Hello everyone, welcome to the 6th issue of BlockBeats' "NFT News"!

Bitcoin NFT ecosystem is not yet settled, and another wave is rising?

Rolling Stone Magazine mocks NFTs? Murakami says "bye-bye" to NFTs?

What does Proof of Play's first game look like after raising $33 million in funding?

OpenSea is in trouble again, does "unlimited minting" lead to the project's relaunch?

Dear readers, let's review the latest NFT news from last week together!

Bitcoin NFT ecosystem is not yet settled, another wave is rising?

On September 20th, the community of the Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals began a heated debate due to the idea proposed by the protocol's founder Casey Rodarmor that "inscription numbers are permanently unstable". (Recommended reading: The controversy over the variability of "inscription numbers" in Ordinals: preserving culture or developing technology?)

Ordinals protocol gives Bitcoin NFTs a unique characteristic called "Inscription Number". Inscription Number is assigned to inscriptions in the order they are created, with the Inscription Number of the Genesis Inscription being #0. With the rapid development of the Ordinals protocol, Inscription Number has given Bitcoin NFTs a unique narrative that sets them apart from other chain NFTs. For example, "Sub 10K" refers to the first 10,000 inscriptions engraved since the creation of the Ordinals protocol.

The emergence of "Curse Inscriptions" has broken the ordered growth of inscription numbers based on the order of inscription creation. If the number of "Curse Inscriptions" is changed from negative values to positive values, it will inevitably disrupt the current order of positive inscription numbers. More importantly, Casey seems to have a tendency to downplay the importance of inscription numbers.

The inscription number, as a unique narrative of Bitcoin NFT, is loved by a large part of Ordinals players. This is not only a unique "selling point" compared to other chain NFTs, but the concept of "inscription number represents history" has also deeply penetrated into the hearts of many players. Therefore, the discussion of "inscription number is permanently unstable" has been raised to the level of "culture" vs. "technology"...

When the smoke of this debate had not yet dissipated, Casey was accused of a very serious charge - inciting "poisoning"...

"Poisoning" is a term originated from the Chinese-speaking community. @xiaoqianbao has made a great summary of it:

This behavior belongs to pure harm to others and no benefit to oneself, and it happened to occur at a critical time when the BRC-20 Token $SATS had been minted for more than half a year. Therefore, this behavior is called "投毒" (which means "poisoning" in Chinese). Casey tweeted on September 23rd:

Can't we engrave the "transfer inscription" to lock the balance of BRC-20 token holders, so that they have to send the transfer inscription to themselves in order to unlock the balance?

Because Casey has the special identity of being the founder of Ordinals protocol, coupled with his personal dislike of BRC-20 and belief that BRC-20 is not the correct development direction for Ordinals, the meaning of his tweet has been infinitely magnified - he was only stating a fact, but some interpreted it as Casey calling for poisoning.

Okay, so next, is the battle between Ordinals "orthodox" and "BRC new trend" going to start again...

"Rolling Stone" Magazine Mocks NFTs? Murakami and NFTs Say "Goodbye"?

On September 20th, Rolling Stone magazine released an article titled "Your NFTs Actually Have No Value, Finally Proven".

This article almost entirely quotes dappGambl's latest research report on NFTs, and we can almost consider it an unbiased article on NFTs - if the author hadn't referred to BAYC as "ugly cartoon monkeys"...

Although we have become accustomed to facing bears in bear markets, this time the bear we are facing is "Rolling Stone", which is quite ironic... Because in June last year, "Rolling Stone" magazine collaborated with BAYC to launch two joint NFTs, which were auctioned off for 40,101 APE (about $180,000) and 19,696.969 APE (about $86,000) respectively at that time.

Can we say "Rolling Stones" got a bargain and still act cute? Because compared to that, Murakami Takashi just gently sighed, "NFT is going downhill."

This famous contemporary Japanese artist collaborated with RTFKT to release Clone X, which is still the 3D PFP leader, in December 2021. In May 2022, he released "Murakami.Flowers". Recently, he held a new solo exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where these two NFT projects were also exhibited.

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Murakami Takashi accepted an interview with The Guardian and said that "he may not release new NFTs anymore". However, he added that expanding NFTs into the field of art is his current goal. He still hopes that over time, NFTs will become an art movement that goes beyond popular art.

$33 million financing, what does Proof of Play's first game look like?

On September 21st, Proof of Play, a blockchain gaming studio, announced the completion of a $33 million seed round of financing, led by a16z and Greenoaks.

is the first game launched by Proof of Play. This is a completely on-chain RPG game, and the main gameplay is to build your own pirate team as a pirate, explore the waters around the island, complete various tasks to obtain loot, and build your own island.

At the same time as the Proof of Play financing information was announced, Pirate Nation was also announced to be converted to a Free To Play game and launched a hosted wallet function (logging in directly using email).

Currently, to play Pirate Nation, you need an activation code or own a Founder's Pirates NFT, or you can join the waiting list and wait patiently... However, before waiting, we can first claim the benefits. For the method of claiming, please refer to the "Weekly Project Preview" section in the following text.

I plan to write a more detailed experience report about this project and share it with everyone. I won't continue to discuss it with you here in too much detail.

OpenSea is in trouble again, "unlimited minting" leads to project relaunch?

On September 22nd, BlockGames encountered an issue during its launch on OpenSea's Launchpad. OpenSea acknowledged their mistake, as the whitelist logic was flawed, allowing specific wallet addresses to "mint without limit". According to BlockGames CEO, Ben Baltram, the frontend of OpenSea had issues when submitting whitelist addresses, resulting in this serious error.

OpenSea actually doesn't need much introduction. It feels like they've been out of trouble for a long time. It's worth mentioning that BlockGames has textbook-level crisis public relations that pulled them back from the brink. After the incident, they closed the chat on Discord to prevent panic from spreading, then quickly issued announcements and held AMA to explain the situation to the community, while cooperating with the trading market to quickly stop trading in the secondary market to avoid further losses. Finally, they promised to compensate the gas fees of the creators and the buyers who bought on the secondary market before the news came out, and announced a delay in the minting process.

From the perspective of an outsider, this process may seem simple and straightforward. However, it is not easy to handle it well in times of crisis. If crisis management is not done properly, it can be fatal. Even in situations like what happened to BlockGames, the problem may not have been caused by them...

Weekly Project Outlook

The new project information worth paying attention to this week includes:

Pirate Nation - Mystery Chest

This is the official free Open Edition welfare from Pirate Nation. I don't know what game props it is or when it can be opened, but considering that Proof of Play just raised $33 million in financing, and this thing is still free, I don't think anyone will not claim it...

Here is the link for you directly: https://app.manifold.xyz/c/pirate-nation.

BlockGames

Also the protagonist mentioned earlier. Game NFT is probably the most popular type of NFT recently. BlockGames has survived a great disaster and will have good luck in the future. Moreover, it is also a Free Mint. Let's wait and see if we can still get lucky during the public sale phase...

The new casting plan will start at 0:00 on September 27th Beijing time.

Fewos

Regarding Fewos, I have already written a detailed introduction article (recommended reading: After 17 months, the top NFT artist's PFP project is finally going on sale). Here is a brief summary:

Highlights:

- Artistic Guarantee by FEWOCiOUS

- ERC-6551

Disadvantages:

- The sexual assault scandal involving FEWOCiOUS does not seem to have been fully resolved.

This is the 6th issue of "Rhythm of NFT News". This week's events gave me a feeling of overlap between the NFT market and the real world.

Some places are in turmoil, with even wars raging - is the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem experiencing one wave after another without settling down?

Some people mock, some people leave, will this world be okay - Rolling Stone Magazine mocks NFT? Murakami Takashi says "bye bye" to NFT?

But if you still insist on staying here, optimistic things always happen - what does the first game of Proof of Play look like with a financing of 33 million US dollars?

Of course, when we are immersed in the grand pessimism and optimism of the world, this world will still present some small surprises to pull you out and scratch your head - OpenSea has another problem, "unlimited minting" causing the project to relaunch?

Let's look forward to what fresh NFT news will happen in the new week together!

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