Rarible Marketplace Users Can Now Create, List, and Trade Flow-Based NFT Collectibles

November 11, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Civic launches free tool to combat NFT-hungry bots on Solana

November 9, 2021 Coin Telegraph

AML

Civic’s Ignite Pass aims to combat bots targeting NFT drops on the Solana network by verifying video-based selfies using artificial intelligence.

Identity verification tech firm Civic Technologies has launched a free tool to combat botting activity in Solana (SOL)-based NFT drops.

According to a Nov. 8 announcement, Civic’s new tool “Ignite Pass” will filter out bots by requiring buyers to complete a liveness verification before being approved to make NFT purchases.

Civic’s website notes that users will be required to take a video selfie in order to verify, with an Ignite Pass then being issued to their wallet address upon completion. The pass also remains active for 24 hours to “limit the options of malicious botters verifying multiple wallets. ”

The website also outlined that “Civic does not store this video selfie,” but does not clarify if the data is deleted or stored elsewhere.

The Ignite Pass is a free version of the firm’s suite of know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance tools, Civic Pass. The tools are designed for decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, NFT marketplaces and public blockchains.

Civic Technologies CEO Chris Hart emphasized the revolutionary capabilities that nonfungible tokens have recently unlocked for artists, lamenting the negative impact that bots are having on creators:

“Bots are more than a nuisance — they’re destroying the trust that communities have built as well as the future prospects of its creators.”

Bots gone wild

In February earlier this year, Dapper Lab’s NBA Top Shot was forced to delay the launch of a new series of Premium Packs due to high levels of botting activity on the platform.

The following month, many users of the MoonCats NFTs were complaining that the project had become overrun by bots programmed to accumulate new cats the moment they dropped online.

In response to the botting, MoonCat developers Ponderware held a vote on whether to destroy a private key holding a collection of rare unreleased MoonCat NFTs or not, with 72% of the community voting “yes” during the 48-hour poll.

September saw TIME Magazine sell out of 4,676 NFTs in less than one minute, with Paradigm researcher Anish Agnihotri attributing the rapid sales to botting activity:

“Many folks knew the mainnet deploy in advance and were able to plan ahead to bot their transactions.”

A surge in activity from bots targeting Grape Protocol’s Initial DEX Offering (IDO) also caused the Solana network to go offline for roughly 17 hours in September.

The Solana Foundation characterized the incident as a “denial of service attack,” estimating the bots had spammed the network with a transaction load of roughly 400,000 every second.

100 Person Mega-Battles: Former Midway, Disney, Activision Game Devs Announce Mechanized-Combat NFT Game

November 2, 2021 Bitcoin.com

NFTs offer a new way for society to ‘store culture’ says Animoca Brands CEO

October 8, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu has urged new NFT users to look past profiteering and examine how nonfungible tokens can redefine culture.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and chairman of NFT game developer Animoca Brands, believes nonfungible tokens offer a new way for culture to be stored in the virtual sphere.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Siu argued that while the technology underpinning NFTs may be new, the desire to “store culture” has long been with us throughout human history.

“We describe NFTs as stores of culture, because they embody a moment in history,” he said, adding: “What is art? Art stores culture.”

Siu is a Hong Kong-based tech entrepreneur who previously worked at Atari and also founded the Outblaze gaming company. Animoca Brands was founded in 2014 and has released notable NFT projects including The Sandbox, F1 Delta Time and MotoGP Ignition, and it invested in Dapper Labs, OpenSea and Axie Infinity.

The Animoca chairman said that culture is about more than just the monetary value of an artwork, and pointed to the example of his daughter and her favorite band BTS, stating that she doesn’t aim to get an autograph from the popular K-Pop group in a bid to flip it for a quick profit:

“Most paintings in the world aren't worth a ton, but like owning culture, the vast majority of people who buy art today or photography don't intend to sell it right away. That's not how we engage with culture.”

When asked what advice he would give to NFT newcomers, Siu urged newbies not to seek opportunities for fast profiteering, instead recommending they immerse themselves in the revolutionary utilities enabled by the technology.

“Start with buying your first NFT not with the intention to make money for you, but simply with a desire to [...] learn from it,” he said.

Siu also argued that NFTs represent a dialectic shift in data ownership and data rights, asserting: “What's interesting about this ownership that we're able to create, is that it doesn't come from a sort of scarcity that you can dig up from the ground.”

Siu described data as among the world’s “most valuable resources,” pointing to the tireless efforts of big tech companies like Amazon or Facebook to mine every skerrick of data from their users in a bid to personalize the advertising they see on social platforms.

“Data has become the source of absolute power,” he added.

Animoca Brands completed an $88.88 million capital raise in May based on a valuation of $1 billion.

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