What is a DAO? Introduction to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

The DAO is a type of decentralized organization that has a set of smart contracts built into it.

DAOs use blockchain technology to operate as a digital ledger for transactions. They are run by the rules coded within the smart contracts and were made popular by the Ethereum Foundation as an example of such a contract.

How a DAO Works and Why it’s so Revolutionary?

A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, a type of artificial intelligence that is powered by smart contracts and blockchain technology.

They are designed to be completely transparent, inviting everyone with internet connection to take part in the process of decision making. A decentralized autonomous organization does not have any human or in-person leadership. The A DAO does not have any centralized decision-making process.

It’s revolutionary because it’s an innovative way to structure organizations with artificial intelligence in order to give everyone with internet connection the opportunity to take part in the process of decision making.

In the world of AI, there are two primary ways in which the technology can be used: as a pure computation engine or as an embedded component in a product. In this article, we take the former approach and explore how DAOs work and why they’re so revolutionary.

The idea of DAOs have been around for a few years now, but it’s only recently that they have seen widespread adoption in the real world. One of the best examples is from the entertainment industry. ERC-721 tokens are utilized by artists to circumvent traditional models and take control of their work. This ensures that artists are paid for every piece sold, and not held back by royalties.

DAO-powered Platforms- A New Business Model for Startups?

With the arrival of blockchain technology and improved DAO-powered platforms, new opportunities arise for companies to take advantage of the decentralization in the form of a democratic organizational structure. This gives startups more autonomy and flexibility that is often lost in traditional centralized structures.

Conclusion: Blockchain & DAOs are Revolutionizing Business Landscape Worldwide

A key problem in business today is that it is hard to coordinate across big, slow hierarchies. Blockchain models provide the opportunity to create decentralized networks that are not just more efficient but are also distributed in nature.

This creates a whole new paradigm of organization with access to better information at all levels of the company. There are many blockchain-based models for running companies which have created a revolution in the business world.

The post What is a DAO? A Complete Guide to DAOs and How They are Changing the World appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

DeFi NFTs

Our core beliefs

We are spending more of our lives online. As global citizens of the internet, we must have two fundamental building blocks – financial sovereignty through DeFi and digital private property through NFTs. We believe Web3 will manifest itself by leveraging these two components. As native Web3 assets proliferate, they will require an intricate yet fluid relationship between DeFi and NFTs.

Who we are

Introducing Defrag, a lending protocol that allows NFT owners to access instant liquidity. Defrag allows you to use your NFTs as collateral. We rank the creditworthiness of your NFTs based on a number of factors to determine your collateral ratio. 

Why we are different

The protocol automatically insures your NFT assets with a financial instrument called a Put Option. In other words, in order to receive a loan against your NFTs, the protocol purchases insurance on your behalf via Put Options.

Peer To Pool

Defrag uses a Peer To Pool model which allows for borrowers to get instant liquidity on their NFT assets without having to wait for a counterparty to enter into a contract. Underwriters provide liquidity and earn premiums through the insurance fees collected from the sale of Put Options.

Raising the Liquidity Pool via Minting our Metamatician NFTs

Each Metamatician will have a proportional stake in our initial Liquidity Pool used to underwrite the first NFT projects. Our NFT holders will have a yield generating asset. Metamaticians serve as your User ID in our financial ecosystem. As the protocol matures and evolves, so will your Metamatician.

Minting Details

Metamaticians—a collection of 3,141 randomly generated NFTs priced at 1.618 ETH. Metamatician NFTs will be minted, each of which features unique attributes including the name of a famous mathematician, a randomly generated 8 digit number, and a greek symbol associated with risk in pricing out financial instruments.

Defrag has integrated Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF) on the Ethereum mainnet. By integrating the industry-leading oracle solution, Defrag now has access to a tamper-proof and auditable source of randomness required to assign attributes to Metamatician NFTs during the minting process in a fully transparent and unpredictable manner. Through Chainlink VRF, we can help ensure participants have a fair and equal chance at obtaining NFTs with the rarest traits.

The 8 Digit Number | Pi π

The randomly generated 8 digit number is your place in the number Pi following the decimal.

The proximity of your number to “3.” will determine the rarity of your NFT. Which in turn will boost your abilities in our financial ecosystem. A few examples include – improving your collateral ratio in other words the ability to borrow more. Another example is increasing your stake in a liquidity pool.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.

Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the documentation at docs.chain.link. To discuss an integration, reach out to an expert. 

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Today is the day, the Super Yeti NFT project launches at 3:00pm ET.  The attention this NFT collectable project has received is unprecedented.  Over the last 4 days, the hype around Super Yeti’s has reached critical mass.  The first sign of this pandemonium was the fact that the project sold out days before the launch.  To put things in perspective (and it feels like the market has changed a lot in a very short time) the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project was fully launched and supply was readily available for a few days before hype drove the eventual sell out.  On top of this project selling out (Each Yeti was initially priced at a not cheap .1 ETH) The prelaunch floor for the yetis catapulted above .18 ETH to over .20 ETH for a period of time. The market eventually cooled mildly but the prelaunch floor has stabilized between .17 and .18 ETH.  Even at this price, the entirety of the project from a monetary standpoint will be seen as a success.

Super Yeti NFT Pre Launch Numbers

As of this writing the numbers for the Super Yeti Project are staggering.

• OpenSea NFT Volume: 309.31 ETH (After Market Sales) Equating to over 30% Return on top of initial launch sales
• Average Price .18 ETH (80% Growth)
• 2,535 Owners. This is important because it took the Bored Ape Yacht Club much longer to reach > 1000 individual owners. and 1/4 of the project is owned by at least 1 different owner
• Top 10 OpenSea Project Pre Launch
• Super Yeti Project sold out in 4 Days

Super Yeti NFT Details

The goal of the Super Yeti project launched during the collectable NFT craze of 2021.  While this may not be a bubble, these collectables appear to have all the signs of a bubble and unless new money comes in to support these types of projects, we suspect the majority of “common” collectables across all of these projects will eventually crater.  The highly rare items should retain value, but collectors should be informed and cautious and knowledgeable about these projects and the risks associated with them.

Super Yeti Video Game

The ultimate goal of this project is to begin funding an NFT lead metaverse video game. Likely with additional IP, collectables, and media attention.  The game will be designed as a play-to-earn concept where the Yetis each own land, can breed, compete in mini games and more.  They describe their metaverse as the Yetiverse and have announced an incredibly aggressive release date for early 2022.

Super Yeti NFT Contract

Like the majority of these types of projects, the Super Yetis are created on the standard ERC-721 contract and leverage IPFS to store files.  There has been some recent controversy around contract types being leveraged to mint collectable projects, but the Super Yetis are being minted on the industry standard for these types of collectables.

Super Yeti NFT Concerns

With all of these projects there are concerns collectors should be aware of.  First, the aforementioned possible bubble could burst at any time. During this project, or a future date.  The current price floor may be impacted by events outside of this project alone.  Collectors should be aware of these issues.  Second, The project appears to have been launched incredibly quickly.  There were limited options in the initial discussions on various Discord channels and clubhouse.  The Devs took feedback from industry insiders and have committed to incorporating enough customization of elements to introduce rarity attributes unique enough to support a 10,000 collectable drop. Finally, There are some areas that the Yeti NFTs could use a bit more polish.  The most common example is the Yeti examples on a background where the foot appears to be floating.  This could be a gaffe introduced for promotional purposes, but it does cause a bit of concern.

Super Yeti Tin-Hat Theories

As the collectable craze continues to reach fever pitch and more and more wealthy benefactors enter these projects, there have been unsubstantiated rumors that this project may be the brainchild or at least backed in part by a major celebrity that will be revealed at a future date in order to allow the project to be successful on its own merits.  With so many pseudonymous actors entering the NFT space we assume its only a matter of time before something like this actually happens, but we doubt that it is with this particular project.

Final Thoughts

As with all projects. First ask yourself if you love the project, collectable, or art. We recommend nobody buy anything they don’t love and the safest thing you can do is only invest in projects you’re a fan of and dont intent to flip. Ask yourself “would you want this collectable even if the project tanked (because 99.9999% inevitably will)”.  Like other recent bubbles in the NFT space, these projects will likely pop in the near future before the market resets, lessons are learned, and more utility is introduced into the space.  all that being said…

We like the Yetis!

Although we are skeptics at  heart, numerous contributors within the NFTCulture family have invested in the Yeti project. Some of those investments have been speculative, but most that invested in more than one intend to hold at least one within their collection.  This is a fun project and we look forward to watching their continued success.

The post Super Yeti NFT Launch Hype appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

The Economics of the Ethereum platform is very tightly coupled with NFTs, and that coupling has a lot of implications for participants in the NFT space, whether you are an artist, a collector, a speculator, or even just a casual looking to hop in.

Pricing NFTs in USD

Ethereum is a slowly inflating currency (soon to be mildly deflationary), whereas USD is an inflationary currency. As a NFT consumer, inflation motivates you to spend, while deflation motivates you to save. However, as a creator, inflation can work against you if you. For example, if you price a piece at $1000 instead of .5ETH, and the value of USD decreases by 10% due to inflation, then the same $1000 would only be able to purchase .45ETH. Inflation acts as if its a force raising the buyers up to your asking price, to use a metaphor. In theory, pricing in USD will make your pieces sell faster.

Pricing NFTs in ETH

So what happens if you do the opposite, and chose to price your piece in ETH? For this thought experiment, lets assume that ETH has moved into its mild deflationary phase (see this article for more info). When you set a price with ETH, you run the risk of the currency becoming more valuable and pricing people out of the market. Suppose you set a price of .5 ETH. On April 2nd, 2021, that translates into a USD amount of $2000. The piece sits on the market a bit, maybe because its a niche piece or maybe its just that you are still trying to find your client base. You check analytics on it on May 2nd, 2021, only a month later, and not only has it not sold, but the piece is showing up in fewer and fewer searches. .5 ETH now translates into a USD amount of $3000. Where you were hoping to attract an affluent but still moderate income buyer at approximately $2000 (think $1999), you are now asking for 50% more, multiple thousands of dollars. To continue the analogy above, the deflationary effect of pricing with ETH acts like a force pushing the piece up out of reach of the buyers, which is exactly what you don’t want to happen.

What are my options?

If you’ve made it this far, you can see that we clearly have reached a conundrum. We are currently in an inflationary environment, and most likely will remain there for the next several years. So, in a perfect world you would want to price in USD (to help buyers make the sale) but you want to receive ETH in payment. And you would want the sale to happen as quickly as possible, in order to avoid the depreciation of value of your artwork. So what can we do?

1. Price in USD, but pad your number a bit, as you should expect it to take some time to find a buyer and want to insure that you are properly compensated for the sale.    OR
2. Price in ETH, but get aggressive with the price. You don’t want to risk the increase in ETH/USD ratio to cause your piece to move out of reach of your buyers. Additionally, as you are compensated in ETH here, the future value increase of ETH should partially compensate for the upfront reduction in earnings.

Our Recommendation

While both approaches are valid, our recommendation is to use approach #2. Be sure to be very aggressive with your ETH pricing, while being cognizant of the expensive gas pricing. Remember that .5 ETH collected today at $3000 ETH:USD ratio could easily balloon to $5000 or $10000 USD in the space of a year. Ideally, you are in a position where you have some savings and can afford to hold off on converting the ETH. But in any case, be sure to follow one of the approaches above. Good Luck!

The post NFT and Ethereum Economics 101 appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

Eth2 refers to the set of upgrades that are being implemented to enable the Ethereum platform to be more scalable and sustainable, while still being as secure as we have come to expect of it. The upgrades are being developed by a large consortium of development teams across the ecosystems. Users of ETH (and more importantly NFTs) will not have to do anything to special to receive the ultimate benefit of this advancement of the platform.

NFT Culture staff recently had a discussion on the impacts of Eth2 on NFTs. We receive quite a few questions from our readers about this, so thought it might help more people if we shared the complete Q&A session.

When will Eth2 take effect?

The first step of the transition, the Beacon Chain, is already underway, as of February 2021. The Beacon Chain is the advent of staking in Ethereum and lays the ground work for important future upgrades. It will also help coordinate the eventual merge of the system. The next step in the process is the implementation of Shard Chains, which are the mechanism by which the Ethereum platform will scale, and it is expected to be rolled out later this year (2021). The final step of the transition process is “The Docking” which is the collapse of the Mainnet Ethereum branch with the Beacon Chain. When this step is complete, Ethereum PoW will be no more.

How will Eth2 affect Gas prices?

A great read on this topic can be found here: The Final Puzzle Piece to Ethereum’s Monetary Policy

A cool detail of Eth2 (at least as far as EIP 1559 prescribes) is that gas fees are effectively burnt. What this means is that the value of the gas goes to the network as a whole rather than a single individual miner in the PoW world. This incentivizes a focus on security rather than capturing a profit. Secondarily, the increased flow of transactions thanks to the shard chains should result in lower transaction costs overall.

From the article above,

“Ethereum 2.0 will have 1024x shards, at 15 TPS each (current TPS of Ethereum 1.x). This is 1.3BM transactions / day.

In order to bring in 1550 ETH/Day in revenue, BASEFEE would need to be 0.0000012 ETH per transaction. To compare, a simple-ETH send costs 0.000021, at 1-Gwei gas price.”

The numbers are rough, but the key takeaway is an expected 10x or 20x reduction in gas prices.

What impact will this have on the NFT Market?

The gas issue will most likely continue to worsen over the next year as the reach of NFTs expands and the other heavy users of the Ethereum platform gain adoption (See DeFi, As well as the growth of ERC-20 Tokens: Why Ethereums Growth of ERC Tokens Matters).

What other externalities should I worry about with NFTs?

The 800lb gorilla in the room for NFTs is government regulation. Crypto, DeFi, and now NFTs are rapidly becoming mainstream, and are frequently receiving attention from officials across the globe. NFT Culture staff will keep a close watch on developments in this emerging area and be sure to keep our userbase caught up with the latest information.

The post Thoughts on Eth2 and NFT Art appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

Flow crypto token is NOT available on Uniswap or the United States.

Flow from Dapper Labs was designed from the ground up as a foundation for protocols and applications that require exceptional user experience. Designed by the team behind CryptoKitties, Flow can be adapted to handle complex tasks for countless businesses, with tremendous potential for collaboration.

Flow is already being used in the following NFT collectables:

• Crypto Kitties
• NBA Top Shot
• UFC Digital Collectibles
• Dr. Seuss Digital Collectables

How Does Flow Work?

Flow is A new type of cryptocurrency incentivizes user-friendly interaction and meaningful contribution to its blockchain by creating four independent roles to ensure that anyone with an internet connection can participate. Flow rewards its participants with cryptocurrency.

• Collector Nodes increase efficiency
• Execution Nodes enable speed and scale
• Verifier Nodes guarantee correctness
• Consensus Nodes ensure decentralization

Smart contracts and user accounts on Flow are always running in a shared, consistent state. Flow makes it easy for your applications to work together in the same state, preventing race conditions and many concurrency bugs.
“Flow makes code review and collaboration simple, accurate, and reproducible.

The post Is flow the future of Crypto Art tokens? appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

Non-fungible tokens are used to create verifiable digital scarcity, as well as digital ownership, and the possibility of asset interoperability across multiple platforms.
A major benefit of NFTs, beyond their unique function, is that they can be easily integrated into mainstream apps and websites. This opens up new possibilities for artists by encouraging a greater number of people to engage with their work on a daily basis.

From trading card games to art and fashion, a number of projects have been using NFTs to create collectibles. With the release of CryptoPunks in June 2017, NFTs became a reality. The crypto-collectible Blockchain Link cards appear on the Ethereum network as smart contracts. The CryptoPunks artists get paid for each card their work is used on as depicted by the picture above.

Blockchain games like CryptoKitties were first to market with a valuable use for blockchain. NFTs, which represent in-game assets, are traded and bought without the permission of the game developer. Marketplaces for limited-edition art and collectibles include Nifty Gateway, Super Rare, and Known Origin.

The post The Origin of Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

A recent series of posts by Memo Akten make a compelling case regarding the negative environmental impact of Crypto Art, casting considerable shade on the movement as a whole, as long as it remains tightly coupled with blockchain technology. We feel it is important to consider all viewpoints regarding the NFT ecosystem, because we we are firm believers in the concept, and negative aspects, right or wrong need to be mitigated as much as possible.

The blog post is here: https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053

We have two major areas of disagreement with the premise of the blog:

1. The Ethereum Ecosystem is aggressively pursuing transition to PoS, by design, thanks to an Ethereum concept known as the “Ice Age”.
2. It is disingenuous to blame the entirety of the environmental impact of a PoW blockchain system on the end users (the transactors) when the cost/benefit/environmental trade off calculus is computed by the blockchain miners.

ETH is Aggressively Pursuing PoS

The Ethereum ecosystem is extremely aware of the negative environmental impacts of PoW, so much so that an actual impetus for transition is coded into the platform by way of the “Ice Age”. I won’t get into a summary of what that is here, as this isn’t meant to be a technical blog (more reading here: https://ethgasstation.info/blog/what-is-ethereums-ice-age/), but the point of the Ice Age is to motivate users of the platform to quickly transition away from PoW and to make sure financial incentives carefully align with that objective.

Memo Akten hinges their entire argument on the inefficiency of PoW Blockchain, but only spends a single footnote (Footnote #1) to address the inevitability of Ethereum PoS, despite admitting that “Ethereum is currently the most popular blockchain platform underlying CryptoArt — or more broadly speaking: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT).”

We feel this sort of argument would be more applicable if Ethereum had a non-existent timeline for the transition or even a nebulous one. But as we speak, the transition process is in full flight, with many millions of ETH locked in the Eth 2.0 beacon chain, which is a very powerful motivator for the ecosystem to complete the transition.

The Miners are Responsible for PoW Impacts, not the Transactors

It is our philosophy that the environmental impact of energy used in the operation of a PoW blockchain is the responsibility of the Miners and not the Transactors on a PoW blockchain. The rationale for this is that the Miners are the party that receives the incentives from the PoW blockchain activity, in the form of both block rewards as well as transaction rewards. The transactor is just consuming a service with literally zero visibility into the real or intangible costs of the transaction.

As a Transactor, I care about security and availability of a service on which I can transact. Right now, there is only one proven secure, reliable source for transacting NFTs, and that is Ethereum.

As a Miner, I care about the input costs and output value of the operation I am conducting. A miner in a 1st world country may or may not have to be concerned about the carbon impact of their operations, depending on the regulator authority. A miner in a 3rd world / developing country most likely does not have to worry about adequate / effective regulation. I absolutely agree that a fundamental flaw of PoW blockchain is that it incentivizes bad actors to set up large mining operations in under regulated regimes to artificially lower the input costs of the mining operation and thus increase profitability.

PoS recognizes this and seeks to strip this incentive system away from Miners, especially the bad actor Miners, and should be wholeheartedly supported for seeking to do so.

In summary, we feel that if you have a problem with PoW blockchain, especially Ethereum, then the best action you can do with real impact is figure out what you can do to support that platform’s transition to PoS. We feel that boycotting NFTs as a whole is counterproductive, because it directly counteracts one of the most exciting potential goods that Crypto enables.

The post Our take on NFT Sustainability and the Environment appeared first on NFT CULTURE.