Weekly Overview: What Happened in GameFi, NFTs, and Metaverse This Week? [November 11–18]
We collect this week’s highlights on NFTs, play-to-earn, and metaverse which are the main topics we hear more and more details about every day.
For those who do not want to miss the most influential news about the industry among dozens of news, we have compiled the top five of the week for you.
Yuga Labs Acquires ‘WENEW’ and Its 10KTF NFT Collection
Yuga Labs announced in a post today that it has acquired WENEW along with its NFT collection 10KTF. WENEW stands out with its blockchain and web3-based initiatives. 10KTF, purchased by Yuga Labs, is the most popular collection of the brand.
With the acquisition, WENEW founder Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann has joined Yuga Labs as an advisor.
WENEW launched in June 2021 and it has made a name for itself with a lot of brand collaborations including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Playboy and the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
10KTF is the prominent concept of the brand. 10KTF, an Ethereum NFT project, provides users with clothing for their profile photos. It is a story-based NFT project featuring a fictional “digital artisan” character (above) named Wagmi-san. In the project, special clothes are produced that can be designed by the owners of PFP projects. They had worked with popular NFT art collections including Bored Apes, Cool Cats, Nouns, Moonbirds.
‘Nike’ Wants To Be in The NFT Market With ‘.SWOOSH’: ‘Polygon’ is the Key
International clothing company Nike announced “.SWOOSH” on November 14. This project is supported by Polygon. SWOOSH is a platform that hosts a virtual product consisting of interactive digital objects such as virtual shoes and jerseys that can be worn in video games or other immersive experiences.
Despite the decline in the NFT market, Nike continues to invest. Cryptokicks, a collection containing NFT sneakers, became one of the company’s most successful projects in this field, with an NFT that was priced at $134,000. On the other hand, in February 2022, the company granted commercial rights to the owners of RTFKT and CloneX NFT, allowing them to create their own derivative projects, produce fan art, and make and sell products featuring their avatars.
Ron Faris, GM of Nike Virtual Studios, says “We are shaping a marketplace of the future with an accessible platform for the web3-curious,” Faris says. “In this new space, the “.SWOOSH” community and Nike can create, share, and benefit together.”
According to Dune Analytics data, Nike has generated a total of $185 million in NFT revenue so far. Of these revenues, $93 million is from primary sales, while $92 million is from royalties.
Cristiano Ronaldo Launches an NFT Collection with Binance
Binance has confirmed a partnership with world-famous football player Cristiano Ronaldo.
The first NFT collection of the five-time Ballon D’or winner Cristiano Ronaldo, the most followed celebrity with 497 million followers on Instagram in the world, will be released on Friday, November 18 on Binance, the leading blockchain ecosystem.
The NFT collection which is 6645 pieces in total, will feature seven different animated statues of four different rarity levels: Super Super Rare (SSR), Super Rare (SR), Rare (R), and Normal (N). Each NFT statue depicts iconic moments in Ronaldo’s life, from his career-shaping shots to his childhood in Portugal.
The highest value 45 CR7 NFTs (5 SSRs and 40 SRs) will be auctioned on the Binance NFT market. The auction will run for 24 hours and NFTs will be awarded to the highest bidder. Bid prices will start at 10,000 BUSD for SSR NFTs and 1,700 BUSD for SR NFTs.
The remaining 6,600 NFTs (600 R AND 6,000 N) will be available on Binance Launchpad, starting at 77 BUSD for Normal rarity.
It has been announced that the new pieces of the collection are planned to be presented in early 2023.
Google Cloud and Aptos Expand Collaboration for Web3 Developers
While the cryptocurrency industry is shaken by the FTX bankruptcy, companies are trying to recover with various collaborations.
Cloud service provider Google Cloud and blockchain Aptos have announced that they are expanding their partnership and that Google Cloud will run a validator on Aptos accordingly.
The collaboration between Layer-1 blockchain infrastructure company, Aptos and Google, named “Token 2049”, has comprehensive content for Web3 developers:
- Google Cloud will run an authenticator on Aptos Network.
- Aptos Labs will use Google Cloud services in its internal development operations and collaborate to make Google Cloud a preferred location for the developer community to run Aptos nodes and decentralized applications (dApps).
- Aptos Foundation to launch an accelerator program.
- Google Cloud will index the Aptos chain and this data will be made available to developers via BigQuery. In this way, developers of projects with the Aptos ecosystem on Google Cloud will be supported.
- A hackathon will be organized as part of the partnership of Aptos and Google Cloud for the cooperation of decentralized developer communities around the world.
Sony Gets its Patents for NFT and GameFi
Japan-based technology giant Sony has received a new patent for the use of NFTs within games. It was stated that the patent will allow players to purchase in-game digital assets and NFTs related to their favorite esports stars.
GameFi integration to PlayStation, the world-famous game console owned by Sony, may be news that will push the market up. PlayStation had previously entered the NFT sector at EVO 2022. The firm, which conducted a player survey, asked its fans what kind of NFTs they would like to buy. The responses were predominantly NFTs about music artists, e-sports stars, PlayStation assets, and favorite game characters.
Sony aims to track in-game digital assets through blockchain technology with the technology made possible by the patent it has received. Patent file titled “Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger”; it also includes a chart that outlines the roadmap for monitoring the ownership, appearance, and metadata of these digital assets.
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