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The RAPSCALLIONS (RAPS): Mooning NFT Project with True Breeding and Battles

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The Rapscallions is an exclusive gang. Membership in the gang requires you to own at least one of the 10,150 RAPS NFT. The Rapscallions will be available to mint from September 24th, 2021 at a cost of 0.06 eth each.

The team behind The Rapscallions has reimagined the whole concept of NFTs and the marketplace around it today. Having experience and vast knowledge in the NFT market, they have envisioned a whole world around the RAPS NFT and it will not end once the last RAPS NFT has been minted.

Their vision starts with The Rapscallions and their recruitment drive to find new members. Then comes the mysterious Axe gang that has been rivals with The Rapscallions for ages, of which more details on this NFT project will be unveiled in a few days after launch and will include a battle game between the gangs.

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Let’s get back to what is currently on the roadmap for The Rapscallions. Once they launch on Sep 24th, The Rapscallions will be hosting numerous Airdrops and giveaways including PS5 systems amongst their holders. At a later stage, a charity donation will be made at the behest of the Rapscallion community once they have decided on a suitable charity. The final stage which is already under development will be breeding between The Rapscallions NFTs, for which the dev team has included for the first time male and female NFTs. One of each will be required to breed NFTs in the incubation center, of which the offspring would take on the traits of their “Parents” or have a minute chance of unlocking even rarer traits.

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Each RAPS NFT has been created with 290+ uniquely hand-drawn traits with varying rarities from 10 different categories of individual traits. Listing on a major rarity evaluating website will be made available once 20% of RAPS have been minted.
To MINT / BUY, one must install metamask and fund it with Ethereum and connect on site to MINT/BUY after launch. It’s best to use a computer or laptop for this. They have fun and helpful community on Discord while you can check them out here.

The World’s first community-driven NFT, manga & anime series on the Cardano Blockchain – ADA Ninjaz

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The ADA Ninjaz NFT is a collection of randomly generated 2D avatars. The designs are inspired by the popular Seinen anime art style, combining attributes from traditional ninja lore with modern-day clothing assets. The lore will be focused around a raging war between 3 individual clans (more details to come), each with their own unique identity and reason for fighting for their clan’s survival.

On top of collectible NFTs, ADA Ninjaz will be the world’s first community-driven manga series. Owners of ADA Ninjaz NFTs will be given voting power to decide the ultimate fate of each clan. Founded by two friends whose goal is to develop one of the strongest anime communities within the NFT space. We want to show the world how incredibly fun, intelligent, and powerful the anime community is and that all of us can do anything when united as one.

This is a tribute to the digital age, ADA Ninjaz is taking the themes of manga and anime that billions of people grew up in love with, integrating it with blockchain technology, and opening up a world of opportunities within the metaverse, both for developers and the future community.

VISION

Imagine a world where like-minded Ninjaz come together to engage, play, and just have good old fashion fun. Maybe it’s in the physical realm, with clan meetups to discuss the latest news on all things ADA Ninjaz and anime. Perhaps it’s in the virtual realm, where you can log in as your purchased NFT and fight in a battle royale-style tournament, or even attend a virtual music festival.

What if, instead of watching your favorite 2D anime on a computer monitor, you get to watch it in 3Dand from the point of view of your favorite character? This is the future and vision of the ADA Ninjaz ecosystem. We aren’t just bringing manga into the NFT-universe. We are striving for something so much more while respecting and appreciating the beauty of the NFT world and community. The ADA Ninjaz team aims to see Ninjaz merchandise worn by groups of friends around the streets.

For it to be represented at comic-cons and people to cosplay as their favorite ADA Ninjaz. And of course, to have developed multiple successful indie platformer games enjoyed by millions of gamers. These ambitions are big, but with you — the investors and supporters, the incredible people already associated with ADA Ninjaz, and of course, the wider NFT community, this is possible.

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WHY CARDANO?

Firstly, the whole of ADA Ninjaz thanks the team over at Ethereum who have been able to deliver an incredible smart contract platform for NFTs to thrive. Without such adoption, the ADA Ninjaz concept may not have had reason to exist.

That being said, it is well understood that the biggest constraint, by far, on the current Ethereum network is the network congestion and consequently high gas (transaction) fees. There are so many issues that come with this, from gas wars through to lost money from failed transactions.

For example, a recent NFT sale cost users $790,000 in failed Ethereum transactions. That alone is enough in transaction fees to purchase an entirely new set of NFTs!

But the biggest problem that we see too often is that smaller buyers (<$500 to invest in NFTs) are immediately priced out of most, if not all big NFT launches. Say you only have $200 to spend on NFTs this month, then paying the same, if not more, in gas fees to buy an NFT, isn’t plausible.

Ethereum is therefore currently a play area for the big boys with big money. That is unfortunately not fair for the smaller investors, the ones who want to grow their understanding of this space, grow their NFT collection, and more often than not, feel a part of a virtual community.

This is why we’ve decided to launch our NFT collectibles on the Cardano blockchain — so that the smaller players have a chance at owning their very own NFT and also be part of this amazing community.

Additionally, the ADA Ninjaz team believes in the Cardano ecosystem. It is okay that the Cardano ecosystem is still young, with smart contracts not yet really mature. We are young too. The beauty of a growing blockchain protocol is that we get ample time to also work on developing our product range and offering. The ADA Ninjaz Team is in this for the long haul.

CORE PARTNERS

NFT-Maker Pro will lead the development of the backend solution and help us launch our project on the Cardano blockchain. Having the Godfather of Cardano NFTs himself, Patrick Tobler and the team at NFT-Maker Pro, rest assured things will be as smooth as they can be on the backend front, as he is second-to-none when it comes to all backend solutions on Cardano.

Le4f Agency will lead the development of the front-end solution. Led by CEO, Kristian Portz, they will create a classic and timeless website for us to share the vision and story that is the ADA Ninjaz universe. With a superb team that is highly experienced in creating a user interface that is engaging, accessible, and most importantly in sync with the Cardano backend, this partnership will enable ADA Ninjaz to really take its front-end to the next level.

Ignacio J. Durruty – master storyteller. A sublime wordsmith, Ignacio possesses significant prowess when it comes to creating stories in fictional universes and screenwriting. His works have received a long list of accolades, particularly in the cinematic space, including, but not limited to:

• 2nd place – 2019 Barcelona Film Festival

• Finalist – 2019 Amsterdam Film Festival

• Finalist – 2019 Davinci Film Festival

• Semi-finalist – 2019 TMFF

• Official Selection – 2019 Las Vegas International film & Screenwriting Competition

Mirai Music Productions, a super Los Angeles-based music production duo that has been onboarded to develop an original soundtrack for ADA Ninjaz.Lead by Riccardo Lovatto and Jacopo Mazza, they will take charge of all things music, transcending written words into sounds and music that will be nothing short of breathtaking.

Riccardo, a music composer, is well-versed in the music of anime and manga, having lived in Japan for several years taught seminars at universities there, whilst playing at Jazz clubs all over the country. In 2018, his first recording “Shinnen” reached the “Top 300 All Genre” chart of Deezer South Korea. Hence, it is of no surprise that they are exactly who the ADA Ninjaz team was looking for to produce the OST.

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Unleash Your Inner Ninja!

Head on over to the ADA Ninjaz Discord channel and say hello!

Stay up-to-date with all things Ninjaz on Twitter.

Things to look forward to in the coming days and weeks:

1. The launch of the ADA Ninjaz website and official sale date.

2. The story and lore of the ADA Ninjaz universe.

3. Transparency in the initial allocations/giveaways of NFTs.

4. Development roadmap and whitelisting

For now, stay tuned, keep calm and be a ninja!

Solana witnesses NFT sale of Degen Ape worth $1.1M

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The prominent layer one solution, Solana, is one fire. The blockchain witnessed its first-ever million-dollar non-fungible token [NFT] sale of Degen Ape.

Both NFT and Solana ecosystem has been bustling with activity like never seen before. In the latest development, the blockchain advisory and investment partnership firm Moonrock Capital announced the purchase of the Solana-based NFT for a whopping 5,980 SOL, which is roughly worth $1.109 million. Its tweet regarding the same read,

Solana’s Degen Ape #7225 happens to be one of the Degenerate Ape Academy NFTs listed as the 13th rarest in the collection. The NFT features a zombie version of an ape that is scarred all over its face and body. It also has a halo on top of it, a gold tooth, and a brain squished in its mouth.

Solana at the forefront of the market

Nevertheless, Solana has had a wild run this summer. It has observed a meteoric rise in terms of the price of its native crypto SOL. Despite the tremendous success, it couldn’t escape the technical difficulties facing NFTs released on the blockchain. All in all, the project has been at the forefront.

It continues to dominate crypto conversations even as the broader market was stuck in a southbound price movement. Over the past week alone, SOL clocked in gains of 27.05% amidst market-wide rout. The rise also coincided with the launch of NFT Degenerate Ape Academy, created on Solana blockchain on August 15. At the time of writing, the sixth-largest crypto asset was priced at $179.69.

The Andreessen Horowitz-backed platform’s spectacular growth can be attributed to the spike in investors’ interest in Ethereum’s rival blockchains with decentralized finance, NFT, and smart contract offerings. Its emergence as a stiff competitor to Ethereum can be evidenced by the $12.09 billion in TV, according to DeFi Llama’s latest stats. The latter’s TVL figures, on the other hand, have taken a significant plunge as gas fees hiked.

Solana

After crypto, Chinese media tries to alienate NFTs

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China has been ousting several prominent cryptocurrency firms from its region. Now the country seemed to be laying eyes on NFTs. Non-fungible tokens have undoubtedly taken the world by storm. Instead of jumping onto the bandwagon, the government was rather repelled by this idea. a media house, Securities Times of a Chinese Communist Party’s branch, People’s Daily revealed.

As the world has been steering towards digitalization, the touch of crypto to it was seemingly necessary. After digitalizing almost everything, taking art into the digital sphere worked out well for many. Despite being uninterested in crypto, an array of people were seen diving into the NFT space. Even though two prominent firms of the country were seen showing interest in NFTs, the Chinese government went on to castigate the value of NFTs.

NFTs next line to be banned in China?

While major firms like Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings were trying to take on the non-fungible tokens business, a Chinese state-run newspaper went on to label this a “huge bubble.”

The Securities Times in a recent article suggested that people using non-fungible assets were rather focused on it as format and weren’t that enthusiastic about the artwork or even the asset. Therefore, the Chinese media noted that there was a huge bubble in these transactions. A staff reporter and author Wang Junhui wrote,

“Once market enthusiasm wanes and the hype cools, the value of these many strange NFTs will greatly decrease.”

Collage creator, Mike Winkelmann who goes by the name Beeple further added,

“I absolutely think [NFT art is] a bubble, to be quite honest. I go back to the analogy of the beginning of the internet. There was a bubble. And the bubble burst. But it didn’t wipe out the internet. And so the technology itself is strong enough where I think it’s going to outlive that.”

NFT marketplace OpenSea continues to break records

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Prominent NFT marketplace OpenSea is on fire and has again broken the daily volume record with a whopping $302 million. OpenSea saw tremendous growth as it rode the NFT mania that continues to sway the market to new heights. The total incoming value to OpenSea’s rose by 516% from a mere $49 million registered at the beginning of the month.

Notably, a huge chunk of the NFT platform’s trading volume surge was observed to have happened after June 2021. As the wider cryptocurrency market resumed uptrend in August, the capital entering the marketplace’s smart contract also saw a major spike. The latest consolidation has had little effect on the figures which started to climb higher after breaking previous records.

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As a matter of fact, since the beginning of the year, the trading volumes on the peer-to-peer non-fungible token marketplace have surged by over 12,000%, according to the latest chart compiled by DappRadar. With respect to transactions, OpenSea has processed more than 1.12k transactions as of August 29. The number of users on the platform was also at the highest level at 40.71K, increasing over 217% in the last 30 days.

Devin Fizner, Co-founder and CEO at OpenSea, had earlier spoken about the growth of OpenSea in an interview and stated,

“Our infrastructure and platform team in particular have had to deal with levels of service and website traffic that we had never handled before. All of these things have been a huge effort over the last 12 months, as we’ve gone from about $1 million in GMV to now, over $2 billion in GMV in probably one of the shortest time horizons for any consumer marketplace”

NFT marketplace wants to expand its team

OpenSea’s head had Nate Chastain recently took to Twitter and disclosed that the popular marketplace consists of only 37 staff members despite all the outrageous NFT volumes. According to the exec’s tweet, the handful of staff members are currently handling 98% of all NFT volumes.

Besides, OpenSea also happens to be the largest consumer of Ethereum network fees, as per the data on EtherScan. It has produced over 22% of the total transaction fees for Ethereum in the past day alone, which totalled almost $6 million, way more than Uniswap DEX and Tether combined.

Philippines’ BIR says NFT-based Axie Infinity players to pay tax on their earnings

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Philippines’ regulatory entity wants the players of the popular NFT-based online video game, Axie Infinity players to pay taxes on income generated from the game. In recent weeks, the platform has garnered significant traction but the’ finance undersecretary of the Philippines, Antonette C. Tionko said that the earnings from these gaming platforms are subject to income tax and players are required to report them for taxation.

According to the report by the Manila Bulletin, the country’s government has not yet determined whether Axie’s in-game NFTs be deemed as securities or currency. Despite admitting to the lack of clarity in terms of categorization by the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] as well as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas [BSP], the official went on to state,

“But regardless of how it is characterized, it’s taxable, subject to income tax.”

The sporadic rise of NFT-based Axie Infinity in Philippines

According to the tracking platform, Player Counter, the Philippines happens to be the largest market for Axie Infinity, with more than 40% of its players located the country followed by Venezuela, United States, Thailand, and Brazil. Developed by Vietnam-based studio Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity saw enormous success riding the wave of NFT mania. Last week, the platform touched an all-time high in sales of $1 billion and established a new record, emerging as the highest valued NFT project in the world.

Besides, there are two tokens that can be earned through playing Axie Infinity- Smooth Love Potion [SLP] and Axie Infinity Shard [AXS]. While SLP works as in-game currency, AXS, on the other hand, is the governance token of the Axie community.

Tionko, who heads the DOF’s Revenue Operations Group argued that even though the platform is not based in Philipinnes, it is still generating income from players based within the country and with the rise in the broader cryptocurrency market, players’ earnings becomes comparable with local wages. She said,

“It is not registered in the Philippines. That is one of the things that we hopefully capture once we have that system of registration for non-residents. It’s not in the Philippines, but certainly, whoever earns currency from it, you should report it. Remember the principle of taxation, it’s a flow of wealth”

NFT social platform announces strategic investment from Tron Foundation

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DeFine, a social NFT platform announced receiving a strategic investment from the Tron Foundation. The fund secured by the platform will be used primarily to develop products, NFT multi-chain ecosystem expansion, and the exploration of NFT-Fi and Metaverse. According to the official announcement, DeFine is one of the first non-fungible token platforms to raise investment from the Justin Sun-led foundation.

The platform tweeted,

“We are excited to announce that DeFine became one of the first NFT platforms that has received a strategic investment from Tron Foundation. We will work together to develop the First NFT marketplace in the TRON ecosystem”

As per the latest deal, the Tron Foundation is essentially participating in this investment as a strategic partner, wherein the two entities join forces to develop the first-ever non-fungible token marketplace in the Tron ecosystem and release auctions in the near future.

The latest news comes just a few weeks after, DeFine and Tron formed a strategic partnership. The main objective behind the integration of DeFine on the Tron network was to provide access to users and creators across the world to utilize the platform that is cost and time-efficient. Besides, DeFine also plans to explore bringing its unique non-fungible token-based social profile system to the Tron ecosystem.

Tron’s tryst with NFT ecosystem

The craze behind the non-fungible tokens appears to be in full swing and the Tron founder Justin Sun is no less than an avid fan of the thriving industry. The Chinese wunderkind had recently launched the JUST NFT fund in a bid to mint the world’s top artists on the blockchain.

While commenting on the launch of his very own non-fungible token platform, Sun had earlier said that he believes that the value of the art market is set by the leading artists and works, and only the artists at the very top of the pyramid can hold and grow their value over time.

Additionally, in March this year, the Tron Foundation had launched TRC-721, the first NFT-based standard. Shortly after this, the organization revealed that it was working on revamping BTFS, the biggest system of distributed storage in the world, to generate a robust infrastructure for delivering artworks as NFT collections on the blockchain network.

NFT platform OpenSea records ~1.5 billion in monthly trading volume

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The prominent NFT marketplace, OpenSea has exceeded an astonishing $1 billion in monthly trading volume in August. According to the latest stats compiled by Dune Analytics, the non-fungible token auction house has massively dwarfed previous records as NFT hype continued. As a matter of fact, OpenSea’s trading volume for the month of August was up by approximately 360% since that of July from just $325.9 million to a whopping $1.49 billion.

OpenSea has been one of the most bustling platforms in the NFT space. So much so that it reached $100 million daily volume for the first time on the 22nd of August.

This Ethereum-based marketplace has emerged as one of the most popular platforms boasting various features and tools for digital artists as well as buyers and collectors. Last month, OpenSea had secured $100 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

OpenSea

OpenSea NFT marketplace overtook Uniswap on Ethereum usage

In the second week of this month, the NFT marketplace surpassed the leaderboard in terms of gas consumption on the Ethereum network even outpacing the leading decentralized finance [DeFi] exchange Uniswap. This was a rare finish as the DEX had been leading the charts with respect to daily transaction fees, depicting significant usage.

However, deFi has taken a back seat as NFTs resurged from highs earlier this year. This has driven activity on OpenSea had previously fetched the top spot and the latest data from Etherscan demonstrates that OpenSea has continued to outperform numerous Ethereum projects. In fact, it has been the top gas guzzler in the network.

Previously, Glassnode insight had detailed the wild growth on OpenSea which was has been primarily driven by enormous user growth and widespread interest in the space. According to the July stats, 63,000 addresses interacted with the platform. Contrastingly, the popular DEX Sushiswap had just 34,000 addresses interact with it over the entire course of July.

Are we at the beginning of a legendary NFT bull market?

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The space of non-fungible tokens or as popularly known as NFT is having its big-bang moment. It has seen a sporadic rise in 2021 alone, with the phenomenon attracting a newfangled brew of not just artists and collectors but also speculators looking to make a fortune off the latest fad.

Beyond the hype, it has emerged as a prominent space enabling talented artists to receive compensation in perpetuity for their works – thereby establishing more apparent parity. According to prominent venture capitalist and cryptocurrency veteran Spencer Noon, we are currently at the beginning of a legendary NFT bull market. His tweet about the same read,

“NFTs hit an inflection point with market structure and underlying infrastructure at almost the exact same time, transforming the category under the hood basically overnight [..] I now believe we’re seeing just the start of a legendary NFT bull market.

Noon also went on to add that,

“Market structure changes: funds, DAOs, non-crypto native UHNWs have entered the chat. Infrastructure changes: fractionalization, aggregation, capital formation. When you mix this [the above] with a market that is inherently super illiquid, you get fireworks.”

Parallels between NFTs and ICO Boom

Even as the NFT marketplace has exploded where individuals purchase unique virtual artwork on the blockchain and then trade it, many found it familiar with the ICO marketplace that saw similar enthusiasm a couple of years ago. A key appeal for non-fungible tokens has been the liquidity factor wherein people can trade these assets amongst each other. However, the million-dollar question that remains is – What’s the consequence of regulatory entities such as SEC looking into this?

Not long ago, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee had previously warned about the thriving sector and argued he sees many similarities between this year’s craze and earlier trends that have captured the crypto world in the form of ICO.

Firstly, the Litecoin exec had argued how easy it was to create new NFTs with few hurdles to entry. Tons of people flooding into NFTs further provided legitimacy to the space, which is fairly simple to understand and explain. He had also added that the hype and FOMO begin prices pump. However, he stated that only a handful of NFTs would hold and have value in the years to come, and most would not.

China’s Alibaba Takes Big Swing With Launch of NFT Marketplace

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Traditional companies have let go of the ethos of not embracing new and nascent technologies for the betterment of their own operations. Organizations like China’s Alibaba have taken steps to ensure that upcoming developments are tapped for maximum potential. To achieve this goal, the company recently launched its own non-fungible token to allow holders to govern their intellectual property.

Named the Blockchain Digital Copyright and Asset-Trade, Alibaba’s NFT marketplace will be accessible to users via the company’s auction platform. Alibaba assured users that the marketplace will be kept to the highest standards of privacy and security, with plans to expand it still in the works.

Reports from within the organization informed us that the NFTs would be issued on the New Copyright Blockchain [NCB]. The NCB is a ledger tech platform founded and operated by the Sichuan Blockchain Association Copyright Committee.

The marketplace and its distribution channels were explained by the South China Morning Post with many users pumped for more information. According to the piece:

“Once the digital products are purchased, buyers can view their items on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat by visiting the public account for Bit Universe, a Shanghai-based firm backed by the Tree Graph Blockchain Research Institute.”

The sheer popularity of NFTs earlier this year propelled them into becoming one of the most sought-after and talked-about commodities in the market. Alibaba aims to make it more accessible for artists to showcase their creations and get the best value that they feel would be appropriate. The marketplace is already live and the set price for a user to access it is 500 yuan.