Otherside

Nifty News: Gucci to drop Otherside pendants, Jack Daniels taps AR, Web3 and more

Jack Daniels is dropping digital collectibles in an AR game, while Fifa launched an AI-football simulation game that will eventually ship NFT integrations.

Otherside holders get dripped out in Gucci

Luxury fashion house Gucci has designed a limited edition pendant for Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse, which will come in both physical and nonfungible token (NFT) forms.

Gucci’s silver jewelry piece is dubbed the “KodaPendant,” and will drop on April 6 for hodlers of the Koda or Vessel NFTs, which function as either creatures or avatars in Otherside.

Koda and KodaPendant NFT artwork. Source: Yuga Labs

The physical chain itself is 50 centimeters long, with a Koda-shaped pendant engraved with “GG.” There will be 3,333 in total on sale for 450 ApeCoin (APE) a pop, worth roughly $1,930 at current prices.

Once the NFTs are purchased, their Koda or Vessel NFT metadata will be updated with a KodaPendant trait, resulting in a physical update to the token’s associated animated character.

It is the first drop of a broader collection called “Otherside Relics” By Gucci, with the two brands being tight-lipped on what comes next.

Explaining the partnership in an April 4 blog post, Yuga Labs noted the duo is looking to “push the boundaries at the intersection of fashion, entertainment, and gaming.”

“Throughout our extensive partnership, we will work together to engage Voyagers in immersive experiences at the intersection of fashion, entertainment, and technology,” the firm wrote.

Jack Daniels gets nifty

Whiskey producer Jack Daniels has launched a new Web3-focused campaign built around Polygon-based digital collectibles and augmented reality (AR) in partnership with Yahoo Creative Studios.

In a Pokemon Go-style map-based game, the duo will launch an AR mobile experience across five Australian cities where users can explore specific areas to find a “Jack Daniel’s crate.”

The crates contain prizes such as gift vouchers, trips to a Jack Daniel’s distillery, and NFT music tracks from three Australian bands: Winston Surfshirt, Stand Atlantic and the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets.

There are 2,000 tracks up for grabs, and if someone finds a crate, they can mint it as a collectible on Polygon.

Discussing the idea behind the campaign with Bandt on April 3, Dimitra Tassopoulos, the senior brand manager for the Jack Daniel’s Family of Brands, noted:

“We briefed our media agency, Starcom, and said to them ‘we’re a big brand, we need to push boundaries and look at doing stuff differently.’ We’re going to do out-of-home, digital, social and events, but we need to find new and innovative ideas.”

“I remember when bands released music, and people lined up to purchase it. They could see the cover art and open it up to see the lyrics. That’s something that the younger generation has not had the joy of discovering because things seem a little less personal when you’re streaming the song rather than owning the song,” he said.

NFT thieves cashed out on Blur in March

Roughly $10.9 million worth of NFTs were stolen in March, with three-quarters of them being first re-sold on the Blur marketplace, according to data from blockchain security firm PeckShield.

Tweeting from its alert-focused account on April 2, the firm said half of the stolen NFTs in March were sold within two hours of being swiped, with 19.5% of the sales coming from OpenSea.

“$10.9M worth of NFTs were stolen, representing a 32.72%% decrease from the previous month. Half of the stolen NFTs were quickly sold on marketplaces within 2 hours,” the firm tweeted.

PackShield did not offer an explanation for why the NFT thieves flocked to Blur in March.

Notably, the stolen NFT activity on the marketplace was much lower in February, representing roughly 20% of the first sales of stolen NFTs despite the platform being in the middle of a token airdrop campaign.

Fifa’s new AI Web3 game

Fifa, the international governing body behind association soccer, launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) and Web3-based mobile game called “AI League” on April 4.

AI League initially launched in open beta on Android, with plans to come to Apple’s app store soon.

It consists of a “4-on-4 casual football game, played between AI-controlled characters,” with the player acting as a coach by controlling tactics and customizing player attributes.

Related: What are dynamic NFTs?: Use cases and examples

The AI characters do not depict actual professional players, instead resembling characters from an animated film or avatar-based NFT project.

In terms of Web3, the characters will eventually become NFTs that can be traded on a marketplace developed by Fifa. The game was announced late last year as part of a range of Web3 games that were supposed to ship before the 2022 world cup in Qatar.

Other Nifty News

According to a March 30 report from blockchain analytics platform DappRadar, NFT trading volume hit $4.7 billion in Q1 2023 — more than double that of the previous quarter. The firm pointed to bullish action from the Blur marketplace, which took the market by storm during its token airdrop farming period in February.

In light of Hong Kong’s commitment to developing cryptocurrency infrastructure, fintech official King Leung recently visited Japan to talk with policymakers and regulators in Tokyo to better understand the idea around Web3 digital assets.

Related: NFT Creator, Emily Xie: Creating ‘organic’ generative art from robotic algorithms

Eminem and Snoop Dogg to perform Bored Apes track at MTV music awards

BAYC members Eminem and Snoop Dogg will perform “From the D 2 the LBC” on an Otherside metaverse transformed stage.

Nonfungible token- (NFT)-friendly rap icons Eminem and Snoop Dogg will be performing at MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) together on Sunday in a performance inspired by the Otherside metaverse and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs.

The Otherside is a collaboration project between Yuga Labs’ BAYC and NFT investment and gaming giant Animoca Brands.

Partnering with Otherside creator Yuga Labs, the global rap icons will be giving some major mainstream exposure to Otherside by transforming the VMAs stage into its style for their latest collaborative single From the D 2 the LBC. Specific details of the performance are sparse at this stage, however.

In what appears to be a signal to the music industry that metaverse performances deserve more recognition, the VMAs have also added a “Best Metaverse Performance” category to its annual awards. Nominees for the award include Justin Bieber, Rift Tour (featuring Ariana Grande) and Twenty One Pilots.

The VMAs may be hoping that in embracing the Metaverse, they will be able to reinflate their flagging viewership numbers. After peaking at 12.4 million viewers in 2011, the awards have seen a steady decline in viewers, with the 900,000 that tuned in live to watch the awards on MTV representing the eigt year in a row that viewership has decreased.

The single marks the first collaboration between the two artists in 20 years, with the duo up for the “Best Hip Hop” award. Both Eminem and Snoop Dogg are hodlers of BAYC NFTs, and the song’s music video heavily features content from the NFT collection. Snoop Dogg has also recently featured in an EDM single called BAYC by Esther Anaya in an animated video of Bored Apes and other NFTs.

Eminem purchased a hip-hop-clothed Bored Ape on Dec. 31 for 123.45 Ether (ETH) and also has a collection of 28 other NFTs under the name Shady_Holdings. Snoop Dog is a much more avid participant within the NFT space, with a partnership between him and The Sandbox leading to The Doggies collection of NFTs, as well as buying a Bored Ape on Dec. 22.

The Otherside and its Voyagers

The Otherside is a gamified interoperable metaverse currently in beta development. The platform offers Otherdeed NFTs to represent digital ownership of land plots in the BAYC-affiliated virtual world, with Otherdeed owners being referred to as Voyagers.

According to the lite paper, “Otherside will support interoperability in the future, giving Voyagers a chance to bring their own outside collections and NFTs to life within our metaverse.”

Related: Yuga Labs ‘inappropriately induced’ BAYC investors: Class action

According to data from CryptoSlam, sales of Otherdeed NFTs have topped $1 billion to date, with $23.5 million of volume coming over the past 30 days. Demand is also quite high for the top-tier NFTs in the collection, with one plot having sold for as much as 333.33 ETH (currently valued at $565,289) four months ago.

The Otherside allowed users into its metaverse for the first time on July 16, with 4500 users able to jump in and experience the virtual world. Only Voyagers and selected third-party developers were able to participate, and the trip seems to have been a great success based on tweets from its supporters.


ApeCoin price eyes 45% rally following Otherside metaverse demo

APE has been pursuing a rare ascending triangle reversal breakout, with its profit target at $8.40.

ApeCoin (APE) rallied to start the week as traders considered Yuga Labs’ decision to open its Otherside metaverse for selected users. In doing so, the token broke out of a technical pattern that hints at another 45% price rally by September 2022.

Otherside metaverse euphoria

APE’s price surged by almost 23.5% week-to-date to reach $6.12 a token on July 19.

The weekly gains came as a part of a rally that started on July 16. Interestingly, Yuga Labs invited 4,300 players of its Otherside gaming metaverse for a demo — and the tour of its Bored Ape avatar online platform — on the day of APE’s rally.

APE/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView

That suggests traders purchased APE after taking cues from the Otherside update, given it serves as a governance token at ApeCoin DAO. This decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) powers the ecosystem of apps and services deployed by Yuga Labs and third-party brands, including Otherside.

APE price eyes 45% rally

The Otherside euphoria has also prompted APE to exit a technical setup called the ascending triangle.

Ascending triangles are typically considered continuation patterns. Nonetheless, in rare instances, ascending triangles form at the end of a downtrend, leading to a strong price reversal.

Related: Time to accumulate? 5 sectors to watch during crypto winter

It appears APE’s ascending triangle had formed at the end of its downtrend. That is because the token rallied by over 100% after bottoming out locally near $3.00 on June 15, followed by a break above the triangle’s upper trendline near $5.22 on July 18.

APE/USD daily price chart featuring ‘ascending triangle’ reversal setup. Source: TradingView

As a rule of technical analysis, a breakout originating from an ascending triangle pushes the price north by as much as the maximum height between the triangle’s upper and lower trendline. That puts APE on the road to $8.40, up about 45% from current price levels.

Conversely, a close below the triangle’s upper trendline could trigger the prevailing bearish breakdown setup, with the profit target sitting below $3.50.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Community anticipation builds for Otherside’s First Trip demo run

Otherdeed land owners, known as Voyagers, will be able to participate in the experience via a token-gated asset confirmation.

The Otherside, a gamified metaverse project associated with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, is scheduled to deploy a technical demonstration of the first stage of the Otherside roadmap on Sunday, July 17 at 4 pm UTC.

The First Trip experience will be exclusively accessible to Otherdeed land owners, known as Voyagers, and has been described by the platform as a “celebration of what’s to come and an opportunity for Voyagers to gather, explore and plan.” 

The company indicated that thousands of users could participate in the event, navigating through the curated arena of play that has been specifically designed for the test, as well as guinea-pigging the “3D, hi-res Voyager prototypes that can walk, run, jump and emote,” and a “private, tokengated live stream,” among other novel features.  

An Otherdeed asset for the Otherside has sustained a floor price of circa 2.9 ETH over the past few weeks, with 100,000 assets in supply and 35,000 owners at the time of writing. 

The First Trip demo arrives less than a week after the occurrence of two load tests on July 6 and 9 with the intention of assessing the technical boundaries of the Otherside platform, and the collaborative dynamics with the Improbable team. 

The events witnessed frenetic crowds of faceless avatars with overhead name tags and reactionary emojis sprinting, dancing and acrobatically flipping around a blank-white universe as giant moderators towered over and bellowed instructions. 

Users were advised to engage in activities to test the gaming experience, such as inputting their age, experience score and objectives for their gameplay, before choruses of degenerates relayed calls of “Otherside” and “We love Koda.”

Twitter user and owner of BAYC #8412, null.eth and Sandbox ambassador allo.eth, each published videos on Twitter, which perfectly captured the experience of the test event.

Despite the visually comedic anthill crabs-in-a-bucket appearance of the load tests, there was widespread praise throughout the community for the visual rendering quality, spatial audio and overall experience, with high anticipations for the upcoming First Trip and future full-scale rollouts. 

Co-founder of digital fashion brand RTFKT Studios, Benito replied by stating that: “2.5K people were connected and moving live. That’s huge, the tech has been proven live with gated access and real people.” 

While BAYC co-founder, Gargamel, known as Garga within the community, shared: “Had about 2.5k concurrent users running around in the neutral space. Tons of great info compiled to make sure First Trip goes smoothly, and [we are] taking all your notes from Discord as well.” 

Less favorably, some compared the uncanny design similarities to the starter templates available through game engines such as the Unreal Engine. It remains to be seen whether Yuga Labs intends on building and developing their own game engine to launch the Otherside and innovate on the future of metaverse gaming, or simply utilize a pre-existing model.

Related: Otherside NFTs fall below mint price while cheaper ETH sees sales volume boost

For many participants of the NFT ecosystem, mentions of the Otherside may still be synonymized with the gas-war minting saga and subsequent financial begrudgery in late April. However, since then, the publication of an eight-part roadmap for the Obelisk mission, and consistently executed testnets have cultivated a more positive narrative around the metaverse project.