Weekly Roundup: What Happened in Play2Earn Games and NFTs This Week? [Sept. 24, 2021]

The momentum of the non-fungible token (NFT) industry appears to be gaining more steam as investors continue to gobble digital art. The past week has been quite eventful for the sector. From movies being launched as NFTs to Snoop Dogg secretly buying highly-prized NFTs, here are highlights of some of the interesting things that happened in the NFT and play-to-earn (P2E) space over the past week.

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Snoop Dogg Enters the Metaverse with The Sandbox

Renowned American rapper and media personality Snoop Dogg has announced a partnership with The Sandbox, dropping Snoop Dogg Land in the Metaverse and inviting his followers to join him in the virtual world.

The Sandbox users can hang out in the Snoop Dogg mansion, collect voxel avatars of the rapper, attend concerts, buy LAND in the virtual world, and even purchase a private party pass NFT to party with the legendary 'Doggfather' himself. The private party pass, limited to 1,000 in quantity, sold out in 20 minutes but can be bought on OpenSea, with current prices going for over 1.5 ETH.

Earlier this week, Snoop Dogg revealed that he is the person behind a Twitter account that has spent millions of dollars on a collection of highly-prized Ethereum NFTs.

The rapper told his 19 million Twitter followers on Monday that he was Cozomo de’ Medici, a pseudonymous NFT collector that joined the social media platform in August. If his claims are true, Snoop Dogg appears to have grown his NFT portfolio to more than $17 million worth of collectibles.

The collection is made up of nine CryptoPunks, ten Meebits, as well as other NFTs from Art Blocks.

A few months ago, Dogg made waves when he released his own branded collectibles. This was followed by a collaboration with the creator of Nyan Cat.

Lockdown Movie to be Released as NFTs

The NFT frenzy is slowly making its way into the movie industry as more producers jump on the train. The producers of 'Lockdown' — a pandemic-themed thriller, have announced that the movie will be released as a limited edition ‘hybrid NFTs.’

Dubbed “the first NFT feature film in Asia,” the movie will be released as a series of just five NFTs in October 2021. Meanwhile, NFT tickets will also be available for the film’s Hong Kong and UK premieres.

The movie was released by Phoenix Waters Productions and AMM Global in collaboration with "hybrid NFT company" Marvion Media. It focuses on the life of an actor who is forced to pass a series of tests by the casting director when an audition did not go as planned. The director, played by The Walking Dead’s Xander Berkeley, threatened to kill the actor’s associates if he failed.

Commenting on the movie, Marvion Media's interim CEO Julian So said:

"Apart from the fact that this will be Asia's first NFT feature film, this will be the world's first Hybrid NFT (h-NFT)."

This is not the first time that NFTs are hitting the big screens. In March, Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Spectres of the Shoah became the first Academy Award nominee to be released as an NFT. Similarly, in July 2021, Anthony Hopkins announced that his next film, Zero Contact, would be released as an NFT.

Burger King Hops on the NFT Bandwagon, Launches 'Keep It Real Meals'

Burger King is the latest global brand to join the NFT train. On Tuesday, the fast-food giant announced that it had launched an NFT campaign in partnership with NFT marketplace Sweet.

The campaign, which has been titled the “Keep It Real Meals,” features three celebrities, including the American rapper, singer-songwriter, and entrepreneur Nelly, Brazilian singer Anitta, and social media personality LILHUDDY.

As part of the initiative, QR codes have been tethered to nearly six million meal boxes. Scanning the QR codes will unlock a digital collectible, and according to Burger King, “collecting them (the digital collectibles) can lead to unlocking bonus NFTs.”

The prizes reportedly range from whopper sandwiches for up to a year to 3D Burger King digital collectibles, autographed items, and even a "once in a lifetime call with one of the campaign's celebrities."

NFT Fantasy Football Game Raises $680 million in Series B Round

Sorare, an Ethereum-based fantasy football game, has secured $680 million in funding from investors. The French startup, which allows players to buy, sell, trade and manage a virtual team through NFT trading cards, has been on an upward trend since the beginning of the year.

The latest funding comes at the heels of a $50 million Series A round back in February. This brings the value of the company to around $4.3 billion. The Series B round was led by Japanese tech and investment conglomerate SoftBank.

Dapper Labs Collaborates With LaLiga, Gears up for Another Sports-centric NFT Marketplace

Dapper Labs, the makers of NBA Top Shot, will be collaborating with Spanish soccer league LaLiga to launch a sports-based NFT marketplace.

Similar to NBA Top Shot, the new marketplace will be hosted on Dapper’s Flow blockchain. The project is expected to launch in summer 2022 and will include all the teams under the top-level Spanish league, including FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid and several others.

Meanwhile, Dapper Labs closed a $250 million funding round on Wednesday. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Google’s GV, and Version One Ventures. According to sources familiar with the deal, the company received a valuation of $7.6 billion.

Fortune Magazine Donates Over $650k NFT Proceeds to Free Press Journalism

Last month, Fortune magazine in tandem with popular NFT artist pplpleasr released a collection of NFT magazine covers that could transform based on who bid on them. Over 429 ETH (valued at around $1.3 million) was raised from the unique experiment.

Interestingly, half of the proceeds from the auction have been given to four organizations that support free press.

Reporters Without Borders, The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), The GroundTruth Project, and The Committee to Protect Journalists have each received $165,000 worth of ETH, with Fortune referring to the recipients as being “worthy organizations that support a free press and public service journalism.”

Commenting on the decision, Fortune CEO Alan Murray wrote:

“It’s no secret that the economic support system for great journalism has been challenged over the last two decades and that journalists around the world are increasingly under attack from oppressive and authoritarian regimes.”

Ron Watkins needs NFTs to save America, auctions tweets

Many people have taken a cue from Twitter’s Jack Dorsey after he auctioned the first-ever tweet as an NFT in March. Ron Watkins, who is believed to be behind the QAnon right-wing conspiracy theory, is one of them.

Watkins announced the project to his Telegram group, noting that the proceeds from the auction would be used to fund a “secret project” that could “save America.” And even though the Twitter account of the American conspiracy theorist has been banned, the CodeMonkeyZ Freedom Series features five screenshots of tweets from his account.

The first NFT in the series is already up for auction on NFT marketplace OpenSea. It shows a tweet sent on January 3 about the impending attack on the US Capital on January 6.

OpenSea CEO Thinks Exec’s NFT Purchases Were Wrongly Labeled

Last week, OpenSea came under a lot of fire for an alleged insider trading by one of its executives — Nate Chastain. This eventually led to the resignation of the now-former head of product.

Chastain was accused of purchasing several NFTs before they were featured on the platform’s main page. Although the drama is beginning to die down following the resignation of the employee, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer believes that the action of the former head of product, even though wrong, was not insider trading.

Speaking to crypto news site Decrypt at the Messari Mainnet conference, Finzer argued:

"I do think there was a misframing of it as insider trading. We don't view NFTs as financial assets, so that does not apply. That's a very specific term for a very specific thing."

Meanwhile, OpenSea announced the launch of its mobile app for iOS and Android users on Thursday, barely 24 hours after its head of product Nate Chastain resigned.

The mobile app will allow users to connect their OpenSea profile, filter NFT searches, save works to favorites, view the stats of NFT collections, and receive links to exclusive releases.

NBA’s John Wall Slammed for Copying Fortnite Art for an NFT

Non-fungible tokens seem to be the latest cash cow in town and some people will do whatever it takes, even if it means stealing an idea from a global brand. Apparently, NBA’s John Wall has been accused of reusing a Fortnite Art for his NFT debut.

The basketball star’s planned Baby Ballers NFT project has come under intense fire from Twitter users after some people noticed some discrepancies.

On Tuesday, the Houston Rockets player announced his Ethereum-based NFT collection dubbed “Baby Ballers.” The project’s first teaser image shows the illustration of a baby spinning a ball on its finger, with a 3D basketball court in the background.

It appears the star was not original enough as Wall has been accused of repurposing a screenshot from Epic Games’ popular video game Fortnite. Additionally, the illustration has a strong resemblance to the cartoon character from the “Boss Baby” film series.

Twitter user SudoShoe posted a series of screenshots showing the comparison to Fortnite and Boss Baby assets. He said:

“The progression of a celebrity trying to start an NFT cash grab.”

In its defense, the team behind the NFT project said that the final NFTs would not use the Fortnite background. They also claimed to have contacted Epic Games and were cleared to use the background since the project will not eventually sell the teased image as it “falls under their fan art policy.”

“Please understand that we have no plans of making this the typical celebrity ‘cash grab’ that is sometimes seen in the community […] We have lots planned for our NFT holders including in-person fan experiences, valued merch, and lots of collaborative events and giveaways post-launch.”

Investors Splash Millions on NFTs

While one would have expected that the initial steam of the NFT industry would have died down by now, investors are relentless as they continue to spend millions on crypto art.

Over the past week, Loomdart purchased legendary CrypToadz #3361 (King Gremplin) for 125 ETH, roughly $375k. Similarly, American music manager and entrepreneur Jake Udell bought the Bored Ape Gold #8135 NFT art for 550 ETH.

NFTCON Announces Global Virtual NFT Conference

Between October 12 and October 14, NFTCON will be hosting a 3-day global conference dedicated to NFTs. The free-to-attend online conference will feature over 100 top NFT experts in more than 40 sessions.

Some of the speakers include Jason Brink, the President of Blockchain, Tegan Kline, Co-Founder and Business Lead at Edge & Node (the initial team behind The Graph), and Tor Bair, who is the founder of Secret Foundation, an organization focused on global adoption of open-source, privacy-centric technologies.

Top 10 NFT Collections by Trading Volume for the Last 7 Days

From the look of things, it appears Axie Infinity is not ready to lose the top spot. The NFT-based online video game ranks top in a number of areas, including its weekly trading volume and the number of sales. Axie Infinity recorded a trading volume of over $103 million from 421,863 sales.

Coming at second place in terms of its weekly volumes and sales is Art Blocks. Even though the trade volume dropped over the past week from $49 million last week to $41 million this week, Art Blocks recorded more sales in the past seven days, with this number standing at 5,547.

Meanwhile, CryptoPunks fell by one step to third place this week, recording a weekly volume of $23 million from 62 sales.

Other NFTs on this week’s top 10 list (in descending order) include Emblem Vault, Sneaky Vampire Syndicate, Anonymice, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, and Lazy Lions.

In terms of the number of sales, Axie Infinity, Art Blocks, and Anonymice are the three top projects.

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