Dear Bankless Nation,

In this edition, we take a slightly different approach than usual: we provide an overview of NFT projects related to sports, selecting the most well known to try to identify a trend. Sports have been connected with collectibles since the dawn of sporting disciplines. In ancient Greece, it seems there was a market for memorabilia linked to the most successful athletes, whose deeds were portrayed in paintings and pottery. 

There is no sport in which there are no fans and collectors of balls, shirts, shoes, rackets, which are then followed by what we can see as the predecessors of collectible NFTs: adhesive stickers. NFTs are certainly not limited to this. They can become shares of sports teams, contracts for the sale of players, and even financial assets based on performance.

However, before we dive into sports, we present the NFT of one of our favorite creators in BanklessDAO, Nittra, who has made a festive and musical work.

Welcome to Decentralized Arts.

Authors: BanklessDAO Writers Guild (Grendel, Kouros, nonsensetwice)

This is the official newsletter of the BanklessDAO. You are subscribed to this newsletter because you were a Premium Member of the Bankless Newsletter as of May 1, 2021. To unsubscribe, edit your settings here.

Artist of the Week

🧑‍🎨 Artist: Nittra, Music by Ines

🏦 Auction Type: Open Edition

💰 Price: 0.05 ETH

BANKLESSDAO ON RARIBLE

“I can't believe I didn't join the DAO since the first day it was founded. I’ve had incredibly GREAT times with everyone. Since I joined the DAO in August 2021, I’ve been involved in many fun projects, especially the NFT showcase. It was my very beginning in the DAO. I was invited to show off my monsters with the BanklessDAO Showcase. So the WGMI and the Probably Nothing are my first collectables and it was a blast. I went moon with all the support!”

—Nittra.

“I recently joined the crypto community and I was amazed how multicultural and global it is. I have always been a global citizen, but did not have the chance to explore that on a deep level till I joined BanklessDAO and I could be chatting with someone from basically anywhere in the world who shares values and interests and we can work together towards a common goal.

I wanted to express that in the music: the crypto culture reminds me of a start-up environment full of chaos and very high paced. However, working and engaging with people with the option to be totally anonymous is a fascinating evolution of our human behavior and capacity to look beyond race, physical appearance or even gender biases. I wanted to express that so I played with the typical song structure giving a sense of rush, chaos, and anonymity. I tried to avoid putting a cultural label on what Christmas is and just keep it as simple as atmospheric bell sounds that anyone from any culture could relate to. At the same time, I wanted to give a melodic feeling of potential and harmony (autonomous) perspective that we are still finding and paving the way forward. I also feel that electronic music is the perfect match since it is a young, innovative, and futuristic expression of music that is digitally produced and still evolving and growing as the crypto culture is.

I hope you enjoyed the minute of Christmas as much as I enjoyed producing it and working with the amazing artist Nittra and her monster's creation that gave a perfect image to the sound of Christmas.”

—Ines.

bDAO: How has the vision and function of NFTs linked to the art and collectables evolved in this period?

Nittra: It is really hard to get my words together here. I used to think that NFTs are art that you collect like the IRL arts. But it is not anymore. It is a community, it is a ticket, it is everything you can think of. It is the future.

bDAO: What relationship do you see between music and NFT?

Ines: I love the potential of music being owned by fans and artists and all getting royalties which makes it easier access for a lot of artists, and fans can directly support their favorite artists without the layers in between.

bDAO: What does the concept of DAO mean to you and how do you see the relationship between these and NFTs?

Ines: I think the DAO concept is a disruptive innovation moving from centralized organizations to decentralized organizations, which falls back into decentralizing music as well.

Curated NFT News

CryptoPunk sells for a record-breaking $10m in ETH

CryptoPunk #4156 was sold last Thursday for 2.5K ETH ($10.26M) making it the top sale of a Punk ever.

This ape is one of the rarest CryptoPunks since there are only 24 apes in the collection. The vast majority of CryptoPunks are humans, of which there are 9,879, then the non-human categories are zombies (88), apes (24) and aliens (9).

Ledger plans to support NFTs

The hardware maker announced last week that they will implement a new process so people can manage their NFTs directly through the LedgerLive app. The company hasn’t specified when this will be available but to celebrate the development, they are offering the chance to win a CloneX NFT by RTFKT Studios.

Alongside this news, Ledger is launching a debit card called the “Crypto Life Card,” which will allow users to pay with coins like BTC, ETH, USDT, EURT, USDC, XRP, LTC and others. The Visa card will first be available in the UK, France, and Germany in early 2022, and the company is expecting to release the card in the US by the middle of 2022.  You can join the waiting list here.

Ledger @Ledger

Drumroll, please – you asked & we listened. We are thrilled to announce that our Crypto Life card is coming soon! You have a chance to be first in line, so DON'T MISS OUT – refer a friend for a chance to get a free physical card & exclusive access. cl-cards.com/waiting-list/ (1/2)

December 9th 2021

117 Retweets441 Likes

UNICEF to launch a NFT collection

UNICEF is a charity responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to kids worldwide and is commonly known as the United Nations Children's Fund. Early in January the United Nations agency will release an NFT collection to mark their 75th anniversary. The artwork will be done by Nadieh Bremer and will be titled ‘Patchwork Kingdoms.’ All the sales will go towards the different UNICEF projects.

One of these projects, the Giga Initiative, aims to connect every school to the internet so children worldwide have access to this technology.

The Patchwork Kingdom collection is supported by Snowcrash Labs, the Ethereum Foundation, Metagood, and others and it will consist of 1000 pieces.

Sports and NFTs

by Grendel

In this seventeenth issue of Decentralized Arts, we talk about the most interesting Sport-themed NFT projects. NFTs and the sports industry are, in fact, now a consolidated combination, as demonstrated on Statista.

The value of the NFTs traded in 2020 in the sports industry, according to research by Statista of March 2021, amounts to approximately 7.1M USD. A significant fact, which prepared the boom for this market in 2021. In fact, in recent months, several projects related to NFTs and their applications in the sports industry have been born, the most famous of which is attributed to NBA Top Shot. Analyzing the sales of 2021 NFTs on Top Shot, as of April, amounted to 82.3M dollars, for a total of 1.26 million transactions made.

In recent years, athletes, clubs, and federations have created innovative projects in the NFT world: from NBA Top Shot to Sorare, passing through the NFT collections released on the market by athletes such as Alphonso Davies and Andy Murray.

Recently, Juventus put up for sale a 3D and high definition representation of the new home kit for the 2021/22 season, purchased at auction for around $30,000.

In Spain, Valencia has chosen $VCF as their main sponsor, the club's Fan Token which launched on the market in collaboration with Socios.com and distributed on the Chilliz blockchain. It is the first time that a football team has been sponsored by a digital Token intended for interaction with fans. This is an important choice, as fans are now linked to the decision-making dynamics of the clubs. The dedicated space on the first team uniform gives even more recognition to the fan-centric project and at the same time guarantees the club a significant increase in Brand Awareness. The team in question will also be increasingly recognizable in the eyes of international fans and the communities will also expand to those digital users who, not necessarily football fans, will instantly associate the club with the sponsor platform.

The choice to turn to digital sponsors therefore allows clubs to align their offline strategies with those online and strengthen their bond with the community. It’s an omni-channel approach that guarantees the maximization of revenue, thanks to the direct relationship with fans. Activations related to Fan Engagement are destined to spread rapidly among all European teams and beyond.

These examples demonstrate how gamification is a fundamental component of fan engagement in the sports industry. The digital evolution of sports requires channeling the attention of fans into dedicated apps, to create increasingly vertical communities based on their interest and passions. Through quizzes, polls, voting, and competitions, the individual fan is continuously encouraged to interact to have access to dedicated rewards and acquire a privileged condition compared to the rest of the fanbase.

NBA Top Shot, a project by Dapper Labs in partnership with the NBA, is a crypto collectibles platform that uses blockchain technology to allow users to purchase NFT moments: highlights of basketball games. These moments can be collected or sold on a secondary market within NBA Top Shot. Each NFT user can see the game details, the players' box score and their seasonal averages, like on a collector's card. NFTs can be purchased in packs. Each package has a different cost and contains a limited number of moments. The NFTs contain an enormous amount of data that reflect the preferences of the individual fan in their purchase process and/or participation in a competition. This is precious data that allows the company to update its proposals, personalizing them according to the needs of the fan/member. A direct and effective way to build loyalty in the community.

And then there’s Sorare, an online fantasy football game based on a web interface in a cryptographic key. Just like in fantasy football, the focus is on building the ideal line-up for each match. To do this, you must choose the players and take into account the respective statistics achieved on the pitch, which are then translated into game points. Sorare has more than one hundred international teams from the various world championships as authorized partners. There are several leagues, including a rookie league for newcomers, regional leagues and others exclusively for formations. At the end of each week, game points are counted based on the performance of all real-world players. Sorare users who have achieved the most points will be able to win amounts of cryptocurrencies and rare cards as a reward for their skill.

In this ever-expanding market, while the first sports around which NFT projects have been created are basketball and football, the world of NFTs will quickly involve other disciplines as well.

In 2021 the general manager of the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, the Formula 1 circuit, announced the marketing of the first NFT of the circuit. All the fans who registered on the marketplace over the weekend of the Italian Grand Prix received the NFT of the cup given to the winner, created by the Milanese artist Miranda Biondi. The Autodrome also wants to digitize and sell track records, "Speed Record Collection," and physical experiences.

A few weeks ago, the news came that the NFL and NFLPA are finalizing a deal with Dapper Labs for an NFT marketplace: NFL All Day. NFL All Day will use the Dapper Labs Flow blockchain just like Top Shot, with Moments trading and showcasing on the All Day platform. NFL All Day isn't ready for launch yet, but the website hosting its waitlist has been updated. The deal stimulates fan engagement by allowing digital videos to be collected from Moments of the season's best plays using blockchain technology from Dapper Labs. All-new digital collectible videos will give NFL fans the opportunity to collect and own NFTs featuring some of the best and most talked about gameplay moments from top players from week to week throughout the season, including current superstars and game legends. Plus, fans will have the chance to collect some of the greatest plays in NFL history.

We know that in crypto, and especially with NFTs, you never get bored, and the union between sports and NFTs underlies this even more.

But we are only at the beginning. In the near future, almost all sports will certainly launch their NFT collections, followed by the NFTs of the most famous sports video games.

Anamorphosis-13 Moderately Extreme

by G. Contro

There is no doubt that the art form most widely and effectively invested in the digitization of the world is pornography. No expression of the human imagination has managed to make use of such a widespread diffusion, of such an epidemic, stratified and multidimensional reproducibility, as a result of a simple technological revolution—except, perhaps, the German Bible of Gutenberg.

To those of you who—perhaps rightly—raise their eyebrows when hearing such an object defined as an "art form," we can only offer a quick historical insight provided by the highly refined professor Pietro Adamo, a scholar of political philosophy, seventeenth-century esotericism, psychopharmacology and counterculture, as well as—by his own admission—a militant pornophile:

“During the sixteenth century, when the demands of the religious struggle (which soon becomes cultural and social) are combined with the new structures of the modern state, an equally unprecedented bureaucratic control of behaviors and consciences becomes possible, which is found in the control of sexuality and in the construction of a repressive and self-depressive imaginary one of its most exemplary paradigms .”

On these bases—but only in the long term—that aesthetic will be built which today seems to synthesize the only defining element of the elusive pornographic act/creation:

"The category requires (...) a sense of contrast with the existing, an attitude of challenge, almost the awareness of a profanation. Writing about sex, sexual organs, holes and batons, or painting or sculpting such organs, even in action, does not imply pornography if these operations are carried out in continuity with the existing."

The mystery of this longed-for discontinuity, which lurks in vile things, dispersed in the schizoid multiverse of our many moralities, hidden to be more visible—just like bodies wrapped in latex—and silenced to finally be talking, as victims/executioners of a bondage game, it is the same one who agitates in the inquisitorial hallucinations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the eternal anti-Semitic rantings, in the accusations addressed to the Templars by Philip IV of France, and in the indignant words that the Byzantine Michael Psello addressed to the Bogomil heretics, echoing in turn in the De occulta philosophia by Cornelio Agrippa, at the roots of modern magical hermeticism.

It is a landscape of horrors and grotesque pleasures, mactorum chorea circense, improbable and necessary, which snaps with pleasure on the tongue of the rigid censor: a panorama of orgies, cannibals piled up and anatomically enigmatic enjoyments, seasoned with infantile blood and abnormal priapism.

One wonders—in this perspective—why the Lutherans of Geneva, who in 1535 removed the arm of Saint Anthony from his reliquary, considered it necessary to label it contemptuously as a mummified deer penis. The living or stunned forms of sexuality slip like slime between the fingers of a decerebro/influencer every time you try to brutalize something by means of language, and the pious iconoclast rejoices in evoking them like the child who says "poop" aloud.

Art deals with and feeds on this material, fluid and painful like molten wax, even if it sublimates its substance in a sophisticated self-illusion. "As soon as you have sexual arousal with the intention of annoying the sexual sensation, humiliating it or degrading it, the pornographic element enters," sang D. H. Lawrence in 1929, in a world so different and so terribly isomorphic to ours.

Today pornography, which is perhaps nothing more than a banal metaphor of art, is no longer an object of indignation, nor of any place in aesthetic geopolitics, nor, on closer inspection, of true enjoyment—technology has taken it with itself and has made it a gallery of business possibilities. Some called it repressive desublimation, but those were other times.

Bankless DAO NFT Updates

💰 Last week’s weekly showcase numbers

Artist Andre O'Shea made a total of 0.6 ETH in sales with the NFTs “The Hodler”.

BanklessDAO 🏴 @banklessDAO

Last chance to collect The Holder before all ramaining copies are burnt!! 🔥 Get it here rarible.com/banklessdao

December 9th 2021

2 Retweets9 Likes

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