The new oldest NFTs on Ethereum? 🧐
1k ETH MAYC loan, OpenSea gets Optimistic, Zora’s Future Tape, & more!
Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & digital collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
Ethereum officially began on July 30th, 2015.
Long time ago, right? Take note then, because yesterday people rediscovered and started minting from Name Registrar, a simple ENS-like project that was launched on August 8th, 2015 — just a week after Ethereum launched!
As you can imagine, many people are very excited about the find because it appears Name Registrar is now definitively the oldest NFT project on Ethereum by a couple of months.
In less than a day since the rediscovery, NFTers have already minted more than 100,000 of these names! The thread above highlights a community-made minting app, yet if you try it only mint with a burner wallet for now since the underlying smart contract remains unverified.
It’s fascinating that NFT archaeology efforts are turning up these sorts of early pioneering efforts, and I’m expecting plenty more interesting rediscoveries in the years ahead. In the meantime have a great weekend everyone, thanks kindly for reading ✌️
-WMP
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📣 General NFT News
Disney is looking to hire a transaction lawyer for its future NFT projects.
JPG, an NFT curation protocol I contribute to, just opened to everyone and launched a revamped curator tooling system.
MetaMask rolled out its new Portfolio Dapp, which includes support for NFTs across multiple chains.
OpenSea launched support for the Optimism L2.
Quix, an NFT marketplace on Optimism, now shows $OP “cash back” rewards in-cart:
🏆 Digital Collectibles
Beans, a Nouns DAO fork, published “An Anatomy of a Bean” ahead of its upcoming mainnet release.
Meta opened up digital collectibles support for all users on Instagram and Facebook.
Redlion, the first NFT-based news periodical, is preparing to launch a PFP project.
🎨 Cryptoart
Art Blocks is ending its Curated drops series designations — there will still be Art Blocks Curated releases but they will no longer come in numbered series, e.g. Series 1, Series 2, etc.
SuperRare unveiled its first $RARE token-gated merch drop, designed by artist Bryan Brinkman.
QQL #14 by Tyler Hobbs sold for 100 ETH:
🎮 Decentralized Gaming
Axie Infinity launched its 3rd Esports Grants wave to the tune of 160k AXS tokens.
GameStop ran a campaign that offered free Gods Unchained cards to its PowerUp Rewards Pro users.
💽 Music NFTs
Future Tape, the first mobile music NFT app, is out via Zora:
Warner Music Group partnered with OpenSea to create web3 opportunities for WMG musicians.
🌐 Virtual Worlds
The Matthew and Rizzle Show published an interview with Paradoxx.eth, the NFT ecosystem’s metaverse videographer extraordinaire.
💎 DeFi x NFTs
fragment borrowed 1,000 ETH against two “mega” MAYC NFTs via NFT borrowing and lending protocol Arcade:
Action steps
🔥 Read The Ultimate Guide to NFTfi by Donovan Choy in Bankless
🙇 Catch up on my other write-ups from this week:
Author Bio
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal—a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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First time I've heard of this - great article! I can't get enough crypto history.