Trump NFT Daily Sales Surge 800%

Former US President Donald Trump’s Non-Fungible Token (NFT) trading card collection has recently witnessed a significant recovery in daily sales volume.

According to market indicator aggregator CryptoSlam, Jan. 18 and 19 saw spikes of 800% and 600%, respectively, compared to Jan. 17 sales volume.

Some experts say the imminent return to social media networks may be to blame, following reports that the former president is looking to rejoin Facebook and Twitter ahead of the 2024 presidential campaign. I think.

A collection of 45,000 self-themed trading cards was launched on December 15, originally priced at $99 each.

Purchasers of the collection automatically entered sweepstakes that included “1000 prizes,” including 1:1 dinners, Zoom calls, and a round of golf with the former president.

They sold out quickly, surpassing $3.5 million in daily sales, but plummeted to a baseline of about $26,000 by the end of 2022.

Yuga Labs Blacklists NFT Marketplace

Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), has blocked secondary trading of “sewer pass” NFTs in markets that do not fully support creator loyalty.

The NFT project was first announced on January 12th and became castable on January 17th.

Only Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club owners can craft a Sewer Pass that serves as an entry pass to a new skill-based NFT game called Dookey Dash.

A royalty is a fee that is deducted from the sale price and sent to the content creator. Yuga Labs has been vocal in opposing the broader move to royalty-free marketplaces within the industry.

According to NFT Price Floor data, Sewer Pass is heavily traded on the secondary market, with a minimum price of 1.81 ETH ($2,809) and a sales volume of 15,627 ETH ($24,267,411).

Based on Yuga Labs’ 5% creator royalty fee, secondary sales of the collection have already generated over $1.2 million.

Neopets Raises $4 Million to Build Metaverse

Popular 2000s virtual pet website Neopets has raised $4 million from gaming and blockchain investors and plans to create its own metaverse.

Venture capital firm Polygon Ventures is among the companies providing funding. Investment firms Hasket Capital and IDG Capital. Game company NetDragon Websoft.and the Blizzard Fund operated by Ava Labs.

According to the announcement, “Neopets Metaverse” is a play-and-earn virtual pet game based on the original that allows players to “raise, care for, customize and fight their Neopets” on the blockchain. will be

In the announcement, Xao Xiao, investment director at HashKey Capital, said:

Neopets was founded in 1999 and the company hopes that the Neopets Metaverse will “bring the magic of Neopets to old players in a positive, fresh light and attract and nurture a new generation of Neopets.”

The community has had an overwhelming reaction to the announcement, with some suggesting that previous efforts to create the Neopets metaverse were a failure.

The company originally launched its NFT collection on November 12, 2021 using the Solana network, but it didn’t go so well that the hashtag #NoNeoNFT allegedly trended on Twitter.

Touch the Metaverse, According to Researchers

A team of researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has created a pair of haptic gloves that they believe can bring touch to the Metaverse.

The invention, called HaptGlove, is an unconstrained, lightweight glove that allows metaverse users to interact with virtual objects in a more realistic way by transmitting touch and grip.

Professor working on HaptGlove. Source: NUS News.

When the user wears the HaptGlove, the virtual avatar’s hand can sense when something is touched, and the hardness and shape of the object can be learned as a result of the HaptGlove constraining the user’s finger position.

NUS claims HaptGlove will also help other fields such as education and medicine by allowing surgeons to prepare for surgery in a “surreal environment” and providing students with a hands-on learning experience. doing.

The haptic glove concept isn’t new, and Meta is working on a version of it. However, NUS claims its gloves can provide users with a far more realistic tactile feel compared to other gloves in existence today.

People working on Metaverse games suggest that virtual reality is a very immature technology and difficult to incorporate into Metaverse products. Existing games such as The Sandbox and Decentraland have yet to launch dedicated virtual reality clients.

Other nifty news:

On January 18th, NFT marketplace Rarible announced that it is expanding its marketplace builder to include Polygon-based NFT collections. This builder will allow artists and projects to customize their marketplace. CEO Alexei Falin believes community marketplaces will be the future of buying and selling his NFTs.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced on January 19 that it will tighten its rules for NFT listings, requiring sellers to complete Know Your Customer verification and have at least two followers before listing on the platform. . The company plans to “regularly review” NFT listings that “do not meet standards” and recommend delisting them.