Techcast 3.0: Recent Episodes
Nick Alexander Lehmacher
Here you can expect exciting current short news about Web 3.0., the Metaverse und much more. Presented by Nick Alexander
Star Trek NFT for enthusiasts
The Paramount company, like many big companies, is now launching their own NFT market-place. To promote this they are using their rights to Star Trek to turn the franchise into an NFT project. For just under $250, a computer-generated starship can be purchased.
Fans of the series are not thrilled, because in their opinion this does not fit the image of the brand. The NFT's should also be an important criteria for further collections and could perhaps become the flagship of the Paramount.xyz marketplace.
Since Paramount also owns rights for Nickelodeon, many are now also thinking of NFT collections of Spongebob, for example. It remains exciting.
That's fewocious
The 19 year old artist Victor Langlois has collected 20 million dollars in 24 hours for his own metaverse called Fewo-World. For 24 hours, anyone who wanted to could buy a piece of art by the artist known as Fewocious. Almost 5000 people followed the purchase request. The young artist now wants to invest this money in expanding his team to make his own Metaverse possible.
With almost 50 million dollars in sales, he is one of the best-known artists on the NFT scene.
He describes his approaches as:
"The way I view it is, what would Michelangelo do if he had a laptop and social media to talk to the best creators on Earth,"
How to become a best-selling author
GaryVee, who is widely known in the NFT, Web3 world, has a book out called "Twelve and a Half". To promote this, he announced on Instagram that buying 12 copies of this book could have benefits. It subsequently turned out that each owner of 12 books will receive an NFT to the book. This NFT is now a requirement to be entered into a drawing, the winners of which will receive a 2nd generation VeeFriend NFT. These NFT's entitle to participate in events and also always offer the possibility to resell them. A 1st generation VeeFriend currently costs at least 50 thousand dollars. The NFT's which qualify you for the 2nd generation are currently available for about 1000€.
Opensea with new upswing
Opensea announced today that Solana NFT's will be tradable on their platform in the future. This has been expected by many for months and is the next logical step to maintain market power. Solana is responsible for the 2nd most NFT transactions and excels in fast and cheap transactions. These have eluded Opensea until now. Moreover, the lack of supply provided an opportunity for other marketplaces to grow by specializing in this blockchain.
Hack to Earn
A team of hackers managed to capture 600 million dollars in crypto currency. In the process, the play-to-earn game Axie Invinity was attacked. Such thefts are unfortunately not isolated cases in the NFT world and Web 3.0 marketplaces need to provide more security and order in the long run.
The in-game currency plummeted by 20% after the hack was announced, which many felt was very little, as 20% up and down can be a normal progression of cryptos.
Art NFT to the moon
When it comes to the most successful living artist, many think of Beeple or Banksy. But it is actually Jeff Koons. The artist now wants to take his first steps into the NFT world. The project is called "Jeff Koons: Moon Phases". For this Koons created a physical art-piece and put it also onto a NFT. The artwork then will be transported to the moon, in keeping with the "to the moon" meme.
Koons says of his project:
"I wanted to create a historically meaningful NFT project rooted in humanistic and philosophical thought,"
NFT Museum of war
The Ukrainian government wants to start a collection of war paintings. Every artist has the chance to apply with his portfolio to the government and to be included in the collection. Each work will cost about 0.15 Eth, which is about 500 dollars.
Releasing the collection has two advantages. Firstly, it raises money, which the government can use in these times. Accordingly, Ukraine has already received 100 million dollars in cryptocurrency in recent months. On the other hand, to draw attention to the war. By storing them on the blockchain, anyone can view the images and restricting them is difficult. So maybe some pictures will make it into Russian society and draw attention there to the destruction in their neighboring country, which they used to call a brother state.
GameStop unstoppable
The platform has been announced for a long time and finally a first beta version of GameStop's platform can be experienced. GameStop's goal is to make digital property tradable quickly, cheaply and securely. In doing so, GameStop is of course primarily targeting gaming NFTs due to its connection to gaming. The power is to be shifted back to the players and creators. To this end, $100 million will be given to NFT artists who create for the new marketplace.
Another innovation is the so-called Layer 2 Blockchain on the Ethereum network. This should make transactions faster and cheaper.
Come to the Otherside, we have Apes
The bored ape yard club has announced its own Metaverse. After the pitching deck of the company behind the NFT project was released to the general public, some insights into the future of the project were published. After that, a Bored-Ape own Metaverse is supposed to be released in the middle of this year. In addition, a video has now appeared on which, in addition to the bored apes, other NFT projects are also involved here. These are CryptoPunks, Cool Cats, CrypToadz, World of Women, Meebits, Nouns and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club.
With their pitch deck, the company behind Bored Ape has raised $450 million in capital for their venture. What's particularly impressive about this is who invested. Investments range from Adidas to Sandbox to GarryV and Mark Cuban.
Can they become the big competitors for Facebook's Metaverse ? Time will tell.
2.5 billion dollars worth
After an investment of 200 million dollars in the Immutable platform, it is now worth around 2.5 billion dollars. This means that it is already one of the big players. Immutable is a layer 2 scaling solution. This means that transactions on this system, which is based on Ethereum technology, can be traded faster and more cost-effectively through innovative approaches. Immutable tries to cover especially the niches gaming and collections.
Large collaborations have also already been announced. ImmutableX is to be the driving scaling solution on the future GameStop store and Opensea has also announced to integrate Immutable X.
In addition, the company is still building its own NFT games. Some even very successful like "Gods Unchained". The technology has a lot of potential, which is why such an investment is justified.
A Coin in the Ape-Verse
The company Yuga Labs, known for their collection "the Bored ape Yacht club". is now launching its own token. For this purpose, a DAO, i.e. a decentralized autonomous organization, was founded to manage the project.
The token is to be usable in future games of the brand. A first game is to be presented in the course of the year. Among each owner of a Bored Apes 15% of all Coins are divided. The same applies to the so-called Mutated Apes. 47% will be used for the development of the ecosystem and will remain with the DAO. The rest of the Coins will be divided among VC's, employees and founders.
Capital for Magic Eden
Magic Eden, like Opensea, is also a trading platform for non-fungible tokens with the difference that you pay with Solana and not Ethereum. Solana has the advantage that the transaction costs are much lower. Mostly only a few cents. In conclusion, this also means that less energy is needed for transacions, so the technology is better for the environment.
The company was founded during an initial upswing in the NFT hype. Magic Eden wants to specialize mainly in gaming NFT's, as they see the most potential in this area, especially for the underlying technology Solana.
Gamers vs. crypto kids
Many gamers see NFT's and the whole scene around it only as a way for game producers to make more money. There are statements like: "It's so obviously being done for profit instead of just creating a beautiful game."
Many crypto enthusiasts are currently hoping that crypto will revolutionize some industries. For gamers, this development probably comes a bit too early. At least for some.
In the long run, cross-game NFT's could revolutionize the gaming world and create new opportunities.
Solana is catching up
Etherium is the blockchain over which most NFT transactions take place. However, its market share is shrinking.
At the beginning of the year Ethereum provided 95% of all transactions, 3 weeks later only 80%. This is a clear trend towards competition.
The biggest problem with Ethereum is the high transaction costs. These are currently around 200 Dollars for one NFT transactions. The biggest winner because of this problem is the Solana network. They use a different technology to perform transactions and can thus charge minimal transaction costs in comparison.
In the long run, Etherium wants to change its way of conducting transactions. However, this is not expected to happen until around the middle of the year.
A second life for "second life
Generation Y will not be familiar with "second life." However, if you ask their parents about the Metaverse, many will say "This is not new, it's called Second life".
And yes, the idea of a virtual world in which you can live and experience is not new. Second Life already tried to implement this concept in 2003. Now new life is to be breathed into the website. With the return of the founder and many developing technical ideas, at least a good foundation has been laid.
In the name of the Metaverse
A couple from India spends their wedding reception digitally. The wedding ceremony still takes place in real life, but afterwards the bridal wreath is traded in for the Pc and they are immersed in a digital Hogwarts themed world. Friends and families are then invited to the party. The husband comments: "I came up with the idea of having a Metaverse wedding reception, and my fiancee also liked the idea," Gift requests are also adapted to the Metaverse. For example, the list includes "gift cards and cryptocurrency"
The world's first NFT restaurant
Restaurants in New York abound. Some stand out with cheap, good fast food and some with delicate masterpieces of cuisine. Now there is also a restaurant that only lets owners of the restaurant's own NFT's in. For about 2.5 Ether (or 8,500 dollars), the tradable membership is currently available, even though the seafood restaurant will probably not open until 2023. The project is supported by a celebrity in the NFT world "Gary Vee"
In 2021 it was him who motivated big influencers to buy crypto punks and thus started the NFT hype.
Dune book sold as NFT for 3 million dollars
The decentralized automated organization Spice DAO bought the NFT hoping to use the acquisition to create its own collection and publish an animated web series.
However, there is a problem.
The NFT does not come with rights to the book. It is just a copy of the book on the blockchain.
As a result, there was spot on Twitter. Bad publicity is also publicity and because of this the whole thing has also a positive side. A lot of people are now interested in how the story continues.
GameStop enters NFT market
Game retailer GameStop has leaked that they want to become the marketplace for digital valuables on the Internet. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the project will be launched as early as 2022. There is already an Internet page on which one can register for cooperation with GameStop. GameStop has a cult following among young gamers and financial enthusiasts. The news managed to trigger another small hipe and the company's stock saw a boost of over 20% overnight.
New marketplace for NFT's
LooksRare is a new marketplace for NFT's. The new site has been online since Monday and is attracting attention mainly by how they are trying to get big retailers onto their platform. A big part of the site is the company's own currency the Looks Token. Every Opensea user who has traded more than 2 Ether in the last few months can receive a certain amount of Looks Token. Opensea is currently the largest trading platform for NFTs. This way of attracting attention is called a vampire attack, because it tries to recruit active users of an other platform and turn them into their own customers.
Hostile takeover among giants
The company Meta, known to many as Facebook, is trying to poach large parts of the employees from the Microsoft's HoloLens project. HoloLens is technically the best AR headset released to date. By changing its name to Meta at the end of October, the company kicked off a major investment in the so-called Metaverse by all major tech companies. To live up to its new name, Meta is currently trying to poach many employees, especially from Microsoft, but also from others like Apple. The salaries of the employees are the main beneficiaries of the hipe. A big downside from this is less innovative startups outside of the big tech giants, as they can't keep up with the top salaries.
What is the Web 3.0.
It is understood to be a decentralized internet. Blockchain technology enables this decentralization. Decentralized means that no one has to act as a middleman in a transaction. With Web 3.0, contracts run via so-called smart contracts. These smart contracts are contracts that have stored in code what happens and when. At the moment, these are usually still somewhat expensive because a large amount of energy is needed to conclude such a contract.