NFT Marketplace / March Update — NFT marketplaces had just over $1.95B worth of trading volume in March, down about 4% from the February total of $2.04B. Roughly 70% of trading volume occurred on Blur (🤝), with nearly $1.35B worth of Ethereum NFT trades, up slightly from about $1.32B in February. OpenSea accounted for about $424M worth of trading volume in March, down from $587M in February — more
Otherside x Gucci / Koda Pendant — The partnership between Yuga Labs’ Otherside and Gucci was announced last week but quickly followed up with the release of the KodaPendant — a digital and physical piece that represents Gucci’s entry into Otherside. This 3,333 collection is meant to “represent the first chapter of a broader partnership between Yuga and Gucci in which fashion, entertainment, and web3 collide” — more
Polygon Labs / Fast & Furious Creator — Polygon Labs has partnered with Feature, an entertainment studio, to build a new racing franchise called Lollipop. David Ayer, who wrote the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious and Training Day, is writing and producing for Feature’s Lollipop franchise — more
Ralph Lauren / Crypto Payments & NFTs — The fashion brand Ralph Lauren announced the opening of a new luxury-focused concept store in Miami’s Design District. The store will accept crypto payments via a partnership with BitPay and enter into a multi-tiered partnership with Miami-based “web3 leisure community” Poolsuite, kicking things off with a Poolsuite x Ralph Lauren NFT airdrop and IRL event — more
Bugati x Asprey / Bitcoin NFTs — Bugati, a high-end sports car manufacturer, has teamed up with British luxury brand Asprey to launch The Asprey Bugatti Egg Collection, a drop featuring 111 physical eggs linked to Bitcoin NFTs. “The price for the eggs number 1-100 will be between $20-50k, while eggs 100-111 will be $200,000 upwards.” — more
FIFA / AI x NFT Powered Game — FIFA launched an open beta version of World Cup AI League — a mobile 4v4 soccer game that consists of customizable AI characters and environments. “Our mission is to lead casual gamers into the world of AI gaming in the metaverse, and with FIFA’s AI League, we are unlocking a unique new opportunity for football fans around the globe to interact with their favorite sport” — more
Arsenal FC / NFT Ticketing — Arsenal FC teamed up with Staynex, a web3 travel company, to launch a new NFT ticketing project on the BNB chain. The pilot project features 400 NFTs, divided into fan categories, providing access to matches and various accommodations — more
Avalanche / Evergreen Subnets — Avalanche announced Evergreen Subnets — a scalable solution for financial institutions built to account for company-specific and industry-wide considerations. Companies can enable permissioning based on KYC/KYB standards, geofencing for jurisdictional requirements, and other regulatory considerations — more
Ecosapiens (🤝) / $3.5M Raised — Ecosapiens, a startup that recently launched the world’s first carbon-backed NFT collection, raises round led by Collab+Currency, with participation from Boost VC, Menlo Ventures, Slow, Alumni, gmoney, and others — more
LayerZero / $120M Raised — LayerZero, an interoperability protocol that allows decentralized apps to build across multiple blockchains, raises Series B from a16z Crypto, Sequoia Capital, Circle Ventures, Samsung Next, OpenSea, and Christie's at a $3B valuation — more
LangChain / $10M Raised — LangChain, a startup aimed at assisting applications with the implementation of large language models (LLMs), raises round led by Benchmark. “LLMs in isolation are often not enough to create a truly powerful app - the real power comes when you are able to combine them with other sources of computation or knowledge.” — more
Polyhedra / $15M Raised — Polyhedra Network, a startup that provides web3 infrastructure backed by zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, raises pre-Series A funding led by Polychain Capital. “The fundraise comes a little over a month after the startup closed a $10 million strategic funding round from Binance Labs and Polychain.” — more
Delphi Labs / $13.5M Raised — Delphi Labs, the incubation arm of crypto research firm Delphi Digital, raises round led by P2P, the creator of liquid staking provider Lido, with participation Jump Crypto. Each participant in the accelerator will receive $200,000 in funding — more
Lore / $4M Raised — Lore, a co-ownership platform for web3 collectives to pool resources and own NFTs together, raises strategic round led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Seed Club Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Zeneca, North Island Ventures, Sfermion, Mischief, CMT Digital, Patricio Worthalter, Spice Capital, Sublime Ventures, and others — more
Astria / $5.5M Raised — Astria, a modular blockchain enabling anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant rollup without having to rely on a centralized sequencer, raises seed round led by Maven 11, with participation from 1kx, Delphi Ventures, and Figment Capital — more
Franklin / $2.9M Raised — Franklin, a project focused on crypto payroll solutions and developed internally at web3 marketing firm Serotonin, raises round co-led by Gumi Cryptos Capital and CMT Digital, with participation from Arca — more
AI is here, and there's nothing you can do to stop it / DCinvestor — “Over the past few weeks, I've been deep in a practical and intellectual rabbit hole on consumer AI (artificial intelligence), and I am both amazed and alarmed by what I've experienced. I felt compelled to share my findings and thoughts with you at this juncture. I believe this is the most important technology developed since the internet / world wide web, and I believe we will look back on the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 as a watershed moment in human history.” — more
Checks and balances: Machine learning and zero-knowledge proofs / Elena Burger — “Blockchains have incentivized zero-knowledge proof research, creating modern proving systems w/ smaller memory footprints and faster proving & verification times — making it possible to verify certain small machine learning algorithms on-chain. ZKPs are useful for more than validity rollups and on-chain privacy. Recently, there have been notable efforts in putting larger and more complex models on-chain, leveraging the ability of ZKPs to succinctly represent and verify programs.” — more
Defensible NFT Bazaars: How NFT Marketplaces Capture Value / Mason Nystrom — “NFT marketplaces should first aim to build defensibility via proprietary liquidity by focusing on 1) primary mints 2) retail traders/owning the majority of users and 3) building additional products or mechanisms (e.g. phygital verification) that lock in liquidity. Additionally, marketplaces can initially compete by serving NFT consumption experiences or by targeting underserved (but growing) verticals that necessitate better discovery.” — more
Building Psychological Attachment, Not Just Ownership, Into Web3 / Li Jin — “As the next era of the internet progresses with products that give users ownership through crypto tokens, builders can learn a lot about psychological ownership from other categories of products/services. By applying this lens, crypto projects can foster a greater sense of psychological ownership that accompanies ownership of actual crypto assets, leading to healthier user retention and sustainable ecosystems.” — more
Rabbithole (🤝) / Introducing ETH Earned — Rabbithole introduced a new on-chain reputation system that allows users to track and retain reputational status for their contributions. “Built atop RabbitHole's Quest Protocol, ETH Earned represents participation. The more quests you complete, the higher your ETH Earned score. You can view your ETH Earned by going to the Rewards Page” — more
Six Generative Artists, Four AI Artists / PROOF (🤝): Evolving Pixels — “Evolving Pixels is an exhibition centered around the theme of growth. The show invites a set of diverse digital artists who work with computational technologies–namely, generative or AI-assisted–to investigate what growth means to them.” Minting on April 12 at 9am PT. PROOF Collective holders will have a 24-hour exclusive minting window. Mints will be randomized from the 10 artists and 858 total token supply — more
StoryCo (🤝) / The Storyline Issue 002 — The second edition of the Storyline features an interview with the TV writer, Sonny Lee, whose new show BEEF recently launched on Netflix. Other updates relate to StoryCo’s ‘The Disco Ball’ project, Producer Token Applications, and new hires — more
Blackbird / Loyalty + Membership Project — Blackbird, a web3-enabled startup aimed at creating meaningful connectivity between restaurants and their customers, launched its first loyalty and membership program with GERTIE — a Williamsburg diner that opened in 2019 — more
Mutant Apes / Serum City Game — The Mutant Apes NFT Collection will star as the main characters in an upcoming game called Serum City on Ethereum, developed by Faraway and Novel Labs. Serum City will use ApeCoin as its primary in-game currency. BAYC holders will also be able to access the game — more
OpenSea x Gem / OpenSea Pro — OpenSea announced OpenSea Pro (previously Gem v2), which aims to serve the needs of “pro collectors” by allowing “collectors to discover the best deals and insights across 170 marketplaces, and access sophisticated tools that meet their need for automation.” — more
Pendium / ChatGPT for Communities — Pendium launched a networked knowledge graph enabling communities to set up and manage personalized AI chatbots. The system is “for communities to design personalized AI chatbots on Discord + the web. A bot that learns from your community's lore & collective wisdom for onboarding, brainstorming, and lorebuilding” — more
Daylight / Scout Launch — Daylight, a startup aiming to help users discover what they can do in web3, announced the addition of the Scout community. Daylight’s Scouts are rewarded with NFTs for discovering new opportunities in web3, which are then visible as opportunities for all Daylight users — more
0xDEAFBEEF / Ensemble (🤝): Memory Box — “Memory Box is a look back into my past, through the traces of digital artifacts left behind on the series of personal computers I've used beginning in childhood.” 1/1 auction ending Friday, April 7th, ~10:15am PT. Current bid sitting at ~3 ETH — more
CharlesAI / Braindrops: Elemental Creation — “Elemental Creation captures the emotional rollercoaster artists experience during their creative journey. It showcases the interplay between technology, economics, and artistic expression while symbolizing the intersection of ancient and modern art. The collection is a reflection of the ongoing dialogue between the past and present, set in the context of NFTs and AI art.” 500 pieces, dropping April 8th — more
Ten Artists / Fellowship: Post Photographic Perspectives — “Post Photographic Perspectives is Fellowship's inaugural group show celebrating a new wave of innovation in photography. On Day 2, Roope Rainisto has curated 10 of the finest artists from this exciting new genre of photographic images, each launching collections of 100 artworks.” Minting today, April 7th — more
Ivona Tau / Verse: Asynchronous Response — “Asynchronous Response is a collection of images created through the use of code and artificial intelligence, exploring the intersection of technology and art. The works in this collection are not concerned with perfection, but rather with the ways in which code and AI can allow for a deeper deconstruction of visual concepts, resulting in a reduction of forms and a non-human gaze.” 40 pieces, dropping April 12th — more
glitch / May 6th Gathering During Marfa Invitational — more
Arad / Delegate Cash (🤝) Intro Thread — more
Ronan Broadhead / Liquid Delegates as Programmable Escrow — more
Derek Edws / Best 7-minute Film You’ll Watch All Week — more
Ensemble (🤝) / First Music Put to Code by 0xDEAFBEEF — more
Mikey / Gallery (🤝) Update — more
Hypeshot (🤝) fka the402 / Name Change 🔥 — more
Ryan Selkis / Crypto: The Truth Ledger for the AI Era — more
9dcc (🤝) / Internet Game (🤝) x IYK (🤝): T-shirt Games — more
9dcc (🤝) / ITERATION-03 Color Breakdown 👀 — more
Derek Edws / Transient (🤝) x SuperRare (🤝): Co-Sign — more
Serotonin / Chromie Squiggle Sighting at Barnes + Noble — more
CyberKongz / MYTY (🤝) Motion Capture Partnership — more
Derek Edws / Public Data Digital Objects of Tomorrow — more
Lucky Trader / Luka Dončić 1/1 Sells for 40 ETH on Sorare — more
Otherside / Koda Decoupling and Vessel Claim — more
Jameson Mah / BTC Ordinals Megathread — more
XCOPY / Which NFT Collections will be in Museums? — more
Manifold / Burn Redeem Any NFT — more
Bojan Tunguz / Meta’s Generative AI at a Snail’s Pace — more
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
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Good updates