22/10/2021 NFT sci-fi card game Parallel raises at $500M valuation from Paradigm

Image Credits:Parallel

It’s no secret that NFTs have been a hot space for crypto speculators in the Ethereum ecosystem to diversify their holdings, and while some see a golden opportunity to shill bad art to suckers, others believe that NFT-based gaming is destined for the mainstream and that products that nail the mechanics early-on will earn the spoils.

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Parallel, a sci-fi card game based on the Ethereum blockchain, has had a more meteoric rise than most crypto projects, and investors have noticed. The platform tells TechCrunch they’ve raised $50 million at a half-billion dollar valuation from crypto VC firm Paradigm. Previous investors include YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Focus Labs, OSS Capital and Yunt Capital, among others.

“The best crypto games will be the ones that can go beyond first-party content and inspire a community of players and developers to build on the game itself. We were impressed byParallel‘s unique approach and fervent early community, and excited to support them for their next stage of growth,” Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang said in an email.

The project is based around a fantasy storyline about humanity’s escape from space following an apocalyptic attempt to resolve a global energy crisis. Unlike some of the other highly valuable pixelated NFT projects, like CryptoPunks, Parallel’s art style is focused on realism — through a science fiction lens, of course.

An NFT from Parallel’s upcoming drop.Image Credits:Parallel

The sci-fi NFT card game caught fire in August after its first pack drop amid a massive surge in NFT speculation. According to crypto tracker CryptoSlam, the platform did nearly $105 million in transaction volume. One of the titles’ “Masterpiece” cards sold for $1.1 million worth of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. Even as sales fell to just over $11 million in September, a huge month like that can do big things for the long-term value of an NFT project, as rarer purchases made during that time that are held onto long-term can establish steadier baseline price floors for new assets minted on-chain.

Nothing stress tests a system like thousands of tech-savvy speculators trying to break down said system in order to get filthy rich. As a result, NFT “drops” have been plagued by every kind of nightmarish scenario. So far things have gone pretty well for Parallel, which has built up its own drop system, but with its next drop just days away and the potential value of those cards moving higher, plenty of eyes are centered on how smoothly things go.

The game element of the project doesn’t actually exist yet; the early funding has been used to build it out. Parallel takes a substantial 10% royalty on NFT sales, with half of that going toward in-game prize pools and the rest going to the company. That money can mean bigger revenues for the core platform down the line, but when the entry-point to a game swells to a few thousand dollars, the nature of the “game” becomes something different entirely. Balancing a market that tempts investors with rarity but is also friendly to new users has been a big challenge for NFT gaming projects to tackle.

Arts

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/21/nft-sci-fi-card-game-parallel-raises-at-500m-valuation-from-paradigm/amp/

Interesting NFTs
Stay Free (Edward Snowden, 2021)
This unique, signed work combines the entirety of a landmark court decision ruling the National Security Agency's mass surveillance violated the law, with the iconic portrait of the whistleblower by Platon (used with permission). It is the only known NFT produced by Snowden. Produced using open source software. This auction is on behalf of Freedom of the Press Foundation. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/appeals-court-strikes-down-nsa-phone-spying-program-aclu-lawsuit
Grape Lemon
The Fight Club NFT collection is a compilation of 280 custom hand painted baseball bats with varying traits such as color and paint placement. Fight Club is created by Deconstructed Pop Artist Matt Gondek.
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In this psychologically bed-headed portrait, a creature sets in a trance; his eyes devolved and vestigal, his third eye open but hardened and in a form resembling a Sharingan. The imagery therefore expresses an awareness existing in corporeal introspection. The creature’s mind sprouts, on the left side, an emerging face, grinning. To the right side of the head, red tentacles and fingers intertwine–a collaboration of invertebrate and vertebrate consciousness cooperatively handling paint brushes of the sort used to build an oil painting. The neck and throat bristle with random thorns, as from a rose or the upper portions of a beak sprouting from its flesh. The neck itself disassociates into layers of membranous material, terminating upon an abstracted base of convoluted forms composing its body. The nose is virtually non existent, more a sinus reiterative of the shape of the third eye. Set against the exposed teeth peering out of thick, meaty cheeks, a skeleton-like impression results. That impression sets behind a visceral set of lips and tongue, which is the creature’s prime seat of awareness. Sensual, organic, the tongue organ hangs, meaty, and with consciousness of a sea cucumber. It illuminates at the tip, drawing the attraction of a nearby moth–with mystery of purpose.
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By OthersideDeployer
Beautiful Worlds
Welcome to the ‘Beautiful worlds’ where nature and technology have merged into a single entity. These are Ai generated and hand finished visions of solarpunk future in which I would really like our future generations to live and prosper: the future we might have if we took the very “alternative route” which now lies before us: replacing states and corporations which free federations of communities and cooperatives, using decentralist and ecological technologies to create a world beyond economic scarcity and social hierarchy, defined by autonomy, mutual aid, diversity, and inclusiveness. The long-term goals of solarpunk are freedom and well-being for all by adopting and developing such ecological technologies as: solar, wind, wave and geothermal energy rather than oil or gas to generate electricity; a world of decentralized eco-cities, permaculture and vertical farming, free and open-source software, open-source hardware, small-scale fabrication laboratories, micro-manufacturing, 3D-printing, and countless examples of commons-based peer-production online: meeting the maximum amount of needs, in the shortest time, using the minimum possible amount of energy. It’s a world of decentralized and confederated eco-communities, using technology for human-centric and eco-centric ends rather than for accumulating power and profit – mending the metabolic rift between first nature (the natural world) and second nature (human culture) – and where social hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and disability are considered horror stories from the past “oil age”. Solarpunk desires societies of polycultural ethnic diversity and gender liberation, where each person is able to actualize themselves in societal environment of free experimentation and communal caring; This philosophy proposes that in order for the social and natural worlds to reconcile, humans must first transform their relations to each other – recreating society along egalitarian, cooperative, and democratic lines – and then transform their relations towards nature – adopting an attitude to cooperation, rather than domination, towards the planet and its nonhuman forms of life. Text by Connor Owens. This artwork took me a year to create and for you it will take a year to discover. Master autonomously updates once a day at 12am with one of 366 original artworks. Enjoy!