Canon launches NFT marketplace
The American office of Canon will launch an NFT marketplace based on the Ethereum blockchain. The website will be called Cadabra.
According to the company, the Cadabra marketplace will become a platform for tokenizing photos. Curators will select the pictures. A first version of the marketplace will be introduced in April, but its official launch is still months away: it is scheduled for fall-winter 2023.
Images on the service will be categorized into several categories: wildlife, landscapes, lifestyle, sports, and others. The collections will include both existing NFTs and newly created tokenized photos. Additionally, the platform will allow artists to sell physical copies of Canon-printed images.
Cadabra was launched in the United States, but it plans to expand to other countries. Payments for NFTs will be accepted in both cryptocurrency and fiat money (mainly dollars and euros). Experts are already comparing Cadabra with Amazon’s upcoming NFT marketplace. Its launch is scheduled for April 24. The first users will be residents of America, and there will be 15 collections available to them as soon as the marketplace is launched.
Solana starts selling Saga smartphones
The Saga smartphone, focused on Web 3, will go on sale on May 8. Orders placed on pre-order are already being prepared for shipping. Retail prices for the smartphone will start at $1,000.
Saga runs on the Android operating system and has 512 GB of memory, a dual-lens camera, a 6.67-inch OLED display, and a fingerprint scanner. Among the features is the Solana Mobile Stack feature, a list of special settings integrating Web3 into a smartphone. In addition, built-in security algorithms allow you to use the phone even as a hardware wallet. In addition, the supported smartphone uses the Seed Vault secure key storage protocol, which places private keys in a special application separated from the wallet, other services, and the operating system itself.
For developers, the smartphone will be interesting for a set of libraries and APIs that make it possible to create decentralized applications for Android phones. The manufacturer already has its own Solana dApp Store, so offering developers a platform to develop new services can be a business move to attract new apps that are interesting to users. With the Solana dApp Store, users will have access to Google Play.
Right now, the Saga smartphone can be pre-ordered in 33 countries. Among the countries where pre-orders are open are the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, all countries of the European Union, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. An initial deposit of $100 is required to join the waiting list. If you cancel your purchase, you will receive a full refund. Users who buy a smartphone by pre-order can participate in developing the Solana Mobile Stack platform. In addition, they will be entitled to the NFT Saga Pass.
For the first time, a prototype of the Saga smartphone was revealed in June 2022. Then it was reported that the device would allow you to sign cryptocurrency transactions and pay for purchases through Solana Pay. However, the phone already has competitors — the Desire 22 Pro device with support for the Metaverse and NFT from HTC, released in the summer of 2022.
Adidas is preparing for the second phase of the NFT ecosystem
Adidas has already released the ALTS by Adidas collection, based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Adidas is expanding its NFT ecosystem — Into The Metaverse by releasing a new token collection. This is the second phase of the launch of the initiative. As part of the first phase in December 2021, the brand released tokens in collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, GMoney, and PunksComic projects, also operating within the Metaverse.
Participants in the first two phases can burn their coins to get new tokens from Adidas’ ALTS collection. The tokens themselves are eight alter egos, varying in rarity. The purchase of the token gives the owner access to the characters in the ecosystem, exclusive virtual clothing, and the opportunity to get a share in ALTS by Adidas.
Clothing and footwear brands have sold NFTs before. So, for example, by August 2022, the brands Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany, Gucci, Adidas, and Nike sold $260 million worth of non-fungible tokens. In April 2023, Yuga Labs collaborated with Gucci and announced that it would release fine jewelry as part of the OtherSide Metaverse.
Fortune magazine presented a rating of crypto companies
The American magazine Fortune presented the Crypto 40 ranking, dedicated to the best cryptocurrency companies in the world. Unfortunately, journalists chose not to talk about the methodology.
The CeFi category includes Coinbase (first place), Binance (second place), Kraken, Galaxy Digital, and Circle (third, fourth, and fifth places, respectively). The main criteria for inclusion in the section were market share, reputation, and player transparency. The media preferred American companies that provided exchange storage and turnover services and placement of stablecoins.
The winner of the TradFi section was PayPal. Robinhood, JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity, and Visa took the rest of the places. As you can see, all players are traditional financial firms that have entered the cryptocurrency world and succeeded in it.
The NFT sector chose the OpenSea marketplace as its winner. Right behind it is the Yuga Labs studio, which created the stunning collection of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Sky Mavis, Art Blocks, and RTFKT tokens. The basis for including the company in the list was the trading volume and commission fees.
The category of infrastructure projects included mining, hardware manufacturing, and software development companies. We were looking for players whose market capitalization or investment amount in whose development exceeded $400 million. These market participants were found: a hardware wallet Ledger topped the list, followed by the mining structure Genesis Digital Assets. Also in the top five were Bitmain, Alchemy, and MoonPay.
The rating of venture capital companies was selected by organizations that have invested in at least 35 projects from the crypto industry. One of these projects was supposed to be a “unicorn.” The list of leaders includes Polychain Capital, Animoca Brands, and Andreessen Horowitz.
DeFi’s rating featured strong competition: the best players were DEX Uniswap, Lido, MakerDAO, Aave, and Curve. In order to win, the company had to perform a regular audit of the protocol code, manage the company through a DAO, and show a monthly income of more than $100,000. The project also had to have a legal registration.
There was also relatively high competition in data providers and blockchain analytics. Among the criteria are the number of employees, the company’s reputation in the media, and the amount of funding raised. The winners are Chainalysis, Coin Metrics, The Graph, Dune, and Messari.
In the latter category, when analyzing candidates, they considered decentralization, the structure behind the blockchain development, the network’s income, the activity of its users, and its security. As a result, Ethereum won the award for best protocol. In addition, Bitcoin, Polygon, Solana, and Arbitrum also made the list.
David Bowie’s unreleased song became an NFT
A startup Gala Games Gala Music subsidiary published a previously unreleased version of the song Let’s Dance as a limited non-fungible token.
Gala Music wants to release 3003 NFTs with a composition and works inspired by Bowie. Sales started on April 14, 2023, on the day of the 40th anniversary of the release of the original version of this song. There is no fixed cost: you can pay as much as you want. According to the NFT creators, all profits will be donated to the charity MusiCares.
Behind the implementation of the initiative is not only Gala Music. The project was created with Warner Chappell Music and producer Larry Dvoskin. They are not the first to pay attention to NFTs and music: in February 2023, the Spotify streaming platform launched playlists with access through NFT wallets. In addition, Arpeggi Labs has raised $11 million to develop a free platform for creating and selling NFT tracks.