Google Plays Nice With NFTs, Starbucks Puts Ex-MLB Star’s NFT Project on Deck

This week, Google made an enormous shift of their coverage in direction of NFTs, permitting apps within the Google Play retailer to incorporate the power to purchase, promote or earn tokenized belongings. In the meantime, Starbucks Odyssey, the model’s Web3 loyalty program, introduced their subsequent Stamp could be “designed by Aku,” the NFT character launched by former LA Dodgers player-turned-artist Micah Johnson.

In different information, Snoop Doog and a16z-backed decentralized music enterprise Sound introduced a $20 million funding spherical and we received one other “phygital” sneaker drop.

This Week’s Alpha

Google will allow you to play with Web3: Google made an enormous announcement this week, doing a 180 on in-game tokenized belongings reminiscent of NFTs and permitting Play Retailer apps to incorporate the power to purchase, promote and earn digital belongings. Builders who incorporate blockchain-based parts are required make it clear on their Play Retailer web page and ensure they don’t run afoul of Google’s playing and contests insurance policies.

Good sport: Immutable Labs’ co-founder Robbie Ferguson declared it an “huge step for readability for cellular devs, and mainstream adoption,” in a Twitter thread.

Mining apps nonetheless a no-go: In a much less shiny notice, crypto mining apps will stay banned for the foreseeable future.

Starbucks brews up subsequent NFT journey: The espresso big’s Web3 loyalty program Odyssey revealed its subsequent digital collectible could be “designed by Aku,” a personality created by former Main League Baseball participant Micah Johnson. The Aku assortment facilities round empowering younger children to dream massive. As a part of the discharge, Starbucks will donate $100,000 to Blessings in a Backpack, a non-profit tackling meals insecurity amongst youngsters.

Turning up the amount: In June, tweets from Beats by Dre and AkuDreams teased a collab with Aku-themed headphones however no particulars have been revealed about when these Beats are dropping.

From residence plate to outer house: Micah Johnson spoke to CoinDesk final 12 months about his journey from the LA Dodgers to a profitable profession as an NFT artist and creator and the way he’s making an attempt to “mix the bodily and digital world” with Aku.

$20M sounds good: Can creators make a sustainable residing by promoting their creations to followers by way of decentralized platforms? Snoop Dogg and a16z are betting sure, backing a $20 million funding spherical for Sound, a platform that permits artists to mint their songs on-chain as NFTs and has already helped music creators generate $5.5 million.Hip-hop drops make noise: Celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop are choosing up, with a collab between Puma, Roc Nation and Reliable to launch a “Mixtape” of “Phygital” sneakers at present that unlock unique digital music content material.

Challenge within the information

Chromie SquigglesWho: Snowfro aka Erick CalderonWhat: The long-lasting, colourful Chromie Squiggle NFTs have been the genesis assortment for generative artwork NFT platform Artwork Blocks in November 2020. The preliminary mint of the NFTs that resemble rainbow doodles have been priced at simply 0.035 ETH (about $23 on the time) and as of writing have a flooring worth of simply over 10 ETH, or practically $20,000. After the preliminary mint of 9,040 NFTs, the remaining NFTs within the 10,000 assortment are minted by Calderon at his discretion.Why: This week, Calderon revealed he could be minting 81 extra NFTs on Twitter, however then upset hopeful patrons by informing readers that none could be on the market. As an alternative, Calderon defined he had earmarked each one of many beneficial NFTs for individuals and organizations that had supported him and Artwork Blocks over time. We talked with Calderon to study extra concerning the causes behind his newest mint and who was getting a Squiggle.

In Different Information

Enter the Slurpeeverse: Comfort retailer 7-Eleven prolonged their annual celebration of the date that shares its identify to Web3 with free Slurpee NFTs. Now followers of the super-sweet frozen drink can get mind freeze within the metaverse, I suppose?Seedphrase indicators with WME: The self-described “No. 1 CryptoPunk” introduced he was going to be repped by powerhouse expertise company WME to “increase the Seedphrase model by way of partnerships in luxurious trend, music and digital artwork.”Get a Banksy mortgage: NFT challenge Particle, which fractionalizes artwork within the type of NFTs, is loaning out its Banksy portray, “Love is within the Air,” to museums everywhere in the world. The co-owners of the piece voted to approve the transfer.

Non-Fungible Toolkit

What Is ActivityPub?

On July 6, Meta launched their Twitter-alternative, Threads, and it’s already handily handed 100 million downloads. One of many attention-grabbing guarantees of the brand new app is that it’ll help ActivityPub, a decentralized social media protocol, which implies customers will be capable to work together with different platforms within the so-called fediverse like Mastodon and vice versa.

So what’s the ActivityPub Protocol and what’s the fediverse? Right here’s what you must know.