Please note that the following review is not an endorsement of purchasing the NFTs discussed, and the author does not themself own any of the collection.
If you’ve heard of one NFT collection over the past week, it’s probably MOTHER OF CREATION. A collaboration between singer-songwriter Madonna and NFT artist provocateur Beeple, the collection has hit the mainstream news thanks to it prominently featuring a highly detailed 3D recreation of the former’s genitalia (yes, really).
MOTHER OF CREATION is described as an “NFT Triptych”, consisting as it does of three separate short looping animated videos that combine graphic computer-generated imagery with spoken audio.
While a collaboration between a bonafide Queen of Pop and a transgressive NFT artist might sound like a match made in hell (Cher and Pak, anyone?), Beeple and Madonna are perhaps the only two members of those categories with enough in common to make it work. That’s because it’s a work that cleaves close to both artists’ oeuvres. Madonna is no stranger to baring her flesh, digital or otherwise. And in Beeple’s case, he has priors with this kind of explicit artwork – think TOXIC MASCULINITY, which paired monumental Jeff Bezos heads with equally monumental male genitalia. So how does MOTHER OF CREATION stand up?
The Collection
First, let’s set out what each piece consists of. MOTHER OF TECHNOLOGY sees a Madonna reading out the poetry of 13th-century Persian poet Rumi while robotic centipedes (representing technology, the gloss tells us) crawl out of her digital representation into a verdant forest, just as Rumi would have wanted it. MOTHER OF EVOLUTION, meanwhile, sees the same representation of Madonna releasing a swarm of butterflies (no prizes for guessing where from) into an apocalyptic cityscape, while in voiceover she reads lyrics from her 1990 song Justify My Love. Finally, in MOTHER OF NATURE, “an opening gives way to a branch,” as the gloss tactfully puts it, with a tree sprouting and flourishing in a stark and austere laboratory setting.
Apparently, this is the culmination of a year-long collaboration between the pair, which according to Beeple “makes it more special because we thought about it a lot.” One can’t help but feel that if they’d thought about it some more, they might have realised the ways the project is actively working against itself. Based on the titles of the artworks, and Madonna’s own statements (“We set out to create something that is absolutely and utterly connected to the idea of creation and motherhood”), the artists are attempting to provide a commentary on motherhood and its relationship to artistic production. but the sterility of the plastic, Barbie-esque version of Madonna (who is conspicuously non-pregnant) seems directly opposed to that ambition.
It would be more truthful to say that the artists are actually not out to lionise motherhood but to shock instead. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, but in an art form already awash with irony and cynicism, it seems tired and, perversely, distinctly un-shocking.
Meanwhile, the audio that accompanies each piece frames what we are viewing as inspirational (“my journey through life as a woman is like that of a tree,” says Madonna in MOTHER OF TECHNOLOGY). Madonna, however, has a history of putting her foot in her mouth when it comes to attempting to say something profound, and there’s equally a sense here that an attempt at profundity has resulted in something quite empty instead.
Of the three, MOTHER OF NATURE is the most successfully realised. It benefits from seemingly having had the most attention to detail put into it of the three, with original words from Madonna and, weird as it is, some highly detailed animation work on the tree itself. Little wonder it fetched the highest price. MOTHER OF TECHNOLOGY sold for 66.55eth (approximately $135,000 at the time of writing), MOTHER OF EVOLUTION 72.05eth (approximately $147,000) and MOTHER OF NATURE 170.5eth (approximately $346,000). Altogether, that’s almost $630,000.
What can’t be denied is that the proceeds are going to worthy causes. Madonna and Beeple have pledged that all proceeds are going towards three charities, those being the NGO City of Joy, which provides a community for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ukraine’s Voices of Children Foundation, which helps women and children affected by the ongoing war in the country, and Black Mama’s Bailout Initiative, which helps women and caregivers spend time with families outside of jail.
The Verdict
MOTHER OF CREATION is not a work that will endear anyone who is sceptical of the reputation for gaudy avarice that surrounds the NFT world, bearing all the hallmarks of bad taste and a distinct lack of subtlety. And while it’s nice that the proceeds are going to charity, that betrays the fact that this is less a serious piece of art, and more a fundraising effort – which is all the more effective the more Madonna and Beeple can generate controversy and get themselves back into the headlines. Be careful not to gaze too long into Madonna’s abyss. Because Madonna’s abyss gazes also into you.
Terra Luna, the protocol behind the TerraUSD (UST) and the LUNA token effectively collapsed after back to back trading sessions that saw its stablecoin UST lose its 1:1 peg with the dollar.
The project is infamous for its use of the widely controversial algorithmic stablecoin model. Algorithmic stables work to maintain dollar pegs through code rather than simply backing the coin with collateral like USDC or DAI.
Terra operates by creating an equilibrium between the UST and LUNA tokens through the incentives of arbitrage.
This is how that works. Say an investor wants to mint UST. To do that, LUNA must be purchased and swapped for UST with the LUNA being burned afterwards. This constricts the supply of LUNA, placing upwards price pressure on the token.
Opposite of this, LUNA can be minted by converting over UST tokens which are then burned. This puts upward price pressure on UST. The key here is the gains made through arbitrage, the core incentive for willing investors to take on the associated risks with the tokens.
Arbitrage is simply when a trader is able to profit from slight price discrepancies. For instance, if UST is trading at $0.99, traders have the incentive to burn LUNA for UST at 0.99. When the price of UST rises above $1, traders can then flip that small profit into buying more LUNA.
An additional Terra ecosystem incentive that encouraged traders to join the ecosystem in the first place was the extremely generous 20% APY on Anchor Protocol that UST holders could earn. This attracted a tremendous amount of growth to the protocol.
The problem here was that such a high APY was completely unsustainable long term. The Luna Guard Foundation (LFG), an associated organization, were managing Terra’s treasury fund to inject liquidity into Anchor to artificially keep rates high.
Why Terra Failed
The short answer to why Terra failed is nothing short of a rapid loss of confidence followed by a bank run on the protocol.
The UST stablecoin went through a major stress event in January 2022 after the unravelling of the Frog Nation DeFi ecosystem. This plunged the price of LUNA and forced UST from its dollar peg. The event actually prompted Terra to raise $1 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) to provide additional collateral to the UST peg. Additional purchases were also in AVAX.
On May 9th, the cryptocurrency market began experiencing more extreme selling pressure which led to a significant decline in LUNA and in Bitcoin. This created a massive problem for Terra. As selling occurred, it depegged the price of UST.
UST and LUNA achieve equilibrium through the redemption power of burning/minting tokens. If there are more UST tokens in circulation, there are less LUNA and vice versa. The problem that occurred here is because of the depegging and the price of LUNA falling, the redemption cost of gaining LUNA was high.
Put simply:
Markets declines, causing LUNA to decline and UST to depeg
Panic ensues and UST tokens are burned for LUNA
The LUNA is immediately sold due to the collapsing price
This further destabilizes the UST peg, creating more panic
Repeat
A ton of LUNA tokens were being minted and then thrust back into the market as investors left UST. This made the supply expand rapidly, creating enormous downward pressure on price.
Even worse, LFG sold their Bitcoin at a substantial loss to inject more money into the protocol to help save the UST peg. This obviously failed and the protocol fell into a total meltdown.
The price of UST fell to as little as $0.19 at one point, with LUNA collapsing in price from an all-time high of $119 USD just one month ago to a price point of $0.90 – a 99% collapse in value. In total, Terra Luna saw some $20 billion disappear from the protocol in just 24 hours, making this the single largest cryptocurrency collapse of all time.
After reading this title, you might be wondering: since we can’t actually eat in the metaverse, what use will restaurants truly have inside a virtual world? Or what use could possibly come out of an NFT “food” item?
Over the years, restaurants have seen growth by adopting more purpose-driven brand models. McDonald’s, for example, isn’t just known for its cheap and delicious food items — but also for its ability to raise funds for charity efforts and give back to communities in need. The Taco Bell Foundation has also spent years gathering millions of dollars in funds, which it regularly allocates towards grants and scholarships to help young leaders access easier paths to education and career-building.
Web3 technology is slowly presenting a range of use cases for the restaurant industry — including opportunities to crowdfund using NFTs, create innovative metaverse experiences, build deeper brand loyalty and serve as access passes for greater experiences and perks. In this article, we’ll take a look at 5 notable brands that are adopting Web3 and metaverse technology.
McDonald’s
The fast-food industry’s reigning champion has already shown significant interest in utilising Web3 technology to create new experiences for its customer base. So far, the restaurant’s initiatives include plans for metaverse experiences and commemorative NFTs.
While this may be a new turn in the company’s marketing roadmap, it isn’t necessarily an uncharacteristic move for McDonald’s. The fast-food restaurant has been long-regarded as an innovator in the fast-food industry, with frequent changes to its branding and model over the course of several decades. Out of all fast-food restaurants, Mcdonald’s is also highly regarded as a leader in digital technology — with a digital innovation team that counts 130 people globally.
In February 2022, it was announced that McDonald’s tendered an application for 10 trademarks in the metaverse. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this trademark registration is meant to cover the support of both physical and virtual goods, as well as a virtual restaurant that also offers home delivery services.
Taco Bell
Last year, popular fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that they would be releasing a series of “limited” NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Sold on the Rarible marketplace, the 25 pieces of digital art sold within a half hour. With the highest recorded bid, the restaurant’s “Ever-Crunching” tacos piece received the highest of all bids — coming in at 3.9 ETH, or the equivalent of $9,406 USD.
Venture capitalist David Pakman commended Taco Bell for their early adoption of NFT technology: “Right now, we are in the experimentation phase of the market, so I would expect to see lots of different experiments from musical and visual artists, brands, tech companies, media companies and creators of all stripes. Sometimes brands can be rewarded for embracing emerging consumer trends earlier than their peer group, so kudos to Taco Bell.”
Taco Bell’s NFT drop ended up being a great case for tokenised crowdfunding, with all funds from the restaurant’s project being allocated to charity. According to the listing, 100% of the profits earned from the sale were donated to Taco Bell Foundation, Inc. “to empower youth to discover and pursue their career and educational pathways.”
Starbucks
This month, Starbucks announced that they would be launching their own digital community Web3 platform, including a release of loyalty-based NFTs. On the company’s fiscal Q2 2022 earnings call, Starbucks presented their new plan to investors — arguing in favour of NFT technology as a way for the popular coffee chain to extend its brand’s concept of the “third place” — a term they used to describe a place where people can feel a sense of belonging over coffee between the home and the workplace.
“Emerging technologies associated with Web3, and specifically NFTs, now enable this aspiration and allow us to extend who Starbucks has always been at our core,” says Brady Brewer, Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer. “We are creating the digital third place. To achieve this, we will broaden our framework of what it means for people to be a member of the Starbucks community, adding new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models that we see developing in the Web3 space.”
Starbucks has not yet revealed specific details on what their first set of NFTs will look like or which sorts of utilities will come attached. However, the company has detailed in an official blog post that it believes there is potential for the company to provide customers with additional experiences and perks through greater utilities.
Starbucks, which is also well-known for promoting artists and musicians, plans to continue this streak with its first NFT launch. According to the post, the company plans to start its first “collection, membership and community later this year, based on coffee art and storytelling. It will come with a host of unique experiences and benefits.”
Chipotle
Last month, in honour of National Burrito Day (which was April 7th, in case you weren’t aware), Chipotle set up shop in the metaverse by launching its very own virtual “burrito builder” — hosted by Roblox. The game was apparently inspired by “Chipotle fans on social media who have compared the complexities of rolling burritos to playing a video game,” the brand announced in an official statement.
While Chipotle didn’t necessarily make use of a Web3 platform (such as Decentraland or The Sandbox), the famous Mexican chain did tap into the popular ‘play-to-earn’ model found in several blockchain games. In this case, users who were able to complete gamified tasks were rewarded with burritos.
Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief marketer, made a statement on the model: “We’ve tapped into play-to-earn, an emerging engagement model in the metaverse, to launch our newest experience on Roblox that celebrates the iconic Chipotle burrito. We’re blending the metaverse and real-world elements of our brand to take the Chipotle fan experience to a whole new level.”
Bored & Hungry
Based in Long Beach, California, Bored & Hungry was inspired by — you guessed it — the imagery from the now infamous Bored Ape NFTs, which are indisputably the most popular and successful of all NFT projects. Andy Nguyen, owner and founder of the new popup establishment, purchased four NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club and two NFTs from Mutant Ape Yacht Club to fund the initiative. Each image now appears across the restaurant’s food packaging and branding.
“The main bored ape, which is our logo, we spent a little over $267,000 on — and on the Mutant Apes we spent around $65,000 to $75,000 for each one,” Nguyen has detailed, revealing how much money was spent on each lucrative crypto asset to kick things off.
In all, it appears that Bored & Hungry isn’t just a flashy new burger joint adorned with popular cartoons as its logo. Its interesting model has actually revealed several insights into how NFT technology can translate into the real world, as the company has also announced that it will accept both Ethereum and ApeCoin (BAYC’s token) as a form of payment.
“The goal is to give back to the growing [Web3] community and open the doors to those who want to learn more about this new Web3/NFT world,” Nguyen has commented. When detailing his greater mission, he says: “Our job is to educate the public about this new future world. And show people that you can create a brand/business out of this IP. Taking away the stigma of, ‘it’s just a jpeg.’”
Please note that the following review is not an endorsement of purchasing the NFTs discussed, and the author does not themself own any of the collection.
NFTs are traditionally associated with pieces of digital art (hence the common criticism of them being glorified JPEGs). A collection from the Paris-based artist Pascal Boyart, otherwise known as PBoy, deftly shows that NFTs needn’t be only restricted to digital artworks, however.
His Underground Sistine Chapelis an NFT collection that serves as a collision between a Renaissance masterpiece and a modern-style PFP collection. Derived from a recreation of Michelangelo’s sixteenth-century Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgment, the collection splits the overall artwork into individual pieces focusing on a specific character. The physical mural is located in an old gold foundry in suburban Paris and was painted during a COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. The 100 square-meter creation features over 400 characters, each of which has been photographed and turned into the 404 individual NFTs that form the collection.
The Background
Boyart has been a pioneer in the crypto/art space for quite some time, having first monetized his frescoes in 2017 via QR codes that linked to bitcoin donations. Via that method, he accrued 1.21 bitcoin over a period of two years, before issuing his first NFTs in 2019 – two halves of a fresco called “Daddy, what’s money?” which had been painted two years earlier. Bornet’s website justifies the creation of NFTs as a means of making the artwork “immutable”, owing to the fact that the building on which the mural is painted will at some point be demolished.
Released in 2021 alongside a feature-length documentary on the mural’s creation, Underground Sistine Chapel builds on Boyart’s existing modus operandi when it comes to digitising his physical art – apportioning up frescoes for sale as NFTs via photographs of individual elements present in the piece. Further burnishing Underground Sistine Chapel Web3 credentials, the work itself was financed via NFT presales – representing a potentially transformative new way of raising money for artistic projects that sidesteps patrons or crowdfunding efforts.
Pascal Boyart
The Mural
Taken as a whole, the full power of the mural becomes apparent – drawing both from Michaelangelo’s original composition and Boyart’s modern rendering. Viewing the piece side-by-side with Michelangelo’s original, we can see this is not a one-to-one recreation. Aside from the shifting around of elements to account for features such as windows in the wall upon which the mural is painted, Boyart also makes his own changes, including swapping the gender of characters and adding modern elements such as depictions of a power plant, an Apple monitor in place of a stone tablet, and falling credit cards shaken out by a demon. Combined with a graphical, comic book style that includes bold black outlines around characters, the overall effect is to wryly equate our modern way of life with the apocalyptic scene depicted by the original.
The Collection
It’s foolish to devote too much time to the overall image, however, as the NFT collection is experienced by the purchaser as a depiction of an individual character rather than a full composition.
Thankfully, the project holds up in miniature. These are a far cry from the algorithmically arranged faces we’re used to seeing, with each character inheriting the perfectly sculpted and intriguingly posed bodies of Michelangelo’s original, only usually with some enjoyable modern twist. Standouts include Jesus Christ himself (which benefits compositionally from the crowd of onlookers surrounding him, as well as including a special animation), the boatman Charon (who is suitably menacing and largely faithful to the original), and a herald angel who appears to have swapped a horn for an iPad.
A small amount of animated zooming and vignetting on each NFT makes each piece feel sufficiently “Web3”, rather than just being a static image – though it does slightly detract from the viewability of the characters. And it must also be said that many of the NFTs consist of abstract and not immediately readable heads that suffer from not being able to portray the surrounding context. In such cases, all we can really witness are blobs of black and skin tones that don’t make for a particularly captivating image.
The Verdict
Boyart’s blending of a physical artwork with digital NFTs used both to fund the piece and prolong its lifespan could well serve as a template for other artists going forwards. But The Underground Sistine Chapel project doesn’t stand up purely thanks to its novelty. Its invocation of the world-famous original paired with modern references serves as a clever piece of satire, and while the full effect doesn’t quite make it through to the atomised NFTs, the pieces are always at the very least graphically arresting.
Crowdfunding — a process that involves the generation of funds for a business or project idea from a group of supporters, as opposed to one or two giant investors — has a history that dates back as far as the late 90s. However, within the last decade, crowdfunding has become a popular way for charities, startups and researchers to democratise fundraising via the internet. When crowdfunding projects are successful, new projects are given the opportunity to launch. Notable examples of popular crowdfunding platforms include Kickstarter, SeedInvest Technology, Mightycause, GoFundMe, Indiegogo and Patreon.
However, the traditional model of crowdfunding is still, in many ways, deeply flawed. Many platforms subject users and creators to steep processing fees, which take away from total amounts of generated funds. Success rates also vary between platforms — according to Kickstarter’s statistics, 78% of campaigns that raise 20% of their goal will see themselves become fully funded — whereas 11% of recorded projects will often finish without seeing a single penny. According to another study, a reported 22.9% of all traditional crowdfunding operations — which is fewer than a quarter — actually end up being successful.
Tokenised crowdfunding, which is fully operated on blockchain technology, is becoming a preferred strategy for companies, communities, entrepreneurs, researchers and other entities to collectively raise capital for a particular cause — whether it be for charity, gaming, scientific research or other objectives. This is largely due to the various advantages it entails through decentralisation — such as greater transparency, better security and faster transactions. DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) are also now playing a vital role in this ecosystem, offering new ways for groups to execute agreed-upon decisions using smart contracts.
Here, we’ve put together a guide on the benefits of crowdfunding with tokens — including a rundown on the most popular types of token standards and models currently used for crowdfunding, highlights of how blockchain technology is improving traditional funding processes and examples of industries that are seeing their reliance on funding made easier by DAOs, NFTs and other Web3 technologies.
Popular token standards and fundraising models
The popularity of crowdfunding with tokens has been largely attributed to the Ethereum blockchain — particularly due to the ease that Ethereum provides in the creation of new coins. Serving as the foundation for an open-source software platform, the Ethereum blockchain allows programmers to create and distribute peer-to-peer programs (dApps).
ERC-20 tokens — a special type of smart contract — are crypto-based assets that have been constructed for crowdfunding strategies on top of the Ethereum network. ERC-20 is the token standard of the Ethereum blockchain and it has become the most popular in the crypto world, accumulating 70% of the total tokens in use. As such, this makes it both the easiest token to find and the most attractive to investors.
Some of the primary factors that differentiate ERC-20 tokens from their competitors include:
The simple deployment process associated with the Ethereum blockchain, which makes the tokens easy to understand
Their design: the ERC-20 token standard is made to address major issues with a wide number of handled tokens
Thanks to its widespread appeal and popularity amongst investors, it is the first widely-used specification for standardising Ethereum tokens
In more recent years, we’ve also seen the emergence of the ERC-721 Token Standard — also more commonly known as the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) standard. Unlike ERC-20 tokens, which are fungible, the ERC-721 standard introduces a token that is unique and non-fungible — serving as a digital certificate that is encrypted and verifiable on the Ethereum blockchain.
Now a highly popular technology trend, an increasing number of companies have started looking to NFTs as a way to raise funds. The technology allows for the authenticated transfer of ownership of a unique asset on the blockchain, making them valuable through their scarcity and novelty. The adaptability of NFTs has also made them useful for leveraging in cases of fundraising — as not only can just about anything can be made into an NFT, but additional utility can also be attached to increase their value.
Let’s also take a look at some of the two popular fundraising models that make use of tokens:
Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
The most well-known option for the launch of new tokens, Initial Coin Offering (or ICO) is a method used by businesses and startups to raise investments by issuing cryptocurrency. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are similar to Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the traditional market. However, unlike the harsh regulatory processes associated with filing a traditional IPO, ICOs allow companies to fund their development and raise capital with the use of tokens.
Rather than selling equity with an IPO or turning to alternative funding methods, businesses can instead build their own blockchain and issue their own tokens. Investors can then purchase said tokens on the company’s platform, allowing them to buy into their products or services. Also, rather than giving buyers traditional equity (ownership shares of a business), the tokens — which usually (though not always) follow the ERC-20 standard and function on the Ethereum blockchain — are sold as having future utility on the blockchain that they fund.
Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO)
Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (or DAO) is the term used to describe a group of people who form an organisation without the presence of a central authority dictating any of the rules and regulations. Instead, DAOs are governed by a smart contract — which defines the group’s rules and holds the organisation’s treasury. Once the contract goes live on the Ethereum blockchain, the rules cannot be changed unless the community votes.
Each DAO will have a different goal — whether it be a single purpose or part of a bigger project. At its core, a DAO is a community formed around a singular idea that each member believes is worth investing in.
Those who want to participate in a DAO will also need to have a “native” token for their designated project. For example, the AssangeDAO fundraising campaign (which has been raised to help WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange’s legal defence) utilises the “Justice” token. In other cases, DAOs can run more like members-only clubs — where members must buy an NFT to access the community.
The power that each person holds in a DAO is also largely dependent on the number of tokens they own. In the case that a funding campaign is successful, the price of the token increases — meaning that members can even make money from joining these types of crowdfunding campaigns.
Both investors and crypto communities believe that DAOs are the “next big trend” in crypto crowdfunding — even billionaire Mark Cuban has called them “the ultimate combination of capitalism and progressivism.”
How does blockchain improve crowdfunding processes?
Blockchain is steadily changing the game for raising capital, allowing project owners to enable funding at more competitive rates. Due to the elimination of intermediaries, projects can be executed more quickly and access to low-cost funds is much easier to reach. Also, due to Ethereum’s open-ended, smart contract protocol, developers are able to create new derivative tokens and platforms with greater ease and security.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits offered by tokenisation in the crowdfunding landscape — especially when compared to more traditional models:
Smart contracts
Smart contracts allow participants to identify both ends of a transaction, therefore decreasing the probability of fraud. Also, given that they don’t require intermediaries, smart contracts are much faster than typical fund transfers — making them highly useful in cases where tight deadlines must be met.
Blockchain technology is also helpful in building more transparent communication between two parties — for instance, in a DAO, contracts are highly visible, verifiable and publicly auditable — meaning that every member can understand how their organisation operates at every step.
Cost-efficiency
When it comes to popular crowdfunding platforms, users and creators are often at the mercy of standard fees and payment processing fees. Kickstarter, which we’ll again use as an example, charges a 5% standard fee and a processing fee of 3% to 5 % to US-based users. GoFundMe, another popular crowdfunding platform for charity causes and individual creators, deducts 2.2% + $0.30 USD per donation as a standardised transaction fee.
Conversely, the decentralised nature of blockchain is a huge asset in making crowdfunding more cost-efficient. Given that intermediaries or third parties are eliminated from financial transactions, crowdfunding is made much more affordable.
Startups are often burdened with a lack of costs — an issue that can prevent new companies from being able to form their own marketing departments or hire the right staff to raise capital. Conversely, crowdfunding with tokens presents a way for startups to become employee-owned companies — a process that can allow them to turn their tokens into internal currency and form a decentralised community without experiencing losses.
Better transparency and security
Unlike seed funding projects — which are often highly secretive throughout their funding trajectory — blockchain technology is comparatively more transparent. When an organisation decides to file an IPO in the traditional market, only a small amount of information becomes available in the public domain. However, crowdfunding with tokens offers a more transparent system, where every transaction can be stored and made visible on the blockchain using smart contracts.
Blockchain also offers an extra layer of security. With tokenised crowdfunding, smart contracts can transfer funds to a company only when a milestone has been designated, eliminating the possibility of fraud. After funding an initiative, investors are usually provided with tokens — giving them a form of ownership that can also thwart fraudulent creators.
Greater accessibility
IPOs in the traditional market come with several regulations — but the good thing about crypto tokens is that they can be sold globally and are equated to the sale of digital keys. Also, while only 3% of the US adult population meets the $1 million net worth required to invest in an IPO, there are no restrictions in ICO or other tokenised fundraising models — anyone can purchase tokens, regardless of their net worth.
Crypto tokens can also be sold globally to all investors — meaning that anyone can participate in crowdfunding initiatives, regardless of their geographic location.
Which sectors are transforming through tokenisation and DAOs?
When it comes to participatory investing via crowdfunding platforms, one of the biggest drivers of this model’s success is that it has eliminated the requirement for any type of investor to gain approval from big corporations. Put simply, this has made investing more accessible to everyone.
It’s also given a platform to investors or companies that were previously barred from the investment industry. This, in turn, has empowered contributors that are much more diverse and representative of our greater society. Within the last decade, we’ve seen a massive proliferation in funding opportunities for varying types of companies, causes and communities across the globe.
While crypto crowdfunding follows this same logic, it also comes with additional benefits — such as fairer, more democratic reward systems and solutions that are far more secure and profitable. Diversity is good for business — and by avoiding the big gatekeepers, DAOs and NFT projects have started fostering a limitless range of ideas and innovations.
Let’s now take a look at some examples of where tokens, DAOs and other forms of Web3 technology are changing various industry landscapes.
Community
At its core, crowdfunding is a community-driven effort — making it ideally aligned with blockchain and decentralised ledger technologies. The peer-to-peer framework that comes with blockchain technology enables the development of community-based platforms — which are, in many ways, a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Crowdfunding has also shown us the propensity with which communities can collectively raise large sums in short periods of time. In 2017, the ICO fundraising model gained significant traction when Filecoin, a blockchain-based data storage network, raised more than $257 million in tokens within a mere 30 minutes. In the same year, decentralised open-source blockchain Tezos raised roughly $156 million in tokens from an online crowd sale.
Mirror.xyz, a decentralised publishing platform, is a notable example of a tokenised crowdfunding model that is leveraging NFT technology — in this case, to help writers monetise their work. To raise funds, writers can turn their work into NFTs — which can then be sold to auctions or publications. This model also allows writers to crowdfund their projects, where readers can get a cut of a story’s profits once it reaches completion. Decentralised music streaming platform Audius has also been widely praised by industry professionals for allowing musicians to crowdfund their albums or album art through the sale of NFTs.
DAOs have also emerged as a disruptive force in the blockchain ecosystem, displaying how governance can be community-driven and managed through permissionless smart contracts. Within the last year, DAOs have become an increasingly popular way for communities to fund a myriad of objectives.
Juicebox, which has been dubbed a “decentralised Kickstarter”, is a rising crowdfunding platform that allows DAO projects to raise funding from communities — all with the power of public smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. Juicebox’s goal is to transform the traditional crowdfunding model, making the process of building a treasury and issuing tokens to a community for a decentralised project much easier. Even Kickstarter has recently announced that it will be building a blockchain-based version of its platform to compete with the rising number of DAOs, opting to utilise the Celo token (due to its “carbon negative blockchain platform”).
While ConstitutionDAO didn’t achieve its goal of purchasing a copy of the U.S. Constitution, what’s notable is that the group was able to accomplish what it did solely based on the community’s contributions (and all without the backing of a larger marketing team or growth director). The rules established by the group also enabled members to receive a refund of their investment.
Another example of innovative crowdfunding we can observe is the DoGood Crypto project, which was founded by Randy McEwen — a philanthropic pastor with over 30 years of experience in non-profit and charitable organisations. With DoGood, McEwen’s goal is to utilise a deflationary token (called the Do Token) and launch a community of “do-gooders”, all while also functioning as both a DAO and a crowdfunding platform.
Following the biblical principle of having “all things in common”, the DAO includes a voluntary tax system on all buy and sell orders of the group’s native token. 70% of the Do Token’s taxes automatically go back to the community, where it is distributed to all token holders proportional to their previous amounts — while 18% of taxes are allocated towards the platform’s charity fund. Also, members looking to donate funds simply just need to participate in the platform’s DAO and vote for charitable causes.
In all, these models are currently showcasing the potential for communities to donate towards causes in a more affordable, convenient and hassle-free way — utilising inventive tokenomics and taxenomics to leverage easier crowdfunding. Due to their evident success thus far, it is likely that we will see more crowdfunding efforts transpire through DAOs over time.
Venture capital (VC) funding
As we continue to see the growth of DeFi, NFTs and tokens, a growing list of venture-backed startups are looking to leverage DAOs with different types of blockchain dependencies across the corporate landscape. This is helping founders dodge regulatory barriers, instead allowing them to rely on the power of smart contracts and tokens.
While the concept of democratising capital is obviously not new, this decentralised approach to funding is enabling more groups to raise funds without needing to rely on the approval of a large VC. This concept alone is already making DAOs a highly effective alternative to VC firms.
Syndicate DAO, a decentralised investment protocol, is one such example of a group that is looking to streamline capital and make the process of pooling money and investing in a project remarkably easy. Syndicate creates investment DAO templates for anyone to use to form investment clubs — a concept that essentially allows DAOs to be created within minutes with the use of an Ethereum wallet.
“At the end of the day, DAOs are a collective technology as opposed to an individual one,” Will Papper, co-founder of Syndicate, recently told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “DAOs are kind of the next evolution of the corporation because they encode both voice and exit into their foundations.”
SushiSwap, which is both a DAO and a decentralised exchange, is an example of a group that recently brought the traditional VC funding model to the battleground. With around 60,000 token holders, SushiSwap was selected by VCs hoping to invest in the project. However, with no centralised entity in place, this led to the first (and likely not the last) time that VCs needed to win over a vast crypto community.
It also appears that early investors in the space are already cropping up. Layer3, a crypto startup offering tools to DAOs, recently closed a seed funding round of $2.5 million — an effort which was led by a team of traditional venture capitalists and angel investors. Some VCs have even recently become DAOs, such as Stacker Ventures.
In all, Web3 technology is allowing for trusted transactions to take place without the need to trust those involved — while DAOs are also allowing startups to raise money without the need for third parties. As DAOs become more popular and more VCs look towards a more decentralised future, it’s widely believed that they will offer the most significant change in how venture capital (VC) funds operate in Web3.
Ali Yahya, GP of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (or a16z) has commented on the sheer power behind the DAO concept: “The fact that a DAO is just a software that can be spun up with the click of a button … but can catalyse thousands or tens of thousands of people — eventually we expect millions of people or larger numbers — that all put together capital and put together ideas to work together for some common goal … we see that as almost the purest vision of what Web3 and crypto are all about.”
Gaming
One of the most conventional forms of fundraising through the purchase of tokens or NFTs can be seen within the Web3 videogame industry. Many developers and publishers are expanding their business models into this new form of financial backing. Where we would have seen, in the Web2 era of the internet, a developer may establish a Kickstarter or similar crowdfunding project, this always created a ‘middle-man’ to whom fees must be paid.
With the advent of blockchain technology, we can now see games being launched directly to the public using a similar briefing method but then financed by the selling of tokens or NFTs (which can be used in-game), which ensures all funds reach the creating team, often transcending currency exchanges due to the use of cryptocurrency.
Of course, this system offers a level of risk to the consumer – you must first believe in the project, but more importantly, you must believe in the creator and their intentions. If a developer abandoned their Kickstarter project, there was a chance you could recoup your investment, however, with tokens and NFTs, that investment is a lot more unstable.
Many Web3 games have begun in this way. Everything from DeFi Kingdoms to Aavegotchi began life with community members rallying around an idea for a game, buying and staking tokens, which become liquid assets for the developers to use to build the game and pay overheads. Once the game then launches, the holding of tokens or NFTs bestows exclusive in-game items, skills or characters to the player.
If we focus on DeFi Kingdoms, we can see how players and users invested in the game. DeFi Kingdoms was formally announced on Medium, September 3rd 2021 – though it had been playable for a few months prior – with the document stating “DeFi Kingdoms is a game, a DEX, a liquidity pool opportunity, a market of rare utility-driven NFTs”. Over the following months, the development team began updating the potential player base regularly, detailing how the game was being made and what gameplay mechanics would be implemented.
It didn’t take long for the community to rally around the game’s concept and begin investing in $JEWEL, the game’s native governance token. You can see that as the game began ramping up production in the tail-end of 2021 and the game gained more traction online, the purchase of $JEWEL went crazy, reaching a peak price of $22.33USD on 5th January 2022.
Charting the rise and fall of $JEWEL
These tokens further benefit the players by enrolling them into a DAO, where community members can vote on upcoming additions to the game, or have a say in the direct development. While it’s clear to see the benefits of fundraising and community support through tokens in the entertainment industry, this method of community backing is now entering into further industries.
Further funding
Funding operates differently across all industries and, as we’ve been exploring here, the advent of Web3 technologies is vastly shifting the investment landscape. In one particular industry, the reliance on funding is paramount to momentum, yet it seems archaically stuck in the past. Whenever a scientific research group wants to create and analyse, they must write a proposal, which then moves through authoritative channels to seek the finances.
Often these proposals are given funding through government grants which are backed by the taxes paid by society. With so many research topics, so many governing bodies and only so much money, a bottleneck is created. Not just a bottleneck, in the US this also becomes a monopoly for pharmaceutical firms looking to turn a profit.
Important research passes through several stages to reach public consumption:
Many times, these research breakthroughs won’t even reach manufacturing stages if profit-driven companies see no margin for business. Researchers will provide the same proposal and proof of concept, though rather than passing through trials and then onto the public, the discoveries and improvements will languish in a gulf researchers colloquially call the ‘valley of death’. Projects that happen to fall into the valley will likely never see the light of day simply because there is no profit in the improvements or patents, and this happens frequently to universities across the world.
Not only do many of these patents fall through the cracks, or in the worst case scenarios, pass, but gouge the public for prescription costs; the proposals which never even receive funding end up wasting the time of researchers. A recent study showed that out of 3570 proposals reviewed by The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia, only 21% were funded. It’s estimated that, in Australia, researchers spent an average of 34 days working on a proposal. For a total of 3727 proposals, researchers spent a combined 550 years working on these documents, which translates to AU$66million in wages.
Much of that time and money is wasted, without the public even knowing that the research is being conducted.
Can VitaDAO solve or improve this situation?
As with other industries, blockchain technology is shaking up progress through the use of tokens and the establishment of DAOs. For those unaware of what a DAO is or can be, a DAO is a distributed governance system which is formed of like-minded community members. The DAOs rules and regulations are voted on through the holding of community tokens and all decisions are actualised by smart contracts, then recorded and stored on a blockchain.
A fraction of the scientific community are beginning to push towards funding through community tokens, establishing a DAO. This movement is currently named DeSci, though as with all Web3 concepts it could change to encompass arts, history and other humanities, removing the ‘sci’. A great example of this new DAO structure is seen with VitaDAO.
VitaDAO is aiming to create a shift in ownership of patents and innovation from the large pharmaceutical corporations, to communities of researchers and patients. This is being achieved by using their own token $VITA, which community members purchase and stake in the DAO in order to take part in governance voting.
Charting the growth spikes of $VITA
As you can see, the $VITA token pricing allows DAO membership accessible to many. Although it should always be noted that the more tokens you hold, the more votes you have to sway decisions.
Anyone can join VitaDAO and governance operates simply; proposals are made and funded by the finances within the DAO. This happens after passing the proposal through a committee of leading researchers, ensuring productivity and benefits from the proposed results. Once the proposal is made, the community votes on whether funding is released. Moving past this phase, any intellectual property or patents are owned by the DAO, developing a growing portfolio.
VitaDAO operation flow
Community is key
The community token powers everything within VitaDAO. Many of those working within the DAO or similar DeSci structures are large proponents of focusing on those who will end up using the patents when it reaches the public. An example often given is with insulin; Molecule marketplace – imagine an OpenSea but for open research projects requiring funding – is one such example. They say, in their Medium blog post, “Imagine a new insulin treatment funded, governed, and owned by diabetics.”
This example underlines everything within DeSci currently – an urgency to shift the power dynamics and extend the ‘creator economy’ so important to the age of Web3.
It all works simply; after visiting the VitaDAO website, you can connect your wallet and review a proposal. Once the proposal is open, you’ll read a summary, followed by a much more in-depth look at the ‘problem’, ‘opportunities’ and even ‘risks’ of the research. As long as you hold $VITA in your wallet, you can then vote For, Against, or Abstain from voting.
The beauty of using tokens on the blockchain is the full transparency of each proposal, plus the voting itself. Everything is laid out for all, from wallet addresses to how they voted individually. It even shows how much $VITA is held by each member of the DAO.
An example of the voting procedure for VitaDAO
Of course, not all projects fly through funding, though browsing the proposals, it seems all but one was passed in the history of the DAO. Constructs like VitaDAO show that not only do members of the scientific community want to take back control from those clutching the purse strings, but they also want to collaborate and work together more efficiently, something which is paramount to any DAO entering the market.
Away from VitaDAO, many academics are turning to token-based community funding in the hope of removing the bureaucracy and lengthy time it takes to craft proposals. Chris Ferrie decided to venture out on his own in order to raise funds for research into quantum systems and quantum engineered devices.
Ferrie took it upon himself to create his own token, $QUANTUM, which raised funds in Ethereum. Structured just like a Kickstarter project, Ferrie aimed to reach 3ETH (the total currently sits at 4.47ETH) which would be used to hire a research student who would work with him on the tasks. Ferrie was transparent with his goals stating that once the research was complete, the IP would be minted on the Zora network as an NFT, thereby making the research fully available to the public.
In Ferrie’s own words, he sees these opportunities as a ‘meta-experiment’ and poses the question, “What if research — that is often funded by the public anyway — was truly owned by the public?” He goes on to list his reasoning behind the experiment, citing “Funding bodies are large bureaucracies with archaic and opaque rules and selection procedures.” And also, “there are no places to request small grants for this kind of research.“
IP-NFTs
Let’s rotate back around to the above mentioned Molecule. Molecule is aiming to be an “open bazaar” creating a “system that could radically increase the diversity of treatments, and lower costs and time to market.” As with VitaDAO, Molecule aims to fully decentralise scientific breakthroughs, allowing for varied ownership. This is done via IP-NFTs, or Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens.
In a first proof of concept, the first biopharma IP-NFT was transferred to VitaDAO to fund novel longevity therapeutics at the University of Copenhagen. It was purchased for the equivalent of $325,000 and included full legal IP.
The blockchain contract for the first biopharma IP-NFT
How does this work? The IP information is stored within the NFT contract itself. Using technology from Nevermined, the data is tokenised and locked away. Only upon purchasing can this information be utilised by the buying party. The reason for tokenising this data is to be able to fully liquidate the IP and place a monetary value on it, which could never be done previously when corporations were supplying funding. This value then becomes the liquid funding, usually paid by a DeSci DAO.
This also allows, through smart contracts, for the inventor of the patent or data to be rewarded with royalties if the IP-NFT is ever sold on.
A GIANT leap for decentralized research was made today
For the first time, real-world biopharma research and IP was transferred and funded on-chain as an NFT via @Molecule_to@Nevermined_io@vita_dao
A DAO now owns IP and funds biotech research at a leading lab…
Another major worry, inherent across the internet during its Web1 and Web2 phases, is the idea of permanence. So much of what has been written on the internet is subject to change or is easily editable by authors, or bad actors. As DeSci users enter into a new era of funding and public accessibility to data, a more secure and precise version of the internet could be the key to bringing everything together.
Enter, Arweave, a Web3 protocol attempting to establish an internet which would be forever permanent and resistant to editing, their colloquial term is ‘permaweb’. Why is this important? Well, Arweave is committed to upholding two central points; firstly, their protocol is hosted on the computers of everyday people, rather than in central servers. This means that if one computer goes down, the content is backed up elsewhere and delivered to the user. Why would people host this content? Well, money, of course. Miners would function as data hosts and be rewarded with funds from the stake holding community.
Secondly, due to blockchain security, the websites and apps being hosted cannot be edited or tampered with, because, much like with NFTs and crypto, fraudulent blocks won’t be processed. This benefits society directly because there’s less chance of spreading misinformation, but also, there could be little to no censorship as the content is hosted independently.
Arweave, much like VitaDAO and the Quantum project, is powered by community and businesses investing in their community token. In this case, $WIKI.
Summary
The changes to fundraising, when switched to blockchain enterprise, are vast. Not only are steep processing fees avoided – particularly if the blockchain used is built on Proof on Stake, where gas fees can be heavily reduced – but there’s more opportunity to give creator support or community control.
Financial backing has been radically overhauled in the era of Web3; supporters can join a DAO, where they can vote on upcoming changes to a variety of projects, such as music, art, movie-making or even scientific research. NFTs can be used as tokenised memberships or direct fundraising for charities using smart contracts.
Even the way cryptocurrency operates benefits fundraising projects by acting as a digital token currency which is unaffected by traditional fiat currency exchanges. This is just the beginning; as crypto and blockchains evolve over time, as well as the programming of smart contracts, we will likely see even more dynamic ways to show financial support where it’s needed.
While Web3 and blockchain gaming present exciting new avenues for developers and gamers alike, there’s still considerable friction when jumping into many of these titles, it’s not usually a case of download and start playing. Web3 gaming platform LootRush aims to change this, recently securing a $12 million seed round to build out this vision.
The round was led by crypto firm Paradigm, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and support from Y Combinator, and Brex founders. Angel investors involved in the round included the founders of Axie Infinity, Plaid, Wildlife Studios, Dapper Labs, The Chainsmokers, and Vivi Nevo.
LootRush was founded only last year based on the idea of making Web3 gaming as easy to use as mobile or playing a videogame on Steam. “Playing a game on Steam is as easy as installing the Steam client, buying the game you want and then downloading it to play. Usually, within a few clicks, you are enjoying the latest and greatest PC video game,” LootRush explains. “But, to play videogames using web 3 technologies, players experience a high barrier of entry. And, as interest in these types of video games continue to skyrocket, players are looking for ways to go from intent to enjoyment in as little time, with as little cost, as possible.”
So how does LootRush speed up and simplify Web3 gaming? “We believe that it should be easy, natural and inexpensive to try out games and NFTs based on lending at first. We will enable gamers to own NFTs and we help NFT owners find great players.” So after you’ve signed up for the platform you pick which game you want to play and select which NFTs to use from a curated list. “We enable players to play video games with NFTs at 100x lower price, providing more flexibility and a larger portfolio of NFTs to have fun.”
Currently, LootRush doesn’t have a massive selection of titles to choose from. At the time of writing only Axie Infinity seems to be playable – and that’s had a rough ride of late – with plenty of others listed but unavailable. The seed round should eventually help with that.
LootRush is still building up towards an official launch with no indication when this might take place. For continued updates on the latest in Web3 gaming, keep reading gmw3.
After spending four years in the blockchain gaming space, you might consider Marie Franville a Web3 veteran of sorts. From curating events for major tech companies to helping launch an early blockchain gaming project, Marie’s focus is now on building premium metaverse experiences for brands and gamers alike.
Marie now leads indie game studio NABIYA — which she co-founded with Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox. With The Sandbox as their chosen metaverse platform, Marie and her team of creative experts are now at the forefront of Web3 entry — creating “tailor-made worlds with games or architectural projects” and “state-of-the-art NFTs” for clients in the gaming, music, art and fashion industries. They’ve also got their own unique metaverse game in the works.
After seeing Marie speak at a panel discussion held at London’s annual Pocket Gamer Connects conference, we recently connected with her to discuss what she’s witnessed in her years within the blockchain gaming space. We also enjoyed covering her foray into building immersive experiences for high-end clients, as well as what she sees for female leadership in the growing Web3 space.
How did things start?
Marie began her career in IT, working as a business developer with Big Tech brands (including Samsung and Dell). Along the way, she found herself curating video game conferencing events — effectively hunting for sponsors and organising game connections in major cities across the globe.
In 2018, Marie began organising events sponsored by Unisoft in Lyon, France, where she’s based — primarily the Blockchain Game Summit, which cropped up quite early in the Web3 space. “At the time, there weren’t so many conventions — the general consensus was that massive adoption of blockchain would happen through video games. This is because game players have an inherent understanding of the value of digital assets.” She further adds: “Of course, the story says otherwise — more mass adoption came through art, with NFTs.”
Marie marks this occasion as her main turning point, describing how she “met really brilliant, bright visionaries — these people really understood what [Web3] was about and how exciting it was. That’s how I fell into that rabbit hole.” She continues: “Nowadays, things have changed — but these people understood how exciting things were and were trying to educate people.”
Marie spent the next four years serving as COO of blockchain video game studio B2Expand before founding NABIYA with longtime friend Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox (a popular decentralised metaverse gaming platform that has partnered with a growing list of brands and artists — including Snoop Dogg, Adidas and Deadmau5).
When Borget caught wind of her idea, he offered his full support to set up the business. “He’s an industry friend and he’s always been very supportive,” she explains. He now serves as the publisher and developer of NABIYA. Amongst their team is also a creative director who has worked extensively in the Paris fashion industry, having previously collaborated with high-end labels such as Christian Dior and John Galliano.
Marie also comments on the power of friendship and community in Web3, describing how: “Many friends in the industry and people work together — that’s what’s so wonderful.”
What does NABIYA’s “all-in-one service” entail?
Today, NABIYA focuses on two missions: one, to conceive and develop their own video game ELEMENTS — and two, to build video games and architectural projects for landowners in The Sandbox.
Now backed by a team of seven experts in art, fashion and blockchain gaming, Marie has helped turn NABIYA into a uniquely creative and innovative collective. While some clients require their help with building artistic or architectural projects in the metaverse, “some people need really cool game mechanics and gameplay. So we are also architects and game builders — we do both.”
On building their client base, Marie claims that “many brands came to look for us”. Some of their most notable clients include popular rock band Avenged Sevenfold (who they’ve collaborated with to create a series of signature NFTs), mobile blockchain gaming pioneer Spells of Genesis and rising NFT project Cyberkongz (with whom they’ve recently formed a co-partnership with).
NABIYA’s wide range of services and approaches also means that their team aims “for high, premium quality — because there are many, many types of businesses and their positioning is different,” Marie explains. “People who have a very strong idea and very strong communities — they come to us and say ‘could you build something for us?’ There is a learning curve with The Sandbox, but we know the process really well.”
She elaborates: “We come up with the concept art, of course working with their director, to really reflect their universe and where they want to go. Then we create, from scratch, their own unique experience — and it’s very unique to their own brand.”
ELEMENTS and next steps
ELEMENTS is an exploration game based on the Chinese cosmogony. In the game’s overall storyline, the player’s mission is to restore equilibrium to a metaverse world using the five elements: Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire and Water. Through a series of 12 chapters, the player embarks on an in-depth and immersive journey through a colourful and historical universe.
On why they chose this theme for their flagship game, Marie simply states her belief that, due to climate change and other environmental issues, our current world is out of balance. In turn, “[the concept] is very modern — because the 5 elements — they are very complimentary and we need all of them to be in balance.”
Each asset created within ELEMENTS is an ERC-1155 token minted on The Sandbox — a fungibility-agnostic and gas-efficient token contract. “Of course, the big, big dream is the utility — we are really doing some research and trying to work with other chains so we can bring our assets that are native to The Sandbox.”
“Maybe it’s a bit naive,” Marie also remarks, “[but] my ambition is to make a game that is fun, enticing and compelling — and then the economy will follow.”
Frictions and next frontiers in blockchain gaming
It’s an issue we seem to keep raising — but gaming communities are still averse to the idea of NFTs and blockchain (an estimated 70% of them consider them to be a negative trend). We’ve already discussed it in previous pieces — and so have other thought leaders we’ve spoken with in the past. It’s become an unavoidable subject when speaking about the advancement of blockchain gaming — but like many others in the space, Marie sees ways for players to see greater incentives with blockchain technology.
“I can see the barriers to adoption — I can see why some people can be bitter or why they misunderstand the intention. At the moment, it’s a bit rough. Everything is still in the process of being built — nothing is laid down or perfectly clear,” she says.
“I think that the conventional games are more and more interested in integrating tokenomics based on Web3. But it’s not because [you] add NFTs.” Rather, she insists that the tension is on hiring: “I’ve observed that traditional video games are trying to input the Web3 component and it’s not done, in my humble opinion, by adding some NFTs.”
Moreover, Marie emphasises the need for more tokenomics experts to join the gaming space and apply a play-to-earn model to more projects and concepts. “We need more people in a new line of career for tokenomics — people who are completely into tokenomics and who understand what’s going on. But these people — they are really scarce.”
With that being said, however, she still notes that we have a long way to go before we see changes start to materialise. “In mobile games, you have free-to-play [models] and you have the economic model to understand how it works. But at the moment, we are still creating — everybody’s trying.”
A window of opportunity for women
Marie also describes the rise of female leadership she’s seen in her four years of working in the blockchain world, noting how the time has never been more optimal for women to find both footing and equal treatment in the space. “I think there is a very big window of opportunity right now and many new jobs are being created, which needs to be defined as we are working on [Web3].”
She continues: “Whatever your speciality is as a woman — whether you’re working as a CMO somewhere or a designer, or whatever your vertical is — there are many ways of connecting the dots at this Web3 layer — so it’s really the right timing now.”
Her advice for other women entering the space? “Whatever you do, whatever your expertise is — you learn by doing. And there are always, always possible connections to Web3, whatever you are doing. So it’s a good time.” She also adds that throughout her trajectory in the space, she’s been very glad “to see so many women taking leadership positions. I think it’s only the beginning.”
What’s next for NABIYA?
Along with wanting a more equitable space, Marie envisions a more interoperable and cross-functional metaverse. She mentions how certain experts “are a bit wary of interoperability, but it’s one big dream for me. It’s very, very hard technology and I don’t know how it’s going to unravel — but it’s a big dream for interoperability, where you [can] hold a piece of history through your NFT and have utility on different platforms.”
She looks forward to seeing a future where users can create [their] story within all the different metaverses. “It’s a new form of content creation,” she says.
NABIYA is also excited to launch what Marie refers to as “full experiences” this upcoming June, where they’ll be releasing part of ELEMENTS. “Of course, not all of it,” Marie clarifies. “We want to launch the game by degrees, so we can get feedback and build a community. That way, we can build the game with the community. This is how things are done nowadays.”
To stay updated on ELEMENTS and NABIYA’s upcoming projects and releases, be sure to follow their Twitter and Medium pages.
The metaverse is firing on all cylinders so far in 2022, with numerous global corporations flocking to the space. A particularly valuable part of this new emerging digital economy is none other than real estate.
Land ownership inside the metaverse is becoming exceptionally popular, with some virtual land plots selling for millions of dollars. Land plots in Axie Infinity (AXS), The Sandbox (SAND), and Decentraland (MANA) have been appreciating in value considerably over the course of 2021 and 2022.
Some organizations such as the World Economic Forum have speculated that land in the metaverse could become worthless in the future, so what virtual and what is driving high prices?
What is Virtual Land?
Virtual land is bought and traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The NFT records precisely who owns the land directly on the blockchain, minting ownership for everyone to be able to verify publicly.
Each piece of virtual land within a protocol like The Sandbox is a small section of the protocol represented by the NFT. This land can then be traded or sold on secondary markets. In fact, virtual properties are highly transactable with an average of 8,000 properties changing hands every month at an average price of 3.5 ETH (~$10,000).
Virtual, purchasable land is broken down into parcels of which the number available varies between platforms. The Sandbox, for example, has just over 166,000 parcels of land presently available. Each parcel is a 96×96 meter plot.
These parcels of land can be developed to create buildings, gaming experiences, advertisements, and other use cases that mimic real-world activities.
How Land in the Metaverse is Driving Passive Income
Purchasing and building out land in the metaverse is becoming increasingly more popular. While risky, this is comparable to developers buying and developing land in places that are speculated to have substantial future growth. The metaverse is no different.
Since the onset of the real estate boom in the metaverse, properties have gone for hundreds of thousands of dollars. As of January 2022 per the Centre for Finance, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), virtual land sales represent $100 million of the $2 billion per month spent within the NFT market.
Individuals and companies alike are investing in metaverse land – and generating income. The valuations vary depending on location and use case. There are a few different use cases that metaverse landowners can explore.
Land ownership gives the user the ability to explore multiple revenue streams, the most obvious being as a landlord that rents the land out to developers or other users. The idea of hosting digital events inside the metaverse is also an arising concept, just like the Travis Scott concert held entirely on Fortnite that saw 27 million users attend.
Summary
The metaverse real estate boom has showcased the increasing demand for both users and companies to secure their own parts of the arising metaverse space. While individual land parcels are still highly speculative in relation to their prices, the overall trend of institutional investment into metaverse real estate shows that the trend is real.
Pokémon GO has been a phenomenally successful videogame that put augmented reality (AR) technology on the map even if you didn’t really need the AR component for most of it. So what happens when you create an AR videogame inspired by Pokémon GO and combine it with a play-to-earn crypto component? You get Expedition, which has already seen its waitlist signups soar to 65,000 after the first day.
Introducing Expedition, the first Play-to-Earn AR game. Inspired by Pokémon GO, Expedition combines AR technology with crypto all into a mobile game.
Teasing that the first 10,000 signups might see something special, due to the initial signup success Exhibition will now be closing the waitlist today, so you might want to add your interest soon. Apart from the Pokémon GO inspiration mentioned, details regarding Expedition‘s gameplay, design and other features remain very vague.
Simply stating that: “Expedition combines AR technology with crypto all into a mobile game,” the only other details to go on relate to the fact that “Expedition will launch on Terra to harness the power of $LUNA and $UST.”
Using some educated guessing, gmw3 would assume that you’re going to be able to walk around real-world locations to catch some sort of digital creature, earning $LUNA along the way. These creatures will likely be NFTs that you can sell or maybe trade, possibly even upgrade or alter in some way. Plus, other Web3 features such as staking to help increase earns.
How and when this will happen is another mystery, Expedition has yet to reveal a roadmap or even a Discord server at this point – its Twitter account was only open in April. So there’s more than likely a little while to wait until something materialises.
However, Expedition isn’t the first title to go down this play-to-earn/AR route, several others do exist most notably DogemonGO which is already available for iOS and Android.
As further details regarding Expedition are released, gmw3 will keep you updated.
OpenSea is a global, digital marketplace in which users can exchange non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Founded in 2017, the platform has quickly grown to become the largest and most popular NFT marketplace, conducting an estimated $20 billion USD in volume through over half a million users and 2 million + NFT collections.
The following will be a step by step guide on how to open a wallet and acquire an NFT through the OpenSea platform.
Step 1: Creating a Crypto Wallet
OpenSea supports many different wallets in which to choose from. A crypto wallet allows you to buy and store an NFT.
Wallets that OpenSea supports are any of the following:
MetaMask
Coinbase Wallet
WalletConnect
Phantom (Solana)
Fortmatic
Kaikas
Bitski
Glow
Venly
Dapper
Authereum
Torus
Portis
Trust (mobile only)
For this guide, we will be using MetaMask. To download MetaMask for a browser or mobile extension, go to metamask.io and click on “Download”. Choose your preferred application and install the extension.
Once MetaMask is downloaded, you can create a new wallet. This will require you to create a password and then generate a seed phrase.
Warning: Like all crypto wallets, if you lose your seed phrase, your wallet cannot be recovered and funds will be lost forever.
This is extremely important – write that entire seed phrase down word for word on a piece of paper and store it somewhere secure, like a safe.
Once you have successfully re-entered your seed phrase on MetaMask, you now have a wallet!
Step 2: Funding Your Crypto Wallet
To purchase NFTs on OpenSea, your new wallet will need some funds. The most common cryptocurrency on OpenSea is Ethereum (ETH). Ethereum can be purchased directly on MetaMask by selecting the “Buy” icon in the wallet:
After selecting Buy, two options appear to purchase ETH directly on MetaMask. One is through Wyre (debit card purchases) and the other is through Transak (credit, debit, bank transfers).
The more common approach is to use exchanges. ETH can be deposited directly into your crypto wallet by first purchasing it at a centralized exchange such as Coinbase, Kraken, or Crypto.com and sending it to your MetaMask wallet.
Once ETH is purchased, it will show in your wallet:
Step 3: Connecting Your Wallet to OpenSea
To connect a wallet to OpenSea and to see which wallets are available, go to the top right corner onOpenSea.io and click the wallet icon. A list will appear of supported wallets.
Click on MetaMask. Your MetaMask will open automatically with a request to connect to OpenSea. Choose your wallet and hit “Next”. After hitting “Next”, a prompt will appear to connect. Hit “Connect”.
Once you have hit Connect, your wallet is now connected to OpenSea!
Step 4: Purchasing an NFT
Now that we have a funded crypto wallet and have connected it to OpenSea, we are ready to buy our first NFT. On OpenSea.io, scrolling down on the main page will bring you to the ability to browse by category or you can just click “Explore” at the top of the page.
After selecting “Buy Now”, a pop up will appear that says Authentication required. This will trigger a Signature Request for your MetaMask wallet. When this appears, click “Sign”. After you sign the Signature Request, you will be able to now checkout and purchase your NFT!
Step 5: Viewing your NFT
You can view your new NFT by going to the top right on OpenSea, selecting your profile icon and selecting “Profile”:
This will take you to your OpenSea profile where you can view the NFTs you have collected, any you have favourited, NFTs you have created, and any other activity related to your profile. Remember, your NFT is stored on your MetaMask wallet.
You have now successfully created a wallet, funded it, and bought an NFT off OpenSea!
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