Transmissions from the Metaverse #5
The metaverse is proving time and again that its expansion is unstoppable and unrelenting. Each new week brings us new projects, mainstream stakeholders joining the crowd, as well as countless innovations and changes within the sphere itself. This week a fake Banksy, sharks, punks and pudgy penguins.
You could call the metaverse many things, but “boring” isn’t one of them. Another week has gone by and the space is, as usual, teeming with interesting new developments. These ranged from duping a collector to buy counterfeit digital art, to fun new and some old NFT characters witnessing new successes.
Counterfeit Banksy NFT sold for hefty money
The news that has certainly marked the past week is the one of a fake Banksy NFT sold for $335,000. It was made possible due to a website hack that made everyone believe the counterfeit work was genuine. Pranksy, a famous NFT collector known for their NBA Top Shots collection, has purchased the NFT called Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster on OpenSea.
Pranksy was absolutely sure it was an original work by the famed street artist. After all, the NFT shows a man with a cigarette in his mouth in the forefront of an industrial chimney emitting black smoke. This seems to be a clear commentary on the environmental impact of cryptocurrency and digital art – in line with Banksy’s previous works.
Initially, the buyer had no reason to think anything was amiss as the same work also appeared on Banksy’s official website. Believing it was indeed an original, Pranksy made an offer for the NFT which was immediately accepted. This was the red flag that made Pranksy realize that something was wrong.
And the assumption was correct. Banksy’s website had been hacked and it was someone else who had created the work, revealing the age-old problem: counterfeiting of all sorts of art, digital included, and selling it for profit. Fortunately, Pranksy got the money back, save for a hefty fee of about $6,000.
Pudgy Penguins frenzy
In other news, all of the 8,888 Pudgy Penguins were sold out on OpenSea in just 19 minutes. Fuelling collectors’ frenzy over adorable (and other kinds of) NFT collectibles, these Ethereum-based characters are each unique and different in their own way.
Their personality and originality are demonstrated through various facial expressions, hairstyles, hats, and other accessories, with some reminding of certain famous (mainstream) characters and people. They are all part of the community called The Huddle.
The project caught the attention of the mainstream early on. Namely, both Bloomberg and The New York Times writing about it and adding fuel to the fire that boosted this impressive sale. Each Pudgy Penguin will be able to mint one Pudgy Present for the upcoming holiday season.
Save the oceans with SnarkySharkz
There certainly isn’t a lack of fun animal-themed NFT characters on the market. The SnarkySharkz collection is the proof – an art project of the Danish artist SLYWEST, who created these as a commentary on humans directly polluting the oceans and destroying entire ecosystems.
SLYWEST was joined by a team of other enthusiasts. Among others, they include Murpjestic – the Director of Events at Decentral Games, the first virtual workplace that allows employees to perform their jobs completely in the metaverse.
Two of the partners of the project include SeaLegacy and ULTRAMARINE – the largest marine conservation organizations in the world, which will each receive 5% of revenue from the NFT sales.
A SnarkyShark NFT grants its owner various perks and membership benefits in the SnarkyShark Society. These include:
- direct partaking in world ocean conservation efforts,
- becoming part of public education programs and raising awareness,
- gaining a high-quality rare collectible,
- qualifying for the community token airdrop,
- a huge bag of NFT drops,
- special access to the SnarkySharkz Play2earn Game,
- special access to the SnarkySharkz and partners metaverse events.
CryptoPunks on the roll
Bridging the gap between the metaverse and mainstream, major Hollywood agency United Talent Agency (UTA) has recently signed a contract with Larva Labs. The contract grants UTA the publishing rights (and licensing deals) to movies, TV, and music related to the celebrated NFT project CryptoPunks.
In this revolutionary move that licenses NFTs to mainstream media, UTA has also pledged to represent other projects by Larva Labs, including Autoglyphs and Meebits.
After the above development, the rare CryptoPunk Zombie 6275 was sold for a staggering $3.9 million – to none other than Pranksy, the famous NFT collector we mentioned earlier. It was later resold again for $5.1 million.
CryptoPunk 6275 is one of 88 punks with the ‘zombie’ trait, part of a larger collection of 10,000 uniquely generated modern-art inspired characters stored on the Ethereum blockchain, which were also an inspiration for the ERC-721 standard powering most digital art and collectibles.
