Move over Mona Lisa

AI Art at the Louvre. Punks on Blur. And a Wallet for the Masses.

👋🏽 Hello everyone, gm gm, WELCOME BACK to another edition of the Overpriced JPEGs newsletter, where we’re catching you up on the world of web3, NFTs, and the metaverse. 

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 One Wallet to Rule them All

• Buckle up folks, we haven’t seen the crypto crowd this excited since The Merge! Everyone’s frothing over ERC-4337, a new token standard projected to be a huge boon for mass adoption by making transactions significantly easier through the use of ‘Account Abstraction’

• The TLDR is that account abstraction opens the door to all sorts of much-needed wallet features for mainstream adoption:

  • Wallet Recovery + 2FA: Buh-bye seed phrases. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

  • Bundling: A single signature to execute multiple Tx’s. Don’t mind if I do.

  • Subscriptions: Crypto autopayments? Sign us up.

  • Sponsored Tx’s: You wanna pay for my gas? Say less, fam. 

• If you wanna get real nerdy with it, here’s a short list of our fave reads to get studied up:

  • All about ERC-4337 by Zeneca; The Dummies Guide by Coin Telegraph; Excellent thread by Rohan; Everything you need to know by Cryptopolitan

  • And if you’re really technical, the original Account Abstraction proposal from September 2021

• Cheers to Vitalik, Yoav Weiss, and the rest of the big-brained crew who put so much thought and effort into making Ethereum easier to use. Overpriced Jin drinks on us at the next ETH Denver 🍸

aurel @aureljpeg

web3 mass adoption is not even close

🥂 Claire Silver is on 🔥🔥🔥

• Move over Mona Lisa, there’s a new grail in town! After teasing (and re-teasing) the news, prominent AI artist Claire Silver announced she’s premiering a new solo collection at the Louvre in Paris on March 21

• The exhibit “can i tell you a secret” will feature an autobiographical series following her life “from childhood poverty in a cornfield town to the current digital reality”

• Although not the first AI artist to exhibit at the Louvre (that distinction goes to fellow BrainDrops artist Pindar Van Arman), she is the first to sign with Hollywood powerhouse agency WME

• AI art has had a rapid rise and a contentious start: 

  • The first AI-generated portrait was sold in late 2018 for $432,500 (or earlier, depending who you ask) 

  • Use of AI has drawn backlash and lawsuits from creators and businesses alike. Courts have even gone so far as to decline copyright protections to AI artwork. 

• Claire’s been an incredible advocate for the use of AI in art creation and this latest achievement is sure to help her mission of legitimizing this growing trend

🌪 Punks on the Move

• It took some doing, but prolific Cryptopunks trader PunksOTC kick started a market for ‘Wrapped’ Punks on Blur, unlocking liquidity … and those sweet $BLUR airdrops 

• Traditionally traded on Larva Labs’ bespoke marketplace with zero fees or royalties, there’s been no real impetus to move the market elsewhere prior to Blur’s stimmy incentives

• While the longer-term impacts are still playing out, in the past week: 

  • # of Wrapped Punk holders jumped 24%

  • # of Wrapped Punk transfers increased 685% 

  • Median token hold duration time dropped 31%

• Sam from PROOF did a fantastic summary, pointing out that Cryptopunks have had one of - if not the - most stable floor prices over the past year, trading extraordinarily steadily without a 10% move in more than 220 days

• We’ll be joining everyone not named Franklin, watching from the sidelines to see how this all shakes out

• Mastercard and Bybit launch a crypto debit card in Europe and the UK

• New House Subcommittee on ‘Digital Assets’ holds its first ever hearing about the regulatory attack on crypto today

• Uniswap Mobile Wallet is in limited early release on Apple’s TestFlight

• Ripple CEO says crypto firms will look to build elsewhere if the US continues to regulate through enforcement

He said there needs to be clearer rules for crypto in the US and when asked why Ripple didn’t register XRP with the SEC, he said that there wasn’t a way to do so: “It’s a little like putting the cart before the horse.”

• Utah passed the Decentralized Autonomous Organization Act, providing a legal framework for DAOs to register as legal entities in Utah

• A recent study shows crypto hedge funds outperformed Wall Street counterparts for ‘at least 36 months’

• Kraken is moving forwards w/plans to launch its own bank despite a very challenging regulatory environment

• In an alternate universe, Gary Gensler could have been working for Binance

🌐 web3 + NFTs

• OpenSea adds an ‘Inspired by’ link allowing collectors to track derivative works of art to its parent collection

• Yuga Labs sold $16.5 Mil worth of Bitcoin ordinals; filed beverage trademark for ‘DON’T DRINK ME’; added affiliate badges to brand handles on Twitter

• Cyberbrokers announces upcoming Pixel Brokers drop for use in MMORPG game WorldWide Webb

• Boys Club is finally dropping their Zine this week in conjunction with a new on-chain loyalty rewards program, DIMES 💃🏽

• Liquid Delegate lets holders wrap delegation rights into a tradable NFT, creating liquidity for owners

• Roo Troop introduces Seekr, a blockchain marketplace aiming to connect employers and job seekers with verifiable work experience

• Popular gaming streamer Dr Disrespect doubles down on blockchain games

• Doodles releases Doodle Map, a ‘lens into its universe and how it all connects’

• Base, Introduced NFT concluded its mint; recent metadata evolutions included Nouns and Jack Butcher

• Creature World’s ‘Crowd’ was minted 38k times, raising $1.7 mil (66% more than their OG collection made in royalties in  all of 2022)

📈 Brands + Biz

• Heavy rumors are swirling around Amazon’s NFT marketplace; latest speculation is an April/May kickoff with possible ties to real-world physical assets

• Nail polish brand OPI drops Me, Myself, and OPI collection on Ledger market 

• Snoop Dogg joins crypto casino game Roobet as Chief Ganjaroo Officer; also co-founds Shiller, a one-stop-shop for web3 content creators

• Reddit ranks #3 in Fast Company’s 2023 list of ‘most innovative social media companies,’ [the only biz called out specifically for its NFT integration]

• Logan Paul + KSI launch Prime ambassador program; reward select fans with free drinks + swag for promoting the wildly popular energy drink

• Twitter had a major breakdown for the 6th time this year and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight

• Shopify and Thirdweb partner on a web3 toolkit to help devs build e-commerce apps

🤖 AI + Metaverse

• Home Depot builds ‘Redcliff City’ on Roblox, where kids collect virtual materials to build projects of varying difficulty

• International competition to develop AI tech heats up; former US Ambassador says “the whole of democracy and human rights are at risk”

• AI artist platform BrainDrops now has a partnership marketplace Sansa 

• Google’s making progress with its AI model that supports 1,000 different languages

• Venture Beat explores the link between web3 and AI bias

• It’s no secret the live events industry is broken. Avery Akkineni and Sam Ewen, the hosts of CoinDesk’s Gen C pod, say NFTs unlock a wealth of opportunity for event organizers, from supercharging event experiences to creating next-level fandom. Sam also sheds light on Consensus’ bold ticketing experiment while Avery lets us in on a little VeeCon alpha 😉

• Ecosapiens’ Nihar Neelakanti joins Carly and Zeneca for our weekly recap. They’re talking: web3 gaming’s big moment, the ongoing marketplace wars, and offsetting your carbon footprint with NFTs. Catch it all here.

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