NFT Weekly 4/3/2022: Azukis blow up, Axie Infinity gets hacked, and OpenSea working to allow credit card purchases

NFT Floor Update

This week's floor update is highlighted by Azuki, who have basically taken over NFT Twitter this week after the Azuki Garden event where they announced the airdrop of Beanz. Trading at 5.26 ETH right now, the Beanz airdrop basically had Azuki's floor double overnight. Not to mention that earlier this weekend, Azuki's peaked at 34 ETH without including the value of the airdrop! Well done to the team 👏👏!

A lot of liquidity has picked up from airdrops, which have led a lot of volume from lower priced projects not included in this list (maybe time to expand this list?). Meebits, Cryptoadz, and WoW have all dropped a bit in floor price after seeing positive runs in the last few weeks.

NFT Project Updates

ApeCoin DAO

• Pending audit, the first play-to-earn game using $APE will launch soon by Animoca Brands. 100% of all $APE earned from the initial sales will be added to the earnings pool
• First round of staking proposals closed with both AIP-4 and AIP-5 voted against. Proposals to re-introduce staking will most likely happen, as many whales have voiced their own opinion on what they would like to see.

Azuki

• Each Azuki holder received two Beanz airdrop, currently valued at over 5 ETH each!
• Azuki Garden event was held in LA earlier this week with Wiz Khalifa performing

Jenkins the Valet

• Jenkins announces partnership with IC4Design to create the "Where's Jenkins" version of "Where's Waldo" in Book 1. All 936 Apes/Mutants licensed for this section will be hand drawn.

World of Women

• WoW announces focus on recruiting and scaling team to help execute and deliver goals. Jobs can be found here.
• Partnership with The Fabricant to create garments for WoW holders. WoW is selecting 5 winners to help design and create the textures for the garments! More info can be found here

Other NFT Projects & Upcoming Mints

• Holders of Cryptoadz for the first 30 days of mint will be eligible to mint a Magic Mirror Gem on April 4th
• Fewocious first drop for Fewoworld happened earlier today and had over $13 million sold on NiftyGateway
• Launch of Moonbirds by Proof is coming up on April 16th. 10,000 will exist and 7,875 will go on sale through a Dutch Auction starting at 2.5 ETH and ending at 0.1 ETH over 6 hours. Proof Collective Members will receive two for free. 3 pre-mint allowlist spots will be given through PreMint.
• BAYC & Doodles discord hacked this week. DO NOT mint anything for the time being!
• PreMint, a platform many NFT creators use, launched their Collector Pass NFT project which will give you additional functionality such as multiple wallets, notifications of upcoming mints, and some user/allow-list management. More information on the thread by the doxxed founder here. Original mint price is set to 0.25 ETH but wording suggests that these benefits will only last for 2022.

Web3 News

Azuki's take over the NFT market as the NFT project skyrockets

Azuki, an anime-inspired NFT project, has been making moves throughout the past few weeks, but the event earlier this week had the project jump as a top 3 NFT project between CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

At NFT LA, Azuki's held a private event for holders only known as the Garden. During this event, with performances by Wiz Khalifa, the Azuki team announced to the crowd to "check their wallets", as they airdropped two NFTs titled "Something" which immediately were valued at ~3 ETH.

This airdrop later would take on the official collection name of Beanz and is currently sitting at a 5 ETH value. Azuki's climbed all the way up from 17 ETH prior to the event to 34 ETH this weekend. Azuki's are now sitting nicely at ~27 ETH, which isn't including the two Beanz that collectors received.

Axie Infinity's loses $625M in Ronin Network Exploit

Axie Infinity, arguably the most popular blockchain game currently, had an exploit in their Ronin Network in which the hackers made off with ~$625 million USD. The Ronin Network is a side-chain used to bridge between Axie Infinity and the Ethereum blockchain.

The Ronin chain consists of 9 validator nodes. When making both deposits and withdrawals in the network, signatures from at least 5 of the validator nodes are required. The hacker exploited this by taking control of 4 validator nodes and then a third-party validator node run by Axie DAO. In a decentralized network, a lot of schemes are created to prevent individuals from gaining majority control, or the 51% attack.

While Sky Mavis, creators of Axie, did have schemes in place to prevent this, the hacker was able to exploit this. Here is what the team had to say about the attack:

"The attacker found a backdoor through our gas-free RPC node, which they abused to get the signature for the Axie DAO validator."

As of now, trading and depositing through Binance is stable again while the team is working on improving the Ronin bridge.

OpenSea will enable credit cards as a payment platform

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, announced recently that they are partnering with MoonPay to accept major credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, and American Express (along with Google and Apple Pay), as payment options when purchasing NFTs.

Currently, the marketplace requires to connect to a self-hosted wallet such as MetaMask, and users must purchase or transfer cryptocurrency from exchanges such as Coinbase. This, along with dealing with gas fees and Web3 interfaces, creates a steep learning curve to onboard new users. Accepting payments and viewing NFTs in USD may be a good way to get a new set of users in the NFT space.

Visa announces NFT creator platform

Major credit card provider Visa recently announced the launch of their NFT Creator Program, which is a one-year program to learn about the world of NFTs with a focus in technical and product skills, mentorship, community building, and access to Visa clients.

The goal is for Visa to help small and medium size businesses in fields such as fashion, film, and music, to help support and expand their business through the use of NFTs. The first Visa Creator is former MLB player Micah Johnson

Other Web3 news

• LooksRare marketplace announces auto-compounding feature, which reinvests WETH trading rewards for higher APY (~250% APY). You need to un-stake your current $LOOKS if you want to switch to this.
• Famous Taiwanese Singer Jay Chou's Bored Ape was stolen through a phishing site
• Bitcoin nears full supply as 19 million Bitcoins have been minted. Only 21 million will ever exist.
• Fractal, a Solana gaming marketplace, founded by Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch) just raised $35 million dollars in a large seed round
• Polygon, the L2 scaling solution for Ethereum, launches Polygon Id to keep private identity safe. Many products have required KYC processes that are used to identify an individual

That's it for this week's newsletter. If you like reading and learning more about the Web3, Crypto, and NFT space, subscribe! Information in this space moves fast, and we aim to condense the news you need to know!