July’s secondary NFT market sales fell to $650 million, a 25% drop from June figures. This is the second month in a row that NFT sales have been below $1 billion!

Also, a Nansen report revealed that over 963,227 ether worth over $2.7 billion has been spent on NFT minting just in the first six months of 2022. Minting occurred across 1.088 million unique wallet addresses on Ethereum during this period. In comparison, about $107 million worth of NFTs were minted on BNB Chain and $77 million for Avalanche. A total of 263,800 unique wallet addresses were involved in NFT minting on the two blockchains.

On Monday, the trading volume of CryptoPunks surged by 1,847% over 24 hours. The surge in interest appears to be tied to luxury jewellery retailer Tiffany & Co. launch of its own NFT collection, which has a special perk for Punk holders!

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Magic Eden, the most popular NFT marketplace on Solana, has announced that it will add support for Ethereum beginning this month. This is in line with its promise to explore multi-chain expansion after fresh VC funding in June.

Unlike with Solana, Magic Eden will aggregate Ethereum NFT listings from other marketplaces, with a representative saying that it would be a "pure aggregator" on Ethereum with "no proprietary listings." That means that listed NFTs won't be held in escrow, which is currently the case for Magic Eden's Solana NFTs.

During the month of August, Magic Eden will begin rolling out Ethereum NFT support across its platform, including its launchpad (used to mint, or create, new NFT projects), its new list tool that lets projects create an “allowlist” of users for NFT mints, and its drop calendar that highlights notable upcoming NFT collectible launches.

In other news,

• ENS Domain Registrations Skyrocketed Last Month, Total Names Created Nears 2 Million. Learn More
• KuCoin crypto exchange debuts USDT-dominated NFT ETF. Read More
• SK Telecom launches NFT marketplace open beta service. Read More
• Binance jumps into NFT ticketing after UEFA League fiasco. Read More
• Pearson Plans To Sell Digital Textbooks as NFTs. Read More
• Canadian taco franchise uses NFTs for customer loyalty program. Read More
• Google AI Turns All 10,000 BAYC NFTs Into Machine-Made Art. Read More

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Playstudios, which owns popular mobile apps like Tetris, is now launching a new blockchain-focused sector, which will use “rewarded play” to leverage blockchain technology and deliver more rewarding experiences to users across its portfolio of games. It also announced a $10 million investment, Future Fund, to back companies building rewarded play options.

“As we enter into the web3 space, we’ve kind of been doing play-to-earn for 10 years, so I’d argue we’re the pioneers in the world of play,” Andrew Pascal, founder and CEO of Playstudios, said to TechCrunch. “We’ve spent a lot of our energy thinking about how to reward players in our games.”

The new division will be built upon the acquisition of blockchain-based loyalty platform for games WonderBlocks, as well as a strategic alliance with blockchain infrastructure gaming developer Forte.

In other news,

• NFT Game Developers Take on Minecraft After Blockchain Ban. Read More
• Dr DisRespect Unveils NFT Game To Mixed Reaction. Read More
• Gaming Startup Skrmiish raises $2.5M for Global Expansion. Read More

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Unified heavyweight champion of the world Oleksandr Usyk has teamed up with leading sports NFT platform Blockasset to launch an NFT collection in a bid to raise over £1.5 million for the people affected by war in his native Ukraine.

Proceeds from more than 2000 pieces of digital artwork, which were designed by world-renowned artist Dosbrak, and intended to provide the Ukrainian people in need with humanitarian aid.

Speaking ahead of his upcoming world title rematch against Anthony Joshua, Usyk said, “I appreciate the opportunity to link up with blockasset, who I regard as the Heavyweight Champions of sports NFTs. I’m a big fan of Dosbrak’s art, and it has been a pleasure to collaborate on this initiative, which I am sure will raise a considerable amount for our foundation.”

Blockasset CEO Paul Evans said, “We’re delighted to be able to help Oleksandr raise funds for the Usyk Foundation through our latest NFT drop. We’re very confident that by bringing blockchain communities together, we can make a substantial contribution”.

In other news,

• Everton and Fancurve offer digital shirt NFTs to wear in the metaverse. Read More
• Global eSports Firm “MegaFans” Launches Its First NFT Collection. Read More
• NFT Tech Teams Up With Sony Hawk-Eye Innovations To Boost Sports NFT. Read More

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Gucci has announced that it is now accepting the BAYC token, ApeCoin, thanks to its partnership with BitPay. The news confirms Gucci will become the first store to accept ApeCoin as payment. Currently, this is only available to US customers in select stores of the luxury brand.

Gucci now has ten cryptocurrencies that it accepts, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and others. This is a huge moment for the native currency of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Elsewhere,

• Tiffany & Co. to launch a new NFT collection priced at 30 ETH a pop. Read More
• Prada’s Timecapsule NFTs grant access to the brand’s Milan fashion show. Read More

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