Both the primary and secondary markets for NFT and metaverse have seen a sharp recovery since the beginning of the year. According to CryptoSlam data NFT sales in January 2023 were $997.53. This is an increase of 41.96% over December 2022. The NFT market volume on Ethereum has risen to close to $600,000,000, an increase of 41.96% from December 2022. These are strong signs that the cryptocurrency industry will see signs of recovery in January 2023. The success stories at the beginning last year are more memorable than the ups and downs that have occurred since the new year. Here’s a list of NFT and metaverse projects that will be funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in 2022. These projects that have large amounts of money will undoubtedly have an extended life cycle and bring new creativity into the market. Yuga LabsYuga Labs is the fastest-growing company in the Web3 sector. Yuga Labs launched NFT series of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), in April 2021 and began to make a lot of money from this. It also launched the Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club series. The official announced several major news items in March that year. On March 11, it announced two blue-chip NFT projects, CryptoPunkss and Meebits. On March 17, it announced ApeCoin as the main token. On March 18, it also announced the launch of Otherside, a metaverse project. It announced on the 22nd that it had raised $450m in financing, at a value of $4 billion. This round of financing was led and participated by a16z with participation from Animoca Brands as well as Sound Ventures. Its co-founder Aronow, announced at the end January that he was withdrawing from the company’s daily operations because of health problems. Dune Analytics data shows that Yuga Labs earned 120,000 APE (approximately $660,000), in the first week of its launch. It was closed on September 9 and users spent almost 145,000 APE on it. BAYC will launch several activities in the future, including “The Summoning”, “Lick the Toad” (or new characters), at the end of February, Type A, “Crossing the Rift”, and “EVO 2 Journey”. OpenSeaOpenSea has more than 2.58 million users every day. Devin Finzer, Alex Atallah and others launched the company in December 2017. OpenSea saw explosive growth with the onset the NFT boom in 2021. It completed three rounds financing in less than one year. In March 2021, OpenSea closed a $23 million Series A financing under the leadership of a16z. In July 2021 it closed a $100 million financing under the leadership of a16z. The B round of financing was valued at $1.5 billion and the leading investor was still an a16z. It completed the $300 million C-round financing in January 2019 with a post-investment value of $13.3 billion. This was led by Paradigm, and CoatueManagement. OpenSea’s creator fees will see all creators collectively earning over $1 billion in 2022. This does not include participation incentives, sponsorship revenue, grants, or participation revenue. These revenues are directly generated from creator fees for reselling works, and are immediately settled on-chain between sellers, buyers, and creators. OpenSea CEO stated in an interview with Financial Times that NFT is more healthy than the overall encryption track and that NFT can be denominated as US dollars in future. This has made the NFT trading platform a source of contention between a hundred schools. OpenSea has been focusing on product optimization and new functions to improve user experience. Since the new year, the bulk NFT purchase function Sweep has been launched, allowing users to save gas costs; the NFT category page has been re-deployed, and game options have been added; the “Bulk listing action bar” has been launched and supports purchases based on ERC- The “alternative project” of the 1155 agreement; the “3-hour position protection period” mechanism was launched to reduce the risk of NFT theft; the project aggregation service based on the Seaport protocol was launched; OpenSea also announced the launch of the Private Beta Testing Program, allowing participants to Experience new features and help OpenSea stress test and find bugs.AutographAutograph is an NFT platform for stars and fans in sports, music, games and other cultural and entertainment fields. It was founded by Tom Brady, a legend in the NFL, and Richard Rosenblatt, an Internet entrepreneur. It focuses on pop culture memorabilia, classic moments in sports history, and allows users to buy videos and photos signed by celebrities, singers, and other stars as digital assets. It is known as “the future of fan groups.” In January 2022, Autograph announced that it had closed a $170 million Series A round of financing. This was led by a16z Venture Capital Firm Kleiner Perkins and 01A, and included participation from Katie Haun, an ex-executive of a16z. Haun joined the Autograph board along with Arianna Simpson (general partner at a16z) and Ilya Fushman (partner at Kleiner Perkins). Autograph cofounder Richard Rosenblatt was made a senior advisor to a16z cryptocurrency in October 2022. Former Autograph board member Sam Bankman–Fried was soon fired. Autograph also reached a multiyear agreement with ESPN on NFT in April 2022. The two parties also collaborated to release the first NFT series in that month. Brady, the co-founder, announced his retirement in February. Brady now focuses on his “new job” and uses his network resources to attract stars to the platform. Autograph also collaborates with the PGA Tour to launch a golf-focused NFT platform. GeniesGenies was founded in 2017. Genies provides tools (Genies Avatar OS) that allow users create avatars, wearable fashion items and avatar virtual worlds. They also offer interactive experiences in web3. Genies established partnerships with Warner Music Group (now Universal Music Group) and became the “official avatar provider and digital product NFT provider” in 2021. This included the virtual avatars of Universal Music’s stars Shawn Mendes Shawn Bieber, Rihanna, Cardi B and Rihanna. Genies developed and hosts both. In September 2022 Genies launched the Flow blockchain-based NFT fashion platform “The Warehouse”. This new platform connects to 3D cartoon avatars created in Genies’ app. Users can upload masks, shoes and other digital accessories. Genies has a close partnership with Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs was also involved in the $65 million Series B financing that Genies completed. Genies closed a financing of $150 Million in April 2022 at a value of $1 billion. Silver Lake was the leader of the investment, Bond Capital and Breyer Capital participated in the investment, while New Enterprise Associates and Robert Iger, former Disney CEO, were also involved in the investment. Robert Iger became a member the board of directors. 11:11 Media, owned and controlled by Paris Hilton, launched an avatar fashion line on Genies last year. Genies creative director Jake Becker believes that:
Our tools, in the form of virtual image ecosystem builders, will help us to create the next big fashion brand, designer, or influencer.
Genies didn’t reveal its 2023 plan. Currently, we are looking to recruit fashion bloggers with over 2,000 followers on TikTok to help us promote our products and grow our influence. Magic EdenMagic Eden is currently the NFT trading platform that has the highest trading volume on Solana chain. Magic Eden’s core products include Launchpad and Eden Games, Magic Ventures, Magic DAO, and Magic Trading Market. Launchpad is a platform that provides ease for creators and project partners, as well as a way for users to find high-quality assets. Eden Games is a content hub for game publishers. The layout allows users to enter Web3 ahead of time. Magic Ventures, Magic Eden’s venture capital department, focuses on investing in the gaming sector. Magic DAO is a platform that explores decentralized governance to make major market decisions. Magic Ticket holders will automatically become members of Magic DAO after completing three rounds of financing in less than a year. In February 2022 Magic Eden closed a $27 million financing. Sequoia Capital and Paradigm were among the investors. Greylock was also involved. (now revised to $16.9million); Magic Eden closed a financing of $130m at a valuation $1.6 billion Series B financing. It was led by Electric Capital, Greylock, and was completed in June 2022. It added additional verification layers to address the issue of counterfeit NFT. Magic Eden was updated in February to improve user experience. This included simplified login, favorite page statistics and collector announcement. It also includes feature count filtering and an instant list. In addition, Magic Eden has also launched a multi-chain plan to support Polygon-based game developers and has reached cooperation with several game companies or platforms, including BORA Games, Block Games, IntellaX, nWay, Boomland, Planet Mojo, and Taunt Battleworld.RarioRario is the first cricket NFT platform with the largest share of the cricket NFT market in the world through exclusive cooperation with 6 international cricket leagues and more than 1,000 cricket players. Ankit Wadhwa is co-founder and CEO of Rario. He believes that cricket is second in the world with more than 1.5 billion cricket fans. Rario’s NFT platform allows fans to trade and own digital collectibles. In April 2022, Rario received $120 million in financing. The investment was led by Dream Capital, a subsidiary of Indian sports technology company Dream Sports that is a venture capital firm. Alpha Wave Global, Animoca Brands and Dream Capital also participated. Rario partnered with Dream Sports in September 2012 to launch D3.club, a cricket strategy game. All Rario players will be eligible to play for free. Sachin Tendulkar, known as the “God Of Cricket”, has launched his first venture into the world non-fungible tokens. This partnership was made with Rario, digital collectibles= platform. Tendulkar will become a strategic investor in Rario. Rario launched D3.club games simultaneously during cricket events in different countries and regions. There are currently two T20 League matches in Pakistan and the Women’s T20 World Championship in South Africa. Stability AIStability AI, a community-driven open source artificial intelligence art creation company, is currently available. It has created open AI models for image and language. It has over 20,000 members in its developer community. Stability AI’s projects include StableDiffusion, an AI image generator tool, Harmonai, and OpenBioML, a biology and life science research tool. Stable Diffusion, a text-to–picture generative model is free and open-source. All codes are freely available on GitHub. Stable Diffusion is used in music videos and Hollywood movies. It has been used by more than 10 million people every single day. In October 2022, Stability AI announced a $101 million seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management. According to reports, this round of financing valued Stability AI around $1 billion. Stable Diffusion has also partnered with Metaverse, the world-building platform Stageverse, to launch the first AI-generated avatar fashion designing tool. As companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI develop AI technology, the competition in artificial intelligence is increasing. The company was hit by two separate lawsuits in January from Getty Images, an image provider, and a group artists. It is clear that Stability must resolve copyright disputes and keep products and technologies updated in the AI competition. How to handle any legal or moral risks may also be crucial to the future of AI-generated artwork. Fan CrazeFanCraze allows fans to collect, use, and interact with NFT cricket through NFT. It was founded by Anshum Bhambri, a Wall Street veteran and founding operations director for the Indian Premier League. Its founding team includes people with backgrounds in technology, finance, sport, and games. The mission of FanCraze is to create a metaverse for cricket. Insight Partners led a $100 million Series B round of financing. Participants included B Cpital and Mirae Financial as well as Tiger Global, Coatue Management Courtside Ventures, Ronaldo’s CRM7, Coatue Management, Coatue Management and Coatue Management. FanCraze previously collaborated with the International Cricket Council at the start of the year to launch “Crictos”, a video collection that recorded cricket matches using NFT similar to Dapper’s NBA Top Shot. The project is now available on the Flow blockchain and will create archived moments older than 50 years. FanCraze is a platform that facilitates official cooperation between various cricket leagues, and their teams. It has been appointed as the official digital collectible partner for SA20 (the South African T20 cricket league). It has also collaborated with 12 English county cricket clubs. The clubs have each signed separate multi-year agreements. Pixel VaultPixel Vault, a web3-centric NFT firm, focuses on developing IP story series. This allows collectors to take part in their NFT and create an ecosystem for collecting. It is currently expanding into the areas of brands, sports, and games. The Pixel Vault team represents PUNKS Comics and MetaHero Identities. PUNKS Comics features CryptoPunks characters. MetaHero Identities is a NFT collection of superheroes and villains that is blockchain-based. MetaHero Universe is a social gaming and social media platform. Adidas will launch its first NFT series in 2021. Pixel Vault founder GFunk also participated in this project. Pixel Vault announced in February 2022 that it had received $100 million from Velvet Sea Ventures. 01A also invested. Pixel Vault is currently working on PUNKS Comic Issue #4, which is expected to be released in Q1 2023. Issue #4 of PUNKS Comic will be released along with a completely redesigned punkscomic.com website. This will be integrated into The Vault. Issues 5 & 6 will follow. PUNKS Comic Issues 4-6 will be free. We encourage you to do your research before investing.Join us to keep track of news: https://linktr.ee/coincuHaroldCoincu NewsTags: AutographFan CrazeGeniesmagic edenMetaverseNFTOpenSeaPixel VaultRarioStability AIYuga Labs