Ever felt overwhelmed by the number of things happening in Web3? Don't have enough time to spend on Twitter to keep up with everything? Don't worry, I got you. Kio’s News is here with all the highlights from last week
Index
Crypto & NFTs
🟡 You can now send USDT through Telegram
🟡 Magic Eden becomes the largest Bitcoin marketplace
🟡 Gucci is partnering with Yuga Labs for the BAYC metaverse
Solana News
🔵 NFT Inspect has been acquired
🔵 Royalties are back
Solana NFTs
🟢 Sol Big Brain’s new PFP
🟢 y00topia was a lie
🟢 Pilot Enforcers reveal is now live
Would you like to sponsor or collaborate with this newsletter? Reach out to me through Twitter or kionftguy@substack.com
🟡 You can now send USDT through Telegram
Telegram users can now send each other USDT, the world's largest stablecoin, within chats. This is a positive development for mainstream adoption, making sending cryptocurrency as easy as sending a text or photograph. USDT offers the benefits of other cryptocurrencies without price volatility, making it a vital component for users who want to keep their money in the crypto ecosystem.
Source: Coindesk
🟡 Magic Eden becomes the largest Bitcoin marketplace
Last week we talked about how Magic Eden was expanding to the Bitcoin blockchain, offering the best experience to NFT traders there. Now we can say, with data in hand, that they are by far the largest marketplace, accumulating more volume than all the others combined.
🟡 Gucci is partnering with Yuga Labs for the BAYC metaverse
Luxury fashion powerhouse Gucci is making waves in the crypto world with its latest Web3 venture. The brand has announced a partnership with Yuga Labs, the creators of the popular Otherside metaverse project.
While Gucci has previously dabbled in the blockchain realm with its Gucci Grails collaboration with 10KTF in March 2022, this latest move with Yuga Labs is set to be a more robust and ongoing initiative. The partnership aims to explore the intersection between fashion and entertainment in the Metaverse, creating digital wearables that can be accessed by holders of Otherside NFTs and BAYC ecosystem members.
While some critics may question the potentially cash-grabby nature of this collaboration, the overwhelming sentiment from the community thus far has been positive. This exciting development is just one of three major launches that Gucci has planned for the first half of 2023, leaving crypto enthusiasts eagerly anticipating what the fashion giant has in store for the future of Web3.
Source: NFT Now
🔵 NFT Inspect has been acquired
Remember we mentioned months ago that NFT Inspect was shutting down? Well, they are back! Due to the difficulty to find a business model and generate revenue, the team behind NFT Inspect decided to close the project. However, many players in the Solana NFT ecosystem got interested in the company and showed interest in acquiring it. One of those was Solport Tom, who wanted to integrate the platform under Graphite’s tool suite.
We still don’t know who ended up buying it. Nonetheless, it’s a great platform that many in the ecosystem use and I’m happy to see that someone will carry on with the project.
🔵 Royalties are back
Data shows it. It seems that the new programmable NFT standard launched by Metaplex caught on and people are paying royalties again. It’s still far away from the numbers we used to have, but 57% of all NFT sales on Solana currently pay royalties. And with the number of projects adopting pNFTs increasing every week, it will most likely continue to go up.
🟢 Sol Big Brain’s new PFP
After much speculation after SOL Big Brain dropped that he no longer wanted to associate his personal brand with SMBs, we finally have a new PFP. And that PFP is from The Catalina Whale Mixer!
He outlined the reasons for this change and why he chose the project from WAGMI Beach below
Now the question is, what is going to happen with the rest of the people who built their personal brands around their SMBs? SMB once was the NFT collection with the highest ratio of holder representation on Twitter on all blockchains. Will they be able to maintain their presence on Crypto Twitter or will everyone switch to other projects after the change of ownership?
🟢 y00topia was a lie
What? What does this mean?
Last week Frank hosted a 2-hour-long Twitter space spilling all the alpha. Here’s what to expect.
First of all, the bridge.
March 27th. That’s the day y00ts left Solana and became officially a Polygon NFT collection. But, how do you make over six thousand people migrate their NFTs to another blockchain?
The answer is incentives and punishments. In order for y00ts to be successful on Polygon, they need to reach a critical mass of holders that bridge, which is around half the collection. That’s why they prepared a battery of initiatives to incentivize holders to bridge and disincentivize them to stay on SOL.
These initiatives include zero gas fees for bridging, a voucher of $5 USDC for listing on Polygon, and 0% trading fees, all powered by Magic Eden. They will also raffle a BTC DeGod among the people who bridge within the first 24h.
On the other side, they are deprecating further development for y00ts/DeGods on SOL. There will be no more points, airdrops, or community access. And they will install a new royalty tax, called “Paper Hands Bridge Tax”, of 33.3% after the 3rd of April. So you either bridge… or bridge. You have no other option. Unless you want a useless NFT.
DeGods will bridge to ETH on March 31st
But it’s March 29th! The y00ts bridge has already started. So what? Did they reach the critical mass?
In fact, in the first 20 hours, more than 10,000 NFT have already bridged, which represents more than 80% of the collection. A big success. And all feedback is positive on the experience of bridging, so the technical side was on point this time.
At this point, only 1400 of the more than 6000 holders still haven’t bridged and there are only 2600 NFTs left on Solana (from the total supply of 13.3k). In terms of floor and volume, y00ts sit at 1.72 ETH on Polygon and have already generated 190 ETH in trading volume (around $300,000), becoming the most traded NFT collection on Polygon in the last month (not that there’s much competition anyways)
Moving on to the second point talked about in the space. y00ts season 2.
There will be new art. Just like DeGods evolved into DeadGods, y00ts will evolve into something else. And you will have the ability to reroll traits as well, spending y00tpoints.
And the third and last point. y00topia was a lie. Frank says he has been studying y00ts for the last 6 months and wants to fuck around and find out with this new model. Equal rarity for all traits was an experiment and now the team wants to experiment with a new model.
Source:
🟢 Pilots enforcers reveal is now live
The reveal for the Pilot Enforcer faction is now live. After weeks and weeks of waiting, the art and website are finally ready and you can enjoy your Pilots. This comes with a very innovative reveal system, where you can spend the points you have been earning by staking your Pilot on opening cases to get some traits to put on your Pilot.
Once you are satisfied with the look of the NFT, you can lock it and that will be the final version of your Pilot.