NFT

Yakoa raises $4.8M to help detect NFT fraud for platforms and creators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Crypto, crypto ecosystem, funding, NFT, startupNo Comments

Yakoa, an NFT fraud detection startup, has raised $4.8 million to build tools to fight intellectual property fraud in web3, the company exclusively told ZebethMedia. One of the most common attacks Yakoa sees is people making copies of NFTs and claiming them as their own work, Andrew Dworschak, co-founder of the startup, said. Yakoa provides tools and an indexer that detects copies or infringement probabilities on original NFTs, ranging from direct forgery to partial or stylistic forgery, which will then notify platforms, brands or creators of these fraudulent activities. The funding round was led by Collab+Currency, Volt Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital with participation from Data Community Fund, Alliance DAO, Uniswap Labs Ventures, Orange DAO, Time Zero Capital, gmjp, Sunset Ventures and FAST by GETTYLAB, as well as angel investors. The capital will be used to grow its machine learning and data engineering teams internally, according to Graham Robinson, co-founder of Yakoa. The platform identifies an NFT’s first existence across a number of blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon and more. “In terms of blockchains, having every blockchain is on our road map,” Dworschak said. “The belief we have is it doesn’t matter where you mint IP or publish an address, what matters is that it’s publicly verifiable.” Anyone can make “a quick buck off of anyone,” Dworschak noted. “It’s really hard to protect against this stuff ’cause there’s so many assets. In some cases [fraudsters are] photoshopping and cropping or changing colors, when they’re really using someone else’s IP.” “When we’re doing an attribution search, we’re trying to figure out where an asset might be derived from and give as much information as we can,” Dworschak said. “Two assets can be similar and not fraudulent and that’s completely appropriate. There’s a lot of edge cases we need to be aware of and other ones that pop up in a similar vein and some use cases we take on as a platform and give people the chance to record their opinion.” “The entire ecosystem is open and we want to continue to make sure it stays that way,” Robinson said. “We’re trying to create the tools for the industry to use and they can use it in their environment.” The name Yakoa came from the saying, “A-OKAY,” but backward, Dworschak said. “When you’re using the blockchain, you want to make sure it’s ‘A-OKAY,’ so that’s why we named it that.” Today, the NFT market has “already demonstrated a lot of potential,” Dworschak said. “It has created types of assets not bound to a specific platform that allows creators to publish their assets and trade them freely across platforms. It’s a brand new method of commerce and it’ll spill over to what’s unimaginable today.” Long-term, fraud protection will be something that can run in the backend for platforms, Robinson said. “There’s a bunch of services that can start from this IP protection.”

FTX and Avalanche co-led $5M round for Joepegs NFT marketplace • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in Avalanche, blockchain, Crypto, crypto ecosystem, FTX, NFT, NFT market, NFT marketplace, NFTsNo Comments

Although FTX collapsed last week, raises their ventures team contributed to are still being announced. Joepegs, an NFT marketplace on the Avalanche blockchain, raised $5 million in a seed round led by now-defunct FTX Ventures and the Avalanche Foundation, its co-founders who go by the pseudonyms Cryptofish and 0xMurloc, exclusively told ZebethMedia. “The funding from FTX Ventures was completed in June, and have since been transferred out of FTX prior to recent bankruptcy events,” the team said in a statement. The marketplace launched in May and has grown rapidly to the largest NFT marketplace on Avalanche with over $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales and 12,000 users. It also has an in-house production unit, Joe Studios, as well as an NFT Launchpad, which has on boarded over 50 projects to the Avalanche ecosystem, the company said. The co-founders also founded and remain involved in the operations of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange on Avalanche (not to be confused with the American supermarket chain), which launched in early July 2021 and has a total trading volume over $88 billion. “As we started building this, we realized very quickly that in order to deliver a platform that really helps users discover great NFTs we have to invest in a lot more platform capabilities so that’s what the fundraise will go toward,” 0xMurloc said. “On top of that, we also create a lot of content on our end. We did this at the start to fill a need. Marketplaces are only as good as the content in the ecosystem.” Joepegs also invests in the operational side, beyond Avalanche, to partner with different traders, projects and artists “across the ecosystem,” 0xMurloc said. “That is something we do ferociously.” Earlier this year, Avalanche dove further into the NFT space after partnering with the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which now operates on the blockchain alongside other platforms like Joepegs and Kalao. With about $408.2 million in total sales, Avalanche is the seventh-largest blockchain by NFT sales volume, CryptoSlam data shows. “People are focused on what is happening to the greater market,” 0xMurloc said. “Yes, there are less people playing with crypto and the NFT market as a whole right now, but, we do see that the interest from creators, brands and projects to dive deeper into web3 and NFTs – that appetite is not softening.” There are a lot of companies, creators and artists who are “eager to explore this form of commerce and community building,” 0xMurloc added. “We’re very bullish on the future of NFTs and what it could bring,” Cryptofish said. “The idea that you can have clothing backed by NFTs is very bullish. You see that with Azuki with their skateboards and Nike sneakers and we want to be on the forefront of NFT innovation with digital stuff and clothing.” As more alternative NFT products come out, NFT markets will have to adapt to accommodate, Cryptofish added. “Our vision on NFT marketplaces will have to be like Amazon over time. Initially it was a bookstore and now they’ve branched out to sell everything. That’s how I see things going.” In the short term, the team plans to continue driving in-house content and has new collections coming up in the near future, 0xMurloc said. “Longer term, we want to branch into different flavors of NFTs and explore what Fish mentioned, whether it’s fashion, physical merchandise or gaming. We’re excited about what’s to come.”

Yuga Labs’ Nicole Muniz to talk about NFTs and Bored Apes at TC Sessions: Crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Crypto, NFT, NFT marketplace, TC Sessions: Crypto 2022, Yuga LabsNo Comments

As the NFT ecosystem continues to waver, superfans and blue-chip holders are still holding on strong. But how can the digital asset sector reignite growth and appeal to new audiences? The number of NFT sales is down almost 90% from the year-ago date, according to data on NonFungible market tracker. But still, the hype is growing across platforms like Reddit, which saw that millions of crypto wallets were created to mint NFTs or on layer-1 blockchains like Cardano, which hit new all-time highs for NFT volume. NFTs are one of the most talked about topics in crypto, which is why we’re excited to have Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, onstage at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. Earlier this year, Yuga Labs raised $450 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, hitting a $4 billion valuation. The Miami-based NFT startup is the firm behind Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club and that has acquired other popular NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Meebits. It also launched ApeCoin, a token that gathered a multibillion-dollar market cap on its first day of trading that is now around $1.4 billion to date. The company wants to build something that “expands the universe” of Bored Ape Yacht Club but “invites the larger NFT community” in at the same time, ZebethMedia previously reported. With all that said, there will be plenty to talk about with Muniz, ranging from the fine-tuned details of Yuga Labs to where her thoughts are for the broader NFT ecosystem and where things stand. We’d like to hear her thoughts on the challenges and opportunities in the NFT marketplace and what areas she sees as most promising when it comes to scaling the ecosystem. Prior to Yuga Labs, Muniz founded an agency called Something New, which has worked with mega-brands like Nike, Google, EA and Square, to name a few. TC Sessions: Crypto takes place on November 17 in Miami. Save $150 with early bird pricing and buy your pass today, and then join the web3, DeFi and NFT communities to keep up with the ever-evolving and always exciting crypto world.