Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction.
Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter.
This week in web3Crunching numbersThis week the crypto market prices were lower, but still relatively strong compared to previous months.
Bitcoin was down 6.5% on the week at $67,300 and 32% higher on the month, at the time of publication.
This kickstarted her career in web3, data and AI solutions.
How crypto exchange Backpack climbed its way to success after its major investor FTX died Backpack hit $27.5 billion in total trading volume during its beta phaseBackpack’s founders, who are building a crypto exchange and wallet, have experienced strong growth since launching in 2022.
There’s a bunch of lessons to learn from FTX, Ferrante said.
This is done in hopes that there’s no single point of failure and that the operations of the Backpack crypto exchange can be split up across multiple entities.
At the end of February, Backpack raised $17 million at a $120 million valuation in a Series A round led by Placeholder VC.
But product distribution is top of mind for the exchange as it hopes to get into every country around the world.
Update: Starbucks announced Friday that it’s discontinuing its NFT program, to “prepare for what comes next as we continue to evolve the program,” according to an FAQ page.
“I think this year we’re going to see a lot of community-based brand building,” he shared on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast.
Starbucks launched Starbucks Odyssey in 2022 as its initial foray into the web3 world.
The experience combined the company’s Starbucks Reward loyalty program with NFTs to enhance customer experiences, TechCrunch previously reported.
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Former web3 gaming founders raise $2.5M for their NFT marketplace to retain users even when there ‘isn’t money to be made’Even though NFT sales volume is still down 88% from 2022 all time-highs (and down 38% year-to-date), Pallet Exchange is building a new type of NFT marketplace focused on user retention.
“It’s cool if there’s a lot of financial innovations happening, but at the same time we saw there’s pain points from a user experience,” Li said.
It’s using social media tactics like in-app messaging that lets people interested in the same NFT collections engage with each other on its marketplace.
That’s when Seiyans, an Sei-based NFT collection fueled by meme culture, capitulated the new blockchain and marketplace into the talk of the crypto world.
Down the line, Pallet plans to look into working with big partners in the art marketplace and create a separate marketplace for those creators.
Zora co-founder Jacob Horne and Goens see crypto and AI as two complementary technologies that can benefit from one another.
“Crypto wants information to be on-chain so that it can be valued and add value to the system,” Goens said.
“And then AI wants information to be on-chain so that it can be freely accessed and utilized by the system.
“We need systems that can help bring all of these things on-chain and that’s what we’re trying to do at Zora,” Goens said.
This means these AI creators have the ability to capture value from their models’ outputs when people mint them and the payouts are split in half automatically.
NFT fantasy sports startup Sorare lays off 13% of staff, as web3 gaming continues to sputter Sorare is not completely shuttering its New York office but is shifting more employees to ParisWeb3-enabled fantasy sports platform Sorare laid off 22 employees based in its New York office in February.
The company will backfill most of these laid-off roles in Paris, according to Julia, with plans to hire more than 20 roles in the next six months.
Sorare is not shutting down its New York office.
Sorare saw $200 million in user transaction volume in 2023, a source familiar with the situation said.
Web3 gaming startup Mythical Games raised nearly $300 million in venture money before holding three rounds of layoffs.
For instance, OpenSea has partnered with the music and arts festival conglomerate Coachella to release three NFT collections that offer both virtual and tangible real-life VIP experiences and merchandise.
The partnership will eventually produce three collections offering different perks and varying tiers of exclusivity (as well as cost).
There have been a lot of NFT collections announced since the term even gained adoption.
OpenSea alone has over 2 million collections and 80 million NFTs on its marketplace, according to its website.
But even with that much total volume, OpenSea isn’t the biggest NFT marketplace today.
Bitcoin jumped and Coinbase’s app crashed, while Aptos eyes Hong Kong and Telegram rolls out rewards with TONWelcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction.
This week in web3Crunching numbersThis week the crypto market was very hyped up as the two biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin and ether, both jumped about 23.6% and 18%, respectively, on the week, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The total crypto market cap increased 19.4% over a seven-day period to $2.34 trillion.
Our favorite ‘Crypto Twitter’ postICYMI, last week a lot of crypto people were tweeting about emails from Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
In June 2022, Magic Eden raised $130 million in a Series B round that granted it unicorn status.
Sony is breaking new ground in the ongoing NFTs and content authenticity saga.
While it might not strictly be termed an NFT, it resembles the core concept of these non-fungible tokens.
We’re collaborating with the Associated Press and other industry leaders to create a digital birth certificate for images shot on our cameras.
The technology, designed to be integrated into the camera’s hardware – starting with the new Alpha 9 Mark III camera, generates a machine-based digital signature when an image is captured.
So, while Sony hasn’t literally launched an in-camera NFT, they’ve certainly created a system that mirrors the core functionality of an NFT – proving ownership and authenticity in the digital space.
Logan Paul is offering refunds for CryptoZoo, the failed and allegedly fraudulent Pokémon-inspired NFT game that he launched in 2021.
The influencer, who faces a class action lawsuit for allegedly making millions of dollars of cryptocurrency by promoting a game that ultimately didn’t exist, also filed a cross-claim.
Class action lawsuits can be “devastating” for defendants, as damages can include what the plaintiff and class members initially lost, in addition to punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
“That would let him angle for a much more favorable settlement.”Logan Paul is being sued in a class action about the CryptoZoo NFT disaster.
At the time of Coffeezilla’s reporting, CryptoZoo held approximately $79,875,629, or 1,214,225,001.8 $ZOO for “wildlife charities and CryptoZoo development.
