One small step for NFTs...
Two companies teamed up to stream a recording of composer Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” to, and from, the International Space Station on July 28, reportedly marking the first instance in which a nonfungible token (NFT) has orbited the Earth.
The orbital NFT expedition is the product of a partnership between Artemis Music Entertainment and space services company Nanoracks LLC, with the two firms minting the track as a nonfungible token after the hard drive the file was stored on completed one orbit of the Earth over roughly 90 minutes.
“The cosmic perspective of space inspires a cognitive shift in humans," said Artemis Music co-founder Bob Richards, adding:
"'Clair de Lune' perhaps comes as close as possible to stirring the emotions of awe and wonder experienced by space travelers."
Clair de Lune was published by Debussy in 1905, with the tokenized rendition capturing a performance of the classic by Hong Kong-based pianist, Wing-Chong Kam, that was recorded on July 19, 2021.
Richards indicated Artemis plans to sell the NFT in future, adding the funds would be forwarded to the Artemis Music Foundation to support future space initiatives.
Debussy’s composition was not the sole NFT to make it into orbit on July 28, with Micah Johnson's tokenized artwork depicting a black child astronaut dubbed “Aku” also being streamed to and from the space station by Artemis on the same day.
The forgotten CryptoPunks
The founder of NFT marketplace Masterpiece, Jereon Hesp has shared data revealing four wallets, containing 342 prized CryptoPunks between them, have not been active in at least three years.
Hesp suggested it was likely the address owners have lost their keys or misplaced the wallet: “If you have this many punks and haven’t sold a single one by now, it probably means you lost access to the wallet.”
Despite — or perhaps because of — their crude, pixelated appearances, the pioneering NFTs have seen extreme value appreciation since CryptoPunks’ June 2017 launch, with just 110 transactions driving more than $16.5 million worth of CryptoPunks trades over the past 24 hours.
EY OpsChain used to create NFTs
Italian blockchain start-up, CinTech, has created nonfungible tokens celebrating the 22 main scenes in the 2012 Italian film, La Leggenda Di Kaspar Kauser.
The tokens were minted using the EY OpsChain, a blockchain-as-a-service product from Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY). EY staff assisted in formulating the sales process and strategy for the NFTs.
CinTech’s founders, Renato Pezzi, and Jacopo and Nicolo Lucignano, have stated that a portion of revenues from the token’s sale will be used to fund a documentary on the nonfungible token sector.
“We are proud to support a new and innovative way of driving value for the film industry,” said Giuseppe Perrone of EY.
Unifty decentralizes governance
NFT marketplace, Unifty, has decentralized its governance through the introduction of a dual-token economy. On August 3, the platform announced that its native NIF token will now exclusively be for governance and unveiled a new utility token for fee payment and other use-cases.
The new UNT token will be issued to NIF stakers as rewards, with users able to receive further UNT rewards for participating in the project’s governance process. Unifty’s CTO, Markus Bopp, stated:
“Decentralization should always be the answer in crypto. Maybe not right at its start, when the project is still young and its success is heavily reliant on great execution and the founding team's vision, but it should be the ultimate goal."
Unifty is currently live on Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Celo, xDai, and Avalanche.
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In other NFT news, the United Nations (UN) unveiled plans to tokenize the work of young artists tackling themes pertinent to climate change. To facilitate the initiative, the organization has chosen to build an NFT marketplace on top of Polkadot parachain, Unique.
Dapper Labs has announced it will sell exclusive NBA Top Shot NFTs at this weekend’s NBA Summer League games from physical kiosks in Las Vegas’s Thomas & Mack Center. The NFTs will be the first Top Shot moments to be sold at a live NBA basketball match.
Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea is extending its dominance over the sector, with daily volumes now bubbling to beat out the value of all trades executed on the platform in 2020 combined. Daily OpenSea volume has increased more than 650 times since 2020.
The Polygon-based CryptoPunks clone project, Polygonpunks, was removed from the OpenSea marketplace earlier this week. Comments from OpenSea’s Nate Chastain suggest the tokens were likely taken down at the behest of CryptoPunks’ creator, Larva Labs.