15/01/2024 OpenSea Wants NFTs to Evolve as Market Plunges 63%

Last year was not a good one for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Sales for the blockchain-based digital assetsfell 63%to $8.7 billion in 2023, even with volume tripling between October and November, Bloomberg News reported Sunday (Jan. 14), citing data from CryptoSlam.

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As that report notes, NFTs were adefining featureof the crypto bull market in 2021, deemed the more accessible way for everyday consumers to access the digital currency market.

They were even something of a status symbol: anyone willing to spend the money could buy an NFT and make it their profile picture on Twitter. These days, Bloomberg says, X — as Twitter is now called — no longer supports NFT profile pics.

Devin Finzer, CEO of NFT marketplaceOpenSea, told Bloomberg that the industry thinks of NFTs as more than just collectibles, and said he defines industry — and company — success as more than just sales figures.

“One of the things we’ve been most excited about is not necessarily how do you drive the most volume, but rather, how do you build sort of the most compelling use cases for NFTs,” he said.

Finzer said his company is at work on “OpenSea 2.0,” an upgraded platform he said will provide a better user experience and greater differentiation between NFT categories as more uses for the tokens develop.

At the moment, he added, NFTs are displayed the same on OpenSea and other platforms, no matter if they’re a gaming token or an event ticket.

“We really want to have a marketplace interface that can be better customized to suit each type of use case,” he said, adding that OpenSea is at work on displaying ticket NFTs on a calendar and sorting them by date.

The report also notes that while NFT sales were dropping, theprice of bitcoin— the most popular cryptocurrency — jumped 160% in 2023.

However, last year crypto startups struggled to raise funds amid a regulatory crackdown and two high-profile criminal cases.

Venture capital investment in the crypto industry dropped tojust $9.5 billionduring the year, less than a third of the prior year’s total.

The sector’s troubles were especially pronounced during the fourth quarter, when FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted ofmultiple fraud charges, and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao entered a guilty plea to violating anti-money laundering requirements.

Arts

https://www.pymnts.com/nfts/2024/opensea-wants-nfts-to-evolve-as-market-plunges-63/

Interesting NFTs
Who Is The Creator 2
The idea for this piece was borne out of a tweet of mine that caused a bit of a stir. I’d posted a link to a blog article I’d written a number of months previous titled ‘Who is the Creator’ discussing various types of creative collaborations and why I hire people to work on my animations. It generated a lot of debate around creation and attribution with the community split on whether it’s right or wrong for an artist to hire other professionals to help them realize their art projects. I decided to push the boundaries even further and see how the cryptoart community responded. What if I quite literally had nothing to do with the physical or digital elements of the work other than coming up with the concept and coordinating it? I decided there was one artist in the space who could add huge value to this idea on levels that none other could and so I gathered my courage and contacted the great JosĂ© Delbo to ask him if he’d be interested in a very unique collaboration. I explained to him that to make this piece ‘work’ he couldn't have any say in what I produced and moreover, he wouldn’t even be allowed to see the animation until it was dropped on MakersPlace. To my surprise, Mr Delbo agreed to my proposal. The animation tells the story of the creative process, which includes my roles as writer, director, and producer working with a team and making edits and changes ‘in real time’. The dialogue between myself and my ‘hired guns’ plays out in front of the viewer. The music written for the piece adds to the nostalgia of the comic book superhero theme but other elements such as the snapping and kicking of the pencil and the signing of my signature at the bottom incorporates further layers and challenges the viewer to ask important questions, such as, is the ‘Art’ the final animation (the creation) or is the ‘Art’ the concept/credit for the creation itself?
Two old trees
They were growing together for ages.... Many things changed but they could save the life surrounding them and they are blooming now and holding the nest of new life that will always thrive under their cradling branches.
Right Place & Right Time (bitcoin hourly price offset)
Each day, a new composition for the Master is generated autonomously using a data feed of Bitcoin's last 24 hours of price action. Each hour's price programmatically controls rotation, scale, and position of a correlating layer. Astute viewers will surmise the day's price volatility simply by examining the artwork. While the daily image generation is the result of autonomous API calls, utilizing an algorithm the artist wrote, the artist has chosen to retain a control token. This token allows him to fine-tune variables associated with his algorithm, in addition to addressing aesthetic concerns within the life-cycle of the artwork. Layer state, alpha, hue, saturation, and brightness are elements the artist has retained control of in order that this artwork remain a living work-in-progress. An earlier iteration of this artwork was featured as a nightly projection mapping video on the face of the Daniels Fisher Clocktower, as part of ETH Denver 2020. Access to this and additional exclusive content awaits the master token owner at the artist's NFT Portal: https://collect.mattkane.com/minted-works/right-place-right-time-bitcoin-hourly-price-offset/
Okay Bulls #1168
Okay Bulls is a clean collection of 10,000 bulls building a bullish community that will transcend the internet into the real world.
ˈSÄ-V(Ə-)RƏN-TĒ
"I'm not smart enough to be an astronaut." That is what 7 year old Rayden told Micah the first time they met. How can a 7-year-old already feel limitations on his dreams? For centuries, the black community has been the target of a system designed to limit their power, their earning potential, their dreams. Now is your opportunity to help destroy the system. For the next 11 years, on each brother's birthday, (Rayden, Aug. 10/ Jacque Nov. 6), you the viewer, will be able to directly contribute Bitcoin to a wallet that will be given to each child upon turning 18. In what is one of the most powerful use cases for Bitcoin, 100% of your contributions and earnings will open all new doors for these special young men.