Brands Continue Foray Into NFTs

Tracking NFTs, metaverses, and brands moving into web3.

🟡 Mastercard rolls out NFT-customized debit cards — Bored Apes, Moonbirds, CryptoPunk, and other blue-chip NFTs can feature on your debit card. ‘Hi Gold’ members and above will be eligible for NFT avatar customization. NFT owners will be asked to verify that they own the NFT in order to apply for card customization.

🟡 Walmart jumps into the metaverse — Walmart has announced that they will launch two new immersive experiences, Walmart Land and Walmart’s Universe Play, in the metaverse world of Roblox. Walmart Land brings fashion, style, beauty and entertainment items directly to Roblox’s 52 million daily users. Walmart’s Universe of Play will be a virtual toy destination.

🟡 SEGA enters Web3 — The multinational video game and entertainment giant has announced plans to release their very first blockchain game. The game will leverage the intellectual property rights of the SANGOKUSHI TAISEN franchise that was originally published by SEGA in 2005. The game is set to be developed and operated by blockchain gaming developer double jump.tokyo and will be released on Oasys Layer 2 Blockchain.

🟡 Warner Music Group partner with OpenSea for music artists — OpenSea look to build a platform for select WMG artists to build and extend their fan communities in Web3. The collaboration allows WMG artists to get early access to OpenSea’s newly rolled-out feature. Artists launch their NFT collections and limited-edition projects on their customizable and dedicated drop pages.

🟡 Robinhood rolls out the self-custody wallet for select users — 10,000 iOS Robinhood customers are currently able to test the feature in beta. Robinhood Wallet, a separate app on the App Store, enables users to trade cryptocurrencies without network fees. The app is launching on Polygon but will support other networks in the future.

🟣 Tyler Hobbs’s QQL NFT project raises close to $17m.
Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wist, co-founders of generative art platform Archipelago, created the QQL algorithm for anyone to create their own custom generative art. However, only mint pass holders can turn their creations into NFTs. The dutch auction meant that the auction started at 50 ETH and decreased over an hour until all 900 mint passes were sold. The final price ended at 14 ETH. The project raised 126,000 ETH, or about $16.5million.

🟣 CryptoPunks NFT #2924 sold for nearly $4.5 million worth of ETH. Despite NFT trading volume down 97% since the 2022 peak, the fourth-largest all-time CryptoPunks sale price (3,300 ETH) was recorded last week. The punk is one of only 24 apes in the collection and is considered the 38th rarest NFT in the project.

🟣 Coral raised $20 million to build Backpack, a wallet for executable NFTs (xNFTs).
The Solana-based developer raised strategic funding from FTX and Jump Crypto. The capital will be used to build their first flagship product. xNFTs give the user the ownership rights to execute some type of tokenized computer code. Holding xNFTs in your backpack will therefore allow you to execute actions in various dApps from a single location. Backpack launched a private beta on Sept. 26

🟢 Pixelmon upgrade roadmap after criticized art reveal in February - Pixelmon, a web3 game that raised $70 million from primary NFT sales, announced new leadership and development plans. Earlier this year Pixelmon unveiled artwork that was widely criticized and memed.

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