FinTech news in digital art category

DSCVR, a blockchain-based social network built on Dfinity’s Internet Computer protocol, has entered the race to build a scalable DeSo platform with $9 million in seed funding led by Polychain Capital. Porter said he made that decision after meeting Dfinity’s president and chief scientist, Dominic Williams, while Porter was working on a blockchain-based smart contract project as a consultant at BCG. His first project was to build a message board on the protocol, which he said exposed him to the need for web3 communities and inspired his decision to build a social network. The communities help NFT projects build hype by airdropping digital assets to DSCVR users, co-founder and CEO Rick Porter told journalist in an interview.

The full scope of the Yuga’s monetization plans for their network are still in development and the founders have yet to nail down timing for a wide public launch, but while multi-million dollar avatars and massive NFT land sales may be unique among today’s games, Yuga is positioning itself to compete with today’s big platforms including players like Epic Games, Roblox and Meta.

Smolin references the great lengths users go to at the end of the year to reach the next level of airline status as a way to signify how they price the value of the service; he wonders whether more services could build this relationship and create better membership programs for users.

Former OpenSea exec arrested and charged with insider trading of NFTs Crypto’s top venture capitalists have said that the talent entering the crypto space is one of the biggest reasons they’re bullish on the space, but as crypto giants continue to make huge layoffs, it’s unclear how much of that talent is being held onto.

Pow, who worked at Ox Labs, a decentralized exchange protocol builder, and his co-founder Hongzi Mao, a computer science Ph.D. from MIT, have created a desktop tool that uses machine learning algorithms to turn still avatars into motion-tracked ones. Available as a Chrome extension, Hologram swaps out Pow’s real video feed with the cat avatar.

In April, China’s top financial industry associations proposed that NFTs must not be used for securitization; nor should they be traded with cryptocurrencies, which have been outlawed in the country.

Digital collectible platforms, according to the proposal issued by Tencent, Ant Group, and others, should hold relevant regulatory permits, ensure the security of underlying blockchain technologies, enforce user real-identity checks, step up intellectual property protection, resolutely ban financial speculations, and promote rational consumption among users.

Instagram to start testing NFTs with select creators this week Meta to roll out new monetization tools on Instagram and Facebook, including a creator marketplace After debuting NFT support on Instagram in May, Meta has launched digital collectibles support on Facebook with select creators. Zuckerberg has also said Meta is going to work on augmented reality NFTs, or 3D NFTs, that you can bring to Instagram Stories using Spark AR, which is the company’s software AR platform.

A Ukrainian deeptech startup is launching a charity NFT project to sell AI-generated artworks with the twin goal of raising money to support people affected by Russia war of aggression and also — it hopes — keep attention locked on the conflict as it approaches its fourth month, with many in the country concerned that the world’s focus is flagging.

Primitives’ ultimate goal is for the digital wallet to become a central location for a user to hold NFTs and cryptocurrencies, interact with friends, store music, play games, and more, Gabeau said.

The fund, which is backed by Dapper’s venture arm and Dapper investors Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Union Square Ventures, Coinfund, Digital Currency Group and Cadenza Ventures, among others, is aiming to incentivize more crypto devs to choose Flow as the blockchain they build their projects on with investments, token grants and development support.

Alberto Simon, co-founder of art investing platform Masterworks, is leaving his current role at Gemini’s Nifty Gateway NFT platform to join Co:Create as a co-founder and chief product officer, Fung said. Co:Create will be chain-agnostic, meaning it will support the blockchains on which its customers have built their NFT projects, Fung said.

Americana Technologies, a startup founded early last year by designer Jake Frey, allows brands and creators to turn physical items such as streetwear, collectibles, cars and artworks into NFTs.

To bring more users to its platform, it will also partner with NFT artists globally, who will do collection drops on Coinbase NFT in the near future, Saxena shared. For example, if an NFT contains details that are illegal in the U.S., Coinbase NFT would ban it, Saxena said.

The verdict that China web3 community has been waiting for months is here: NFTs, or the tokens used to prove the ownership and authenticity of an item, must not be used for securitization or transacted in cryptocurrencies, said China’s banking, securities and internet financial associations in an announcement on Wednesday.

The startup is looking to capitalize momentum behind NFT profile pic collections and ENS (.eth) handles to build out a network of NFT-based avatar identity products. Genies, an LA-based digital avatar startup, announced Tuesday that it had raised $150 million in funding from Silver Lake, with participation from others.

The NFT market was worth $41 billion at the end of last year — nearly as large as the conventional art market by some estimates — and it’s expected to nearly double in size by the end of 2022, according to a report released this week by blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

On Friday, Justin Kan’s crypto gaming marketplace Fractal, which hosts Solana-based NFTs, raised $35 million in a round co-led by Paradigm and Multicoin, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca, Coinbase and Solana Labs.

The one-year immersion program, the Visa Creator Program, will bring together a global cohort of creators including artists, musicians, fashion designers and filmmakers the ability to build their businesses with NFTs It previously made headlines for buying a popular CryptoPunk NFT in August 2021.

The Miami-based NFT firm behind Bored Apes Yacht Club has not previously raised funding, though the startup has long been courting attention from VCs eager to back a major player in the NFT craze. Yuga Labs, maker of the multimillion dollar monkey JPEGs that plenty of NFT skeptics love to hate, just raised a $450 million round from Andreessen Horowitz.

Multimillion dollar monkey pictures and monkey money are likely not the future you were expecting to capture the undivided attention of Silicon Valley VCs, but Yuga Labs hopes that the new game and token will inspire a mainstream crypto economy built around their their IP, which further expanded last week to include the highly valued CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections after Yuga acquired the assets from Larva Labs.

The Larva Labs founders have almost fully divested from the project at this point, with Yuga Labs detailing in a blog post that they had also acquired 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits from the company, leaving the founders with just a few of each in addition to their generative art project Autoglyphs which was not part of the deal.

With big-name backers like The Chainsmokers, Alexis Ohanian, Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg, Pearpop is launching Pearproof, a web3 app that allows creators to mint NFTs of their social media posts.

Another wholesale NFT heist happened in April 2021 when artist Qing Han aka Quinni’s work was stolen and reposted on the same platform that York used, OpenSea.

Today it extending the whole process further by launching real estate-backed NFTs in the United States, working on the technological and legal framework to literally turn real estate properties into NFTs.

Here’s how to conduct the ultimate litmus test on an NFT project through its creators: Check if both the founder and tech are open The first NFT was created in 2014 and was sold only last year.

The company is rolling out NFT Profile Pictures to Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS by way of Twitter Blue early access Labs feature

POAP, which stands for Proof Of Attendance Protocol, wants to dial deeper into the idea of using NFT to create internet communities, with a protocol that helps build more active communities and award individual participation like taking part in an event.