David: For everybody reading right now, I’m here with Steven Vasilev of RTFKT, and we’re here today to talk about his upcoming avatar project, which I’m very excited to talk about. Steven, how are you doing today, and what should the people expect coming up soon? 

 

Steven: I’m doing good! Well, it’s going to be the next evolution of avatar projects. We’re trying to do everything in our power to take the game into its next stage of evolution in terms of design, quality, and utility. So we’re super excited. We’ve been working very hard the last three or four months on this project. It’s super ambitious, which people will see when we release it, and I’m excited to tell you more of what we’ve been working on. 

 

D: Awesome. So we’ve seen a lot of attempts at avatar projects over the past few months, but I know that you guys always do things differently. How do you feel about the concept of the open metaverse and using multiple solutions for virtual worlds? How are you guys taking advantage of the current platforms that exist in this upcoming activation?

 

S: So we see day by day, the metaverse is evolving. We’re taking the crypto native approach, so we’re working with platforms and games, such as Sandbox and Decentraland, to provide day one utility for the avatars and also other products that we release. We’re actually in talks with big triple-A game publishers to also begin the conversations of moving into this NFT ownership reality. So we’re right at the forefront of what’s possible, and we’re trying to push the limits to create what we envision where these assets become interoperable and can be used in different environments. 

 

D: I love that. So I know you guys have been partners with a lot of these “metaverses,” especially the XR verses that currently exist like Decentraland and Sandbox, for quite some time. For people who are reading who might not be so familiar with the process, walk us through how you guys take advantage of wearables, especially through Decentraland. I’ve been a big fan of the way that you guys operate in the wearable space- but I would love to hear your intro to people who might not be so familiar with XR “verses” and how they can add value to an NFT purchase.

 

S: For sure. So with us, how we approach this is: we release and sell an NFT. We treat NFTs as passports into experiences. For example, with a cyber-sneaker NFT from RTFKT, we have different utilities that we add. So we’re most known for allowing physical redemption of the sneakers. In addition to that, we also airdrop- which is the process of dropping in a free NFT to someone’s wallet- Decentraland and/or Sandbox wearables. So they can express their identity and ownership of that NFT across different worlds. We’re openly and actively exploring as many different possibilities and ecosystems as possible. We did something recently with Avatsars, an avatar company where you can create your own avatar and export it into different games like VR chat. So as more and more publishers and ecosystems open up to the concept of NFTs and ownership, we want to be there to allow holders to showcase their identities or their products in as many different ways as they want. 

 

D: Absolutely- with the metaverse, a lovely conversation that I get to have quite often is how we’re moving past base identity. We can now be whoever and look however we’d like, when we’re expressing our genuine selves. So with this project coming up, what are you excited about in terms of people being able to express themselves differently through these exciting characters?

 

S: Yeah. So we’re huge fans of anime, and we feel like anime spans this culture that we’re in very heavily. Before crypto punks or the current avatar projects, the founders and I, and loads of friends, always had profile pictures of our favourite anime characters. So that was the general gist of why we chose to do an anime project. The second thing we’ve done is that everything’s 3D modelled. So we’ve done over 200 traits, and we calculated that we can generate over a billion unique 3D assets. This is a big task, and if you look at all the leaks we’ve revealed so far, the quality is video game triple-A studio. Chris, our Creative Director, who comes from the video game and skin industry, assembled a team of veteran game designers, and we put a lot of work into polishing every single one of the 200 traits to look good. Another thing that people don’t realize while looking at the avatars is that doing 3D anime is very difficult. A lot of companies fail when making them because anime is known for its 2D style, and we managed to perfect the image where it still looks like a 2D anime character but fully 3D. Having the 3D models for all the traits allows us to plug into metaverses and have the 3D models ready for use. So that’s what we’re experimenting with, and the main goal was to make the best visual-looking avatar project that’s on the market. We all love how they look, and the community reception to the leaks has been insane- so we’re excited about it. 

 

D: One of the most exciting things about your team as a company is the way that you guys advertise by integrating elements of the metaverse into the real world through the power of AR. So I did see your most recent Instagram posts and some of your recent teasers. Again, using the AR filters in real situations, I would love to hear from your perspective how that idea came about and how it’s been so effective for you as a brand for some people who might not be aware.

 

S: For sure. Benoit, the other co-founder of RTFKT, comes from gaming, and he’s been very deep in tech. So has Chris, in terms of AR and LIDAR and new technologies that are becoming sort of mainstream. And for us, since inception, we’ve always been big believers in AR as a technology, especially with the Snapchat lenses that are coming out, Apple’s glasses, etc. And we believe that it will take one big giant like Apple to mainstream either technology. So right now, how we see it is coming from the sneaker industry itself. Sneakers have become tradable assets, similar to why we do NFT sneakers, because the whole process can be simplified. If people buy sneakers, take a picture to post on their Instagram or social media to show that they have that item,  they can then flip it and sell it. So we allow that same function. So if you buy one of our NFTs, and you don’t want the physical item for some reason, you can still create content using AR. We’ve partnered with Snapchat to allow people to have these experiences. So when our new website comes out, it will be clear that owners of the NFTs can access exclusive AR filters to showcase and create content, which is another form of self-expression. We’re big believers in AR, and right now, we’re filming our vision project, which should be coming out by the end of the year, which is our vision of what the future of NFTs and AR is going to look like. So that’s a really big project to keep an eye out for. 

 

D: Before we get deeper into the future of AR and the future of the metaverse, I would love to talk again about this project and how you guys are playing with identity, because you were mentioning the power of these AR filters and how we can use them in the real world. But I also do think that as we create the metaverse through AR, virtually people will really start using wearables, and especially avatar projects, as their identities. So with this upcoming project- do you see people buying these as not just their PFPs, but also as their new identities?

 

S: That’s why we went for the avatar project- because we have seen people, how they create communities, and we experienced it ourselves. When we started the company, we bought punks, and we were welcomed into the punk community- which is an amazing community. And we really liked the concept of people using our punks as identifiers, right? So that was the way we went for our avatars. Our goal is for people to use these avatars as their identities. The brand we’ve created that’s releasing this project has a storyline that’s set in this whole concept of identity and what the future of identity could look like. And we expect, with the utility that we’re planning to integrate into multiple virtual worlds, to also provide the 3D models for our users to download, rig into games, or mod into games- also Vtubing! The models eventually will be rigged so people can use these avatars to Vtube and create their own content or Twitch streams using their virtual identity. So we think that’s a big part. We’re also trying a lot of innovative mechanics in terms of the smart contract and functionalities.

 

D: I recently had a call with Whale Shark, and he definitely does the Vtubing thing- he has this whole custom avatar, and it’s amazing to see what that stage of the future is going to look like. So I’m really excited to see that and what the newest level of unlockable content will look like from RTFKT. You guys have done an amazing job of creating community around successful projects. Like your partnership with the punks, your partnership with apes, etc. So I would love to hear, from your perspective, how those kinds of conversations came about, and how that helped dictate this very identity-driven avatar project. 

 

S: Yeah, so it comes down to the nature of our brand. We’re a creative-led brand, a community-led brand, and an open-source brand. So the way we approach things is for and by the community. An example of this is for the avatar presale; we’re dropping 20,000- so we made 10,000 exclusively available to our NFT holders. So if you own an RTFKT NFT, you can mint up to three for 0.05 ETH, which is about $150 USD; and what that caused was over 14 million in secondary sales, and our floor price went from, I think, 1 ETH  to 7 or 8 ETH now. So we’re generating a lot of wealth for our community- we always put them first. And in regards to partnerships, we’ve been contacted by literally every brand, including many that we aspired to work with. And we have a very strict approach. We, 1. Check if they’re native to our community or represent who we are as creators, 2. Make sure that we will have the creative freedom and control and that we don’t have to go through marketing departments, and 3. We can put our brains together; can we do something that we couldn’t do individually? So why we focus on the crypto community is we believe it’s a very powerful community. It’s a small group of people that together can achieve big things, and they all exist under the same mentality of building this open metaverse and the only way we can achieve such a concept like this is together. So we find it better to collaborate internally within the community and pick exclusive brands or brands that we admire and we think that we can do something big for the community to collaborate with, so that’s sort of our analogy and how we approach the market.

 

D: I love the way that you guys go about it. One other thought- I know you have a deep rooting in anime but I would love to hear if there’s any specific reference point there that you guys come back to in terms of the future? I know you mentioned Ready Player One, but is there any personal reference point for your team of the future that you would like to see? 

 

S: It comes down to the three founders, we all have different films and animes that inspire us and that we bring together like Matrix and Galleon, we sort of combine everything and just create who we believe will fit into what we want the future to be. And why I think it’s really amazing in the NFT spaces, avatar projects have become people’s identities, and a lot of people have gained confidence in not being their real selves. So someone could say I’m the “Wizard of NFTs” and put their picture as a punk, create their own storyline. So we’ve seen, like you said, adults, showing off their childish side, creating these storylines and expressing themselves in new ways. And that’s really deep-rooted in our avatar project. We’ve created a bunch of traits that allow people to showcase different identities. We’ve also made it non-gendered in the sense that you can choose to have a male or female body. We don’t define the sex of the face; they all use the same base head but have features that can differentiate them. So we’re really trying to build something that’s already set in the future and create the norms that we want to see. And I feel like that’s our role in this place, to innovate and test things out and help guide our community and what we’re building into the future we want to create.

 

 

D: That is so excellent. I think it’s the idea of identity and being more transparent about who you really are. It’s interesting because, through an avatar project, it seems like you’d be concealing your identity but often, when we have an avatar on- we’re more authentically ourselves because we’re not worried about being judged by others because we have this intermediary, like a wall being the avatar between your physical self, and your identity online, which I think is really exciting. 

 

I would love to get a message from you, just for the other people who are operating the space, about how important it is to facilitate and even delay projects or work a little bit harder to make sure that they are on-chain and to make sure they are open source. 

 

S: Yeah, I feel like as awareness increases in the space, the importance of on-chain data will be crucial because there are some projects, for example, where they’re not fully on-chain. So that means you could spend $100,000 on an NFT, and then they go one day and change the image to a meme frog, right? So there are these sorts of scenarios. I think a good example of this is from Chris; he comes from the steam industry of game skins, and there was a scenario where someone’s account got locked by steam, and he had millions of dollars of skins in there, and he committed suicide, and that was a horrible thing. And that shows how important it is for you to actually have true ownership where the item can’t be changed if the company goes bust, for example. The servers go offline, and you lose everything. We also saw it with Nifty Gateway. All the NFTs that are held on the platform are in Nifty’s wallet, right? So if something bad happened to the company, if they lost the wallet, your NFTs are gone. 

 

So, ownership is super key, and that’s why we’re seeing such a boom. Decentralization as well is key to the whole industry, and that’s what we keep super native to our brand. All of our advertisers are on-chain, and it’s kind of annoying because we had ideas of interoperability and evolutive items (where the images change), but we chose not to do that just to stay fully decentralized. So I think as time progresses, there will be advancements in terms of how much can be on-chain and how much can be off-chain, because there are some limitations to having everything on-chain.

 

D: It’s always easier via metadata, and it always has been.

 

S: Exactly, I think it depends really on the company as well, that’s interacting with the space and what their goals are because for some artists, maybe having their data on-chain isn’t the most crucial part of the ecosystem or what they’re building. But I do agree that the future is definitely on-chain. People need to own what they pay for, and I feel like that’s what’s so revolutionary about the space, especially the royalties. Having lifetime royalties is a concept familiar to many game-skin designers, but to the majority of the world, they haven’t experienced that. And especially for artists, it’s groundbreaking to be able to profit off the work you’ve created after an event has happened that has caused your work to appreciate in value or your talent is recognized. So I think that’s very crucial.

 

We’d like to thank Steven for taking the time to do this interview. For more information on RTFKT, Steven, and Project Akira, feel free to look through the links below: 

 

Steven’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/zaptio?lang=en

 

RTFKT’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/RTFKTstudios

 

RTFKT’s Discord: https://discord.com/invite/rtfkt

 

Project Akira Teaser: https://twitter.com/RTFKTstudios/status/1442188635101663233

 

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I would not have been overly surprised if you had told me a year ago that I’d be writing an article about Dolce & Gabbana. But if you’d have told me that I would be writing an article about D&G’s first major crypto play, I would have been far more skeptical. However, this is indeed today’s headline, and I have to say they are taking a significant step in the right direction in terms of their integration of web3, the metaverse, and the DeFi community with their latest “Collezione Genesi” FW2021 collection. Presented across three of the top events in Italian Fashion- Alta Moda (the Italian equivalent of Haute Couture week), Alta Sartoria (the premier event for formal wear in Italy), and Alta Gioiellleria (featuring the best of fine jewelry), D&G announced their latest collection and NFT integration, via their first runway show in Venice on the 28th of this past August. 

 

 

WTF Dao member, Jamie Burke, had the opportunity to join the D&G team in Venice to get an exclusive preview of the collection alongside representatives from Polygon  According to Burke, “Having met their head of digital and their CEO- this is not a PR exercise- this is their first step into the metaverse, and they are very committed to it. So, it was interesting that there were some crypto people there, to the Polygon team, to me.” This group of tastemakers was comprised of top-tier representatives from the world of DeFi, placed together at the same table as a ‘genre’ along with other tables representing  Music, Film, Art, and other traditional creative industries. According to Burke, he felt as if his table “represented a new class, a new group of culture makers coming from the technical metaverse perspective.” It’s fantastic to hear that a brand as significant as D&G is properly embracing this new space and the people who make it all happen. 

 

 

This NFT project is a collaboration with UNXD- the latest play into the NFT/Web 3 space from a Conde Nast affiliate. According to the UNXD website, their team believes that “culture is currency, and NFTs have revolutionized the market around digital culture.”  This platform is a logical next step after Conde Nast’s global digital advertising agency CNX launched in 2018. This new organization has brought together some of the leading minds from “the luxury/culture and physical world,” intending to create NFTs that “bring ‘tangibility’ into the NFT space with a mission to “intertwine the digital and physical worlds.”

 

 

According to the COO of UNXD, Nick Gonzalez, “With this collection, Dolce & Gabbana [is] creating NFTs that bridge their creative work from the physical to the metaphysical.” Bringing “the metaphysical” into some of the longest-running mainstay fashion events in the world is, at the very least, provocative. However, the house managed to pull off their genesis collection poignantly and effectively. The collection itself pays homage to the city of Venice, where this season’s shows took place. After D&G’s first NFT offering launched this past June, with a sneaker release in collaboration with basketball player P.J. Tucker, the brand decided to launch itself full force into the metaverse. 

 

Sold using Ethereum, transacted on layer two solution Matic (AKA Polygon), UNXD is helping D&G take a massive step forward into the future. The show and collection are the embodiment of “phygital” AKA “digiphizzy,” AKA whatever you might prefer to call it.  In this web3 world, several big brands are beginning to make their marks in the metaverse, yet D&G has managed to produce a unique series of offerings that go beyond the realm of possibility. 

 

According to our man on the ground, Jamie Burke:

 

“[Dolce & Gabbana] very carefully thought about what can look good both physically and what will render well in gaming engines. I  particularly like the idea because they want the digital version to be experienced in as high-end of a manner as possible. Also, the fact that they let their purchasers, the winners of the auction, have two years to decide which virtual environment they want it realized in, so rather than force somebody to have to put it into Somnium or Decentraland now, where the quality is reduced, they have the option.

 

 

This is quite a step forward compared to other luxury brands attempting to make wearable plays, such as Gucci’s NFT sneakers. It seems as if the UNXD team has successfully taken pages out of the playbooks of other prominent luxury projects in the space. Similar to Damien Hirst and his “Currency” drop on Henny Leviathan, those who buy need to apply to do so.  According to UNXD, “Due to the historic nature of the collection, bidding for Collezione Genesi is open only to approved bidders in crypto or fiat.” This worked quite well for Hirst, who received over 60,000 applications for his 10,000 buyer slots, and will no doubt work well for D&G. Furthermore, similar to Hirst, who gave buyers one year in which to chose to keep the piece as an NFT or claim it as a physical, D&G is giving their buyers two years to decide where they would like their wearables to live. 

 

This is quite progressive and an excellent response to many critics finding issues with compromised quality of most early-stage metaverses.  Without a doubt, numerous metaverse platforms will be created and vastly improved in the coming years.  It will be interesting to see what buyers choose to do with their virtual fashion pieces. On top of the metaverse component, D&G sought to create pieces that existed outside of the confines of reality. In an arguably superior model to Hirst- five of the nine inaugural D&G NFTs will be claimable as both bespoke digital and physical garments. 

 

Furthermore, in addition to being incredible phygital garments wearable in both reality and the metaverse, these NFTs will act as access tokens to what they are calling the “D&G Family.” According to Jamie Burke, “Those who buy will gain access to both physical and virtual experiences; Catwalks, Front Row Seats, and the like.”  

If you are interested in throwing your hat into this high fashion ring, you can apply here to bid. According to UNXD, “Approved bidders will receive customized service including a personalized walkthrough of the collection and help with account setup and bidding.” And, as is the new norm with NFT projects, the buyer experience will not end there.  According to the team, “Winning collectors/hodlers can also be assured there will be more exclusive surprises for them in the future.”

 

Find out more in UNXD’s launch tweet thread here.

Apply to purchase a piece here

And for updates, follow D&G and UNXD on Twitter

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Republic Realm, a metaverse real estate development and investment company, announced the grand opening of Metajuku, a shopping district in the Decentraland metaverse, with DRESSX becoming one of the first digital-only companies to open a store inside the district. In addition to the digital fashion outfits displayed in the store, there are 3 NFT artworks inspired by DRESSX collections dedicated to SpaceX launches and created by the digital artist Hanne Zaruma. 

 

Metajuku is a 16,000 sf (256 m2) project built with a pedestrian-friendly open space at its center. The district is located at the coordinates 94, 21 in Decentraland (and I highly suggest that you check it out). Metajuku takes its roots in Harajuku, a district in Tokyo known as the center of Japanese street fashion.

 

“Real-world shopping malls are sitting half-empty as stores move more business online,” said Janine Yorio, co-head of Republic Real Estate, “meanwhile, elaborate virtual malls are being built in the metaverse, a nascent industry called ‘de-commerce.’” 

 

DressX is the largest fashion store for digital-only collections from well-known brands and 3D designers. Through the use of digital clothing, users can simply layer fashion items on top of photos that they have taken in order to create whole new outfits. As a solution to the negative environmental footprint produced by the fashion industry, DressX was created by Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova in July 2020 as the first-ever platform for digital garments that generate zero waste, carbon footprints, and chemicals during their production. 

 

“We are very excited to create a virtual shopping experience accessible to anyone, anytime, and anywhere in the world. At DressX we see it as our mission to drive the development of the digital fashion industry and provide more opportunities for people to leverage available technologies, immersing themselves into the new virtual reality or connection in social media. The shopping mall built from the ground up in Decentraland and offering digital-only clothes from DressX cosmic collection is our joint next step aimed at merging the traditional fashion experience with the world of tech and innovation.”

Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova, co-founders of DressX.


 

Today, nearly 9% of all fashion is acquired for content creation (Instagram posts, photoshoots and the like), and the fashion industry is considered to be one of the world’s largest polluters. Digital garment production provides the fashion for content with 97% less CO2 emissions. Moreover, virtual real estate does not have the same physical constraints as real-world real estate development, therefore the DRESSX virtual store was designed with zero-gravity features, in which digital clothing is displayed floating in zero-gravity balls in the air. 

 

Although the digital wearables market is still in its infancy, glimmers of its potential are apparent from the video game industry where gamers have paid more than $40 million for wearables in the game Fortnite alone. Digital real estate prices have exploded in recent months. For example, parcel price in Decentraland has doubled over the past two months, from roughly $1800 per parcel to $7,000+ today, which represents a 4x return in just two months. 

 

Republic Realm is a digital real estate NFT investment vehicle that acquires and develops digital real estate NFTs in decentralized, blockchain-based virtual worlds, including Decentraland, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, and other new emerging metaverses. Republic Realm is professionally managed by a cross-disciplinary investment team at Republic from both the cryptocurrency/tokenization and traditional real estate groups. Republic Realm is co-sponsored by Republic, the private investment technology platform with over 1 million worldwide users.

 

 

If you want to see the store for yourself, DRESSX digital collections are now available for purchase in DRESSX virtual flagship store at coordinates 94, 21 in Decentraland.

Or simply via this link.

 

And then follow DRESSX on socals and explore their world further: 

Dressx.com

Instagram: @dressx

Crunchbase: DRESSX

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PRIDE is all about liberty, self-love, acceptance, and expression. We love ourselves a little more when we are rocking an epic garment, as fashion intrinsically ties into our identity. We are now granted liberties that surpass anything that fashion has given before with the availability of digital fashion like the most recent drop by Amber Jae Slooten and her digital fashion house The Fabricant. Slooten, alongside the iconic Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter /superstar Pabllo Vittar, Nicola Formichetti of NicoPanda, and artist Blake Kathryn, is enabling buyers to convey style without leaving a scar on the environment. Their digital garments are never brought into the physical world, forever living in the digital space that newer generations now exist in more than reality. We can now embody a variety of new elements to express our individualities while cleaning up the fashion industry too!

Presented by Nifty Gateway and Playboy, the collection boasts bold rainbow colors, beautiful variance in textures, and cool eye-catching animations. Go check it out for yourself! Although the collection sold out quickly, you can still view it in cool animated form and listen to the futuristic soundtrack. (That’s right musicians — You can now overlay your music into these digital fashions too!) The collection stays true to the unique playfulness we think of when we see people express their PRIDE style. Just like the purveyors of the event are doing by disrupting stigmas and previous social norms, this new form of apparel is shaking up what we once believed about our appearance.

dressx.com

 

Fashion is on the threshold of evolution and the future is looking… Simple. Clean. Sustainable…Yet also vibrant and bold, with a variety of never explored variants. Imagine wearing a simple robe IRL, but on your social media, you’re wearing an ornate gown made of materials previously foreign to the clothing production process.  With digital fashion, we are unconstrained by the same guidelines we’ve had to follow in the past. Unburdened by excess waste, the overhead of brick and mortar storefronts, or shipping logistics. Not to mention the overall pollution caused by the fashion industry (more than almost all other industries btw,) we are free to explore new realms of design. No longer are there rules eliminating certain elements in fashion due to lack of functionality.

While many are just learning about NFTs, Slooten has been utilizing the blockchain since at least 2019 with her release of Iridescence, a breathtaking digital gown that was never stitched or brought into the physical realm, but was still highly regarded and admired in the fashion world. With her ideas and wearables like the ones you can find on DressX, we are liberated to stylize in various ways never explored. DressX is a platform used by several designers and sustainable fashion advocates like Amber, to display their latest digital fashions for sale, alongside several others. The items are available for sale using FIAT currency and can be uploaded directly and superimposed onto the photos of your choice to be “worn.” Slooten is no rookie to this highly sustainable realm, she has actually been creating these designs for years already. “Fashion is a language we speak, it’s something we wear but it communicates in such a big way.” She shared on the TedEx stage, “Now this message of fashion was one I wanted to tell, but I came into school and I could not believe how physical things still were. I had to sew outfits day and night… and I thought why are things so physical, when the digital world permeates our daily life so much?”

Quantrum Boots
Photo Quantum Boots

I recommend giving Dressx a spin if you don’t know what the digital fashion hype is about yet. For now, you upload photos and place outfits accordingly, but with advancements like AR glasses, we could eventually have these adorning our bodies as we walk around, only visible to those with the appropriate eyewear. How cool would it be if our earthly environments were sleek, chic, and minimal until you put on your glasses activating a beautiful digital world full of spice and variety like we’ve never seen thus far. Sounds pretty nice to me, but what are your thoughts? Reach out at our NFTs.WTF Twitter and let us know!

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Pixel Art has taken the NFT world by storm. With crypto punks, rare pizzas, and other avatars popping up as a semblance of identity for many. NFT artists like Maxwell Step and MirruTatep are finding ways to turn them into surprisingly detailed artistic expressions. And then there’s always the sweet nostalgia they represent. I know whenever I see pixel art, I immediately am brought back to a time where my Nintendo 64 was my metaverse. The games were simpler, and yes, pixelated. No matter what reminiscent thoughts come to mind for you, it’s safe to say that pixels are back with a vengeance. Some even feel that pixel art marks the beginning of NFTs- since so many learned about the blockchain via Cryptopunks. 

 So, how can we enjoy our NFTs to the fullest extent? Well, a good start is with displays allowing us to flaunt them IRL as much as possible. The Divoom company gives us the perfect opportunity to peacock our digital artworks with their unique and novel audio/visual devices. The coolest attribute of these products is the colourful pixel art displays shown on the most adorable gadgets. Combining nostalgic charm with classic gamification – the toymakers have given us a super cute way to show off our non-fungible tokens in style. With backpacks, art frames, boom boxes, and a collaboration with Koi Footwear, Divoom could have some big things coming up on the horizon. They even have cool art drawing boards to inspire budding artists.

 

Photos courtesy of divoominternational.com

 

Their newest release is the adorable Divoom-Ditoo. The Ditoo is modeled to resemble a retro computer and the Tivoo and Tivoo-Max both possess a quaint antique TV likeness. To use the Divoom devices to their fullest potential, download the app and unlock a variety of customizable features. With the app, you can choose from a vast catalogue of different art pieces and gifs. You can pixelate your own pictures to display on your devices and have access to a whole pixel art community. 

Bluetooth and Alexa capabilities allow you to play music, podcasts, and anything else you like, including app-accessed radio stations and audiobooks.  Another win is the remarkable battery life, and products can even be synced with your phone’s notification center. When you get a notification the device lights up with a pixelated picture of whatever app the message is on, turning every message into an adorable work of art. With these gadgets, our NFTs will become more functional than ever before! Some even have clap or snap to wake options you can activate for hands-free use. 

Furthermore, you can use sound sensitivity to create visuals on the device that match the music you play with the DJ feature! Choose from a DJ mixer or several different instruments to create your own custom sounds and light shows. I hope our NFT musicians are taking notes! Within the app, there are settings for white noise amongst other sleep aids, and you can set alarms with gentle wake settings for a more comfortable morning. You can also add reminders in the daily planner feature, and even see a pixelated weather forecast. 

Now let’s talk about the game options, with games like Tetris and Magic 8 Ball already installed, you have to wonder what will evolve as NFT and gaming enthusiasts take hold of the tech. A whole line of retro gaming fashion and fun would be a welcome addition to this fast-paced technological age. These tiny pixel portals share a small piece of history and commemorate the novel roots of digital art while ushering in a new era where fashion, tech, and entertainment converge.

 

 

 

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We knew the moment would come when jewelry would enter the NFT space. It was only a matter of time, and that time is upon us, my friends! I just had a lovely conversation with fashion editor turned NFT jewelry connoisseur Francine Ballard aka MetaGolden. After trying to pay an artist in Belarus and failing, she was able to see the immense value of crypto. She realized that the artist had no access to Paypal or even a bank account and was unable to receive funds at all. That’s when she decided to use Instagram to walk them through obtaining their first crypto wallet and paid them in Ethereum! She confesses that even she was new to the crypto space, but had to do something to help.

 “I’m just enamored with this space because there’s so much human potential there.” The mother of two explains, “to me, it’s about empowerment, and it’s empowering people and groups that didn’t have power before. It’s levelling the playing field and making everyone connected to each other.”

The human connection is a beautiful aspect indeed, not to mention the whole “women being badasses with NFTs” tangent I could take us down. Wonderful topics to elaborate on later, but I brought you here today for the BLING. MetaGolden drops on Opensea TODAY and part of their collection is already spoken for by the celebrity friends of artist Ashley Longshore.

Francine Ballard
Francine Ballard

 

Glowing digital art accompanied by its physical counterpart of 18k tangible gold moulded into gorgeous jewelry. On its own, that’s pretty friggin awesome, but don’t drop the mic yet. She announced that she already has “Blockchains” in production. Modelled with a super cool coding design that every tech head will love, and soon to be embedded with a crypto cold storage wallet and NFT display (as soon as I get her a collab with Apple)!! Seriously though… I was thinking about mentioning it to Wiz and his Taylor Gang too since they are interested in NFTs, but I’m bringing it to you all first!! Get these while you can, because the sellout game is as real as the gold they’re made of. When asked about collaborating with Taylor Gang, Francine was delighted at the thought: Hmmm….I think we’re onto something guys… Taylor Tokens on the GangChain? Lol ok, It’s a work in progress, but you catch my drift.

 

Ashley Longshore
Ashley Longshore

 

Back to our girl Francine. She spent years at publications like In Style, so she knows a thing or two about fashion, which is clearly conveyed in her curated designs. She’s no rookie to the jewelry realm either, with exclusive connections to flawless stones and metals. Her business savvy mentality and philanthropic heart are as beautiful as her wearable art, if not more so. I will leave you with this for now, so you can hurry up and go buy yours, but I assure you this won’t be the last you hear of the MetaGolden Legacy.

Metagolden
MetaGolden

 

Code Ring
Code Ring

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