Morning Minute | Curate-to-Earn Is Here

TylerD's Market Summary

The next major trend in digital art is here, where collectors can get paid by highlighting their favorite artists. Find out more, plus catch up on the launch of Web3's newest super app!

🖼 Curate-to-Earn Arrives

It's no secret the digital art world is facing challenges.

With declining art sales and increasing complexity in the ecosystem (new marketplaces springing up by the week), there's a need for a solution that addresses authenticity, discovery, and curation.

Enter Rare Protocol and its Curation Staking mechanism.

And hey, collectors can make some extra money by participating (much needed in this bear).

What Happened

SuperRare has announced Curation Staking, where users can vouch for their favorite artists by staking $RARE with them.

The Purpose of Curation Staking is allowing users to verify the appeal and authenticity of an NFT or creator (their sign of approval) by staking $RARE

Its primary benefit is that it creates a data stream that showcases the value, reputation, and preferences of an individual collector, which can be aggregated across the entire collector base.

Here's How It Works

There are two major components of Curation Staking:

• Community Pools: By staking $RARE on artists or collectors, participants join a supportive community pool. As artists make sales on integrated platforms, the community pool and its members are rewarded.
• Curated Lists: These are transparent ledgers of artists a user has supported. They aid in identifying similar tastes and preferences, streamlining the discovery process within the ecosystem.

To get started, all one needs is $RARE.

You can stake any amount of $RARE on any artist with an ETH address, which admits you into the Community Pool.

When artists make sales, their stakers earn rewards - and the more $RARE staked and the earlier it was staked, the more you can earn (incentivizing being early and discovering hidden gems).

Within a few days of staking, this was the top 10 list of artists by $RARE staked:

• XCOPY
• Botto
• VanArman
• Matt Kane
• Sam Spratt
• DieWithMostLikes
• Coldie
• Claire Silver
• Bryan Brinkman
• Basileus

Curated Lists then become your way to show the world who you like and support - and perhaps who newcomers should look at when they arrive on the scene.

Why It Matters

Collectors are being empowered (and incentivized) to do their part in onboarding the next wave to the digital art world.

As more and more artists enter the scene, and AI leads to an explosion in creation - curation becomes more important than ever.

How will newcomers to the space know where to look? Where should they start?

Curation Staking solves this.

Other platforms, like Foundation, have made similar announcements as of late (i.e. their Moments and Worlds news) that are empowering collectors to curate and showcase.

There are downsides and risks to this of course, one major being the "popularity contest" risk as well as the degree of control that $RARE whales will have.

But any new system will come with risks, and whales have always controlled the narrative of the top-end art market to a degree.

💻 The New Web3 Super App

Crypto apps and UI have been notoriously bad for years, and big hurdles for broader adoption.

Well Paraspace is looking to fix that with their launch of ParaX, merging Parallel Finance and ParaSpace into one.

The merge is said to combine the best of both worlds: account abstraction and zkVM from Parallel Finance, along with ParaSpace's renowned interface and user-centric design. They also bring together $250M in TVL.

Oh, and itt's a major step towards a chain-agnostic future.

What Happened?

ParaX is a "Web3 super app powered by account abstraction and zkVM."

So what does that mean?

They've created a new user interface (their MUI) that lets users interact with all of their favorite apps directly from a single dashboard.

All your favorite NFT & DeFi apps (OpenSea, Uniswap, Aave) in one single place.

And even better - users won’t need to know what chain they’re on.

Paraspace's "Multi-chain Account Abstraction" (MAA) works behind the scenes so that users can have a single identity, which can be authenticated and authorized across multiple applications and platforms.

Kind of like a multi-chain single-sign-on.

They're rolling out several other features as a part of this super app, including:

• one-click batch transactions
• an Omni-chain yield optimizer, with ability to move funds easily from one protocol (and chain) to another
• omni-chain lending, aggregating collateral across chains
• mutli-underwriting model, enabling borrowing against any onchain collateral on a ris curve

All powered by their "state-of-the-art" zkVM infrastructure called ParaVM.

To get started, users will need to migrate to ParaX's new independent wallet which is powered by account abstraction.

The team has put together a migration flow to guide users, and while acknowledging their will be gas fees to migrate (they estimate $50-$200), they're incentivizing migraters with their ParaX Medal NFTs.

There is also a points system put in place, tracking historical and new activity.

Why It Matters

This is a major step forward for web3 UI and infrastructure.

Composable building blocks like zkVM and account abstraction are being tied together, and new apps are being built on top.

All with better UI and one-stop-shop functionality.

Imagine being able to go to one app and perform all of your typical daily/weekly crypto transactions across DeFi, NFTs and blockchains - all in one spot.

We are moving towards better usability and a chain-agnostic future. And I'm all for it.

Find out all the details, along with the NFT they're dropping for migrators, in their announcement thread.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• Trading volume notched up to 6,500 ETH on Thursday; NFTs saw a mix of red and green after Wednesday's big pump
• The Monument Game has officially come to an end, as Sam Spratt named the 3 winners Ben Skaar, Garey Simpson and Summer Wagner; interestingly, Garey purchased the winning Player ticket on secondary (and didn't write the Observation), meaning the winning writer sold their winning ticket (valued at 90 ETH)
• While Sam acknowledged the game had ended, he did leave it open for more to come in his "thank you" note to players stating "The Monument Game of the Summer is about to be over. But as seasons change, this fertile ground becomes ripe for the return."
• Refik Anadol announced "Machine Hallucinations: Sphere," a new work that will be prominently displayed on The Sphere in Las Vegas (Winds of Yawanawa pumped 13% to 7.5 ETH)
• Terrell Jones Terrell Jones announced the date for the next Born 2 Die burn event as Sept 9
• Pudgy Penguins announced an Asia tour coming Sept 11-15, covering Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• The crypto market fell on the day; BTC -5% at $26,000; ETH -4% at $1,640
• The SEC delayed all 6 of the Bitcoin spot ETF applications, including those from BlackRock and Fidelity
• The New York court which dismissed the class action lawuit against Uniswap also classified Ether as a commodity in her opinion on the ruling
• Fidelity (3rd largest asset firm with $4.2T in AUM) released an investment thesis paper for Ethereum

🚀 NFT Total Volume

• MAYC (682 ETH, 5.5 ETH Floor)
• DeGods (644 ETH, 4.54 ETH)
• BAYC (485 ETH, 27.99 ETH)
• Clone X (270 ETH, 1.42 ETH)
• Pudgy Penguins (194 ETH, 4.1 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

• Metal Tools Access Pass (86%, 2.79 ETH Floor)
• Apes Together Strong (29%, 0.74 ETH)
• Checks - VV Edition (22%, 0.5 ETH)
• Pudgy Rogs (16%, 0.31 ETH)
• Winds of Yawanawa (13%, 7.49 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a very slow day of drops in what's likely going to be a quiet holiday weekend.

The highlight is likely the charity auction from Trevor Jones honoring Alotta Money. Trevor is collaborating with MakersPlace for a charity exhibition featuring 30 curated artists including Pak, Jose Delbo, Bryan Brinkman, Hackatao, and more (proceeds going to Maggie's).

If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Trevor Jones x MakersPlace x Alotta Money - Charity Exhibit and Auction (Sept 2)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.

For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.

For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.