We’re back with the latest Web3 Weekly Wrap.

With every week, the Web3 space, especially the NFT sector, grows insane amounts, with new projects, all-time highs, and mind-blowing developments happening almost every day. This week was no different and featured a wealth of inspiring drops and announcements, including a hackathon by FWB and Zora, a new platform to tokenize royalties, and much more.

Check it all out below.

c / a Get Their Dues and Sell Out Legacy Collections

Until recently, London duo c / a were relatively unknown NFT pioneers. Largely due to the championing of gabagool.eth and his on-chain sleuthing, over the last few weeks the duo has been getting deserved attention, selling out two 2018/2019 NFT collections, realti—a piece of which featured as an XLR8R+ artwork last year—and aifx, the latter of which are keys to open access to parts of the duo’s M Ξ T A P L Ξ X, an early Metaverse-styled mall and environment that offered tokenized access to decentralized applications, music, games, artworks, simulations, and experiences, all created and curated by the duo. The artworks within the realti collection, interestingly, were some of the first experiments with GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) trained generative art, made by the program, which the duo trained on music by Aphex Twin and Grimes.

In the last two weeks, c / a also sold five of the seven HORSES on XNFT, which is a fascinating collection of generative ambient and horse hallucinations that are undoubtedly collector’s items in regards to the history of NFTs.

FWB (Friends With Benefits) and Zora Announce a Hackathon

Technology and culture community FWB (Friends With Benefits) and open protocol Zora have announced a hackathon, a six-hour incubator of sorts for its community to “unleash our creative liberties and build cool shit, alongside people we love.” Kicking off at 2 p.m. EST on August 29, teams will have six hours to design and build “an FWB member benefit that any token hodler of our beloved $FWB can access.” Three winning teams will be selected and awarded funding to build their proposed project alongside the FWB Product team.

You can find more information about the hackathon here.

Rapper Tyga Announces OnlyFans Rival MyyStar, Allowing Content Creators to Sell NFTs via Ethereum

Rapper Tyga announced that he’s ditching OnlyFans in favor of launching his own creator-support platform, MyyStar. The site will be offering a better deal for content creators (taking a 10% cut as opposed to OnlyFans taking 20%), and creators will be able to sell Ethereum-based NFTs directly from the site. MyyStar follows Tyga’s other business Too Raww, which was an agency designed to get people up and running with OnlyFans. The platform is open for applications now.

Afghans are Buying Crypto to Safeguard Their Money as They Flee the Country

In the midst of a nationwide cash shortage, rising prices, and a destabilizing local currency, fleeing Afghans are turning to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum as a way to safeguard their funds. One local was reported as saying he could make more money day trading crypto than he could doing construction, although a lot of Afghans were less interested in talking about their dealings in the digital world when questioned about it directly according to CNBC. Looking at statistics provided by Chainalysis, Afghanistan was ranked 20 out of the 154 countries listed for crypto adoption over the last year, but when looking at purely peer-to-peer crypto facilitation, that ranking jumps up to number 7 on the list. It’s not all smooth sailing for crypto in the land-locked country though; many folks lack access to any banking facilities, and furthermore, the internet is not nearly stable enough to be reliably usable by merchants to accept crypto on a larger scale. Even still, it’s promising to see that even in the face of uncertainty, cryptocurrencies can offer a bit of stability (as volatile as the price may be).

Quipuswap Governance Token Air-Dropped to all “Early Access” Users

Tezos-based DEX Quipuswap has airdropped tokens to early users. If you’ve used the platform at all before August 25, you should have at least 5 Quipu governance tokens sitting in your Tezos wallet. 300,000 tokens were distributed so far, with a total supply of 422,535 tokens minted. If you’ve used the platform but don’t see any tokens in your wallet, make sure you’re using a wallet that supports FA2 tokens like Temple or Kukai and add the token address manually (Token Address: KT193D4vozYnhGJQVtw7CoxxqphqUEEwK6Vb).

Single EtherRock Sells for Over $1.3 Million

The NFT space gets wilder by the second as a single picture of a rock with a superimposed Ethereum logo on top sold for a staggering $1.3 million (400 ETH at the time of purchase). As stated on the site, the rocks have no intrinsic purpose except to be a digital image of a rock, however, the project has been around since 2017, putting it in the same era as the ubiquitous CryptoPunks and lesser-known curio cards. Another part of the allure comes from scarcity; there are only 100 of the rocks available, meaning only a few owners can own one of the earliest NFT projects to exist.

Chicago Blackhawks Launch NFT Collection Inspired by Old-school Games

NHL team the Chicago Blackhawks today announced the release of 12 collectible 8-bit character cards and 2,000 digital tickets were minted and are available on sweet.io. Select NFTs will even be paired with real-world objects to please fans both digitally and otherwise. The character cards (60 total available) each have a unique name, description, and set of attributes inspired by Blackhawk history, the United center, and hockey in general.

The Hundreds Sell Out 25,000 NFTs in Seven Minutes

Streetwear brand The Hundreds officially entered the NFT space this morning with Adam Bomb Squad, an NFT drop consisting of 25,000 “unique combinations of bombs and accompanying backgrounds related to our history over the last two decades,” with all bombs “designed by The Hundreds at some point in the last 18 years, and most were featured on T-shirts, apparel, and billboards.” The drop sold out within 40 minutes, showing how a strong and dedicated community—whether crypto native or not—can move mountains in this space.

Check out more from the project here.

Dr. Who: Worlds Apart Official NFT Card Game Launching on Binance Smart Chain

A fully licensed, fully playable Dr. Who trading card game is on its way to the blockchain. Fans will be able to own digital trading cards featuring gorgeous artworks of characters from the series represented with various levels of scarcity. The game is free to play and the core cards will be minted in perpetuity so long as the game continues, however, limited edition cards will also be introduced which will cost real-world money to acquire. The game is still in development, although early adopters can begin setting up their decks and strategies now. Dr. Who – Worlds apart is set to launch in Q3 of this year.

ON1 Force Collection Sells Out in Minutes

ON1 Force, a collection of 7,777 generative side profile characters, sells out in minutes. These colorful collectibles feature anime-esque characters ornamented with everything from the likes of apocalyptic masks to horns and headphones. More information and roadmap updates can be found on their Twitter, @0n1Force.

3lau Raises $16 Million to Tokenize Royalties for Artists and Fans

Crypto-forward electronic musician 3lau raised $16 million for a project called ‘Royal’ that aims to bring music royalties to the blockchain. The platform will allow rights owners to mint and trade ownership of artist intellectual property, an idea 3lau and friends had earlier on in their lives before the emergence of cryptocurrencies. “Imagine an NFT that represents 100% ownership of a song or album’s master recording rights. The artist can then issue a DAO token that fractionalizes ownership of a song or album while maintaining 51% ownership of the total supply,” wrote the entrepreneur earlier this year in a brief statement of his intentions for the platform.

What to Join and Who to Follow:

The Hundreds Discord – with more drops on the way, it would be smart to join this community.

@Spaghetti_dev – the creator of Lunar Token, tokenized real estate on the moon

@gabagool.eth – self-professed blockchain sleuth

@cslasha – Artist duo, creators of M Ξ T A P L Ξ X.

@etienecrauss – NFT artist, crypto influencer

XNFT Artist Spotlight: c / a

As stated above, c / a is an anonymous performing arts duo based in London with a keen interest in software programming, film, video games, and, of course, all iterations of the web. In 2018/2019 the duo created and launched a virtual universe dubbed M Ξ T A P L Ξ X, which offers participants a chance to experience their art, with experiences gated by tokens.

The duo’s first collection on XNFT, HORSES, has almost sold out, with only two of seven remaining on the Polygon (Matic) chain. Fusing generative ambient textures and phrases with wild horses running on a field in RGB lights, the collection, as stated by the duo, was “generated by a neural network, performed at a back garden,” and “created as an intro for the Covid era virtual performances.”

Don’t sleep on this duo. Check out HORSES here.