Coachella, Super Bowl & Olympics Event NFT's, Gamestop $100M Deal, eSports NFT's, Moonwalk NFT Tickets.
Each week we share insights from the Web3 space + the latest from Moonwalk.
Live event NFT’s caught fire this week with Coachella, the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics announcing NFT projects. The gaming sector cautiously flexed its NFT potential with Gamestop’s $100M deal, along with eSports drops from Andbox and 100Thieves. At Moonwalk, we added to our suite of NFT ticketing utility ahead of February/March launches, while customers built NFT Utility wallets on the platform.
The Week In Review.
Platforms
GameStop secured a $100M deal from ImmutableX to launch an NFT and metaverse fund for game creators. The deal included Gamestop utilizing ImmutableX’s Ethereum Layer 2 protocol for its NFT marketplace launching later this year.
Warner Music is planning to launch a music-themed world in Sandbox - a combination musical theme park and concert venue that will feature events with Warner artists.
Nike sued StockX, the sneaker reseller, for selling NFT’s that certify a users ownership of physical Nike shoes stored in StockX vaults. This follows Nike’s acquisition of NFT studio, RTFKT, that amongst other things creates NFT virtual sneakers and other NFT wearables. StockX’s new NFT marketplace launched 2 weeks ago.
Drops
Live Event NFT’s showed promise this week as major events announced NFT plans.
» For Super Bowl LVI, the NFL is launching a suite of NFT’s - including souvenir NFT’s (ticket stubs) in partnership with Ticketmaster, a series of 7 commemorative NFT’s in the run-up to Super Bowl, and NFT’s for the LA Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
» Coachella is launching NFT’s in partnership with FTX, that come with on-site perks and VIP access to its April festival. It includes a 10 NFT “Coachella Keys Collection”, each offering lifetime festival access - along with 2 other collections totaling 11,000 NFT’s.
» 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics organizer IOC launched “Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022”, a mobile game featuring NFT pins. Players will be able to earn digital versions of the Olympic pins, that are used to earn in-game rewards and power-ups. The pins can be traded on a marketplace - the project is powered by Animoca company nWay.
» NFL’s college all-star game, Senior Bowl, partnered with trading card maker Panini to launch limited-edition NFT trading cards with videos of each player in the game.
In gaming, eSports NFT drops prevailed this week despite the gamer community’s ongoing apprehension towards NFT’s:
» Call Of Duty team the New York Subliners sold out 300 NFT packs, with each pack comprising 3 moments. As part of the launch, team owner Andbox is offering “NFT’s With Benefits”, NFT utility powered by Moonwalk (more below).
» Esports team owner 100Thieves gave away 300,000 NFT’s on Polygon - a Championship Chain that is a one-for-one replica of that same diamond, platinum, and sapphire encrusted chain that they gave to the players.
Sorare marketplace delivered as German Bundesliga rising star Erling Haaland’s NFT card sold for $678K, topping Christiano Ronaldo’s November NFT sale for $400K.
SuperRare is honoring Black History Month with year-round initiatives to celebrate Black communities, culture, and artistry, beginning with a quarterly curator program starts starting February 7 with Senegalese artist Linda Dounia, creator of the BLACK*RARE exhibition.
Meek Mill is planning to launch an NFT album, after the success of his first NFT music drop, citing frustration with his label - he is exploring Sandbox and Opensea.
Cameo announced Cameo Pass, an NFT collection with each NFT priced at 0.2 ETH, that will allow holders to access its “metaverse compound”, live events and merch.
Cool Cats finally launched its follow-on drop, Cool Pets. Any holder of a Cool Cat can claim a Cool Pet. The Cool Pets floor price hit 2.0 ETH.
Deals
Bored Ape Yacht Club is rumored to be raising funds at a $5BN valuation, which may also include $APE tokens.
Markets
OpenSea became the #1 used product on Ethereum, topping Uniswap, the industry’s favorite Decentralized Exchange - a signal of strong NFT demand despite the soft crypto market.
The BoredApe-CryptoPunks floor-price spread widened to 30 ETH, as Bored Apes continue to find demand at 100 ETH floor while Cryptopunks weakened to 70 ETH. Meanwhile, Cryptopunks founder Larva Labs took heat for dumping their V1 Punks.
Total NFT sales for the past 7 days dipped from the highs - to $802M from $924M - while still significantly higher than December.
Industry & People
Kanye West didn’t rule out launching an NFT in the future (“Ask me later”) despite signaling he was done with being asked to launch NFT’s.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club co-founders were doxxed by Buzzfeed. BAYC enthusiasts came out in support of the co-founders while expressing frustration with the doxxing.
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson tapered his enthusiasm for NFT’s on the company’s call after expressing excitement about their potential in November. Meanwhile, Super Mario creator Nintendo expressed interest in NFT’s but indicated they were still figuring out how to make them fun.
The Mark Cuban co-owned @nft handle on Instagram was permanently suspended for “promoting low quality NFT’s” - a timely reclamation for Instagram as it begins to focus on the space.
Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian attributed part of Facebook’s 26% stock price slump to its “outdated” advertising business model, referring to NFT/Web3 business models “where the actual creators of the content … have a stake in it”. Meanwhile Facebook focused on its pivot to Meta, launching 3D avatars to mixed reviews.
Spotlight.
This week, Decentraland launched its 2022 Manifesto.
Launched to the public in February 2020, Decentraland is the leading fully decentralized metaverse - managed by a foundation, governed by its $MANA token community, with open source code, and that anyone run a server for. Development is said to have started as early as 2015 by its Argentinian founders Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, accelerating in 2017 when land was made available for sale and the team completed a $26M token sale.
In the manifesto, Decentraland is planning new ways to enter its metaverse (a VR client, and a mobile app), make in-world experience improvements (improving voice and text chat, along with mods), and enable personalization of avatars with NFT’s or wearables. It is also planning an incubation program for creators.
What Moonwalk Did.
This week, Moonwalk added to our suite of NFT ticketing utility that will be included in our v2 platform launch - as we gear up for NFT-gated live, virtual and metaverse events throughout the first half of 2022 on the platform.
Our core features now include:
Ability to easily gate access tiers by NFT token ID, e.g. only Gold Apes, or sponsor-activated NFT’s, can access VIP
Integration with other ticketing platforms using manifests - to enable Web2 ticketing companies to offer/integrate NFT-gating
Enterprise-grade mobile NFT scanner iOS app with each scanner permissioned to scan certain NFT token ID’s
Download tickets to Apple and Google Pass for offline access
Gating for large scale live events (General Admission), virtual events and streams (Vimeo, Zoom, Twitch), and metaverse events (Decentraland)
NFT’s dropped as rewards for attending events - that can unlock benefits during or after the event like free drinks and in-event access upgrades
As we gear up for launches in February and March, esports client Andbox announced NFT Utility for its newly launched packs for its Call Of Duty team NY Subliners. The NFT utility, powered by Moonwalk, will include “year long rewards, future airdropped NFTs, signed jerseys, experiences with the team and staff, token-enabled discord channels, and NFT-Owner exclusive experiences at a Stage 4 Event.”
Moonwalk is the leading no-code platform for brands and creators to build their web3 ecosystems - NFT’s, generative collections, communities, membership + utility. We work across entertainment, gaming, sports/esports, music labels and creators. Each week, we write The Week In Review in which we share insights from the Web3 space + the latest from Moonwalk. Follow us on Twitter or drop us a line to learn more.