NFTY NEWS [July 17, 2018]

NFTY NEWS is a weekly newsletter covering the latest developments of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the blockchain space – collectibles, games, new platforms, and much more. NFTY NEWS is created by contributor Brian Flynn and adapted from his Medium page. For more information on NFTs, check out Brian’s reading list to get you up to speed on crypto digital assets.

Non-Fungible Major Announcements

The NFTY News is back for another week about nifties! It was a crazy week in NFTs between MLB announcing their own collectibles, the KittyHats team launching their own marketplace Atomic Bazaar, and Todd Goldberg’s 🔥 post about NFTs on Token Daily. Also check out the shiny new logo 😏 Let’s dive in!

1. CryptoKitties gets charitable by auctioning off Honu, a hybrid turtle kitty.

CryptoKitties continues their altruism by auctioning off a unique kitty, Honu the 🐢. Back at Ethereal Summit, they auctioned a CryptoKitty for $140K. Since NFTs are a unique, digital sound good, they can me mapped to specific donation payments. Maybe non-fungible tokens being rewarded for donations are the killer use case for NFTs.

How can NFTs be used to support more than just influencers? Can they be used to protect the commons? Maybe we can map real-world organisms to digital assets and use fungible tokens or other NFTs as donations to fund the care of those organisms.

2. HTC gets into the NFT game by partnering with CryptoKitties on their new flagship phone, the Exodus

HTC missed out on the smartphone wave, but maybe there is an opportunity by building a smartphone as a wallet? CryptoKitties will be one of the first applications on the Exodus Phone. Really curious to see how the UX of this compares to using the web application or dApp on Toshi.

3. MLB is launching their own digital collectibles

Just after Unblockable announces a 5M raise to launch collectibles tied to athletes, MLB Partners with game studio Lucid Sight to launch their own collectibles.

Collecting items related to your team, engaging with your team in a new way. For me, say the Red Sox win the division in a couple months, I want to buy something that symbolizes that. These will be event-based things — those moments in sports that happen that you want to remember and cherish, and have a sense that you were there, even if only digitally.” — Kenny Gersh, MLB’s executive VP of gaming

Collectibles can become the new frontier for fantasy sports or any type of prediction market (shoutout to Augur for 🚢) by collecting cards and staking against a certain prediction.

(AND they have a trademark on True Digital Ownership. HUGE!)

4. Gods Unchained announces the “first blockchain based e-sport”, a trading card game built on Ethereum

There was a ton of controversy around the launch of this game because of the pricing of their packs. The highest tier pack, the legendary pack, is selling for a whopping 3.36 ETH.

What’s even more controversial is that Etherbots, the original title from the Gods Unchained game, claimed to have the most successful pre-sale to date of any blockchain game:

Yet they’re still selling packs using a pre-sale model.

A few months ago, I wrote a rant about non-fungibles selling game assets at a premium. Nothing has changed with this pre-sale model. I really want to see more innovation here, especially from a team who’s done it before.

What I’m really excited for in Gods Unchained is the e-sports. Can they successfully pull off the first “blockchain based e-sport”? I’m super skeptical. But here’s a formula in how they can combine blockchain & e-sports:

1. Visible prize pools to incentivize purchasing packs — A certain % of the pre-sale should go towards the prize pool. Games like DOTA 2 do something similar to fund the prize pool. It’s a great opportunity to do something similar, and even easier to do with crypto.
2. Earn tickets to competitions through gameplay — Tickets to tournaments need to be front and center in gameplay. Make it so people can earn these by playing games and ranking up. Maybe even so players can sell their tickets as ERC721s on marketplaces like OpenSea.
3. Real-time betting — Let viewers be able to make a prediction market on anything during the game. Make it as easy as possible for anyone to transfer value from any match.

5. The KittyHats team launches Atomic Bazaar, a marketplace for buying, selling, and swapping NFTs

One of the better announcements of the week is the launch of a brand new marketplace. FINALLY we have a method to swap NFTs with each other. Now we can start selling items in bulk and trade with friends. The user experience is still super primitive, and thus we probably won’t see some major adoption for this marketplace any time soon.

Maybe decentralized exchanges are the answer to the UX problem of NFTs?

6. Still trying to figure out NFTs? Check out this post by Todd Goldberg in TokenDaily last week!

Todd Goldberg published an amazing post on NFTs last week on Token Daily. If you’re still confused on why NFTs have enormous potential, I suggest checking it out.

Waiting for a blogging platform meant for crypto for embeddable token support for simple UX…

7. The NFTY News is now being published on The Creative Crypto!

Michael and his team have been very supportive of my writing. I’ve decided to let them republish my content on their growing site. In general, I’m optimistic of the potential for The Creative Crypto to become a hub for all creative non-fungible token content and for creatives to get discovered. They even made my awesome new logo!

Contributor Name: Brian Flynn Twitter: https://twitter.com/Flynnjamm Medium: https://medium.com/@brianubiquik Original Article with Newsletter Signup: Link