Culture / 400 posts found
The NFT Community Reacts to the Rise of Open Editions
So far, the defining Web3 conversation of 2023 has been about open editions (OE). 3D animator and crypto artist NessGraphics broke records when they dropped Money Printer Go BRRRRRR and raised over 1,404 ETH ($2 million) in one hour. Likewise, Victor Mosquera’s January 29 OE drop for The Collector raised 224 ETH (nearly $400,000) in the span of 90 minutes. These exceptional sales volumes, coupled with a clear statistical uptick in the number of OEs being minted in the last month, opened up a passionate debate in the NFT community about the supply, value, and utility of an artist’s body […]
For Better or Worse, NFT Open Editions Are on the Rise
The rise of the open edition (OE) is officially here. After increasing in popularity throughout 2022, the last few months have seen thousands of artists and Web3 builders creating claim pages for open-edition mints. The NFT community has flocked to them in droves, generating millions in revenue and reinvigorating the crypto art space as it tries to shake off the icicles of a frosty 2022. Beyond the financial boost, OEs benefit the NFT ecosystem by driving engagement, allowing an artist’s fan base more opportunities to collect their work while expanding that community’s reach at the same time. This all sounds […]
How Jack Butcher’s Checks Challenges the Way People View NFTs
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, the internet collectively braced itself. The world’s richest human’s new toy was now a social media platform with an active user base of 368 million accounts — what could go wrong? One of the billionaire’s first changes to Twitter was to upend its “lords and peasants” system of deciding who gets a blue checkmark next to their name on the site. These checks, which users had to apply for, were a designation of the notability, activity, and authenticity of accounts. In place of that top-down system, users could now simply buy blue-check-mark-notability […]
A Guide to The Memes by 6529: Building an Open Metaverse Through Humor
Over their lifetime, memes have come to be understood as more than just cat pictures and fail videos that solicit the occasional laugh. In contrast to the often flippant nature of internet culture, memes have taken on great significance in mainstream and popular culture, achieving staying power as somewhat of a universal language. This also rings true in the NFT space, where memes continue to be created, shared, and sold for incredible sums. Considering the off-kilter, self-deprecating, and sometimes even plain nonsensical nature of Web3, the culture on the blockchain would be nothing without humor, distilled and disseminated through memes. […]
Gaming in Web3: Here’s Where the Most Iconic Brands Stand
We’ve come a long way since CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity were the most compelling options in the blockchain gaming space. Today, the blockchain gaming market is a billion-dollar industry, valued at roughly 4.6 billion dollars in 2022. Still, this growing slice of the gaming industry has decades’ worth of catching up to do with the mainstream gaming market, which saw a valuation of an estimated $232.02 billion in the same year. But not all brands are going full throttle on Web3 features in their games. In 2022, Microsoft took a hard stance on NFTs in its proprietary Minecraft game, banning […]
Sewer Pass Fever Pitch: BAYC Nets $20 Million, Blocks Zero-Royalty Platforms
The Alpha: On January 19, Yuga Labs launched Dookey Dash, an interactive minting experience playable until February 6. Users must have a Sewer Pass in their crypto wallet to play the game. These passes were initially airdropped to BAYC and MAYC NFT holders for free and have since started appearing on secondary NFT marketplaces, as announced by Yuga Labs in a Tweet. Public demand for Sewer Passes has reached a fever pitch since they first became available. Just three days since appearing on OpenSea, Sewer Passes have accrued a trading volume of over 13,000 ETH — more than $20 million […]
Is Bitcoin a Religion? A Scholar of Religion Explains
Read enough about Bitcoin, and you’ll inevitably come across people who refer to the cryptocurrency as a religion. Bloomberg’s Lorcan Roche Kelly called Bitcoin “the first true religion of the 21st century.” Bitcoin promoter Hass McCook has taken to calling himself “The Friar” and wrote a series of Medium pieces comparing Bitcoin to a religion. There is a Church of Bitcoin, founded in 2017, that explicitly calls legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto its “prophet.” In Austin, Texas, there are billboards with slogans like “Crypto Is Real” that weirdly mirror the ubiquitous billboards about Jesus found on Texas highways. Like many […]
Lore: What to Know About This New Type of NFT Utility
When it comes to the development and advancement of an NFT project, “lore” is invaluable. From Bored Apes to Forgotten Runes to goblintown and everything in between, lore is often considered the backbone of a successful NFT endeavor and acts as a prominent fixture that drives the storytelling component of a project. But what does the term actually mean? Ask any odd collector or creator what lore is, and you’ll likely receive a range of answers. A term that is undoubtedly tied to the unique and overarching narrative of a project, lore has fallen into ambiguity within the NFT space. […]
Rarible Unveils NFT Marketplace Builder That’s 100% Free
The Alpha: Rarible, one of the most widely used NFT marketplaces, has just launched a tool to help NFT creators set up bespoke NFT marketplaces for their projects and collections. The new free tool comes as a Polygon-based companion to a similar feature that was previously released by Rarible on the Ethereum blockchain. No coding knowledge is required to use the tool, which lets you customize your new NFT marketplace(s). Royalty enforcement could be fully on-chain, potentially protecting creators’ project revenue from policy changes. Why it matters Much of what makes engaging in the Web3 side of the internet so […]
Four Artists Open up About AI and the Future of Their Craft
The AI art movement is in full swing. And while it has a fair amount of controversy attached to its name, there’s simply no going back. Billions of people across the globe are using programs like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and plenty more to engage in artistic expression daily and on a scale that humanity has never before witnessed. And, given its penchant for embracing new technology, the NFT community has taken to these tools as quickly as anyone. As a result, we’re now starting to see a proliferation of NFT art whose creators have infused their work with AI […]