NFTs In A Nutshell: A Weekly Review

Instagram is building native minting features for NFTs, while OpenSea finds itself in the middle of the heated ‘creator royalty’ debate. Creator monetization was a core pillar of much of last week’s NFT discussion, all while the ‘excitement to irrelevance’ spectrum of new NFT projects is seemingly accelerating (if Art Gobblers are any example).
Meanwhile, there is more mainstream IP making it’s way on-chain. Every weekend, we review the biggest NFT stories from the past week with our Nutshell. Let’s take a look at last week’s action as we head into the final two months of 2022.
This Week’s Non-Fungible Token News
OpenSea’s Position On Creator Royalties In Question
OpenSea has found itself in a sticky position trying to sort through creator royalties. The leading NFT marketplace reiterated over the weekend that they are working on dynamic tools that give creators flexibility around creator fees:
There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few months about business models for NFT creators & whether creator fees (“royalties”) are viable.
Given our role in the ecosystem, we want to take a thoughtful, principled approach to this topic & to lead w/ solutions. 🧵
— OpenSea (@opensea) November 6, 2022
It comes as OpenSea competitors have sought to cut into market share by slashing royalties for NFT creators, allowing them to undercut OpenSea prices at the expense of creators. OpenSea has been biting back with strength, threatening to blacklist competing marketplaces as things get more cut-throat. The marketplace is expected to make a formalized decision around royalties and the like within the next month.
The Rise And Possible Demise Of Art Gobblers
From the Gobblers to… the gobbled? OK, maybe not so fast – but things went from trending up to… not exactly trending up, in quick time. Crypto investment firm Paradigm worked alongside ‘Rick And Morty’ co-creator Justin Roiland to release NFT collection Art Gobblers this past week; despite massive volumes in the early days of the project’s release, it has seemingly come to a quick return to earth. Volume and price within the project have continued to fall as last week continued on. The project’s GOO token experienced similar effects; despite being designed as an inflationary token, the GOO price went from over $2000 to roughly $60 in less than one week’s time.
Non-Fungible Citizenship
A small island in the South Pacific is aiming to build a full-fledged community of crypto investors, as we covered in-depth earlier last week. The property developers on the island desire a 21,000 capacity crypto haven that is tax-free; for interested inhabitants, there are currently ‘Satoshi Island Land NFT Deeds‘ available on OpenSea for under 1 ETH.

Polygon (MATIC) has been established as the blockchain of choice for Meta's Instagram, as the social media platform continues to build NFT infrastructure for creators. | Source: MATIC-USD on TradingView.com
Warner Bros. Latest NFT Drops
Warner Bros. is on track to be a weekly feature in the Nutshell at this pace, with continual new NFT projects that feature their massive catalogue of IP. This past week, it was a new announcement around Game of Thrones, courtesy of Warner Bros. and their NFT-native partner, Nifty’s.
The new release is described as “a digital collectible experience,” and taps NFT studio DAZ 3D. Expect the release to be minting sometime this winter.
Instagram’s NFT Efforts Continue
Instagram took the stage at Creator Week 2022 last week to continue voicing the firm’s efforts in allowing app users to sell and buy NFTs on the social media platform. Despite Meta’s recent struggles to find traction through VR and metaverse-based initiatives outside of Instagram, there is a continued push to release an initial toolkit for Instagram creators around NFTs.
That kit will come courtesy of the platform’s existing partnership with blockchain Polygon. Testing already has been in place for nearly a year now with what started as a very limited beta run with select creators. It comes at a time of increased pressures around the ‘creator economy,’ with TikTok taking aggressive market share from Instagram while paying out creatives; other creator-first platforms, like Twitch or YouTube, also pay their creators, while Instagram historically has not.
Even Elon Musk, now leading the reigns at Twitter, has stated that creator monetization is on the horizon. We’ll see who can win the race as social media platforms look to build creator affinity.
Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com
The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice. This op-ed represents the views of the author, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Bitcoinist. Bitcoinist is an advocate of creative and financial freedom alike.