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Can Instagram dethrone OpenSea as the largest NFT marketplace?

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Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of Instagram hosting NFT sent the crypto community into a tizzy. In March 2022 at the South by Southwest [SXSW] conference, Zuckerberg said, “Hopefully, in the next few months, you’ll be able to mint NFTs within Instagram.”Prior to this, Adam Mosseri, the head of the social networking platform had shared that it was “definitely actively exploring NFTs”.

Proponents believe this might be the turning point as the popular social media platform has a user base of more than a billion people. In fact, analysts from Deutsche Bank went on to predict that the addition of blockchain-based digital works of art on Instagram can lead to an influx of millions of new users and possibly generate billions in revenue for the social media giant.

Until now, OpenSea managed to remain the undisputed king. With their 1.4 million users and trading volume worth $23 billion, they are at the top of the NFT game. In Jan 2022 alone, the platform saw $5 million worth of NFT sales. But with the introduction of these unique digital tokens on Instagram, Opensea might finally meet its match.

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Can Instagram dethrone OpenSea as the largest NFT marketplace? 2

One cannot deny the fact that the NFT marketplace is an extremely lucrative place as seen from its widespread adoption by firms around the world. So, it’s understandable why a social networking site decides to plunge into the highly competitive NFT market.

Instagram will top 2 billion monthly active users in 2023

Besides experts from Deutsche Bank envisioned that Instagram will have 2.2 billion monthly active users in 2023. According to their estimates, even if a mere 2 percent of those users start trading NFTs, it would open up a marketplace of 44 million people. This is roughly 31 times more users than Open sea.

Earlier this year, a new NFT platform for Instagram called Everlens went live. The platform championed itself as the first NFT marketplace dedicated to social networks, allowing over 1.4 billion Instagram users to connect to the Everlens NFT marketplace and trade their posts for NFTs.

It uses the ELEN cryptocurrency as the main token to power the marketplace, enabling users to create, buy, sell, swap, and display a wide range of unique digital artifacts.

Coinbase NFT: First came alpha, here comes beta!

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After first announcing plans for it in October, Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT marketplace has now debuted in testing for a restricted group of users.

The beta NFT marketplace is open to the public starting today, although only a few people will be allowed to buy or trade at first. According to reports, Sanchan Saxena, the exchange’s VP of product, took to Twitter to announce the Beta version going live.

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In October, the exchange platform introduced a marketplace waitlist, which received more than 1.5 million sign-ups. According to the site, only a limited number of clients will be able to utilise the beta marketplace at first, based on their position on the waitlist.

On the marketplace, beta testers will be able to create a profile and purchase and sell NFTs. They can use exchange’s Wallet or MetaMask, or any other self-custody wallet. For a limited period, transaction fees will not be charged, but will eventually impose fees in accordance with industry standards, according to the exchange.

For the time being, Coinbase NFT only supports Ethereum-based NFTs and ether payments. The marketplace will eventually connect other blockchains, according to Saxena, and complete fiat on-ramps will be arriving shortly.

In terms of gas prices, Coinbase stated that it has teamed up with 0x Protocol to optimize transactions for cheaper costs. Users will be able to buy NFTs using credit cards, as the exchange platform revealed earlier this year. At the time, the company worked with Mastercard to allow consumers to purchase NFTs using their credit cards.

Coinbase NFT marketplace to permit social engagement

The exchange platform claims that their NFT marketplace would allow communities to interact as well as purchase and trade NFTs. Coinbase NFT intends to use this community-building function to differentiate itself from competitors like OpenSea and LooksRare.

Coinbase has joined the ranks of other cryptocurrency exchanges in introducing an NFT market. Binance, FTX, and Okcoin have all recently created similar exchanges. However, Saxena believes that Coinbase NFT will be the favoured destination for users due to its ease of use as a primary platform for buying and selling cryptocurrency.

OpenSea in troubled waters; faces 3 lawsuits over stolen BAYC NFTs

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OpenSea’s trouble woes continued to pile up after a year rife with hacks and scams that have already played havoc on the world’s largest NFT platform. As per sources, the Nft marketplace is now facing three separate lawsuits from plaintiffs who lost access to their Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Texas native Timmy McKimmy and Michael Valise of New York both claimed to have lost Bored Apes in a hack that exploited a known security vulnerability in OpenSea’s code. The third plaintiff Robert Armijo, of Nevada, said he lost his NFTs in a social engineering attack which he blamed was caused due to the platform’s negligence.

As per court filings, McKimmy also failed to get compensation for the lost assets despite numerous requests with the platform though OpenSea allegedly told him that it was “actively investigating” the issue.

OpenSea Has Prioritized Growth over Consumer Safety- Court filings

According to the court documents, Armijo suggested a certain website and the user sent him a link to it, claiming that they had already uploaded their NFTs. As he clicked the link, his wallet containing his two Mutant Apes and his Bored Ape, along with some cryptocurrency, was drained off.

Armijo then attempted to contact OpenSea to freeze his assets, But he reportedly encountered numerous obstructions. “Mr. Armijo tried to find a phone number to contact the customer service, but no such number exists,” read the court documents. He next went to OpenSea’s Discord server.”

There too, Armijo didn’t receive any responses. As this critical window of time closed, the plaintiff found his stolen Bored Ape was listed on OpenSea and sold off two hours after the hack.

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Armijo accused the platform’s delayed reply who took 4 hours to respond to Armijo’s help tickets and froze his Mutant Apes. But that could not do any good, as the hacker already listed the Mutant Apes on LooksRare, where they were sold almost immediately. Frustrated, Armijo is now suing LooksRare as well.

“OpenSea has prioritized growth over consumer safety and the security of consumer’s digital assets,” the complaint reads.

The complaint cited the example of an approval process that OpenSea used to have, which required that NFTs be verified before upload by their proper owner. The process was discontinued in March 2021, since then thefts became rampant, it alleged.

GameStop Launches NFT Beta Marketplace With Loopring

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GameStop is clasping the crypto world as it shifts its focus away from tangible items, and its long-teased NFT marketplace is now taking shape.

The shop launched a limited-functionality beta, powered by Ethereum scaling provider Loopring.

Users may now add funds to the platform using Loopring’s layer-2 scaling solution by connecting an Ethereum wallet (such as MetaMask).

You may also customize your display name and profile, however, there are currently no NFT trading capabilities.

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GameStop Launches NFT Beta Marketplace With Loopring 6

Loopring and Gamestop collaboration

According to Browman, GameStop, in collaboration with Loopring L2, seeks to give the general public “quick, affordable, and secure” access to digital ownership.

With GameStop at the “forefront of these emerging global digital economies,” they plan to return control to gamers, producers, and collectors.

He described how users may now mint NFTs directly on Loopring L2 for “fractions” of the expensive gas expenses that often occur from minting on L1, which is less than $1.

The Loopring zkRollup inherits the self-custodial security of Ethereum L1 to ensure that its users “get the strongest digital property rights.”

Immutable will power GameStop

The company has announced a $100 million award for game designers and developers as part of its partnership with Immutable X (IMX) for its NFT marketplace.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission report released on January 28, 2022, it indicated that Immutable was its first Layer 2 NFT integration for trading and minting and that Loopring will follow.

Immutable X just completed a $200 million funding round, bringing the company’s worth to $2.5 billion.

It turns out that both layer-2 technology vendors will eventually fuel GameStop’s NFT initiatives. Immutable tweeted that it is GameStop’s “preferred partner” for the marketplace and that the companies are collaborating to find game creators to launch their NFTs on the platform.

Immutable claims to have received thousands of inquiries about its IMX token incentives from game developers and NFT creators.

Immutable further stated that the Loopring integration “was not a surprise (and we welcome them!)” and that the GameStop marketplace will serve as an aggregator for NFT minting systems. However, it looks that Immutable X will attract the most attention in the market.

OpenSea is examining the phishing attack after labeling $200M loss to be ‘False Rumors’

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After a recent hack that stalled OpenSea’s planned upgrade, the leading NFT marketplace is currently examining the factors that led to the “phishing attack” while announcing some key updates with respect to the incident via their official Twitter handle.

The thread also read that the list of affected individuals was numbered 17, and not what was previously mentioned as 32. The attack according to the firm’s observation did not appear to be active after the incident as there has been no activity on the malicious contract for more than 15 hours.

Refuting claims that its website’s code was breached, the platform’s chief executive Devin Finzer said in an earlier tweet on 20 February that

“We don’t believe it’s connected to the OpenSea website. It appears 32 users thus far have signed a malicious payload from an attacker, and some of their NFTs were stolen. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have surged in popularity over the past year.”

In a series of tweets, Finzer dismissed rumors that the hack incurred a loss of $200 million. The chief exec also said the hacker “has $1.7 million of ETH in his wallet from selling some of the stolen NFTs. And that some of the stolen NFTs have never been returned.

Finzer in a separate tweet mentioned that he and his team got in touch with “dozens” of individuals across the NFT space, and confirmed that this was a phishing attack.

Furthermore, he announced that Opensea was actively “working with users whose items were stolen to narrow down a set of common websites that they interacted with that might have been responsible for the malicious signatures.”

Critics slammed OpenSea’s ‘phishing’ claims

That being said, not all seem to back up the claims. One user who goes by the name- Mr. Whale in a tweet, posted a few hours after the breach, said that “over $200M [was] lost already.”

Another user named Jacob King also chimed in by rejecting Finzer and Opensea’s phishing attack claim. The user stated that a “flaw in their code led to one of the largest NFTs exploits in history.”

As previously reported by TronWeekly, OpenSea announced an upgrade on their smart contract on 18 February 2022 that aimed at removing inactive listings on the platform. It required users to migrate their listed NFTs from Ethereum blockchain to the new smart contract.

But just a few hours following the announcement, multiple reports emerged of an ongoing large-scale attack that targeted the soon-to-be-delisted NFTs.

NYSE Aims To Own NFT Marketplace, Files Trademark Application

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The NFT trademark ecosystem is heating up of late and the newest entrant to dive into this space is the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization – the New York Stock Exchange or NYSE. On February 10, the platform which goes by the nickname, ‘The Big Board’ filed a trademark application to register the name “NYSE” for a variety of crypto products, that incorporates nonfungible tokens or NFTs.

In accordance with the company’s official NYSE NFT website, the forthcoming NFT collection will put emphasis on one-of-a-kind moments. The initial wave of these “First Trade” collectibles will celebrate the first NYSE trades by Spotify, DoorDash, Roblox, Snowflake, Unity, and Coupang.

The platform also said that it will focus initially on those six companies before eventually welcoming others to join the community. As stated by trademark attorney Josh Gerben, the NYSE’s trademark application also indicates future plans to launch an NFT marketplace. This is not the first time NYSE has ventured into the digital token market.

On April 12, 2021, NYSE via Twitter posted a series of threads unveiling non-fungible tokens celebrating the ‘First Trades’ of six of its most notable listings. Having said that applications for trademarks in the NFT market have increased significantly over the last few weeks.

Avalanches of NFT trademark applications

Popular lingerie giant Victoria Secret filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 8, which was later posted on Twitter by Josh Gerben. As per the documents, Victoria’s Secret has filed trademarks to sell digital goods such as clothing, undergarments, and footwear.

Two weeks ago, Kobe Bryant’s estate has also filed three trademark applications for virtual goods as his family is seeking to protect his name in the metaverse. The filings include “Kobe Bryant” and “Mamba Forever,” for digital items like clothing, jewelry, avatars, emotes, toys, and trading cards, and “Mamacita,” in memory of the basketball star’s daughter Gianna.

The competition got more fierce when on February 3rd Nike announced that it was suing an online marketplace-StockX, for launching non-fungible tokens built on Nike shoes, bringing attention to the limits of crypto trademark law.

Nike in its suit alleges that the resulting crypto assets constitute trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and trademark dilution, among other violations. 

Coachella partners with FTX to launch NFT

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The well-known giant music festival, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, has entered an alliance with crypto exchange FTX US to issue an accumulation of non-fungible tokens (NFT). The popular music festival took to their Twitter handle, on 1 February 2022, to announce the same.

After a long break of two years, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the much-awaited music festival seems to be returning with a bang this April. Coachella’s new set of NFTs, Coachella collectibles, will provide on-site advantages and VIP entries to the event which will embark on this come-back, according to their website. This advanced alliance aims to cultivate crypto-based endurance at the famous festival.

The NFTs which happen to be in a restricted bunch will be dropping in this Friday, 4 February 2022. This marketplace is built on the Solana blockchain. However, the users must have an account on the US-regulated crypto exchange, FTX US. The gains from the elements sold will be donated to Give Directly, Lideers Campesinas, and Find Food Bank, with a percentage that will support the founders involved.

Sam Schoonover, the innovation lead of the music festival, said that only blockchain technology can give a unique ability to offer tradeable lifetime passes to the music and arts festival. He added,

“As the metaverse continues to develop, we will create more opportunities for fans to have fun and interact with each other and their favorite artists both online and offline.”

Coachella collectibles can be exchanged for real-world passes

The collectibles are being offered in a variation of three sets. The first set is called Coachella key collection, which grants lifetime entrance to the festival with additional VIP perks. This set is found only in ten tokens. The features offered through these keys are said to evolve and grow every year.

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The remaining two sets are limited-edition token collections for the fan base. The second one is The Dessert Reflections Collections, these can be exchanged for photobooks which consist of pictures from the festival. This set is available in 1000 tokens, priced at $180 each.

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The third collection, found in 10,000 tokens, is called Sights and Sounds Collections. These offer soundscapes from the Polo Fields.

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This is the first time that any music festival has used NFTs in exchange for lifelong passes in the real world.

NFT wave hasn’t hit Kanye West yet

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While the monthly trading volume of non-fungible tokens (NFT) reached an all-time high of $6 billion in January, the American rapper, record producer, and fashion designer, Kanye West, gave clarity about him not being enthusiastic about joining the market for NFT. The rapper took to his Instagram handle to express his opinion to his 10.5 million followers, on 1 February 2022.

Despite the fact that many celebrities have invested in the pitch, the record producer does not seem to be interested in entering the digital art world just yet. In a robustly phrased handwritten post, he said,

“My focus is on building real products in the real world. Real food. Real clothes. Real shelter. Do not ask me to do a fucking NFT. Ask me later.”

While there had been speculations about Ye being engrossed in the digital collectibles, the rapper turned fashion designer seemed to bar any further conjectures through his Instagram post. He asked everyone to stop asking him to make NFTs. Ye asserted that he was not on the particular wave, yet. The rapper seemed to taunt the fact that these digital collectibles are only virtual and that they don’t exist in reality by stressing that he makes ‘music and products in the real world’.

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Even though the aggressive post seems to have dismissed the idea of Kanye west joining the NFT experience, he leaves some hope for deliberation. At the end of the post, Ye wrote, “Ask me later,” which could mean that with time, the rapper might endorse non-fungible tokens in the future.

Celebrity endorsments in NFT market, a recent trend

There have been several celebrities like Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, Jake Paul, Eminem, founder of Def Jam Recordings Russell Simmons, and NFL player Tom Brady that have bought or expressed an interest in the market of digital collectibles.

Stars like the NBA legend, Stephen curry, and Model Emily Ratajkowski have made their own non-fungible tokens and launched them on Metaverses.

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With big brands such as Nike, Crocs, Adidas, and Under Armour making progression into increasing their benefaction of NFTs, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the NFT market rose to a stunning high of $41 billion in 2021.

Associated Press set to debut a new NFT marketplace

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The Associated Press [AP] is soon to launch a non-fungible token [NFT] marketplace built by blockchain technology provider Xooa, where collectors can purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism. According to the press release, the marketplace and first NFTs are set to go live on Monday, January 31, 2022.

At first, the collection will contain a compilation of photographs by current and former Associated Press photojournalists along with a selection of Pulitzer Prize-winning AP images. Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing stated,

For 175 years AP’s photographers have recorded the world’s biggest stories through gripping and poignant images that continue to resonate today. With Xooa’s technology, we are proud to offer these tokenized pieces to a fast-growing global audience of photography NFT collectors.

The announcement comes immediately after TronWeekly had reported the launch of LooksRare as a new NFT marketplace that also featured an airdrop of LOOKS tokens.

What is expected from Associated Press’s brand new NFT Marketplace?

As per the post, each NFT will feature a set of original metadata offering collectors awareness of the time, date, location, equipment, and technical settings used for the shot. NFTs will be from a gamut of areas like space, climate, war, and other images to spotlights on the work of specific AP photographers. As a not-for-profit news cooperative, proceeds would be used to fund factual, unbiased AP journalism.

In addition to that, all users will be able to seamlessly buy, sell and trade official AP digital collectibles through the marketplace. Apart from that, it will facilitate secondary market transactions and purchases using credit card payments as well as crypto wallets, including MetaMask. The platform is planning to add support for Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase in the near future.

It is to be noted that the NFTs will be minted on the Polygon blockchain, which as per the blog is an environmentally friendly, Ethereum-compatible layer two solution. The leading news agency has been dabbling with the NFT ecosystem for quite some time.

Previously on 19 October 2021, The Associated Press launched a premium NFT collection on the Binance NFT marketplace. Each NFT depicted the news agency’s historic news over the past 100 years, spotlighting an array of milestones in space, global conflicts, science, among other things.

NFT marketplace LooksRare debuts with an airdrop of LOOKS tokens

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LooksRare NFT marketplace announces its official debut and an airdrop of LOOKS token to users on the condition that they traded 3ETH or more on OpenSea from June 16th to December 16th, 2021. According to the launch post, LOOKS stakers can earn 100% of the transaction fees on the NFT marketplace [all NFT transactions have a 2% standard fee]. The platform which touts itself as the next generation NFT market, explained in the blog post that it indexes all NFTs that exist on the Ethereum blockchain in order to let users all the Ethereum NFTs that are available in OpenSea and others.

In addition to that, it also enables users to trade in these digital assets with Ether or Wrapped Ether [WETH], or a mixture of both, and make offers using WETH. LooksRare was started by two anonymous co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts backed by a small team consisting of nine individuals, most of whom engineers.

The LOOKS token which is being utilized to reward as well as draw users from larger rival OpenSea went live at 8:15 UTC this morning and is being traded on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. The asset saw a peak price of $4.71 before dropping to its press time price at $1.82. Currently, the platform is offering an extremely high rate of 30,400% APR to those staking the token.

LooksRare Vampire style attack on OpenSea

By enabling users to claim LOOKS tokens for free, the new marketplace is looking to entice NFT big spenders who are regular on OpenSea. This kind of attempt in the crypto sector is known as a “vampire attack” as one protocol tries to steal a competing platform’s user base. Back in September 2020, SushiSwap performed the infamous vampire attack that led to about $1.5 billion moving from Uniswap to SushiSwap.

Interestingly this is OpenSea’s second vampire attack, the first being inflicted by the then-newly launched NFT marketplace Infinity. This targeted the former’s user base with a similar airdrop on 8th October 2021. Having said that, one can also check the claim stats for the new NFT marketplace’s LOOKS token in the DuneAnalytics dashboard provided by hildobby.