Weekly Web3 Roundup

Leading brands like Nike, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Adidas and Tiffany generated a combined $260 million worth of sales from NFTs. Our own Australian Open Artball project is in top-10!🎉

🟠 The Date is set for the ETH “Merge”. Ethereum Developers officially confirmed that the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, also known as “The Merge,” will happen on September 6.

🟠 Bitcoin is trading like a tech stock. After the hawkish stance of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during his Jackson Hole remarks, broad risk assets like growth stocks and bitcoin along with other cryptocurrencies moved together, furthering the narrative that Bitcoin behaves like a risk asset rather than an inflation hedge.

‍

🟣 Telegram founder wants to auction usernames as NFTs.  After the success of domain name auctions by The Open Network, a layer-1 blockchain originally designed by the Telegram Team, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, wants to create a marketplace that could utilize “NFT-like smart contracts” to auction highly-sought after usernames.

🟣 Bored Ape track to be performed by Eminem and Snoop Dogg. Rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg announced they will be performing their latest collaborative single partnership with Yuga labs, “From the D 2 the LBC,” at the MTVs Video Music Awards.

🟣 Pudgy Penguins NFT floor prices jump 83% as the developers continue to release multiple announcements about the project this past week.

🟣 Uniswap wants NFT financialization. Uniswap is in talks with different NFT lending protocols to solve liquidity fragmentation and information asymmetry. Uniswap’s main goal is to build NFT financialization.

🟣 M&Ms embraced BAYC. Global confectionery giant Mars partnered with virtual metaverse band KINGSHIP to create limited edition boxes of M&M’s that showcase content from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

🟣 BendDao contract has only 15 ETH in their wallet. The BendDAO contract has run out of wrapped Ether (wETH) with only 15 wETH left. At the same time, there is an estimated 15,0000 ETH left to be paid to lenders. BendDAO is a lending protocol that allows traders to take loans using NFTs as collateral.

🔵 Creator of The Sims raises $6 million for blockchain games. Gallium studios, an independent gaming studio founded by Lauren Elliott and The Sims Creator Will Wright, has raised $6 million to fund its Web3 games. Backed by venture capital Griffin Gaming Partners and VentureBeat, they will develop a simulation game that is powered by blockchain technology.

🟢 Hell’s Kitchen is coming to the Sandbox Metaverse. The famous cooking competition reality show Hell’s Kitchen is partnering with The Sandbox to create a Hell’s Kitchen in the metaverse where players can compete to be the head chef.

🟢 Beijing announces two-year plan on embracing the Metaverse. The innovation plan focuses on the development of metaverse-related industries and building a benchmark city for Beijing for the digital economy.

🟢 Ledger teams up with The Sandbox to create Ledgerverse. It aims to educate people about crypto security using a game inside The Sandbox metaverse.

🟡 Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has successfully raised $50 million for a new venture fund which will focus on early-stage Web3 startups. The fund has already invested in multiple projects including Web3 gaming studio BlinkMoon, Polygon-based metaverse Planet Mojo, and e-sports platform community gaming.

🟡 Thorswap now offers cross-chain swaps for 8,300 Ethereum Tokens. Now, users don’t need to bridge assets and enable native asset swapping directly on its platform.

🟡 Animoca Brands Japan Raised $45M with the help of its parent company and MUFG bank, the largest bank in Japan. The company aims to use the capital to secure local licenses for popular anime and manga intellectual property (IP) and future additional investments.