Halloween Horror Nights Universal Studios

One of the biggest problems people are trying to solve in the NFT space is onboarding - how do you get normal people to start buying and using NFTs?

Universal Studios is partnering with MoonPay, which is a crypto payments service, for a massive NFT scavenger hunt experience in their California and Florida parks, as part of their Halloween Horror Nights event throughout the month of October.

Seven different QR codes will be hidden in the theme park, and when scanned, each will mint an NFT with Halloween Horror Nights-themed art. Parkgoers who find and scan all seven will receive a special gold medal NFT, which will allegedly unlock special perks.

Universal Studios and MoonPay are anticipating somewhere around 7 million NFTs will be minted, which will make this the biggest IRL onboarding event in NFT history.

https://nftnow.com/features/exclusive-moonpay-ceo-talks-universal-partnership-and-the-future-of-nfts/

https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/09/21/universal-studios-planning-halloween-themed-nft-scavenger-hunts/

https://attractionsmagazine.com/universal-introduces-halloween-horror-nights-nft-experience/

Funko

Funko has been really interested in the NFT space for the past year. In August 2021 they started releasing monthly drops of their Digital Pop! NFTs, which are digital trading card collectibles.

In a few days they’ll be launching another project, in which they’re partnering with Warner Brothers and Walmart to release a “phygital” product, where you get both a physical copy of DC’s “The Brave and The Bold” comic book cover, and can claim it as an NFT online.

Funko x Warner Brothers: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/21/funko-teams-up-with-warner-brothers-for-dc-comics-nft-release/

Disney NFTs

Disney is trying to hire a transaction lawyer to explore emerging technology opportunities, including NFTs. No other information on their plans at the moment, but Disney has dipped their toes into the NFT space last year with the release of their Golden Moments Partners Statue NFT on the VeVe app.

https://www.theblock.co/post/172654/disney-hiring-transaction-lawyer-for-aggressive-nft-and-defi-plans-linkedin-post

Robinhood Polygon Wallet

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/robinhood-polygon-crypto-web3-noncustodial-wallet/

"Notably, Robinhood says it won’t charge Robinhood Wallet users network or gas fees for transactions, differentiating its non-custodial offering from other popular non-custodial wallets such as Metamask and Coinbase Wallet."

Christie’s 3.0

On-chain curated NFT marketplace

https://nft.christies.com/

https://decrypt.co/110659/christies-goes-fully-on-chain-with-new-ethereum-nft-marketplace

Sotheby’s also launched their own NFT marketplace last year https://metaverse.sothebys.com/

Verifiable Credentials Bill

https://twitter.com/techgirl1908/status/1575545635306377217

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB786

Unintentionally, just about all our news this week has to do with OpenSea, which is currently the most popular secondary marketplace to buy and sell NFTs! (#notsponsored)

OpenSea's OpenRarity

OpenSea is introducing this rarity protocol as a way to standardize rarity calculations, in a way that is transparent and open source:

https://twitter.com/openrarity/status/1570175357961084930

https://github.com/OpenRarity/open-rarity

https://mirror.xyz/openrarity.eth/LUoJnybWuNYedIQHD6RRdX1SS9MiowdI6a69X-lefGM

https://twitter.com/opensea/status/1572648422674669568

Solana Collections are now autoindexed by OpenSea

https://twitter.com/opensea/status/1573067266220236800

Arbitrum L2 NFTs will be on OpenSea soon

https://twitter.com/arbitrum/status/1572251210765291523

And lastly we discussed the state of the NFT industry

OpenSea lost 99% of its trading volume (as measured in USD) since May: https://fortune.com/2022/08/29/nfts-opensea-crypto-winter-bubble-blockchain-web3/

There's very little speculation happening, BUT a lot of funding is happening behind the scenes. There's a lot of focus on utility in upcoming projects

https://mirror.xyz/arpeggi.eth/jkpMgDfGdKZGyM_PX0CNy5xmIqLOIwCkE5IIwOS8GnE

https://decrypt.co/109278/web3-investor-animoca-brands-raises-10m-metaverse

We're also seeing a lot of big brands getting into the NFT space - Old Navy, Starbucks, Nike, and Lamborghini, to name a few

https://nftnow.com/news/lamborghinis-second-epic-road-trip-nfts-take-utility-to-new-levels/

Welcome back to the NFToyz Podcast!

In this episode, we discuss:

International NFT Day (is today!!!): https://www.internationalnftday.org/

Starbucks is launching their own NFTs: https://waitlist.starbucks.com/

The Merge happened successfully, and now Ethereum's power usage is down 99.95%! https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/