you know. Fuck doing expected things.”
The studio announced on Twitter that it would auction off the collection before the week was out and that a notice with the specifics of the auction and the time it would take place would be released 24 hours beforehand.
The NFT industry's most prosperous company is Yuga Labs. The studio produced collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Otherdeeds from Otherside. In addition, it purchased CryptoPunks and Meebits in March from rival studio Larva Labs.
Polygon Roll-Out Privacy-Enhanced Identification Product - Zero Knowledge
The Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology-based Polygon ID product, which was introduced on Wednesday, will enable users to validate their identities or credentials without disclosing sensitive data, according to Polygon.
The popular Polygon PoS sidechain is one of the scaling systems that Polygon specializes in for the Ethereum blockchain. The new Polygon ID "toolset can be used by developers to unlock features like an enhanced signup user interface, assist in regulatory compliance, help verify user identities, and restrict access control to specific areas or features via token-gating," the company claims.
“Providing identity in a way that the average consumer can use is the holy grail of digital ID adoption,” Polygon co-founder David Schwartz said. “No other identity solution has been able to provide the scalability needed for mainstream adoption leveraging ZK technology until now.”
According to a tutorial on the project released on GitHub, the "identity holder" of Polygon ID is a person or entity that has "claims" that are kept in a wallet. Verifiable credentials are issued to identity holders by a "trusted and reputable source" and cryptographically signed by the issuer. Then a verifier examines the evidence that a holder has produced.
“The simplest example of a Verifier is a Bar that wants to verify if you are over 18. In the real world, the Identity Holder would need to provide an ID and show all their personal information,” according to the tutorial. “With Polygon ID they only need to pass a proof.”
Smart contracts can be used to do proofs both on and off the blockchain. The Polygon website states that there is a wallet software development kit, or SDK, and a Polygon ID wallet app.
NFT Trading Volumes Hit $2B in February, Highest Since LUNA Crash, Thanks to Blur
In the non-fungible token (NFT) space, the battle for market share may actually be producing advantageous effects.
In February, NFT trading volumes reached $2 billion, the highest level since before Terra and its UST and LUNA tokens crashed spectacularly in May 2022, according to the most recent industry report from Web3 data platform DappRadar.
The rise in popularity of the zero-fee marketplace Blur is largely responsible for the increase. The amount of cryptocurrency transacted across those trades increased by about 120% while NFT sales, or the number of tokens traded, fell by about 32% from January. This is largely due to trades that were encouraged before Blur's native token airdrop in mid-February.
While Blur is gaining market share and challenging the formerly dominant NFT marketplace OpenSea, Sara Gherghelas, a blockchain research analyst at DappRadar, cited that the market isn't attracting new traders to NFTs. Blur's focus on professional traders may be increasing trading volumes rather than attracting new customers, whereas OpenSea is geared toward retail traders.
“Blur doesn't bring adoption,” said Gherghelas. “As of right now, they are just bringing hype with the token launch, but it's impressive what they're doing.”
Blur has been concentrating on floor-sweeping NFT traders since its October launch who want to make expensive purchases without paying any fees. It quickly gained notoriety by encouraging traders to conduct transactions on the platform in order to qualify for its native token BLUR before the token was released in February. Blur outperformed OpenSea in terms of trading volume two days after the token went live, and ever since, it has been challenging the position of the top marketplace.
How Yuga Labs played a part in keeping NFTs hot
While Blur has contributed significantly to the NFT trading volumes in February, DappRadar also noted that Yuga Labs' NFT collections made up 30% of the Ethereum-based NFT trading volume in February. This sum was significantly influenced by its Dookey Dash skill-based mint; earlier this week, the winning key, an NFT obtained by scoring the highest possible on the game, sold for $1.6 million.
According to Gherghelas, Yuga Labs' devoted customers will buy any new NFTs the company releases in order to join the larger community the business is creating. They don't care about highly sought-after rarity traits. She stated that TwelveFold, its upcoming generative art Bitcoin NFT collection, will be welcomed by Yuga buyers.
“It’s another way that they are trying to dominate the market,” said Gherghelas. “It’s surprising why Yuga Labs wanted to launch this … this might be something interesting that the market will evolve [towards].”
The report claims that there were other encouraging signs for blockchain gaming in addition to the rush by Yuga Labs fans to play Dookey Dash in the sewer. In 2023, Web3 gaming projects are focusing on the metaverse and being able to develop better projects, supported by gaming engines like Unity that released support for SDKs for MetaMask and other decentralized projects. The play-to-earn model, which was made popular by projects like Axie Infinity, saw a decline in 2022.
Near Protocol Builds ‘Blockchain Operating System’ to Enhance User Experience
Illia Polosukhin, a co-founder of blockchain layer 1 network Near Protocol, announced the launch of a product-first operating system at the ETHDenver business conference. This operating system allows developers to build into it and users to interact on it as a single platform.
According to Polosukhin, the platform is meant to serve as a common layer for browsing and discovering Web 3 products such as cryptocurrency exchanges, non-fungible token (NFT) galleries, and social media platforms. Polusukhin clarified that the framework will be compatible with all blockchains (currently supporting the Near Protocol and Ethereum Virtual Machine chains). Near will serve as the common entry point.
“The composable decentralized front ends as a framework can work with any Web2 or Web3 back end and any wallet,” Polusukhin said. “In the future, we will be offering [use of] wallets from one chain to interact with another via seamless bridging,” he added.
According to data from Messari, the Near protocol is currently the 35th-largest blockchain in terms of market capitalization. At the time of writing, the market capitalization of Layer 1 was approximately $1.96 billion, and the NEAR token was trading for about $2.28.
In the press release, the platform is referred to as a "blockchain operating system (BOS)". We are shifting our attention away from layer 1 and toward the user and their experience. According to Polosukhin, we view this as the front end for blockchains in general.
Polosukhin added that the platform aims to address some of the Web3 industry's user experience problems. There is currently no search engine or a way to navigate between Web3 apps, which makes it difficult for users to find a single location to look at them, according to Polosukhin. A single point of entry is made possible by the BOS.
Magic Eden Roll-Out 'Mint Madness' With Free Web3 Gaming Mints
March will see the release of a number of free Web3 games from the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden.
The launch has been given the moniker "Mint Madness," a play on the name of the March Madness college basketball tournament in the NCAA. There will be a total of 13 Web3 games made available for free on the Polygon, Solana, and Ethereum blockchains.
All of the games use NFTs for in-game functionality, regardless of whether they were made by conventional gaming studios or Web3 native developers. The well-known AAA first-person shooter game Shrapnel and the gaming metaverse Planet Mojo are among the titles.
“We’ve observed that many games entering Web3 do not necessarily need to use NFTs as a monetization tool. However, NFTs are a really important user engagement tool for them to share their vision and work with a highly captive and invested audience," said Chris Akhavan, chief gaming officer at Magic Eden.
A leaderboard of the top NFT traders across all Mint Madness collections will be posted by Magic Eden on its social media channels in order to increase engagement. A prize pool of 20,000 MATIC (roughly $25,500) will be awarded to the top 10 traders on the Polygon collections, with the first-place winner taking home a prize worth 4,500 MATIC (about $5,400).
The NFT market has indicated that interest in blockchain gaming is rising. Chris Akhavan, a former executive at Electronic Arts, was hired by the company in December to serve as its chief gaming officer, and last week, its venture arm Magic Eden Ventures made investments in 11 Web3 gaming studios.
Dan Harmon's Still-Unreleased NFT TV Show 'Krapopolis' Gets Third Season
The third season of "Krapopolis," the animated TV show from "Rick and Morty" co-creator Dan Harmon, has been ordered without having yet aired an episode.
Fox is scheduled to air the show, which is set in a mythical version of ancient Greece, sometime in 2023. An all-star cast, including Hannah Waddingham, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Pam Murphy, and Duncan Trussell, will provide the voiceovers.
In August, Krapopolis introduced its first 10,420 Krap Chicken non-fungible token collection, enabling owners to vote on show elements, access behind-the-scenes material, participate in in-person meet-ups with the cast and crew, and exchange rewards for licensed merchandise and digital goods.
While the floor price of the collection on OpenSea is currently around 0.11 ether (ETH), or roughly $170, Krap Chickens can still be purchased on the Krapopolis website for 0.18 ETH, or roughly $280. As recently demonstrated by Porsche's unpopular NFT collection, it is generally regarded as a bad sign when the floor price for an NFT in a collection is lower than the cost to mint one.
However, Fox's president of scripted programming, Michael Thorn, told Deadline on Thursday that he was still "bullish" about backing promising projects. "While [a third season order] is unusual, with 'Krapopolis,' it was a no-brainer for us."
Fox Entertainment announced in July that it would contribute $100 million to the endeavor. OpenSea reports that the project has generated 418 ETH (about $650,000) in sales as of the time of writing.