NFTs Return to Minecraft, Coinbase Provides ENS Usernames

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  • Vul­can Forged game stu­dio clos­es $8 mil­lion Series A round led by Sky­bridge Capital
  • Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azu­ki NFTs have had the top NFT sales with­in the last sev­en days

NFTs for healthcare

NFTs are tack­ling the UN’s sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals. 

The Women in Inno­va­tion Fund (WiN Fund) is using the pro­ceeds from NFTs sales to invest in women-led health­care star­tups in Africa, address­ing the UN’s third such goal — good health and well-being.

NFTs for good caus­es is a grow­ing con­cept, and the ben­e­fits of blockchain for health­care and democ­ra­cy are being explored in coun­tries with unsta­ble leadership. 

Women are more attuned to the health­care needs of their com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to Corinne Momal-Van­ian, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Kofi Annan Foun­da­tion. “Women entre­pre­neurs – from what we’ve seen in Africa — can dri­ve inno­va­tion, can dri­ve effi­cien­cy and can real­ly have a place in the health­care ecosys­tem that gov­ern­ments can­not fill,” she said at a UN-adja­cent round­table dis­cus­sion in New York this week.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion and the World Eco­nom­ic Forum also participated.

WiN Fund’s co-founder Pradeep Kakkat­til, remind­ed the audi­ence of an “unac­cept­able” sta­tis­tic: Only 2% of ven­ture cap­i­tal invest­ments glob­al­ly go to women-led enter­pris­es, despite the fact that women-led busi­ness­es deliv­er 35% high­er returns and cre­ate 6 times more jobs. 

Coinbase partners with ENS 

Coin­base has teamed up with the Ethereum Nam­ing Ser­vice (ENS) to cre­ate its own Web3 usernames.

Built on top of ENS infra­struc­ture, Coin­base user­names are ENS sub­do­mains that con­tain a ‘.cb.id’ at the end, rather than ‘.eth.’

Users can then replace their 42-char­ac­ter address with a per­son­al­ized wal­let address.

Users who already own an .eth domain now have the option to trans­fer the own­er­ship of the ENS name to a Coin­base Wal­let and choose between a Coin­base user­name or an exist­ing ENS user­name as the pri­ma­ry user­name for that wallet.

A .cb.id user­name is not tied to Ethereum and can be used on mul­ti­ple net­works to send and receive crypto.

Sim­pli­fied wal­let address­es have recent­ly surged in pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the last few months of the bear mar­ket. Since July, ENS reg­is­tra­tions have increased by 200%, and the total vol­ume of NFT sales has increased by 80% in the past three months, as per NFT­Go data.

Latest NFT loyalty program: Scotch & Soda

Ams­ter­dam-based lifestyle brand Scotch & Soda is upping its con­sumer loy­al­ty pro­gram by launch­ing NFT-based mem­ber­ship for Club Soda 3.0.

Hold­ers are grant­ed exclu­sive access to mer­chan­dise and events, as well as the abil­i­ty to co-cre­ate cloth­ing with Scotch & Soda partners. 

Each NFT acts as a mem­ber­ship card to what is called the “Free Spir­it” com­mu­ni­ty of Scotch & Soda lovers.

Cloud soft­ware com­pa­ny Sales­force chose Scotch & Soda to debut its pilot NFT Cloud ser­vice to help com­pa­nies make and man­age NFTs.

NFTs back in Minecraft?

Minecraft devel­op­er Mojang recent­ly banned NFT sup­port inside Minecraft client and serv­er appli­ca­tions, but MyMeta­verse has found a way around the new restriction.

The meta­verse com­pa­ny re-imple­ment­ed playable NFTs not only on Minecraft game servers, but also on mod­i­fied ver­sions of Grand Theft Auto (GTA).

Using NFTs run­ning on Efin­i­ty, a Polka­dot parachain devel­oped by gam­ing plat­form Enjin, MyMeta­verse works with devel­op­ers who build third-par­ty servers atop of Minecraft and GTA 5 core games.

Simon Ker­tone­goro, CEO of MyMeta­verse, told Block­works it works sim­i­lar to how Word­Press allows peo­ple to use their tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate cus­tom web­sites. “These servers are self-host­ed, mod­i­fied instances of the game, run­ning inde­pen­dent­ly of Mojang or Rock­star,” Ker­tone­goro said.

Thus, Mojang and GTA par­ent-com­pa­ny Rock­star have no offi­cial affil­i­a­tion with the NFTs.

“The mod­i­fied ver­sions allow the game to con­nect with cryp­to wal­lets and rec­og­nize NFTs in the game, which the user can then use as in-game items,” he added.

GameFi by the numbers

  • Blockchain gam­ing stu­dio Vul­can Forged secured $8 mil­lion in a Series A fund­ing round led by the invest­ment firm Sky­Bridge Cap­i­tal, found­ed by for­mer White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Antho­ny Scara­muc­ci. The round includes the option to invest an addi­tion­al $33 mil­lion. Fund­ing will go toward accel­er­at­ing the growth of “Metas­capes,” a play-to-earn fea­ture that allows Vul­can users to build their own land in the meta­verse. Vul­can Forged has about active 200,000 users across 15 games and decen­tral­ized appli­ca­tions (dapps).
  • Blockchain game Splin­ter­lands sold out its newest card pack edi­tion, Rift­watch­ers, in less than 2 min­utes, pock­et­ing $5.2 mil­lion on the sale of 500,000 packs. With­in hours, mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty had also pur­chased 30,000 pre­vi­ous card packs, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. 25 mil­lion SPS — Splin­ter­lands’ native token — was either imme­di­ate­ly burned or sent to the SPS Foun­da­tion DAO.
  • Immor­tal Game, the com­pa­ny tak­ing the game of chess into Web3, has closed $15.5 mil­lion across two rounds, includ­ing a $12 mil­lion invest­ment in July. TCG Cryp­to led the Series A round — back­ers Cas­sius, Green­field One, Sparkle Ven­tures, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s 35V, Block­wall, Krak­en Ven­tures and Spice Cap­i­tal also par­tic­i­pat­ed. It plans to use the fund­ing to build out its plat­form, which is cur­rent­ly in beta form for users who wish to opt in to the game’s play-and-earn system.

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  • Ornel­la Hernandez

    Block­works

    Reporter

    Ornel­la is a Mia­mi-based mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing NFTs, the meta­verse and DeFi. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, she report­ed for Coin­tele­graph and has also worked for TV out­lets such as CNBC and Tele­mu­n­do. She orig­i­nal­ly began invest­ing in ethereum after hear­ing about it from her dad and has­n’t looked back. She speaks Eng­lish, Span­ish, French and Ital­ian. Con­tact Ornel­la at [email pro­tect­ed]



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