Nike helped lead the fashion world’s charge into NFT adoption thanks to its 2021 acquisition of crypto startup RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”), and it has done a number of token-gated sneaker drops since. Until now, though, you usually needed to own an expensive NFT to buy the real-world kicks. That’s not the case with Nike’s latest RTFKT collab. On Monday, Nike launched a public presale for its new RTFKT Dunk Genesis sneakers, letting anyone purchase the shoes without owning a RTFKT NFT. The Nike ..read more

As NFT marketplace Blur sets its sights on a so-called Season 3 of rewards for traders, one JPEG flipper walked away with more than $8.4 million worth of airdropped BLUR tokens from Season 2. Factoring in how active the trader was—across NFT bids, listings, and lending activity during its months-long Season 2—Blur awarded the pseudonymous Hanwe's hanwe.eth wallet with 22.85 million BLUR tokens, according to a Dune dashboard. The airdropped tokens were worth around $7.3 million when claimed late ..read more

Crypto degens have found a silver lining to the news that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) plans to step down and plead guilty to violating anti-money-laundering laws: speculating on a freshly launched shitcoin called "CZ." The now ex-CEO, famous for touting “4” on Twitter to calm his millions of followers whenever FUD rears its ugly head, will see his company pay $4.3 billion in fines to the U.S. government. People across the industry are rushing to Twitter to voice their opinions on the mat ..read more

Square Enix, the storied video game publisher behind the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises, is gearing up to launch its first original Ethereum NFT game, Symbiogenesis. And now we know when the first NFT mint will take place. The Symbiogenesis auction process will begin on Monday, November 27 and span three waves for the first batch of NFT-based characters for the game. The first wave will take place on November 27-28, the second wave will follow from November 30 to December 1, and the ..read more

DUST, the native token for NFT collection DeGods, rallied from $0.62 to almost $0.80 today on the heels of a weird and totally unsubstantiated rumor that the new Grand Theft Auto will feature the cryptocurrency.  The rumor has since been shot down, but it was enough to send the token—down over 90% from its all-time high—on a wild ride.  DUST is a utility and governance token, on both Ethereum and Solana, that was initially distributed to DeGods holders through their staking program. Everyone who ..read more

Turn-based NFT monster-battling game Axie Infinity is taking a leap into commercialization of its colorful axolotl-inspired characters, releasing official merchandise and allowing owners of certain Axie NFTs to create and sell their own products. Holders of a select 4,877 Axie NFTs will be able create and monetize their own merch, user-generated content (UGC), and businesses using their Mystic and Origin NFTs, Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis announced Friday. Additional Axie NFT owners may be ..read more

Interest in upcoming Ethereum layer-2 network Blast is bringing lots of cash with it. According to DeFi Llama, total value locked (TVL) in the project now stands at over $405 million just days after the project was announced—and it’s growing fast.  Blast is a new Ethereum scaling network announced on Tuesday. In the crowded market of layer-2 networks (like Arbitrum and Optimism), developers come up with ideas to make it quicker, easier, and cheaper for people to do things on Ethereum’s sometimes ..read more

Recently announced Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Blast, led by the founder of top NFT marketplace Blur, has pulled in over half a billion dollars worth of locked funds from users seeking yield and rewards—but also faced substantial criticism over its rollout. And now early investor Paradigm has joined the list of parties with issues over the launch. On Sunday, Paradigm Head of Research and General Partner Dan Robinson shared a post on X (aka Twitter) that took Blast’s launch to task, attribut ..read more

Magic Eden sees a crypto future that spans multiple blockchains—and is launching its crypto wallet browser extension in closed beta to support that aim, the firm behind the NFT marketplace announced Monday. “We believe in a multi-chain world for NFTs,” Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu told Decrypt in an interview.  “Up until today, for a user to really experience all the different products and features and great content that we have on every chain, they effectively have to download three wa ..read more

Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts maker Square Enix kicked off the first NFT auction Monday for its upcoming game, Symbiogenesis, and said that it will give out free NFTs as gifts to bidders who participate in the process. The publisher also revealed the launch date for the game. According to Square Enix, the browser-based Ethereum and Polygon NFT game Symbiogenesis will launch on December 21. Previously, the storied publisher said that the game would tentatively debut in December, but did not sp ..read more