Panic at OpenSea: High-Stakes Fight for NFT Supremacy

Greetings Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's time to tackle the week ahead.

⭐️Today's selection:

• ⛵OpenSea's Desperate Bid to Win Back Users
• 🤭Awkward copy-paste
• 💰Venture Monday
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

OpenSea 0:1 Blur

Blur surpassed OpenSea in terms of ETH trading volume, and they did it in style.Blur surpassed $100m in NFT volume over 24 hours, first marketplace to achieve this since April 2022. Of course, it made OpenSea feel like a stranded sailor lost at sea.

In response, OpenSea has taken measures to win back their users:

• Temporary 0% platform commissions (2,5% before)
• Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% minimum)
• Condescending attitude towards other marketplaces when it comes to NFT creators' fees (before, creators were restricted to receiving royalties on only one platform at a time)

And to add to the drama, OpenSea hinted at a potential airdrop. Can you feel the suspense building up?

With OpenSea's $13 billion valuation, they have the resources to compete in the NFT marketplace battle by tokenizing their business.

In theory, OpenSea could pour its token for users as compensation for commissions/royalties paid, but how that would work in practice is unclear.

OpenSea was cruising along as the undisputed leader in the fledgling NFT market until Blur appeared as a formidable adversary, launching an unrelenting barrage of attacks that posed a serious threat to OpenSea's reign.

Now, OpenSea is scrambling to maintain its lead in the secondary NFT market, and issuing a token seems like the logical step to keep users from jumping ship.It's like a captain offering his crew a share of the loot to keep them from joining a rival crew. Will it work? Only time will tell.But wait, there's more! LooksRare, a marketplace that's often overlooked, is set to make a comeback with their biggest update yet, Looks v2.

It's like when that one quiet kid in class suddenly turns into a popular influencer overnight. Exciting to see it!

TL;DR: Blur has overtaken OpenSea in NFT trading volume, reaching $100m in 24 hours. OpenSea is responding with a temporary 0% platform commission and hinted at a potential airdrop.

YUGA LABS COPIED THE LOGO FROM A CHILDREN'S BOOK 

Yuga Labs or better known as Bored Ape Yaught Club creators have been accused of copyright infringement.

More specifically, the theft of the skull logo of their other Bored Ape Kennel Club collection.

The picture is an exact copy of an image from a children's colouring book.

The authors of the colouring suggest kids draw a wolf's skull...

Here's a drawing from the 'playbook'.

The company Easy Drawing Guides worked on the development and responded to the scandal + confirmed that the picture in question is copyrighted. This means that Yuga Labs is using it illegally.

Freelancer to blame?!

Yuga Labs explained that they hired an outside freelancer to draw the logo. He simply copied the wolf skull from the Easy Drawing Tutorial website. Yuga Labs will now remove the logo from all resources.

Founders added:

"We will change the logo and update it on our website / ask the marketplaces to change it. This collection has been for charitable fundraising from the beginning. And I am proud of the fact that BAKC has raised over $1 million."           

Whether the company will pay any compensation is not yet known.

TL;DR: Bored Ape Yaught Club creators are accused of copyright infringement for using a wolf's skull logo from a children's coloring book in their Bored Ape Kennel Club charity collection. 

VENTURE MONDAY

Crypto index platform Alongside raised $11M in a seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz(a16z), with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Village Global, Soma Capital, FJ Labs and Not Boring Capital.

Alongside is like S&P 500 for the cryptocurrency market, offering low-fee index products that provide diversified exposure to the entire crypto market. Its mission is to lower the barrier to entry in crypto using the same tools that saved stock market investors billions in fees

Web 3 communications infrastructure Sending.Network raised $12.5M in a seed funding round led by Insignia Venture Partners, MindWorks Capital and Signum Capital, with participation from K3 Ventures, LingFeng Innovation Fund, UpHonest Capital and Aipollo Investment.

Sending.Network is a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system that allows users to transfer funds securely and instantly without intermediaries or middlemen.

Web3 Social World created from wallet activities Phi raised $2M in a seed funding round led by Chapter One and Delphi Digital, with participation from Polygon Ventures, GBV Capital, Mask Network Japan and Next Web Capital.

As soon as you engage in an on-chain activity such as swapping tokens or participating in a DAO vote, you will earn an item for your virtual land in Phi Land.

These items, known as Phi Objects, represent various on-chain activities and can be used to showcase your on-chain identity within the virtual world.

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• Gemini Co-Founder Predicts that The Next Crypto Bull Run will Start in the East. "Great, another market to compete with," says West
• Bitcoin Price on South Korean Crypto Exchanges Falls Below the Average Price. South Korea has a different definition of 'average'
• Helium Network Plans to Migrate to Solana Blockchain at the End of March. New blockchain, new challenges.