Ticket to the Future

Disney's Meta(re)verse. Nakamigos. And Ticketmaster's Big News.

👋🏽 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. 

👜 How are our Bags Doing?

• No, it’s not just you. Flipping JPEGs has felt like a slog this week, with trading volume down, discords gone silent, and project founders in sink or swim mode

• There was even a collective groan across Twitter when Blur announced it would be extending farming season another month

• Yup, the macro market’s got everyone paralyzed, with the CFTC coming for Binance, SEC going after Coinbase, courts taking down DAOs, and the IRS gunning for taxpayers

• Still … degens ‘gonna degen, and nowhere is the desperation to feel something more evident than the week-old project Nakamigos, which in four days overtook BAYC’s lifetime trade count, despite no one actually knowing who’s behind the project or why it’s running so hard

ThreadGuy 👑 @notthreadguy

The banking system is collapsing. Only buy gold, ammo, and toilet paper Nakamigos:

• Yuga, though, isn’t going down with the ship. The team delivered hit after hit this week:

  • 7k+ players joined the 2nd Trip to the Otherside, with members of Jimmy Wong’s winning Team Glacia scoring airdropped Winged Helmets

  • Almost as if preempting any potential post-trip FUD, the team immediately introduced Legends of the Mara, a 2D standalone game for Otherdeed holders and finally answered the burning question on every Koda HODLer’s mind: What are they and what do they do?!

  • Oh yeah, Yuga also announced a multi-year partnership with Gucci this week that’ll span its various collections, including Otherside and 10ktf

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🎸 Ticketmaster Gives the People what we Want

• We’ve been banging the drum on token-gated ticket sales and they’ve finally arrived on the big stage with Ticketmaster’s NFT-enabled presales

• Token-gated tickets all but ensure the earliest seats will be filled by a performer’s most dedicated fans rather than scalpers and bots … oh, and no lines either 🕺🏽

• Shout out to Avenged Sevenfold (A7X), who requested the feature from Ticketmaster to reward their band’s 10k Deathbats Club holders with priority access and exclusive rewards + merch

  • The band took a calculated risk here (37% of 12k Twitter users polled by the group voted ‘Fuck the blockchain’), but it paid off in spades as 1k token-gated tickets were purchased for concerts in NY and LA with holders widely reporting a seamless and stress-free experience

  • Carly interviewed A7X frontman M. Shadows last year about his vision for how the blockchain will revolutionize the music industry and fan experience, so we’re stoked to see this coming to life

TreNotCool (but on bird app) @TreNotC00l

@shadows_eth @DeathbatsClub This was my first time buying my own tickets, and the integration made it so much easier than I expected. None of the anxiety caused by waiting in a queue of 1000+ people, and clear pricing from the start. Hope more bands go this route in the future. Props for trying this.

• Ticketmaster and its parent co. Live Nation Entertainment control an estimated 70% of the ticketing and live events market, so it’s got a vested interest in staying relevant in a decentralized world where the middle man simply isn’t necessary 

• To that end, they’re dabbling hard in web3 and have already minted ~15 mil NFTs across Flow, Polygon, and Ethereum 

• On the heels of the successful A7X launch, Ticketmaster says its token-gated service is now available to any artist with an NFT collection or community. Yeah, we’re looking at you, T-Swift 😉

🚀 Polygon has Liftoff

• The highly touted y00ts migration from Solana to Polygon happened on Monday and it appears the heavy incentives for holders did its job with +85% of supply migrated. I mean, who wants to pay a 33.3% Paper Handed Bridge Tax?! 

  • y00ts are the first major PFP collection on Polygon and it’s already attracted some leaders from other high-profile communities like PROOF and Azuki 

• Morgan Stone’s Roo Troop is also planning a migration to Polygon, although it’s TBD whether a community moving from ETH to Polygon will be as supportive as one jumping over from Solana 

• Wallet creation growth on Polygon is actually outpacing Ethereum and with Reddit gearing up for it’s Gen3 Avatar launch soon, the trend could continue

• You’ll be reading a lot more about zkEVM this year - an innovation that boosts speed and scalability on Ethereum without sacrificing security

• Polygon launched its long-awaited zkEVM mainnet this week, and while it wasn’t the first to do so (that distinction goes to Matter Labs’ zkSYnc), they can still humble brag that Vitalik the GOAT sent the 1st network Tx with a degen-approved gas limit of 69,042

• CFTC is suing Binance over some big allegations, including: Secretly encouraging US customers to use VPNs, turning a blind eye to criminal use, and using ~300 ‘house accounts’ to trade on its own platform 

  • CZ disputed the CFTC’s “incomplete recitation of facts” but last time we checked, incomplete ≠ inaccurate

• Nasdaq takes first step toward opening crypto trading with debut of a crypto custody service 

  • Similarly, Fidelity Digital Assets opened up to retail traders last week

• US Judge says DAO governance token members may be plausibly liable for the DAO’s obligations 

• Coinbase urges voters to join them in donating to and electing pro-crypto candidates in US elections after being hit with their 2nd Wells Notice from the SEC

Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong

@DaveVED_ Imagine you've got both football and soccer refs on the field, but we're actually playing pickleball (fastest growing new sport in America). The refs can't really agree on the rules of this new game, and one of them decides to change a call they made back in April 2021.

• NVIDIA CTO slams crypto, says they’d rather see their products used for AI than crypto mining

• SEC charged Tron founder Justin Sun and a slew of celebs w/fraud and security violations

• Majority whip Tom Emmer introduced ‘Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act,’ which says devs and service providers that don’t custody funds aren’t money transmitters

🌐 web3 + NFTs

• Magic Eden is launching its ETH marketplace beta next week with 10 partner collections; will respect royalties on all native listings

• Pudgy Penguins says Rogs will be a multiplier for select on-chain drops, licensing deals, or future claims

• PROOF and Transient Labs collab on Outliers, a 6-week program for select creators to build “the next groundbreaking projects in web3”

  • AI project Botto (which we covered in last week’s newsletter) is among the 15 creators chosen for the pilot 

• RIP to CryptoPunk 685, which was accidentally burned when its owner unsuccessfully attempted to wrap the punk after buying it just weeks earlier

• Deadfellaz releases “Front Facing Fellaz” for holders; Betty asks community what other IP extensions holders wants to see

• Revolving Games + Overlord collab on Creepz-inspired ‘interplanetary domination’ NFT game

• gmoney and 9dcc are launching ITERATION-03, a luxury baseball cap, at NFT NYC

• Ledger Market launches “Inspired by Ledger,” commissioning 5 artists to create free pieces for Infinity NFT holders 

• End of Sartoshi holders are eligible for free art from Pixelord

• PROOF introduces Evolving Pixels, featuring artwork exhibitions curated by 10 artists beginning with Emily Xie

📈 Brands + Biz

• Scaled down Metaverse Fashion Week launches with a variety of luxury brands, including Dolce & Gabbana, Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, and Balmain

• Adidas makes a final evolution from Into the Metaverse into a new web3 ecosystem, ALTS by Adidas

• 86-year old Guggenheim Museum hires ‘LG Electronics Associate Curator’ to develop and support engagement with technology-based art and other emerging tech

• Levi’s partnering with Lalaland.ai to create hyper-realistic models of various body types, age, sizes, and skin tones to increase diversity

• Amazon inadvertently reveals NFT plans after CoinDesk editor received a receipt for a digital token despite not having purchased any NFTs

• Formula 1 team signs crypto exchange Kraken as a sponsor; deal includes logos on race cars and an NFT experience

🤖 AI + Metaverse

• Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang are among 1k+ tech leaders calling for a pause on further development of Artificial Intelligence

• Zoom’s new AI ‘smart companion’ will summarize chat threads, create meeting agendas, and draft content for chats, emails, and whiteboard sessions 

• From architecture to the runway, AI is leaving its mark in our real world experiences 

• AI influencer Roberto Nickson goes viral by substituting Kanye West’s AI-generated voice over his own with impressively realistic results

• Engineer develops AI tool to called Warren Buffet to streamline analysis of large and complex documents

• Chinese state media introduced an AI journalist who can interact with the public and answer questions

• Other things AI can do for you? Analyze long and complex documents. Build an entire website with simple prompts. And let you converse with your fave books.

• Former Disney exec and Hollywood media veteran Jon Rogers is back for our second episode of Blockbuster, where Entertainment meets the Blockchain. Jon gives great insight into Disney’s web3 strategy, where he thinks they should dedicate resources (spoiler alert: On-Chain Theme Parks), and which Bob is more bullish on blockchain. We taped this pod just prior to reports that Disney is eliminating its next-gen storytelling division, so be sure to tune in to the next episode of Blockbuster for all the juicy scoops!

• Carly’s joined by HUG Co-Founders Randi Zuckerburg and Debbie Soon for our weekly recap. Debbie’s got takes on Doodles’ NFT Project and how to properly value NFTs, while Randi sees a lot of similarities between the early days of web2 and web3. They’re also talking AI Art, NFT gaming, and Balaji’s big Bitcoin bet.

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