NFT survival 🧬

Dear Bankless Nation,

The NFT ecosystem has experienced a burst of new expansions, new products, and new acquisitions in recent days.

That’s the difference between “this cycle” and “last cycle.”

In early 2018 when crypto activity levels jumped off a cliff, there were hardly any NFTs or NFT projects to actually use at the time, and interest dropped off acutely.

Fast forward to today, though, and there’s a seemingly endless stream of NFT, DeFi, and DAO projects arriving every day that are worth exploring.

To be sure, this new reality is not enough to totally shield the young cryptoeconomy from rough macro conditions or irresponsible, massively overleveraged crypto firms, but it’s something. And it’s something we didn’t have before. Don’t get lost in the past, I say, and have a great weekend, too.

-WMP

🛒 NFT News & Platforms

• 1confirmation unveiled a new $100M NFT fund.
• ClubNFT launched its Backup Tool, a new resource for backing up NFT metadata.
• Ledger, the hardware wallet maker, is launching a platform for curated NFT drops.
• LooksRare rolled out a conditional listing feature:

• MoonPay launched its NFT minting service HyperMint.

🏆 Digital Collectibles

• CryptoPunk 8531, a rare zombie punk, resold for 825 ETH:

• Doodles announced the ambitious Doodles 2 expansion effort:

• Doodles also brought on Pharrell Williams as chief brand officer.
• Noah Davis is leaving Christie’s next month to become the brand lead for CryptoPunks at Yuga Labs.
• The Vogu project will be launch creators on the upcoming GameStopNFT marketplace.

🎨 Art

• Archipelago, a new marketplace designed for Art Blocks users, is now live.
• Gucci purchased $25k worth of RARE tokens to join SuperRareDAO and launch the “Vault Art Space” exhibition.

🎮 NFT Gaming

• Axie Infinity introduced The Creator Academy.
• Axie Classic Season 21 has concluded!
• Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult and Bisonic released the first playable demo of Forgotten Runiverse, an upcoming massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

💽 Music

• Spores, a new tool for remixing music NFTs, is live and seriously fun:

• Coopahtroopa.eth published This Week in Music NFTs - June 20th.

🌐 Virtual Worlds

• The Sandbox is partnering with TIME Magazine’s TIMEPieces initiative to build a virtual TIME Square location.
• Decentraland revealed the judges of its 2022 Game jam event.

💎 DeFi x NFTs

• Uniswap acquired NFT marketplace aggregator Genie — watch this week’s State of the Nation episode on Bankless featuring Uniswap creator Hayden Adams to learn more about the announcement.
• ParaSwap released an NFT P2P mobile trading app.

Action steps

• 🧐 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week: 

  • The Arbitrum Odyssey begins

  • NFT marketplace acquisitions

  • Top 10 best browser crypto wallets