Beeple

Nifty News: Avalanche launches mentoring initiative, Beeple opens massive new studio and more

The Avalanche Foundation has launched a new mentoring initiative for digital artists, and Ticketmaster has introduced a new feature allowing artists to reward NFT holders.

In a March 30 blog post, The Avalanche Foundation announced the launch of Avaissance, an initiative designed to support digital artists and boost the growth of the Avalanche nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem.

Avaissance has two main components: an Artist in Resident program (AIR) for over 50 artists, and the Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI) to curate digital art and expand the collections of art-focused decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

The AIR program will provide artists “of any skill level” with funding, mentorship and virtual workshops for six months. The MLI will collaborate with DAOs’ curatorial teams to promote emerging Avalanche NFT artists and establish an “Avalanche Permanent Collection.”

Ticketmaster introduces new feature for artists to reward fans using NFTs

On March 27, United States-based ticketing company Ticketmaster announced a new feature — token-gated ticket sales — allowing artists to reward NFT holders with exclusive benefits, including “special presales, prime seats, custom travel packages and access to unique concert experiences.”

The ticketing giant developed the functionality after being approached by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold (A7X) and its Web3 team, Bitflips. A7X wanted help implementing a service to provide holders of its NFTs — Deathbats Club, a collection of 10,000 unique Deathbat NFTs — the opportunity to unlock perks and access to events.

The feature works with tokens minted on Ethereum and stored in decentralized application (DApp) wallets, like MetaMask or Coinbase.

NFT artist withdraws work from Sotheby’s over lack of female representation

Popular NFT artist Patrick Amadon told his 142,400 Twitter followers that he would withdraw his work from major auction house Sotheby’s upcoming “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism” art sale to protest a lack of female representation.

Sotheby’s responded the next day to say it would pause the sale to “redress the imbalance in representation within the sale,” and relaunch later with a “more equitable and diverse group of artists.”

Related: Indonesian government looks to NFTs to preserve cultural heritage

NFT artist Beeple opens a major 50,000 sq ft studio in South Carolina

Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, shared a video with his Twitter followers on March 12, revealing his new 50,000-square-foot studio in South Carolina.

According to Beeple’s website, he will use the space to create his artwork and host events to “showcase the very best art and communities.”

“We are looking to partner with the most cutting-edge artists and communities to put on events that are not possible at any other venue,” the website stated.

Other Nifty News

On March 25, an NFT from the popular CryptoPunks collection, valued at approximately $135,000, was accidentally burned by an investor attempting the process of NFT wrapping to potentially borrow liquidity from it.

Sony Interactive Entertainment, the video gaming giant behind the PlayStation brand, recently filed a patent for a framework allowing users to transfer and utilize NFTs across multiple game platforms, titled “NFT framework for transferring and using digital assets between game platforms.”

Once implemented, Playstation 5 users will be able to explore NFT use cases via popular gaming titles.

Bored Apes founders propose new model for NFT creator royalties

The BAYC founders want an NFT creator royalties model that ensures transferring NFTs between wallets remains free and encourages creators to remain within the NFT ecosystem.

The founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has weighed in on the ongoing nonfungible token (NFT) creator royalties debate and shared a potential path forward that they believe best deals with the issue.

A Nov. 8 blog post from BAYC co-founder Wylie Aronow — co-signed by co-founders Greg Solano and Kerem Atalay — shared that they regard creator royalties as “the single most important factor that brought them [creators and artists] into the ecosystem.”

The post was in response to OpenSea’s Nov. 6 announcement that it would follow other NFT marketplaces on royalty enforcement, which Aronow said shows its intent “to move with the rest of the herd and remove creator royalties for legacy collections from their platform,” and opined this move was “not great,” adding:

”For as much as NFTs have been about users truly owning their digital assets, they’ve also been about empowering creators.”

In response, the BAYC founders proposed a model for NFT royalties that uses “allow lists” coded into an NFT collections smart contract, which permits NFT trading between regular wallets but only allows NFT trading for “marketplaces that respect royalties.”

A basic version of how this would work was explained, with the first step being to check if the wallet is a regular wallet or a smart contract making the transfer request.

Regular wallets would have transfer requests allowed, while transfers initiated by smart contracts are checked against “an oracle of contracts that are known to respect royalties,” with the requests approved if a match is found.

This model would allow free wallet-to-wallet transfers, which the BAYC founders emphasize is a must to ensure one of the core benefits of NFTs — asset ownership — is acknowledged, with owners able to move assets between wallets without fees.

Related: NFTs are the key to turning passive fandom into an active community

The BAYC founders acknowledge that this model does still carry trade-offs, citing allowlist maintenance and an increased barrier to entry for new marketplaces, but said that for now, this allowlist is relatively small, noting:

“To start with, there are only a handful of known good actors today. Starting the allowlist is easy–just add those couple marketplaces that pay creator fees. Done.”

Allowlist maintenance is what they see as the more challenging issue, particularly the make-up of the governing body, adding:

“The real work is just in figuring out what this governing body looks like. But I think that’s a solvable problem for the NFT ecosystem to take on.”

In a Nov. 8 tweet, popular NFT artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, applauded the post as a great way to protect creator royalties as many NFT marketplaces move away from them.


Beeple’s Discord URL ‘hijacked,’ directing users to wallet drainer

Other users in the Crypto Twitter community believe lax security management is to blame for the latest phishing scam aimed at Beeple’s fans and followers.

Nonfungible token (NFT) artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann has found himself the target of phishing scammers yet again, warning users that the URL link to his official Discord server was “hacked” — sending unaware new members to a wallet-draining Discord channel if they follow the link. 

In an Oct. 3 post, the NFT artist warned users not to go into the “fraudulent” Discord channel and verify as it will “drain your wallet.”

However, Beeple wasn’t the first to notice the URL sleight-of-hand, with Twitter user maxnaut.eth noting in a post hours earlier that the Discord link connected to the Beeple: Everydays — 2020 Collection on NFT marketplace OpenSea may have been “hijacked.”

The screenshot shared by maxnaut.eth suggests that the URL points to a “CollabLand wallet drainer,” showing a Collab.Land Bot on Discord which directs members to verify account ownership — instead it works to drain their wallets, noting:

“Your Discord URL probably got hijacked and your team didn’t update it on OS. You need to change that ASAP or people going to get rekd.”

While Beeple claims the URLs were hacked and that Discord is to blame, other Crypto Twitter community members are arguing that lax security measures are truly to blame.

NFT analyst and blockchain detective OKHotshot replied to the artist’s announcement, stating the URLs were not hacked but instead alleging, “Mismanagement of discord URLs allows this happen, probably just like it happened to CryptoBatz.”

While cybersecurity firm Black Alchemy Solutions Group commented their belief that it was not “a Discord problem.”

“This is a problem with a mismanagement of the Beeple Information Security apparatus. If you haven’t already, hire a vCISO (Security Officer), web3 doesn’t = Natively Secure.”

It appears that the misdirecting Discord URLs have been fixed by the artist, according to maxnaut.eth, noting that it “Seems Beep Man picked it up and has fixed it now.”

At the time of writing, the Discord link in the affected OpenSea listing also appears to be gone.

Related: 8 sneaky crypto scams on Twitter right now

Beeple’s social media and messaging platforms appear to be a popular target for scammers and hackers, having sold some of the most expensive NFTs on record, including the First 5,000 Days, a compilation of 5000 pieces of artwork that sold for $69.3 million.

Elon Musk’s spacecraft manufacturer Space X, tech giant Apple, luxury brand Louis Vuitton and other high-profile companies and individuals are all listed as clients on Beeple’s website.

In May, a phishing scam netted $438,000 in crypto and NFTs through a hijacking of his Twitter account, linking to a raffle purporting to be related to a Louis Vuitton NFT collaboration. 

In Nov. 2021, his Discord was part of another scam, where an admin account was compromised and a fake NFT drop was advertised, netting the scammers an estimated 38 Ether (ETH), worth roughly $176,378.14 at the time.

Beeple did not disclose how many users may have been impacted by the current malicious Discord links.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Beeple but has not received an immediate response at the time of publication.