The Biggest Sports Leagues in the World are Using NFTs | LENS Whitelist Update

Gm DOers!

Welcome back to our Weekly Rollup, where we hook you up with the web3 news download in under 5 minutes every week.

And there’s so much to talk about this week. It seems like there’s a ‘zero time off’ policy for everyone in Web3, except for Jay who just returned from vacay. 😄

We have launches upon launches, even though we’re in a bear market and we couldn’t be more bullish about the future of web3! 🔥

In today's Rollup we’re talking about…

🚀 Metaverse adoption🎟️ Ticketmaster on the blockchain⚽ The biggest sports leagues in the world are using NFTs🌿 Lens Protocol Whitelist update

Let’s get right into it 👇

Wait 🚥 Not into reading? 📖

Sit back and watch on Youtube 👀 or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts 🎧

❗Lens Protocol Whitelist Update❗

To limit the amount of bots getting a Lens Protocol whitelist, we decided to add another step to the quest. This way, we ensure that only DOers get early access to Lens Protocol 🚀

To get your whitelist:

1. Follow Web3 Academy on YouTube, Spotify & Apple Podcasts 🎧

2. Listen/watch to the Weekly Rollup (links above). Kyle and Jay will give you step by step instructions as to how you can proceed to get your whitelist!

P.S - I recommend you watch on 👉 YouTube so that you see the steps that need to be taken. While you're there, drop a like and subscribe 🔥

Major Brands Playing in the Metaverse

To start, we wanted to go through Hype Research’s Metaverse Brand Activations Report which has been recently released to the public. 

As an overview, the report highlights the significant adoption of 2 of the most popular metaverses: Roblox (centralized off-chain) and Decentraland (decentralized on-chain). 

Although we’re still super early in terms of metaverse adoption, the report highlights 40 brands across 6 different industries experimenting with metaverse activations.

Currently Roblox has an incredible 226M users, of which 67% are under 16 y/o. 

This means that kids are already exposed to the metaverse, although they’re not calling it that. They are native to this environment, and when they go into jobs, they will change the entire mindset of the work environment, just like millennials did (they were super familiar with the internet) and there was a big shift from the usage of paper to using the internet exclusively.

The new generation will look to gamify everything and the chart belowshows why. They grow up in metaverses. 👀

Big brands understand that there is a shift occurring and this is the perfect opportunity for them to engage customers in a new and fun way.. 

Absolut did just that. To celebrate 10 years of sponsoring Coachella, they recreated moments from the concerts into the Decentraland metaverse. People could attend, order drinks (which would be delivered IRL) and do quests in order to receive digital collectibles. 

A really creative marketing campaign! 🚀

Finally, we can conclude that the metaverse is extremely early and that most of the active users right now are just early adopters. We are not at the point of mass adoption… yet! 

But the stats below look pretty tasty 🔥

👉 You can access the report here

Let’s get into some news 👇

Web3 News & Highlights

So far in 2022, 4150 companies have filed trademarks for metaverse web3/crypto related products and services. That’s a lot!! Almost double in comparison to 2021. Ford, Sony and Hermes are the most recent to file trademarks.

Ticketmaster adopts the blockchain! Probably the biggest ticket reseller in the world has partnered with Flow to allow event organizers to issue NFTs to ticket purchasers. No this doesn’t mean your next Beyonce concert tickets will be an NFT. We’re still a few years away from that. But it’s a first step towards getting NFTs in the hands of Ticketmaster customers and another big step towards mass web3 adoption 💥

Vitalik Buterin is releasing a book called Proof of Stake. The book includes Vitalik’s writings throughout the years. The book can be purchased through an NFT accompanied by a signed commemorative soulbound NFT. Vitalik is donating all proceeds to Gitcoin Grants, which funds web3 startups building public goods.

NFT Innovation & Utility

a16z launched open source NFT licenses. A huge asset for any NFT project, these copy and paste NFT licenses can simply be added to any smart contract. They will be called CAN’T BE EVIL, inspired from Google’s mantra: don’t be evil.

Want to know more about CC0 & NFT IP licenses??

👉 Read this thread from a16z’s GC & Head of Decentralization, Miles Jennings👉 Refer back to our latest deep dive covering what CC0 is? It will help you understand NFT IP ownership rights in simple terms.

NFT volume on Opensea has seen a 99% reduction!! Speculation is basically gone! 💨

NFTs aren’t going anywhere. This is usual during a bear market (similar to the ICO mania back in 2017). This is why now, during a bear market, we are talking about the fundamentals of NFTs such as CC0 and NFT royalties, not about the floor price of some silly monkey PFP… 😮‍💨

The NFL released an NFT collection of 2,500 animated helmets that are one-of-a-kind for each of the 32 NFL teams. This is as part of its new NFL Rivals blockchain fantasy football game, which was made by Mythical Games.

NBA, NBPA teamed up with Sorare to launch a free-to-play fantasy basketball game, scheduled to be released in time for the 2022-23 season. This will allow fans to put NFT-based digital collectibles into action.

FIFA launched FIFA+ Collect on Algorland. This new platform allows fans to own and collect FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women’s World Cup moments. The upcoming World Cup hosted by Qatar in November is expected to be watched by 5 billion people around the world so we might see a few new users in web3 🤯

RTFKT drops phygital Air Force 1s to CloneX NFT holders. The cool kids are calling it Phygital (just rolls off the tongue). It’s when a digital good is accompanied by a physical good and it’s the hottest trend in fashion. Just imagine you buy a pair of digital shoes for your avatar and along with it you get the same pair of IRL shoes. It might sound crazy but we bet that every major fashion brand will be doing it within the next year.

New York Fashion Week has partnered with buy-now-pay-later service Afterpay to create NFT keys that provide access to unique NYFW experiences,limited edition clothing and accessories.

Web3 Launches

Tezos-based generative art platform fx(hash) launched fx(text) last week, a new service that lets users create blog posts, tokenize them, and sell/give them away as collectable NFTs. 

Except, posts aren’t conventional non-fungible tokens, they’re semi-fungible tokens. Wait what??? Semi-fungible tokens? 🤯

Simple explanation. These articles can be edited by the creator with all edits and versions tracked on-chain.

Here’s the reasoning behind this from fx(hash),

“While NFTs are usually designed to be immutable by default, we believe this paradigm shouldn't apply to fx(text) articles. The pace at which our world changes makes immutable articles, i.e., unchangeable articles, the equivalent of creating time capsules, whereas we’re interested in creating living documents. As such, fx(text) articles can be edited and updated at any time, including after minting.”

Twitter is testing an edit button! Users will have 30 minutes to edit a Tweet after posting it, and edited tweets will be marked with a label that, when clicked on, shows the history of edits.

Digital avatars company Genies unveiled “The Warehouse,” an NFT storefront (marketplace) for selling digital fashion items. Item creators retain their IP and get a cut of every sale, while Genies takes a 5% fee. Make your avatar gucci AF 😎.

The 1s & 2s

Vitalik once said “The Internet of Money should not cost 5 cents per transaction. It's kind of absurd". Transactions on Arbitrum Nitro (Arbitrum’s latest upgrade) cost $0.01 per transaction. Damn that feels good!

Hot Takes & Funny Tweets

No memes today, only hot takes 🔥

🚀 Action Steps For Web3 DOers 🚀

👉 Watch or listen to the podcast of this Weekly Rollup on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts to get instructions as to how you can claim your Lens handle.

👉 Follow Web3 Academy on Twitter for more chances to participate in future giveaways

👉 Refer back to our latest deep dive covering what CC0 is. It will help you understand NFT IP ownership rights