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NFT news | SEC regulates NFT for the first time; “curation” becomes a new trend in NFT sales

2023-09-04 11:15

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SEC's first-ever regulation of NFTs, is it a huge negative?

Will "curation" become a new trend in NFT sales?

What kind of NFT project gives me the same joy as the "on-demand station" I used to enjoy as a child?

Someone used NFT + a full set of Supreme Box Logo T-shirts to obtain a million-dollar loan?

BlockBeats takes you through a review of last week's NFT news!

SEC's First-Ever Regulation of NFTs: A Huge Negative Impact?

This could be the biggest NFT news of the year.

Impact Theory's "Founder's Keys" is the first NFT project in history to be charged by the SEC with "unregistered securities".

On August 28th, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) charged Impact Theory, LLC, a media and entertainment company based in Los Angeles, with conducting unregistered securities offerings of encrypted assets in the form of NFTs.

Facing SEC's charges, Impact Theory, LLC accepted a cease-and-desist order without admitting or denying the findings of the SEC investigation. The order found that the company violated registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and ordered it to pay over $6.1 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties, which will be returned to harmed investors through the establishment of a fair fund. Additionally, Impact Theory agreed to destroy all of their "Founder's Keys" NFTs, issue a public statement about the cease-and-desist order on their website and social media, and waive any potential royalty income from future secondary market transactions involving "Founder's Keys".

"Founder's Keys" Why was it accused of "unregistered securities"? It is strongly recommended that everyone read "NFT Huge Negative? SEC's First-Ever Regulation of NFTs" after reading it, you should be helpless and smile bitterly - "promising to use the sales revenue of issuing NFTs to build brands", "NFT is a way for the community to benefit from the team's efforts", "building the next Disney", "buying NFTs is like investing in start-ups/emerging brands"... How many NFT projects haven't said these words?

Two SEC commissioners, Hester M. Peirce and Mark T. Uyeda, have raised objections to the SEC's first-ever enforcement action against NFTs. While there has not been a significant panic in the NFT market in the short term, the long-term outlook is not so optimistic. In their dissenting statement, Commissioners Peirce and Uyeda raised nine questions about NFTs, indicating that the road to NFT regulation and compliance has only just begun.

"Curating" Will Become the New Trend of NFT Sales?

In the PFP-dominated NFT market, KOLs with the ability to shout have the "right to speak". However, for art NFTs with relatively weaker financial attributes, shout-out KOLs cannot control the thunder so much-after all, selling PFP is selling NFTs, while selling art NFTs is often selling art.

Considering the recent weakness of PFP and the occasional skyrocketing market environment of art NFTs, the role of "curator" may gradually develop into a new identity circle in the NFT community. It is even more important to consider that the current NFT "infrastructure" is already quite friendly to creators for issuing new NFT series. Especially for art NFTs, there are not as many twists and turns as PFP, and mature foolproof platforms such as Manifold/Zora/Foundation can be set up to issue them with just a few clicks. Even the popularity of AI will enable more people to become creators and thus produce more art NFTs.

If we believe that NFTs will be increasingly accepted as a medium for art, then the relationship between "curators" and "creators" will eventually become like that between "shouting KOLs" and "PFP project parties", which will catch our attention until it becomes commonplace.

On August 29th, NFT art platform Foundation officially announced the launch of a new curation feature called "Moments".

「Moments」

"Moments" is a supplement to "World". With "Moments", not only can you open your own "NFT gallery" through Foundation, but you can also create a gallery with a specific theme on a certain day. For example, I can use "Moments" to create an "End of August" theme exhibition on August 31st, and release a new series of corresponding themes for sale during the exhibition.

"World" is a gallery where the gallery owner (everyone) can set a whitelist to allow which creators can sell their works on their "World" and decide whether to charge a certain percentage of sales commission.

「World」

"Moments" and "World" give me the feeling of running an "artistic online store", just like opening a distinctive record store. I have to decide which artists' records to sell, and find ways to improve my personal artistic taste, and think about what kind of content and ideas to convey to customers who come for art... If I could have a top traffic store, small and medium-sized creators would definitely come to me for help with distribution. After all, with so many NFTs being released every day, without the help of influence, small and medium-sized creators are like transparent people...

Other than the traditional gallery-style curation method of "Art Small Online Shop", SuperRare, another NFT platform, launched a "Curation Staking" program on August 30th that uses token incentives to achieve curation effects.

In short, it means that you can create a "staking pool" for a specific address and stake SuperRare's native token $RARE into this staking pool. If the address sells an NFT on SuperRare, a certain percentage of the transaction fee collected by SuperRare will be distributed to the staking pool, and then distributed according to the different weights of the stakers in the staking pool.

If a creator obtains a large amount of $RARE staking, they will naturally rank higher on the staking pool overview page and receive more attention, which can drive sales. More and larger sales bring more dividends to the stakers, which in turn attracts more stakers... This is an indirect curation method similar to "many hands make light work".

Currently, the most staked $RARE belongs to the renowned crypto artist XCOPY, while the second highest staked belongs to the creator of LUCI: Chapter 5, which was mentioned in last week's NFT news, @SamSpratt.

I believe that we will see more and more interesting online NFT art exhibitions, and we will also see more and more excellent "curators" who have accumulated influence in this field.

What kind of NFT project brings me the joy of "on-demand TV" from my childhood?

Going back to nearly 20 years ago, during my elementary school days, one of my greatest joys was watching the "on-demand channel" run by local TV stations. Every day, various wealthy people would call in and request to watch various animated shows, or play small games like Gold Miner and Metal Slug using their phones as a keyboard.

Fluint is the NFT project that reminds me of "Dianbo Tai".

Remove the person holding the brush from the process of artistic creation, replace them with robotic technology and decentralized decision-making, and coordinate everyone's interests by allowing everyone to share the profits of any financial sales. Take control away from any one person and pose a question:

Who is the real "artist"?

The Fluint team spent 7 months building a complete system that allows a group of people to gather online and remotely control a custom CNC machine. It can move on a pool in 3D space and automatically drop different inks. This machine, affectionately named "Sumi" by the Fluint team, can listen to and execute any commands given by anyone logged in as an "artist" on the custom interface at Fluint.art. Everyone can watch the real-time collaborative creation process through Twitch live streaming.

「Sumi」

All participants in the creation can freely mint their own works, and NFT holders can also claim the corresponding physical versions. More importantly, creators can directly extract royalties from the contract on the Fluint official website, which is an innovation that provides equal income for all creators at the smart contract level by the Fluint team.

Currently, Fluint has completed two remote real-time collaborative art projects, "Series A" and "Series B". "Series C" will also be launched soon, and I am very excited!

Someone used NFT + a full set of Supreme Box Logo T-shirts to obtain a million-dollar loan?

Do you remember, in the first issue of NFT News two weeks ago, I mentioned that someone used NFT-ized Pokémon TCG cards as collateral on the chain to obtain a USDC loan? At the time, I said, "Imagine mortgaging your collection of shiny Charizard cards to buy a mansion."

Now, even crazier NFT + RWA cases have emerged - someone has used a full set of Supreme Box Logo T-shirts as collateral to obtain a million US dollars (USDC) loan!

This loan was completed through the NFT lending platform Arcade. The collector who owns the complete set of Supreme Box Logo T-shirts from 1994 to 2022 sent these clothes to the NFT RWA protocol 4K for custody. After the value of the clothes was evaluated by Christie's, 4K sent an NFT representing the ownership of the complete set of Supreme Box Logo T-shirts to the borrower, and the loan was finally completed on Arcade. The lender of this loan is etherhound.eth, with a loan amount of $1.1 million, an APY of 40%, and a term of 60 days.

When we look at NFT from the perspective of it being a "technology" and not using the lens of "hype narrative", NFT can really bring us a lot of surprises...