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Headline News - Magic Eden Launching ETH Marketplace, Ticketmaster Debuts NFT-Gated Ticket Sales, DeGods Migrates
Magic Eden Launching ETH Marketplace
Magic Eden announced the launch of its ETH Marketplace beta will take place on April 6, expanding its NFT platform to support a fourth major blockchain:
To celebrate the launch, Magic Eden is partnering with more than ten ETH collections to be featured throughout April. Partners include CryptoNinja Holiday, Hashflow, Realm Hunter, The Space Club, and KaijuKingz. The platform will also respect royalties for all creators on native listings—both new and existing. Additionally, Launchpad creator partners will be offered reduced 2% transaction fees for six months.
To further incentivize adoption, Magic Eden announced Diamonds:
Diamonds functions as a rewards currency to encourage user engagement and loyalty—much like Blur’s approach. Users can earn Diamonds by listing NFTs, bidding on them, and completing their Magic Eden profile. A built-in loyalty score system helps accelerate Diamonds earnings. Higher loyalty translates to a higher multiplier, and scores are checked every 24 hours.
The introduction of Diamonds on Magic Eden provides a unique way to reward and engage users beyond simple fee discounts or token accrual. By providing additional incentives to users, Magic Eden can strengthen its community, promote platform growth, and encourage user loyalty in a sustainable way.
Magic Eden's expansion to ETH is significant. It facilitates a more seamless user experience across different blockchains, allowing creators and collectors to access a wider range of NFTs as a result. The platform is also respecting creator royalties, a particularly hot topic ever since Blur’s rise to prominence. Magic Eden’s success on ETH will largely be a question of whether they can provide more value to users than Blur.
Ticketmaster Debuts NFT-Gated Ticket Sales
Ticketmaster announced their Ethereum NFT token-gating feature is live for artists. Developed in partnership with popular metal band Avenged Sevenfold, the feature was previously tested via their 10,000 Deathbats Club Ethereum NFTs. Token holders were offered early access to buy tickets to the band’s upcoming arena shows in LA and NYC; about 1,000 total tickets were purchased via NFT-gating.
Ticketmaster has minted almost 15 million digital collectibles tied to events, including NFL games, via Flow and Polygon. Their token-gating feature is now available to any artist with their own NFT collection, and fans stand to benefit in various ways. Avenged Sevenfold used the capability to offer first access to tickets, but other use cases could include unlocking premier seats or sitting in on soundcheck.
NFT-gated tickets has always represented a clear application of blockchain technology improving an industry. The concept is somewhat simple to grasp (compared to many blockchain initiatives) for the non-crypto native. It also offers genuine potential to improve issues plaguing the industry of late; largely crazy secondary pricing and the resulting effect of consumers risking shadier secondary sites/scams. It’s working for Avenged Sevenfold fans—at least so far. One holder was able to buy two Section 2 tickets for $275 via NFT-gating; a few days later those same tickets would cost $750.
While the potential is there, it remains to be seen to what extent consumers will benefit. It’s hard to imagine such arbitrage opportunities like the one above will exist for long. It’s likely the same people/platforms gaming the existing system will catch on to NFT-gated initiatives. But given the widespread disscontempt with the current web2 setup, NFT-gated initiatives offer hope. The unique experience angle is a good one, too. Offering token-gated access to things like premier seats or soundcheck rewards true fans—as long as it’s actually the true fans accessing them.
DeGods Migrates
Frank and DeLabs have had quite the week. Fresh off Monday’s successful y00ts migration from Solana to Polygon, DeGods has now followed suit. So far, so good. y00ts sits at a 2.3 ETH floor (1.6 ETH last week), while DeGods is at a 9.55 ETH floor.
Frank also got people talking via a 100+ ETH shopping spree, scooping up a bunch of notable projects he believes in:
Much like the y00ts migration, DeGods owners are being strongly incentivized to migrate. Those who migrate in the first 24h have gas covered; they’ll also have a chance to win a BTC DeGod.
Beyond that, ETH royalties are reduced to just 0.33% on all marketplaces. Interestingly, Blur is the official partner. Frank co-hosted a Spaces on Saturday night with Pacman (Blur’s founder) to talk about the move. That’s the short term, but how does this play out long term? DeLabs is the talk of NFTs right now (at least in the PFP arena), but whether this short-term momentum translates into y00ts and DeGods becoming major ETH brands long term remains to be seen.
For full articles on all the above and much, much more, head into the sections below and click on the relevant links.
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Curated News - the biggest stories of the past week
BIGGEST NFT Sale: BAYC #6776 - 240 ETH
Educational: Copyright for Digital Artists Vol 1: Unleash Your Creative Power and Protect Your Digital Art
Educational: ZenAcademy’s 30 Days Of NFTs - Entry Level NFT Course
A word from our Founder: Welcome to ZenAcademy! and why to join
Talking Point - Is AI a Problem?
What do Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari, and Andrew Yang have in common? They’ve all signed a petition calling on all AI labs to immediately pause (for 6 months) training their AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
The petition is clear: "AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal”. While an existential risk to humanity itself clearly has to be considered, this isn’t explicitly mentioned in the petition. Instead, the focus is on the natural consequences to society if our jobs (and purpose in many cases) are replaced, and we are inundated with an infinite amount of convincing unreliable content.
The obvious question is this: Will the petition actually do anything? It might have a limited impact—and maybe that's enough for legislators to catch up. But rather than slowing AI down, we need governments and legislators to SPEED UP. Our world is moving at an accelerating pace, and elected officials living in the past is a huge issue. Regardless of anything else, you should be paying A LOT MORE attention to AI than you are.
Here’s a link to the petition, where you can also see the signatories: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
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HeyMint Launchpad - Are You Looking to release an NFT project? We have recently partnered with HeyMint Launchpad. They are, without a doubt, the most comprehensive no-code toolbox for creating your dream NFT collection. The best part? It’s 100% free for creators. It’s great for independent artists and 10k PFP collections alike. Try it out for yourself here.
Note: All links in the above text are referral links; by using them you are directly supporting the ZenAcademy Community. Thanks for your ongoing support.
ZenAcademy & 333 Club Noticeboard
ZenAcademy Community News
ZenAcademy partners with ShareMint! ShareMint makes it easy for web3 teams to launch a referral or affiliate program to get revenue and partner with top names in the space. ShareMint's mission is to do all the heavy lifting, making it easy for teams to add an affiliate program. Our partnership with ShareMint aligns perfectly with our mission to help individuals and communities thrive in the web3 space.
ZenAcademy has always emphasized giving back. We've donated over $100k USD to various charities and organizations since launch, and want to continue in that spirit for as long as we exist. Two initiatives close to our heart are Liberty Labs and JaimeMusing’s relative biking the USA to raise money. Liberty Labs is a new Web3 community initiative that provides free access to IT education and job opportunities to those impacted by the conflict in Ukraine. JaimeMusing’s parent-in-law is biking the USA to raise money for those who lost homes due to catastrophic storms. Read the Discord announcement for more info: https://discord.com/channels/867600947282706463/871766911862599790/1090199146956345425
We released our first ebook, for free, for everyone. Titled “Copyright for Digital Artists Vol 1: Unleash Your Creative Power and Protect Your Digital Art”, we hope you enjoy it.
ZenAcademy - Latest Content Releases
YouTube Video: The Importance Of Asking Questions In Web3 - Zeneca at MET AMS
Zeneca Newsletter: Letter 36: All about ERC-4337
Zeneca Newsletter: Letter 37: SVB & USDC
YouTube Shorts: The Future of NFTs: Embracing Subscription Models
YouTube Shorts: Building Real Communities vs Ponzi Schemes
ZenAcademy Regular Events
The ZenDaily Show hosted by Zeneca and Emileevee, every Mon-Fri (at 10:30am EST). This space is all about education, information and entertainment. It has a focus on Web3 education, topical perspectives, and being a forum for the ZA community and beyond to join in and discuss what’s going on in the web3 world. Additionally, Zeneca will be doing what he does best: distilling complicated information into easily digestible bites.
Wellness Wednesdays - Hosted by @Kit777 every other Wednesday. Kit talks with one of our highly esteemed members in a Twitter spaces where we pause, take a break and discuss all things related to mental health/wellness and our shared human journey in life.
Artists Corner - Every other Wednesday, hosted by KingInTheCastle, this event takes place in our Discord for our members. Artists take to the mic and share their journey, experiences and knowledge with our community. Hop in the call to learn and have fun.
333 Club’s weekly ‘This Week in NFTs’ Twitter Spaces, each and every Sunday. Follow the 333 Club Twitter page here for more info.
Join Poker Nights via our Discord. Events held weekly, with prizes to be won.
There’s a ‘global-events’ forum in the ZA Discord to help facilitate IRL meet-ups amongst the community. Find more details here.
Don’t forget to keep across the Giveaways Discord channel, with plenty of allowlist spots up for grabs on a regular basis.
If you enjoy ZenCaps, don’t miss out on ZenDaily. It’s published Monday to Friday and provides a short recap of the past 24hrs in the NFT space. Subscribe for free here.
Nothing in this or any other ZenCaps publication should be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in ZenCaps publications do not reflect those of Zeneca or the ZenAcademy.
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Always exercise caution within the NFT space and adhere to best practices when it comes to making any investments. There is plenty of potential, but this comes with inherent risks.
Stay safe, and as always, good luck.
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