NFTs

40% of crypto game devs are banking on trad gaming in 2024

More than a third of survey respondents believed the blockchain gaming industry benefited most from traditional game studios adopting Web3 tech in 2023.

Nearly 40% of blockchain game developers believe that traditional gaming studios will be one of the biggest positive driving forces for the Web3 gaming sector in 2024. 

In its “2023 State of the Industry Report,” released on Dec. 12, the Blockchain Gaming Alliance (BGA) found that 37.8% of respondents believed Web2 studios launching new games in Web3 or applying blockchain elements to existing titles would help push the industry forward in 2024.

When asked to identify the biggest positive driver in 2023, 19.8% of respondents cited traditional game studios launching nonfungible token games, while 15.2% pointed to the same studios transitioning into Web3.

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FIFA launches NFT collection amid 2023 Club World Cup

FIFA NFTs, minted on Algorand, have totaled only $2.4 million in trading volume since their inception last September.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the body governing international soccer competitions, will launch its own nonfungible token (NFT) collection ahead of the 2023 Club World Cup in Saudi Arabia in collaboration with blockchain firm Modex.

According to the Dec. 11 announcement, an inaugural collection of 100 NFTs will premiere on Dec. 15 and feature the chance to secure tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2026 final. In addition, a total of 900 other digital collectibles will be issued on the Polygon network and OpenSea this month, comprising memorable moments from the ongoing tournament and digital versions of memorabilia.

“Scheduled to kick off in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on December 12, the FIFA Club World Cup brings together seven of the world’s greatest football teams. The champions of FIFA’s six confederations are all participating,” FIFA wrote. The NFTs will be available on FIFA’s namesake platform, FIFA+ Collect. The NFT platform was launched in September 2022 and is powered by Algorand. 

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LimeWire’s new game simulates music pirating nostalgia and pays in crypto

LimeWire’s retro music downloading game revives the look of its platform from the early 2000s and offers players the chance to win crypto.

A new game aimed at reviving the nostalgia of pirating music with the added bonus of crypto rewards has been launched by former peer-to-peer file-sharing platform turned nonfungible token marketplace LimeWire.

On April 13, the historic music-downloading platform, wildly popular in the early 2000s, was revived and turned to Web3 in the form of a retro music-downloading game themed on the Microsoft Windows XP operating system.

Players need to enter their email addresses to play the browser-based game that prompts them to search for old early 2000s music and movies to download.

The simulation will provide a list of songs or movies from that era for players to choose to “download” within a time limit. Each simulated download that doesn’t contain a simulated “virus” will yield points to the player.

Screenshot from LimeWire’s game. Source: LimeWire

The scores are entered onto a leaderboard with the top players eligible to receive a distribution of LimeWire’s upcoming ERC-20 token, LMWR.

Related: Music NFTs are helping independent creators monetize and build a fanbase

LimeWire was re-launched in mid-2022 as an NFT marketplace with the aim of becoming a leading creator content marketplace and membership platform.

The original file-sharing platform was shut down in 2010 after a federal copyright infringement court case and the LimeWire NFT marketplace has no connection to the original platform or its team.

Cointelegraph contacted LimeWire for further details but did not receive an immediate response.

Hodler’s Digest, April 2-8: BTC white paper hidden on macOS, Binance loses AUS license and DOGE news

AI has a role to play in detecting fake NFTs

Artificial intelligence is going to be a key component in cracking down on the growing number of counterfeit non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Beyond all the good a permissionless internet promises, it also makes it convenient for anyone to freely mint pirated nonfungible tokens (NFTs). There are in fact over 90 million fake copies of NFTs. Because in a permissionless system, what’s to stop bad actors from creating copymints to scam unsuspecting users or damage a brand’s reputation?

Only the top 20 most copied NFT projects account for 8 million fake copies across NFT marketplaces.

Source: Optic.xyz

Since NFTs are valuable only because of their uniqueness, such copycat NFTs are fundamentally worthless for consumers. They imply a massive reputational cost besides financial loss for buyers and creators. This is particularly detrimental to a nascent and emerging industry like NFTs. 

The “nonfungibility” and rarity of NFT assets are pivotal to their value proposition. These are the qualities bringing long-term adopters to this domain. But although the on-chain “token” itself may be unique and nonfungible, the content mapped to it through metadata can be tampered with, replaced or even removed. This is among the key technical challenges facing NFT innovators today.

Related: Cryptocurrency miners are leading the next stage of AI

It’s apparent now that NFT marketplaces need to step up to protect consumer and creators’ interests against copyminting, forgery and intellectual property violations.

But the big question for them is: How do you protect users from copymints while keeping the ethos of a permissionless and decentralized internet intact?

Copyminting has grown alongside NFTs

NFT sales counts topped 101 million in 2022, nearly 67% higher than in 2021 despite widespread bearish trends. The total monthly NFT trading volume reached $1 billion across marketplaces in January 2023, and the industry is on track to become a $231-billion market by 2030. NFT trademark filings also scaled new heights in 2022, further illustrating the industry’s rapid growth. But the demand for NFTs is growing not just among adopters but also among malicious actors.

Copyminting is among the most common scams involving NFTs. This method involves attackers deceiving buyers into thinking that their collection is original. Whereas in reality, it’s merely a copy or rip-off of another NFT, albeit a popular one. For example, Bored Ape Yacht Club has 10,000 original NFTs and more than 4 million counterfeit NFTs.

Most often, copymints simply make minor tweaks to the original collection, such as highlighting, mirroring, adding borders and pixelating originals. Some other methods include resizing, color swapping and adding unintegrated texts or emojis. 

Scammers also often use filters to create fake NFTs. Sometimes copyminters put up pixel-to-pixel replicas from accounts bearing fake blue check marks and unauthorized copies of brand logos. This makes it even more difficult for users to differentiate between original and fake collections.

And with hundreds of NFTs listed across marketplaces every day, manually checking them for counterfeits is becoming increasingly challenging.

AI can restore authenticity and originality to NFTs

One way to prohibit fake mints is to revoke the “permissionless” nature of an NFT platform and limit the rights to mint NFTs. However, that would go against Web3 ethos, leaving NFT marketplaces in a tough spot.

NFT marketplaces, brands and creators need solutions that can effectively detect fakes without the need to restrict access or gatekeep these platforms. Artificial intelligence-powered content recognition and fraud detection systems are doing wonders to this end.

Related: Should Bored Ape buyers be legally entitled to refunds?

They can distinguish between originals and fakes to degrees impossible to the naked human eye. Particularly with the ever-increasing number of NFT projects, AI models are an anti-counterfeit game changer. These solutions can process hundreds of millions of assets per day with 99.9% accuracy.

In fact, some of the largest NFT marketplaces — including OpenSea and Rarible — have recently started using AI solutions to help with near real-time copymint detection. That means the AI solutions can assess new and existing collections for a wide range of parameters. Based on the results, they can detect potentially fake NFTs and either take them down instantly or notify marketplace moderators to take further action.

Although copyminting currently troubles stakeholders across the NFT landscape, innovative solutions like these can usher in a better future. By recognizing counterfeits vis-à-vis the immutable, on-chain data for the originals, they can restore the authenticity and originality of NFTs.

Doing so will go a long way to boost investor confidence, attract more institutional capital and strengthen adoption. And these are among the most valuable assets for NFTs as they mature into a mainstream industry.

Andrey Doronichev is a co-founder of Optic, AI powered content recognition engine. He is passionate about building digital creator ecosystems. Previously served as Product Director at Google, where he helped to launch its Metaverse initiatives, including AR, VR and Stadia and led YouTube Mobile to launch ContentID.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

UK Treasury drops plans for Royal Mint NFT

The Economic Secretary of the Treasury told Parliament has confirmed the project has been put on the back burner, but will “keep this proposal under review.”

The United Kingdom has shelved plans to launch a government-backed “NFT for Britain,” which was initially proposed by crypto-friendly Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

While serving as chancellor of the Exchequer, the equivalent of a chief financial minister, Sunak asked the Royal Mint in April 2022 to create an “NFT for Britain” as part of the government’s “ambition to make the UK a global hub for crypto-asset technology and investment.”

The project was meant to be launched by the summer of 2022, but has ultimately failed to meet the deadline.

Asked by the chair of the Treasury Select Committee whether there was still a plan for the Royal Mint to issue a nonfungible token on March 27, Economic Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Griffith noted that:

“In consultation with HM Treasury, the Royal Mint is not proceeding with the launch of a Non-Fungible Token at this time but will keep this proposal under review.”

Harriet Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Select Committee who posed the question in Parliament, was later quoted in a March 26 BBC report as saying:

“We have not yet seen a lot of evidence that our constituents should be putting their money in these speculative tokens unless they are prepared to lose all their money.”

“So perhaps that is why the Royal Mint has made this decision in conjunction with the Treasury,” she added.

Related: CryptoUK calls on regulators to address de-banking of digital asset firms

The NFT for Britain concept ultimately appears to be quite vague, as the Royal Mint and Treasury haven’t elaborated on what the NFTs would do and how they would be used.

At the time of the initial announcement, it was simply stated that more details would be announced “soon,” while opponents of the plan, such as Labor MP and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, questioned Sunak’s priorities.

“The country is facing a severe cost of living crisis made worse by this chancellor’s choices. This is his priority right now. Hopeless,” she said last year.

Related: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

Nifty News: Doodles ‘no longer an NFT project,’ Playboy bares all on NFT earnings and more

The NFT project doodles is looking to go beyond being an NFT project, with plans to become a “leading media franchise.”

Identity crisis: Cofounder of doodles says it’s not an NFT project

One of the co-founders of nonfungible token (NFT) project doodles says it is going to pivot away from being an “NFT project” to becoming a “leading media franchise.”

In a March 18 post on the project’s Discord, one of the doodle’s founders, Jordan Castro — who goes by the pseudonym “poopie” online — said it wanted to move away from financial speculators.

“We’re trying to go from a startup to a leading media franchise. We are no longer an ‘NFT project,’” said Castro.

Castro’s Discord post explaining doodles move to be a media franchise. Source: Discord

Doodles was launched in October 2021 and has grown to reach a $704 million valuation according to a September 2022 funding round. The collection also boasts iconic musician Pharrell Williams as its chief brand officer.

Going forward, Castro said doodles will focus on its “most loyal collectors” and it won’t spend resources “appeasing those with financial motivations.”

Many on Twitter took issue with the apparent shift in focus and pointed to other perceived problems with the project such as its recent lack of communication and a March 16 NFT sock drop.

Some were, however, supportive of the move with NFT startup founder, Daniel Tenner tweeting “the quicker we get rid of the term ‘NFT project’ the better,” adding such projects “are all startups/businesses.”

Castro later tweeted a response to the criticism and doubled down on its new focus but said it “will continue to use NFT tech as the connective tissue between everything we do.”

He added the aim was to “evolve beyond vicious speculative cycles” by “bringing in intrinsically motivated users,” solving real problems and releasing products with a market fit.

Playboy’s NFT endeavor strips down its crypto earnings

The parent company of famed porno magazine Playboy has disclosed significant losses on the Ether (ETH) holdings it earned from an NFT collection it launched in late 2021.

In a filing on March 18, PLBY Group said it took an impairment loss of $4.9 million in 2022 as crypto prices took a significant downturn over the year from the all-time highs seen the year before.

Playboy launched its Rabbitars NFTs in October 2021, just before the crypto market reached its peak. Since that time Ether’s price has dropped around 60% in line with the broader market decline.

Screenshot of Playboy’s Rabbitar NFT collection. Source: Opensea

As of Dec. 31, 2022, the value of Playboy’s crypto holdings sits at $327,000.

In the filing, it explained it counts the impairment losses as unrecoverable, even if the fair value of its digital asset holdings rises after recording the losses.

“The market price of one Ethereum in our principal market ranged from $964 – $3,813 during [2022],” the firm wrote. “But the carrying value of each Ethereum we held at the end of the reporting period reflects the lowest price of one Ethereum quoted on the active exchange at any time since its receipt.”

“Positive swings in the market price of Ethereum are not reflected in the carrying value of our digital assets and impact earnings only when the Ethereum is sold at a gain,” it explained.

Yuga Labs’ new collection mints over $10M

NFT conglomerate Yuga Labs has once again made millions on a new NFT collection it minted in the next step of its “Dookey Dash” web game.

On March 15 those who minted a “Sewer Pass” NFT which was originally needed to play Dookey Dash were invited to “The Summoning” to burn their passes in order to mint an NFT from a new collection titled HV-MTL, or Heavy Metal.

The new collection features 30,000 NFTs that resemble robotic-like cubes which will later reveal a “Mech” according to the collection’s OpenSea description.

The collection has rocketed on the secondary market since it dropped. OpenSea data shows the current floor price sitting at 2.3 ETH, around $4,000 and total trading volume has hit over 6,050 ETH, an equivalent of around $10.3 million.

With Yuga’s creator earnings set to 5%, the project has already earned the firm over $500,000.

Those who minted the collection early reported issues with the output of the process but Yuga identified and fixed the problem within a few hours by updating the collection.

Some early minters of the new NFTs reported issues with so-called “companion traits” not appearing on their HV-MTL initially, but Yuga Labs identified the issue and updated the collection.

Coinbase launches a ‘one-stop shop’ for NFT creators

The NFT marketplace arm of crypto exchange Coinbase has put out a new “Creator Hub” that provides a slew of tools for NFT creators to launch and market a collection.

Coinbase NFT tweeted the announcement on March 16 touting the hub as a “one-stop shop” and provided an overview of the new toys available to creators.

The capabilities of the tool can apparently launch an NFT collection in three steps, track sales on Discord and embed an NFT collection on a website.

Other features included the ability to create gated experiences only for NFT holders along with tools relating to the analysis of holder wallets.

It’s apparently the first time in a while that Coinbase NFT has released a significant update to its platform.

“Glad to see that you’re still alive and kicking, one user wrote responding to the announcement. “For a moment, we thought you were dead.”

Other Nifty News

NFT creator tools are evidently all the rage as software-as-a-service giant Salesforce also announced a platform called Salesforce Web3 to help companies sustainably create, manage, and deploy NFTs.

Without saying exactly why, Formfunction — a Solana-native NFT marketplace — said it’s going to shut up shop by the end of March after being in operation for just over a year. Its shuttering does come, however, as the price of Solana (SOL) and NFT trading volumes have taken a dive over the same period.

Formfunction to shutter marketplace amid Solana NFT slump

The platform didn’t disclose the reason for its closure, but Solana NFTs haven’t been having the best run lately.

Formfunction, a Solana (SOL)-based, nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, has announced it is closing up shop after only 13 months of operation amid a slump in Solana NFT prices and trading volumes.

On March 15, Formfunction announced it was “shutting down” on March 29, saying it “cannot continue to operate.” The decision was reached after “much discussion and careful consideration, it said.

The exact reason for closing the platform was not disclosed in the announcement.

Formfunction’s head of community and marketing, known by their pseudonym “Magellan,” tweeted on March 15 that the cofounders and the team will “pivot to a new direction, likely outside of the crypto [and the] SOL space,” but did not provide further details.

Cointelegraph contacted Formfunction’s cofounders — Matt Lim and Katherine Liu — for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The marketplace’s shutdown comes after its launch just over a year ago, on Feb. 3, 2022. According to Magellan, over that time it conducted $5 million in sales despite a “brutal bear market.”

Shortly after its launch the platform also raised a $4.7 million seed round in March 2022 led by venture capital (VC) firm Variant Fund and contributions from other VC firms Solana Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Pear VC, Palm Tree Crew Crypto and OpenSea Ventures.

Since Formfunctions launch, the wider Solana NFT space has plummeted in terms of volume and floor prices alongside a drawdown in the price of SOL.

Figures from Solana NFT data aggregator SolanaFloor show its index of the “blue chip” NFTs on the blockchain saw a 75% price drawdown in dollar terms since early February 2022.

The USD price of an index of blue-chip NFT prices on Solana since Jan. 1, 2022. Source: SolanaFloor

The daily number of buyers of Solana NFTs has also seen a slowdown over the past 12 months. According to data from CryptoSlam, daily unique buyers currently hover around 7,000, almost half the amount seen on average at the start of 2022.

Solana has seen a slide in daily unique NFT buyers (blue) since March 2022 and daily sales volumes have also halved to under $4 million. Source: CryptoSlam

SOL’s price has also tanked since Formfunction’s launch. At the start of 2022, SOL traded at around $100; it has now fallen over 80%, at time of writing trading around $19.

The price of SOL took a significant hit in the November 2022 collapse of FTX and has struggled to regain traction since. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was an early investor in the Solana blockchain.

Related: Do ‘Ethereum killers’ have a future? Here’s what the crypto community says

Notable NFT collections first native to Solana are seemingly abandoning the platform also.

In December last year, DeGods and y00ts — two top-performing Solana NFT projects — announced they were bridging to Ethereum and Polygon to “explore new opportunities” and to allow for the continued growth of the collections.

What are Bitcoin ordinals?

Bitcoin ordinals have been the most hyped-up Web3 trend of 2023 so far. How do ordinals compare to traditional NFTs, and what are the opportunities?

Ordinals vs. traditional NFTs

Ordinals are different from traditional NFTs from a technical design perspective. There are several features that make the pricing for ordinals a different exercise. 

Bitcoin ordinals, as mentioned before, help identify sats uniquely and have content or art stored on-chain. Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, which is used to create NFTs, typically holds the metadata or a pointer to the art, which is generally held off-chain. Some Ethereum NFTs are experimenting with on-chain storage, but they are more of an exception.

The other key difference with Bitcoin ordinals is the way rarity is derived and how pricing around the NFTs would work. With traditional Ethereum-based NFTs, the attributes of the art typically define the rarity of the NFT and, subsequently, its price. With NFTs like Ethereum Name Service (ENS) for instance, limited supply drives the value.

However, with Bitcoin ordinals, pricing would be defined by key moments that a Bitcoin block would represent. The first 1,000 or 10,000 ordinals inscribed might still be treasured by collectors. Don’t be surprised if the genesis Bitcoin ordinal is sold for a few million dollars in a couple of years. Yet some sats would be considered more precious than others.

A simple framework suggested by the founders of Bitcoin ordinals is that key events would decide the rarity of a sat and the ordinal inscribed into that. The first sat of every new block would be rarer than the other sats in the block. The first sat of an adjustment period that occurs approximately every two weeks would be even rarer. As the next halving is slated for 2024, the first sat of each halving epoch would add another level of rarity. 

Finally, the first sat of the adjustment period, which happens once every six halvings (approximately once in 24 years), would be another level of rarity. Per the founders of this amazing innovation, this could differentiate Bitcoin ordinals from NFTs and make their rarity truly random and not controlled by the founding teams of nonfungible token collections or by their artists.

This could also help understand why the activity around Bitcoin ordinals has already peaked in the short term. It would be interesting to see how activity ramps up closer to the Bitcoin halving in 2024. 

How have ordinals been perceived by the broader Bitcoin ecosystem?

Bitcoin ordinals are a great innovation that can highlight various applications unique to the chain, thereby driving developers to participate and create the tools needed by users.

Bitcoin ordinals have certainly seen a hype that potentially peaked sometime in February 2023, based on transaction data. However, the hype around the application tier on the Bitcoin blockchain is just getting started. 

For instance, Stacks (STX) has seen a rise in price since the ordinals episode warmed up. It is clearly the early days for the Bitcoin ecosystem, but if developers are attracted to the chain, then the network effects between developers and users could come in time for the next crypto cycle.

Related: Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem explained

However, there are downsides to the way ordinals have been designed. As the inscribed content is all on-chain with ordinals unlike with most Ethereum-based NFTs, the size of the blockchain would increase. As new applications emerge and network utilization and transactions increase, so will the cost of transactions. 

The other potential impact of Bitcoin ordinals is whether it will affect the fungibility of sats. So far, satoshis have been exchanged with one sat being valued the same as another. With various applications of ordinals, this may not be true in the future. A sat with a Bitcoin Punk inscribed in it could be priced differently. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see how this narrative evolves over the next few months and years.

How to buy, sell and trade ordinals

Much like the process of minting Bitcoin ordinals, the trading process hasn’t had the matured tooling. Yet there are a few tools to trade these digital artifacts.

As Bitcoin ordinals grow in popularity, most of the trades have been largely over-the-counter. Collections, such as “Planetary Ordinals” and “Bitcoin Punks,” among the first 1,000 inscriptions were transacted mostly without an NFT marketplace such as OpenSea or Blur.

However, tools like the Ordinals Wallet, Hiro and Xverse allow users to buy and sell Bitcoin ordinals. Users can buy some sats within the wallet, using on-ramp payment plugins, and perform the transactions to buy and sell ordinals.

The typical user journey involved in buying Bitcoin ordinals using Ordinals Wallet is as follows.

  1. Go to ordinalswallet.com
  2. Click on “Create Wallet”
  3. Take a backup of the recovery phrase for your wallet
  4. Set up a password for wallet access
  5. Use the address of the Ordinals Wallet to send some sats to the wallet 
  6. Go to “Collections” at the top of the page
  7. Choose the ordinals collection and the inscription that you would like to buy
  8. Buy the ordinal (using the sats in your wallet).

How to mine Bitcoin ordinals?

Mining, minting or inscribing Bitcoin ordinals are the terms that have been used to refer to this process. Unlike minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, which is a relatively matured process, mining Bitcoin ordinals is a technically complex process and lacks intuitive tools.

Bitcoin ordinals, in the initial days, could only be mined by those who ran a Bitcoin node. For tech-savvy users, a Bitcoin node with the ord app, a command line wallet, would be the gateway to mining ordinals. Node operators would load their wallets with some sats to pay for the gas fees and perform an inscribing process on their ordinals.

However, no-code ordinal mining applications like the Gamma or the Ordinals Bot aim to allow users to upload the content that they want to inscribe to create their Bitcoin ordinal. The user journey takes them through a payment process using a QR code and is intuitive enough for the less technically gifted.

The tools around Bitcoin ordinals are still at a very early stage. It has only been a few months since the genesis ordinals were inscribed. As demand from ordinary users and followers increases, the ecosystem and the tooling should start maturing with more user-friendly journeys.

How do Bitcoin ordinals work?

Bitcoin ordinals are based on ordinals theory that essentially has brought life to satoshis (sats) and allows them to be treated as atomic units on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals, in their simplest state, are a numbering scheme for sats.

Ordinals theory drives the mechanics behind how Bitcoin ordinals work. Ordinals theory defines satoshis (sats) as the atomic unit that can be identified and traded individually on the Bitcoin network. There are 100 million sats that make up 1 Bitcoin (BTC). Sats are numbered based on the order of mining, and this number, which uniquely identifies a sat, is an ordinal number.

Related: Bitcoin vs. Satoshi: Key differences explained

By being a unit of transaction, sats can also be inscribed with digital content that make up Bitcoin ordinals. They become immutable digital collectibles that can be transacted on the Bitcoin network using Bitcoin wallets. As per ordinal theory, sats can be attached to security tokens, accounts or stablecoins using ordinal numbers as stable identifiers.

Due to the broad set of use cases that ordinals can support, Rodarmor prefers not to equate Bitcoin ordinals with NFTs. The use case of ordinals to number a sat that’s been attached to or inscribed with a JPEG can be called a nonfungible token on the Bitcoin blockchain. Although the ordinal’s use that found market fit is that of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, ordinals are much more than just nonfungible tokens.

What are Bitcoin NFTs?

Bitcoin NFTs — aka Bitcoin ordinals, aka digital artifacts — are a way to inscribe digital content on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

The Bitcoin ordinals protocol was launched in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmor. The protocol allows inscribing of digital content like art onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and other blockchains, Rodarmor wanted to create an immutable on-chain presence of a piece of art, text or video. The genesis ordinal was a pixel art of a skull that Rodarmor inscribed on Dec. 14, 2022. 

As the NFT space based on Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard skyrocketed in 2021, Rodarmor, who was a programmer and an artist, saw the opportunity to create a similar yet unique experience on the Bitcoin blockchain. His solution was Bitcoin ordinals, based on ordinal theory, which he went on to implement through 2022.

Ordinal theory concerns itself with satoshis, giving them individual identities and allowing them to be tracked, transferred and imbued with meaning. The ordinals hype really kicked off in February 2023, six weeks after the genesis ordinal was created.

The number of inscriptions doubled every week for a few weeks. However, the number could have been much higher if the infrastructure to inscribe and trade ordinals had been better planned and executed.

Daily inscriptions by type

The rise of Bitcoin ordinals has seen the Bitcoin network explode in terms of usage, fees and storage space as shown in the chart above. This may also be the first big breakthrough for the Bitcoin application tier and can help move the narrative from a pure “store of value” to something more utilitarian.

15 influential women entrepreneurs in Web3

Discover the influential women entrepreneurs shaping the future of Web3, cryptocurrency, blockchain, metaverse and NFTs.

Web3, the next generation of the internet, is an exciting new space creating opportunities for entrepreneurs across various industries. While the field is still somewhat male-dominated, several influential women entrepreneurs are significantly impacting the Web3 space.

Here are fifteen influential women entrepreneurs in Web3 to celebrate this International Women’s Day — along with their contributions and achievements.

Nicole Muniz

Nicole Muniz is an entrepreneur and CEO of Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible token (NFT) collection. She has a background in advertising and marketing, having worked as a producer at J. Walter Thompson and managed accounts at B-Reel, including Google.

Muniz is known for her creative marketing and brand strategy expertise, which has helped Yuga Labs grow and become a leading player in the NFT space. Her work in Web3 has been influential in shaping the future of blockchain-based digital art and collectibles.

Elizabeth Stark

Elizabeth Stark is the co-founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, a company developing a protocol for fast and scalable Bitcoin transactions. She is also an advocate for blockchain technology and has been featured in several publications, including The New York Times and Forbes. She has presented at venues including TEDx and the MIT Media Lab.

Stark has also been involved in the development of various other blockchain-related projects. Before her work in the blockchain sector, Stark taught computer science at Yale, Harvard and Stanford universities.

Caitlin Long

Caitlin Long is a prominent entrepreneur, lawyer and blockchain advocate known for her work in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. She is the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, a Wyoming-based digital asset bank that aims to provide banking services to the cryptocurrency industry. 

Before this, Long served as the chairman and president of Symbiont, the smart contract platform specializing in smart securities. She has also held various positions on Wall Street, including managing director at Morgan Stanley and head of corporate strategy at Credit Suisse.

Cathie Wood

Cathie Wood is an American entrepreneur and founder of ARK Invest, a global asset management firm specializing in disruptive technology companies, including those involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency. Wood is known for her bold investment strategies and forward-thinking approach to disruptive technologies.

Wood won CEO of the Year at the 2021 Markets Choice Awards and frequently comments on financial and technology issues.

Cathy Hackl 

Cathy Hackl is the founder and chief metaverse officer at Journey, an innovation and design consultancy. A popular futurist, speaker and proponent of augmented reality (AR), Cathy Hackl is also a recognized expert in branding and marketing techniques for virtual and augmented reality. Hackl frequently contributes to Forbes and has been named one of the top 10 tech voices on LinkedIn. 

She has worked with several well-known businesses, such as AT&T, Magic Leap and Vive. Hackl also co-authored Marketing New Realities: An Introduction to Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Marketing, Branding & Communications.

He Yi

He Yi is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. She was instrumental in the early growth of Binance, contributing to the exchange’s brand development and user growth. She also became the head of Binance Labs in 2022. Yi previously held the position of director of marketing at another cryptocurrency exchange, OKCoin.

She has received recognition for her work in the blockchain sector, and in 2019 she was included in Forbes’ list of Asia’s 30 Under 30. He Yi founded Binance Charity, a nonprofit group that uses blockchain technology to support charity causes worldwide, in addition to her work at Binance. 

Brittany Kaiser

Brittany Kaiser is a former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and a prominent figure in data privacy and political campaigning. She rose to fame while working for Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm at the center of controversial data gathering during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kaiser became an advocate for data privacy and openness in political campaigning after leaving Cambridge Analytica.

She has spoken at various conferences and events worldwide, giving testimony on the Cambridge Analytica controversy before the U.K. Parliament. Kaiser founded the Digital Asset Trade Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving data rights and promoting the ethical use of data in the digital age. She is also the co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation — which advocates for citizens reclaiming their data — and the author of the book Targeted: My Inside Story of Cambridge Analytica and How Trump Won.

Jaime Leverton

Jaime Leverton is a Canadian business executive who has held leadership roles in various technology companies, including as CEO of Hut 8 Mining and chief operating officer of hyper-scale data center company eStruxture. Leverton joined Hut 8 in 2020. The company offers high-performance computing, digital asset mining and miner repair services.

She has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology industries, with expertise in strategic planning, business development and operational management.

Lisa Loud

Lisa Loud is a highly accomplished entrepreneur and fintech strategist with a proven track record of success in major blockchain and tech companies such as BitMEX, ShapeShift, Apple and PayPal. As the co-founder and CEO of Fluidefi, Loud’s extensive experience in technology has fueled her passion for the future of money.

Her analytical perspective, strategic leadership and ability to anticipate industry trends have earned her a place on the Rising Women in Crypto Power List for 2022 — and many more accolades.

Eugenia Kuyda

Eugenia Kuyda is a Russian-born entrepreneur and computer scientist based in the United States. She is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Replika, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot app designed to simulate human conversation. Since 2020, Replika’s usage has increased by 35%, reaching over 10 million users worldwide in 2022.

Before founding Replika, Kuyda co-founded Luka, a messaging app that used AI to recommend local restaurants and cafes. Her first software, Bribr, which let users covertly track bribery attempts, was built shortly after she worked as a journalist for one of the leading daily newspapers in Russia. 

Jinglan Wang

Jinglan Wang is the co-founder and CEO of PlasmaPay, a decentralized financial platform that allows users to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies. As CEO of PlasmaPay, Wang is focused on driving the company’s growth and expanding its reach in the global payments market. Since 2013, she has been active in the cryptocurrency sector, with numerous organizations like the Blockchain Association of Ukraine recognizing her services to the sector.

Jutta Steiner

Jutta Steiner is a computer scientist and entrepreneur best known for her work in the blockchain industry. She is the co-founder and CEO of Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company focused on developing software solutions for the Ethereum blockchain. Steiner held several positions at the cybersecurity company McAfee before beginning her career in the blockchain sector. She was also a researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

 She has also participated in several open-source software initiatives, and is a fervent supporter of decentralized technologies and their potential to revolutionize many industries. Steiner has delivered keynote addresses at several conferences and gatherings worldwide, and is regarded as a leader in the blockchain sector.

Linda Xie

Linda Xie is the co-founder and managing director of Scalar Capital, a cryptocurrency investment firm. She is also a co-founder of CryptoSight, a platform that lets cryptocurrency investors track and analyze their portfolios. Xie is a well-known name in the cryptocurrency sector, appearing in several publications, including Forbes and Fortune.

Swan Sit 

Swan Sit is a marketing and branding expert who has worked with various companies in the technology and startup space. Swan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University. Swan has served as the head of digital marketing at Nike, Revlon and Estée Lauder, where she oversaw teams dedicated to digital transformation.

Sit has also been referred to as “the Queen of Clubhouse” by Forbes. She gained this title because she successfully leveraged the audio-based social media app, Clubhouse to build her personal brand and connect with other professionals in the technology and startup space.

Jaime Schmidt

Jaime Schmidt is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Schmidt’s Naturals, a personal care brand known for its natural and innovative products. Schmidt is also the co-founder of Color Capital, an investment fund specializing in Web3 and consumer goods. In 2022, she founded BFF, a decentralized organization facilitating a growing community of women and non-binary individuals seeking equitable access to knowledge, opportunity and financial rewards in the evolving Web3 landscape.

Within a short span of a month, the community has garnered an impressive 14,000 members. Schmidt is a regular contributor to Fast Company and Entrepreneur, and has also been recognized as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs (Goldman Sachs, 2017, 2018), and the PNW Entrepreneur of the Year (Ernst & Young, 2017) — among others.

Whale sells 1,010 NFTs in 48 hours in ‘largest NFT dump ever’

With the Blur marketplace set for a second airdrop soon, Nansen’s Andrew Thurman theorized that this major NFT dump could be a play to reap extra BLUR token rewards while also booking some profits.

According to data from Nansen, nonfungible token (NFT) whale Jeffrey Hwang — known colloquially as Machi Big Brother — dumped 1,010 tokens for 11,680 Ether (ETH) or $18.6 million, in the space of 48 hours.

In a Feb. 25 Twitter thread, Nansen’s simian psychometric enhancement technician, Andrew Thurman, highlighted the trading activity over the previous two days and noted that it’s “likely the largest NFT dump ever.”

The major selling event included 90 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, 191 Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs and 308 Otherdeed NFTs, to name a few.

However, Machi Big Brother promptly bought back 991 NFTs, with Thurman theorizing it could be a play to either book some profits while also conducting “one big wash trade to generate huge Blur airdrop profits” or a “pretty naked market manipulation. ”

Machi is reportedly one of the biggest receivers of the Blur (BLUR) token airdrop from upstart NFT marketplace Blur, which recently ousted OpenSea from being the top-ranked NFT platform in trading volume.

On Feb. 14, the project started dishing out its first round of airdrops to the community, with the amount of airdropped tokens depending on the user’s level of platform engagement and Ethereum-based NFT trading activity.

On Feb. 17, blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intel indicated that Machi had received 1.8 million BLUR, cashing it out for $1.3 million.

As such, Machi could score some fresh BLUR tokens in the next round by ramping up NFT trading activity, while other whales may be looking to do the same.

Related: Blur founder Pacman puts the NFT marketplace war into perspective

Looking at the floor prices of top collections that Machi initially dumped, BAYC, MAYC and Otherdeed NFTs have seen their prices drop 7.77%, 9.2% and 8.16% in the past 24 hours, according to data from NFT Price Floor.

“One man’s quest for an airdrop is wrecking some markets,” Thurman noted in a subsequent post.

At the time of writing, BLUR’s price is $0.79, declining 17.7% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.

On Feb. 22, the Blur team tweeted that the project will soon airdrop $300 million of tokens in its second round.