Culture / 400 posts found
BAYC’s Kennel Club Explained: Furry Friends for Bored Apes
In June 2021, Yuga Labs announced it would provide even more value for holders of the illustrious Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs via a completely free NFT airdrop. A month later, in July 2021, the Bored Ape faithful finally learned what those NFTs would end up being: furry friends for their Bored Apes. Much like how Larva Labs gave holders of its seminal CryptoPunks collection complementary NFTs in the Meebits collection, Yuga Labs would reward its holders with a free complementary NFT. Free, save for gas fees needed to mint the NFTs, of course. Bored Ape Kennel Club #8800 — […]
4 Brands That Didn’t Need to Say ‘NFT’ to Bring Fans Into Web3
Despite the best efforts of the NFT community and builders leading the space into the future, the term “NFT” remains controversial for most of the internet. The mere utterance of NFTs has been enough to send fans of deceased creators into a frenzy upon learning of impending drops related to these late creators’ bodies of work. Regardless, some brands find the allure of launching an NFT project too great to ignore. After all, NFTs are just one prong of what is often a multi-faceted strategy to prepare for the mainstream arrival of Web3, the internet’s next great leap forward. So […]
5 NFTs People Have Minted Onto Their Skin
Since at least 2017, communities have rallied around NFT projects across the entire space, as seen with the explosion in popularity the CryptoPunks community and others enjoyed IRL, in the form of in-person community meetups and events. But for others, projects have inspired so much love in some members’ hearts that they’ve decided to represent their favorite NFTs IRL permanently — with tattoos. Considering the recent rise of NFTs existing in our physical world, it’s no surprise that enthusiasts have taken to using NFTs they own, or simply just like a lot, in a profoundly personal way. After all, what could be […]
Rolling Stone Unveils ‘Matriarchy Now’ With Pussy Riot Superstar
The Alpha: Rolling Stone has just announced the upcoming release of MATRIARCHY NOW — an 11-part NFT collection in partnership with Pussy Riot Co-Founder Nadya Tolokonnikova and noted photographer and artist Ellen von Unwerth. The collection drops on January 11, at 3:00 p.m. ET. The forthcoming collection will be spearheaded by the auction of the lead 1/1 MATRIARCHY NOW NFT, with proceeds distributed to help forward the cause of women’s reproductive rights through a UnicornDAO LegalAbortion.ETH via Endaoment. Tolokonnikova’s UnicornDAO has raised $4.5 million as of writing to help support this, along with many other women and LGBTQ+-focused social causes. […]
Owning Our Coverage: Here’s How We Decide What’s Fit to Print
Making sense of the news cycle can be exceptionally challenging. We live in an age of information overload, and parsing out what’s factual and relevant from what’s sensational and reckless is tricky for even the most seasoned internet denizen — and journalists are no exception. As a publisher, it is our job to produce objective and impartial coverage of notable and newsworthy events. We owe it to ourselves and our readers to take this responsibility seriously and focus our attention on subjects that matter — on the stories that uplift, inspire, or highlight valid concerns. And we also owe it […]
TV Isn’t Dead. It’s Being Resurrected in Web3
The entertainment media landscape has changed immensely over the past decade. And for new generations (Gen Z and later), it’s still changing. There was a time when kids woke up to cartoons and spent their evenings watching regularly scheduled family-friendly programming, but the youth of the 2020s now take their breakfasts with a side of YouTube and their late-night snacks while binging shows on Netflix. That’s not at all a bad thing, unless, of course, you’re in the television industry. Because in the past 10 years or so, subscriptions to video streaming services have skyrocketed while pay-TV subscriptions (cable) have […]
NFT Timeline: The Beginnings and History of NFTs
There’s no denying it: NFTs are fundamentally reshaping the digital economy, taking blockchain to unprecedented prominence in a new era of Web3. It all started with the first NFT ever created, called Quantum, which was minted by Kevin McCoy on Namecoin in 2014. But several other NFTs were launched on pre-Ethereum blockchains over the following years — for example, Spells of Genesis launched in 2015, and stands as the first-ever blockchain-based game. Rare Pepes came out in 2016 and helped kick off the first crypto art market. However, these projects failed to reach widespread popularity. They remained mostly unknown to […]
5 Classic Brands Nailing a Comeback With NFTs
Undoubtedly, NFTs have provided a route for countless young, up-and-coming artists and musicians to finally make a living from their passion and craft. Even legacy brands have gotten in on the fun, utilizing this revolutionary new technology to engage their market in a deeper and more meaningful way. Through the usage of smart contracts — one of the features that sets NFTs apart — brands can even enable a host of unique utilities for their buyers down the road. However, a reoccurring story we’ve seen in the brief history of NFTs in the public limelight is how classic, sometimes long-defunct […]
Fear vs. Ethics: Where AI Art Critics Go Wrong
Artificial intelligence is making a lot of people angry this week. “AI art” has been trending on Twitter for several days now, community members on the popular artist platform Art Station are staging anti-AI art protests, and the tech’s biggest advocates have wasted no time in pushing back against the wave of outrage. Hell, even Beeple chimed in with a fantastic visual born of the whole debacle. But this week’s madness is only the symptomatic culmination of several months of technological developments and the widespread dissemination of AI-assisted artistic tools. The pressure has been building, and it’s now ruptured the […]
Four Luxury Brands Bringing Their Loyal Followings to Web3
It’s a well-known fact that individual NFTs have often sold for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars through the years. Whether it’s a particularly rare piece from collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, or a new piece from an acclaimed artist like Beeple, high-value NFTs are a prominent feature of Web3. Given how NFTs have gradually established a warm relationship with luxury goods, several brands catering specifically to luxury markets have firmly established themselves in the NFT space. But it goes deeper than just entering a market prepared to shell out considerable sums of cash, though. NFTs […]