🎨 Metaproof Art

Hey friends, this is Sophia from 🎨 Metaproof Art, the weekly newsletter where we keep you informed on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the art industry.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse art news every Monday.

💌 A quick thanks to our friends…

Did you know only 10% of NFTs are stored on-chain? Meaning if the company that issued the NFT goes out of business, the image on that NFT will disappear and you will be left with an essentially worthless NFT! Don’t let that happen to you. Use ClubNFT to protect your NFT collection with their free backup solution. Protect your NFTs now!

Sponsored post

📲 By the numbers

📫 News & trends

😱 Deep Fake: The world’s largest AI art exhibition

AI art continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, and physical exhibitions featuring AI-assisted artwork are becoming increasingly common. Its presence at the NFT Paris this week is a testimony to this, with Superchief Picture Gallery NFT teaming up with AI art advocate and backer Claire Silver on Artist x AI 000003, where they present works from 39 of the most inventive AI-empowered creators in the space and with each production dropping as a 1/1 on NFT marketplace Foundation on February 23.

That gallery handily leads into another Superchief-run AI art show in Los Angeles on March 3 called Deep Fake – curated by ClownVamp – which advertises itself as the largest gathering of AI art ever. A few choice details:

• In a similar style to the NFT Paris exhibition, 62 of the 73 artworks were minted on Foundation and available for auction a day before the show, while the remaining 11 pieces were collaborative efforts by MAIF artists released on Objkt as editions of 30 for 20 XTZ each.

• The artist roster included Tomeo, Prostov, Str4ngeThing, Jenni Pasanen, Anna Condo, Stephan Vasement, Nikita Blank, 0009, Richard Nadler, Ren AI, and Leônidas Valdez.

• According to show curator CloudVamp: “Perhaps these ‘fake’ tools can create some real thoughts and feelings,” referring to AI.

❗OpenSea just cut fees and creator royalties

OpenSea has recently made changes to its creator royalty and fee structure, and the implications of these changes are significant for both collectors and creators:

• It dropped its 2.5% fee to zero for a limited time, intended to attract more buyers and sellers to the platform and increase liquidity. However, its long-term impact on the market remains to be seen.

• OpenSea has moved projects to optional royalties, which means that creators can choose whether or not to receive royalties on the secondary market. This shift in policy is in line with other marketplaces that have shifted in favor of NFT collectors at the expense of creators.

OpenSea's decision to make royalties optional when trading on royalty-optional marketplaces has been met with criticism from creators, who argue that it reduces the value of their work and hinders their ability to make a living. These changes have a considerable impact on both collectors and creators; while collectors may benefit from lower costs and increased flexibility, creators may feel undervalued and inadequately compensated for their efforts.

✨ Art college in Seoul to be recreated in metaverse to provide virtual training courses

Jeonghwa Arts College, a private college in Seoul, is partnering with South Korea's major telecom company KT and Dot-mill to create the virtual campus Metaversity, which will enable students to take classes and participate in lectures, group discussions, webinars, and seminars from the comfort of their homes. Metaversity will use an NFT-based academic management system to “prevent the forgery of educational and career-related experiences” and offer novel processes: A multi-screen function will be adopted for students to take classes that require varying firsthand experiences, while administrative tasks and business meetings will also be carried out at the virtual clone of the art school.

🤩 MakersPlace continues push for physical and digital art creation

NFT marketplace MakersPlace has announced the launch of its new Phygital category, which combines physical and digital components to create a unique and optimized NFT and buyers will be able to unlock and redeem the physical counterpart after purchasing the associated digital work.

MakersPlace partnered with tech firm Aioray to make the Phygital experience possible for creators. It already launched a Phygital category on its home page, featuring a curated selection of projects to provide buyers with an opportunity to explore and discover the latest and greatest in Phygital NFTs. Additionally, NFTs containing unlockable items are now clearly labeled to identify whether they have been claimed or not.

🤔 The Friendsies fiasco: Rug pull rumors and leadership woes explained

The Friendsies NFT project, headed by FriendsWithYou founders Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, has recently made headlines when they deleted their Twitter account and website after announcing a pause on the project, leading to widespread speculation of a "rug pull" or when the creators of an NFT project disappear with investors' money. The Friendsies team eventually reactivated its Twitter account and announced hosting a Twitter space to explain the situation to the community. Worries emerged from the following:

• Speaking with NFT Now on background, a well-known NFT collector described their experience in the FriendsWithYou community as “markedly disappointing.” The collector had bought a Friendsies NFT that, as part of a March 2022 auction with Christie’s, came with a painted bronze sculpture counterpart. Yet after being informed by the Friendsies team that they would need to pay an additional $8,000 to 12,000 to ship the statue, the holder declined and subsequently had to return the NFT, getting refunded 45% of their total NFT investment and thus taking a significant loss in the process.

• The anonymous source and others have pinpointed the wallet activity that saw much of the ETH project wallet accumulating in its mint swapped for USDC and taken out of the ecosystem.

🎉 Art Blocks transforming the secondary marketplace

Leading generative art platform Art Blocks has expanded its secondary marketplace functionality with new features including native listings and delistings with creator royalties always baked in. This is a significant development, with the following key takeaways:

• Art Blocks now supports a purchase flow for aggregated listings across other marketplaces, where buyers can purchase NFTs from multiple marketplaces through a single purchase flow on Art Blocks.

• Collectors may now directly list and delist their pieces for purchase on the Art Blocks site, providing more flexibility and control to collectors and fitting a fast-paced and ever-changing market.

• Art Blocks has reiterated its commitment to supporting creator royalties, a meaningful cultural pillar of patronage and are essential to the sustainability of the NFT ecosystem.

🤗 OnChainMonkey: Meet one of the first 10K PFP projects on Bitcoin

OnChainMonkey (OCM) has become an iconic entity in the NFT world after it has repeatedly demonstrated remarkable foresight: uploading its full 10k NFT compilation onto Ethereum in a single move and with the new Ordinals protocol, becoming one of the first 10,000 PFP projects on Bitcoin.

The OnChainMonkey universe expanded with the launch of the Karma and Dessert collections, which provided holders with membership to the Monkeyverse, votes in the DAO, access to Missions, and Banana tokens, among other perks. In 2023, OCM shifted to Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions; Before uploading its OCM collection to Bitcoin, the team had to reconcile its commitment to sustainability amid the much-criticized environmental impact of Bitcoin and other proof-of-work blockchains.

🏃‍♂️ Quick hits

• David Hockney’s Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) was a nearly hour-long exhibition of multimedia projections that opened in London. In a 2012 essay, the painter positioned technology as a source of hope for artists.

• Contemporary art institution Pace Gallery’s physical exhibition is featuring new work from generative artist Tyler Hobbs at its New York gallery from March 30 to April 22 - Pace’s first exhibition dedicated to a single artist’s web3 project.

• Sotheby’s is auctioning off the original manuscript for Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s landmark 1992 science fiction book that coined the terms “metaverse” and “avatar."

• MIRROR MIRROR - Fashion & the Psyche is a diptych exhibition across Belgian institutions MoMU Fashion Museum in Antwerp and the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent, exploring fashion and its psyche in the metaverse.

• Look back: For Black History Month, decentralized protocol Zora teamed up with artist and community leader Brittany Pierre in spotlighting nine black artists in web3.

💸 Finance buzz

• London-based creative firm Demetera, known for the Demetera International Film Festival, introduced the first metaverse dedicated to the film and creative industries. (Source)

• Chinese singer and light artist Lydia Hong Chen, founder of the Metaverse Art Museum in Shenzhen, has been appointed as the International Advisor for Light Art for the LABA International Art Festival 2022-23. (Source)

• Tech company Alpha Metaverse Technologies is releasing an AI tool that lets companies generate concept art to create 3D assets for metaverse experiences at a significantly reduced cost and time. (Source)

🗣️ Quote of the week

--

All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse art news every Monday.