Alpha Schedule #3 - WEB3 RELI3FS ❤️
Alpha Schedule #3 - WEB3 RELI3FS ❤️
*Read this newsletter on the web for the best experience*
Hi Pals,
What a week we had!
They claim a week in the NFT space equals a month in the offline world ... and all I can say is: this is an understatement.
The past week has been crazy, with an overwhelming amount of news from the metaverse. I managed to read through all of them and collected my favorite news items for you!
So brace yourself; this newsletter is a bit longer than the previous one.
PS. Please do keep forwarding this email to friends, family, gaming buddies, or colleagues you think would benefit from receiving this newsletter in their inbox every Friday. For free!
— 🩸💀 AMERICAN RADASS
🤓 THIS WEEK IN THE METAVERSE
This newsletter is a bit longer than usual, so I decided to add a table of content to guide you to the content you like the most.
🇺🇦 Ukraine gets assistance from Web3
🇻🇪 Metamask is blocked in Venezuela
👾 Pixelmon revealed hilariously ugly art
💀 CryptoMories got a DCMA takedown
👽 Doodles mistakenly sold for a significant loss
📰 Quick news from the past week
💀 Recognize a rug pull
📅 Upcoming Mints (incl calendar and research)
🔮 Future Mints (start grinding for the allowlist)
😍 Behind the Scenes
📖 How to research
😂 Laugh out Loud
⚠️ NFA & DYOR disclaimers
🇺🇦 UKRAINE GETS ASSISTANCE FROM WEB3
In the midst of geopolitical turmoil, 37 NFT artists banded together to create a humanitarian initiative in a joint effort.
In response to Russia’s invasion, the web3 community decided to support Ukraine by crowdfunding through NFTs.
The community of over 37 artists and NFT leaders formed RELI3F, a web3 initiative consisting of NFT leaders to provide global humanitarian aid. Within 30 seconds of the initial launch, the project sold out earning over a million dollars. [one37pm]
😨 RELATED NEWS
CryptoPunk #5364 was transferred to Ukraine’s Ethereum wallet on Tuesday, adding a potentially lucrative and sought-after asset to a donation campaign that’s already amassed over $33 million in cryptocurrencies. [Coindesk]
🇻🇪 METAMASK BLOCKED IN VENEZUELA
Multiple MetaMask users based in Venezuela and Iran have reported that they have been blocked from accessing the popular Web3 wallet. The NFT marketplace OpenSea has also limited access to Iranian users, highlighting longstanding concerns over how decentralized many aspects of Web3 actually are. [Cryptobriefing]
👾 PIXELMON REVEAL HILARIOUSLY UGLY ART
The Pixelmon non-fungible token project became the laughingstock of crypto Twitter after the highly anticipated artwork series was panned as shoddily crafted and just plain ugly.
Pixelmon raised a whopping $70 million upon mint on Feb. 7, marking one of the biggest launch sales completed for a project in the NFT market. Buyers spent up to 3 ETH per mint (about $9,200 based on historical ether prices), with the project completely selling out in less than a day.
According to the project’s road map or "lite paper," it promised the “the largest and highest quality game the NFT space has ever seen.”
The backlash on social media prompted a swift apology from the Pixelmon team, which immediately switched into damage control mode. [Coindesk]
The team then continued to buy Blue Chip NFT's for themselves with the development money from their project.
💀 DCMA TAKEDOWN DRAMA
CryptoMories was recently delisted from OpenSea. At first, everyone had thought it to be an issue with Opensea that would be soon fixed. However, it turned out not to be as it disappeared because of a DMCA takedown request.
The reasoning behind the DMCA takedown request is because of the skull head trait, which according to Twitter user @studentoforacle, is a “1-minute minimalist skull”. Also, he mentioned that Sabet has used and profited from other licensed NFT and non-NFT artworks. From the likes of BAYC, Marvel, and Star Wars.
It took a few days before both NFT projects reached a settlement over the alleged infringement. Sabet’s DMCA complaint was withdrawn and he apologized to the CryptoMories community.
👽 DOODLES SOLD FOR A BIG LOSS
Space Doodles, the just-released collection from the team behind the Doodles NFTs, is a case in point. Launched on Feb. 28, Space Doodles spurred excitement for its playful characters zipping through psychedelic space in various crafts. But some are selling well below the floor prices.
These Space Doodles are released with one-to-one availability to their origin project Doodles, which means Spaces Doodles can’t be sold without losing the original NFT.
Some Space Doodle owners didn’t get the message and rugged themselves. This led to Space Doodle sales at 5 ETH and 7 ETH, well below Doodles’ floor, which is 10.7 ETH, over $30,000 as of Mar. 1 [Thedefiant]
📰 NEWS FROM THE PAST WEEK
The highly-anticipated WGMInterfaces, a project composed of beautiful 3D renders, has been placed on indefinite hold by its creators due to mounting pressures and felting enjoyment.
OTHER NEWS
Deadfellaz has announced profile picture metawrapping. This technology allows converting the original profile picture NFT to a pixel- and a Sculpt-version in order to integrate their horde into their owned metaverse assets (Sandbox, Webb3,..). [Deadfellaz]
Ethereum officially reached the 1 million unique NFT buyers, seven years since the first NFT was minted on Ethereum blockchain. [blockonomi]
Data revealed that the number of unique NFT buyers for February was 796,009, down by 12% from its January record. This marks the first time that buyers will be below 800,000 since October 2021. [Cryptoslate]
Deadfellaz announced a partnership with Metalink, in order to move to a discord replacement. For now, they are only migrating the giveaways. [Twitter & Mirror]
Metalink, a social app for NFT communities, has now integrated Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF) to provide cryptographic randomness to platform giveaways. [nftevening]
Axie Infinity has announced an updated fee structure for its native marketplace. It will introduce a higher transaction fee starting March 7th. Currently, the transaction fee Axie Marketplace charges is 4.25%. However, starting next week it will jump by one percent to 5.25%. [DappRadar]
MoonPay bought the World of Women NFT at a Christie's auctions for £567,000 ($754,340) on behalf of a mystery buyer. [theblockcrypto]
Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has poached a director from Jump Capital to serve as an evangelist of its Ronin blockchain. [theblockcrypto]
✨ NEW IN THE SPACE
A Barbie NFT featuring a diverse assortment of Barbie careers will be part of the Boss Beauties Role Models NFT collection, designed to empower women and girls at the forefront of technology and creativity, alongside other trailblazing figures. [Twitter & Mattel]
KPMG Canada has bought a World of Women NFT. This follows the audit, tax, and advisory firm’s purchase of Bitcoin and Ethereum for its balance sheet earlier this month. [cryptobriefing]
The Sandbox and World of Women teamed up to bring more women and diversity into the NFT and metaverse space and announced the launch of the WoW Foundation. The Foundation will kick off with a $25 million grant from The Sandbox–dedicated to bolstering the representation of women in decentralized web spaces. [Cryptoslate]
Sports NFTs are projected to generate more than $2 billion in transactions in 2022, according to a new study by Deloitte — and the Premier League is considering a move into the space. [frontofficesports]
Global music brands Billboard and Universal Music Group are partnering to launch ChartStars, an NFT based project of digital collectibles built on the Flow blockchain. [theblockcrypto]
South Korea is reportedly planning to invest some $187 million in creating its national metaverse platform. [cryptopotato]
Rakuten Group Inc, the firm behind the popular online shopping platform Rakuten, announced Friday that it has launched its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. [theblockcrypto]
💀 HOW TO RECOGNIZE A RUG PULL
A “rug pull” is a wildly used term within the crypto world and NFT space to describe a scam in which the founders of a project don’t fulfill their promises after receiving funds - essentially, running away with the money.
In order to recognize these rug pulls and to help you improve your research, we’ll be sharing various tips and tricks over the next few newsletters.
Looking back on the past week, we stumbled upon some shady business activities in the NFT scene. We recommend being extra careful.
POTENTIAL RUGS
Scammers are pretending to be Ukrainian NFT artists, in order to boost their sales. They've been changing their names, locations, and Twitter bio's in order to make this credible. [Twitter]
Scammers are charging money for WL spots, after which they'll actually never get you on the allowlist. [Twitter]
Hundreds of NFTs were stolen in the TreasureDAO exploit, conducted through a series of transactions. The attackers were able to exploit a bug in the protocol that enabled them to mint NFTs for free. Soon after, the platform urged its users to delist their non-fungible tokens from the marketplace. [Cryptopotato]
📅 UPCOMING MINTS
This chapter of the newsletter functions as the extension of my public NFT mint calendar, which is meant to highlight projects I’m looking forward to.
As you scroll through the list of mints, you'll notice many women-focussed projects are being released on the 8th of March to celebrate International Women's Day.
Below are the projects I’m looking forward to the most, but don’t forget to do your own research into them if they sound interesting because this shouldn’t be considered as financial advice.
Feline Fiendz
Pre-mint: March 5th
Public Mint: March 6th
Supply: 7.777
Price: Ξ 0.05
Max Mint: 3 per wallet
Twitter: @felinefiendz
Roadmap: fiendz.io
Something I noticed over the past few weeks, is that the current market prefers drops with a limited supply and a relatively cheap buy-in. Feline Fiendz marks these boxes, and then some.
The project's founders are all doxxed and originated from the Cryptoon Goonz community, which might be why the art looks similar.
The project had a few credible partnerships (Fishy Fam, Cosmodinos, Cosmic Cats,..), generated a decent amount of engagement, and .. cats are quite popular in the NFT community.
Ghost Frens
Pre-mint: March 6th
Public Mint: March 7th
Supply: 5.555
Price: Ξ 0.03 presale, Ξ 0.04 public
Twitter: @ghost_frens
Roadmap: ghostfrens.io
Ghost Frens grabbed our attention for the exact same reasons: a limited supply and a low mint price.
In their discord, you're able to find a very detailed roadmap for the coming months: from launching a DAO and buying Metaverse land, to focusing on community initiatives like allowlist giveaways, Merch, charity, and eventually even companions.
In this roadmap, the team also announced a raffle system for giveaways based on the rarity of your ghost, where the more rare ghosts will be able to have more entries in their raffles.
Additionally, the team announced free companions for all holders who manage to keep 2 (or more) Ghost Frenz in their wallets.
Their discord community is solid, but what worries me a bit is the fluctuation in their Twitter engagement.
Year of The Woman
Date: March 8th
Supply: 10.000
Price: Ξ 0.08
Max Mint: 5 per wallet
Twitter: @YearoftheWoman_
Roadmap: yearofthewoman.io
YOTW is an NFT project led by Yasmin Shima. She's a known artist, muralist, and art teacher from Australia who has been building a solid community via various Twitter spaces, offline events, and painting various murals over the past few months.
Her main goal with this project has been to bring the female community together, to help them build connections and support their work.
In a recent space, Yasmin mentioned that the art is inspired by the Chinese Zodiac signs and is meant to “represent these confident, empowered, and fearless women in the NFT space.”
Over the past few months, Year of The Woman has received various twitter endorsements from respected NFT projects (such as Women Tribe,..) and gained some high-profile NFT collectors as followers.
Personally, Year of The Woman is the NFT project I look forward to the most!
🔮 LOOKING FORWARD
We are already looking ahead to the next few weeks, meaning we’re currently doing our due diligence and researching the projects listed below.
It’s no financial advice at all, but you might want to start doing your research and grinding for these allowlists before it’s too late.
PS - Don’t hesitate to tell them you found out about them via this newsletter ;)
😍 BEHIND THE SCENES
NFT project Clay Friends - who's minting today and recently partnered up with Photoshop - has released a behind-the-scenes video that reveals how they made their art.
📖 LEARN HOW TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
😂 LAUGH OUT LOUD
I can totally picture this conversation in real life 😂 😂 😂
😊 ENJOYED THIS WEEK'S ALPHA?
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🤓 DISCLAIMER: NFA & DYOR
This newsletter is a curated overview of the most interesting things I’ve read the past week, the projects I’ve researched, and the NFT’s I’ll be trying to buy.
This means I’m - per definition - biased, so don’t consider this as financial advice and keep doing your own research if you see something you like.