NFT

Amidst This Bear Market, We Need NFTs to Promote Positivity

Published

6 days ago

June 21, 2022

The NFT community could use a break. Forces outside the ecosystem have done their part in fostering a less-than-optimistic disposition among collectors and developers. Cryptocurrencies have lost value as Web3 endeavors trudge their way through a bear market, venture capital firms are pumping the brakes on their investments, and media outlets seemingly can’t get enough of exaggerating the potential for all things doom-and-gloom for blockchain-based economies.

The tone of the discussions taking place within the community isn’t doing its members a service, either. Things like roadmaps and utility have their place, but relentlessly and impertinently demanding these things from artists and developers in a community’s Discord is an exhausting position to inhabit.

The point is that it’s all a bit heavy, and the NFT community is experiencing a mental health crisis as a result. Without ignoring the very real difficulties the NFT world faces, it can easily be said that the community could use good reasons to feel more positivity and optimism in its ranks. Gladly, there are entire projects whose sole aim is to inject some much-needed levity and joy into that community.

Creating positivity in NFTs with Seeds of Happiness

Seeds of Happiness (SOH), a collaborative effort between film producer Maurice Fadida, artist Jimmy Paintz, and Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs is one such endeavor.

SOH’s mission statement feels like a refreshing antidote to the grey cloud of the bear market, explaining that the project aims to “inspire a movement of happiness through art and create a chain reaction of positivity through acts of kindness, charitable giving, and smiles.”

Built on the Flow blockchain and founded by Maurice Fadida, the artist behind the project’s NFTs is Jimmy Pierce (better known as Jimmy Paintz), a renowned LA-based contemporary street artist whose work is characterized by an aesthetic of bright and wild splatters of color reminiscent of Jackson Pollock.

To make the NFTs for SOH, Pierce is individually hand-painting 8,888 physical paper smiles in his unique style. The collection of these smiles is currently being prepared in an undisclosed warehouse. Once all the pieces have been finished, they will be digitized by the SOH team and minted on the Flow blockchain to be made available for purchase. They will then be “planted” out in real-world locations to spread the message of positivity to as many people as possible. The allow-list for the project opened June 20, and the pre-mint for the allow-list as well as the public mint will be announced at a later date.

dsc0475100xx2848-2848-720-0.jpg - Urban Moolah — Jimmy Paintz. Credit: Seeds of Happiness

“The smile has a different meaning for everybody, it’s what’s behind the smile that really matters, and these seeds that we’re planting out in the world represent the happiness we want to share with others,” explained Pierce in a press release.

As far as utility is concerned, collectors will be privy to exclusive in-person events (like quarterly happy hour meet-ups) and be given allow-list access for future drops. Special benefits will be conferred to the project’s top 22 collectors, including access to 22 custom 1 of 1 Jimmy Paintz physical pieces and a party with the artist himself. Collectors will also have the chance to claim the physical twin of their NFT or donate it to charity. Any unclaimed physical pieces will be donated to a charity or cause of SOH’s choosing.

manduu-birmingham100xx3024-3024-0-0.png - Urban Moolah — Jimmy Paintz. Credit: Seeds of Happiness

Roham Gharegozlou, the founder of Dapper Labs and a supporter of the SOH project added in the press release that “NFTs have created new frameworks for idea sharing, creative economies, and global connection. Seeds of Happiness was designed to harness the power of this connection to make real-world impacts both on-chain and off.”

Those real-world impacts are sorely needed, and the charitable work the project aims to engage in is a great way to go about doing that.

“We believe there is infinite happiness and love in the world and we want to tap into it,” explained founder Maurice Fadida in the press release. “These smiles serve as a reminder for people to focus on happiness.”

Even in the midst of a bear market, such evergreen advice is welcome.

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DeviantArt Emerges to Defend the Copyright of Everyday Artists

Published

13 hours ago

June 26, 2022

Urban Moolah

As the world of NFTs has evolved at breakneck speed, so has the number of bad actors that inhabit it increased. Therefore, reports come in thick and fast of artworks being wrongly appropriated with the aim of making a quick buck.

To combat this injustice, huge user-generated art repository, DeviantArt, built its own safeguard. A self-governing protocol that indexes NFTs over nine different blockchains, then checks them against its own platform. Through this project, it indexed over 400 million artworks, identifying 300k copyright infringements.

Realizing these previous efforts didn’t go far enough, DeviantArt has now developed a new system. Essentially, a set of decentralized checks and balances to combat the rising tide of decentralized art theft. So, at great cost to the company, DeviantArt has built the ‘Protect Protocol’. A fine and absolutely free to use web wide tool for anyone to use regardless of DeviantArt status, all with the singular goal of protecting artists and creators from the bad actor scourge. Once spotted, the team will aid the artist in the takedown, and have the NFT purged from the marketplaces on which it resides.

In a world where money rules, DeviantArt has taken a hit to protect the everyday artist. Hats off to them, and everyone involved!

Visit the Protect Protocol >> Here

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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas are from the personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended as educational material only. Individuals are required to fully research any product prior to making any kind of investment.

Decentralised human, Explorer, Adventurer.

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NFT

CryptoArt Sundays: Interview with VISBII

Published

16 hours ago

June 26, 2022

Urban Moolah

Welcome to CryptoArt Sundays! This week we are SO excited to be featuring a phenomenal illustrator and extremely talented artist. Meet VISBII, part of the socially conscious NFT project The Humanians and master of exaggerated characters, abstract compositions, and organic textures.

It’s no surprise VISBII’s client list spans from the Wall Street Journal to Women’s Wear Daily. Her refreshing style of art draws you right in. There is something exciting, bubbly, and quirky in the way she blends colors and portrays larger than life characters through her illustrations.

For aspiring creatives, we also highly recommend to check our VISBII’s website and blog where she shares some really useful tips on how to move past creative blocks, manage being a freelance illustrator, and more.

Now let’s dive in and find out more about VISBII’s NFT art journey, The Humanians project, and her breathtaking illustrations!

How did you find out about the NFT space, and what attracted you to create your own NFTs?

I actually didn’t know too much about NFTs apart from a few of my artist friends launching their own collections. When Odd One Out Labs approached me about their idea though, I couldn’t say no. I immediately fell in love with the concept, the team, and the giving back aspect of it all. It’s been such an incredible learning experience so far and it’s been so interesting to see how blockchain and web3 is applicable to all of our lives.

What is your creative process?

My process always starts with ideas in a notebook. For this project in particular, since we added an insane amount of traits, the team and I filled about ten notebook pages with random ideas to pull from before rough sketching. Once we had an idea of how the Humanians could look, I went straight to Photoshop and we created three main characters, gave them unique personalities, picked out traits, and I basically didn’t leave my studio for the next three months.

You recently launched a very successful NFT project The Humanians, can you tell us more about it and the inspiration behind it.

The inspiration was to bring a sense of humanity to the NFT space via a socially conscious collection bridging art and utility, while bringing awareness to the growing mental health issue in our society today.

The world of Humania was conceived to be an active force in both assisting and bringing awareness to the lack of human diversity and the unrealistic self image expectations perpetuated by modern and social media.

The media and entertainment industry has portrayed unrealistic goals and opinions of what it means to be beautiful and acceptable. With The Humanians’ simple agenda of an, “inclusive celebration of humanity”, we highlight the awesomeness of all people helping to end prejudice, alienation and insecurities. The Humanians’ celebrate anybody and everybody, everywhere – all judgement aside.

What’s next for the project and how has your experience been with building a community around it?

For now we are heavily into planning the staking marketplace launch which will be end of June 2022. As for art I am also planning a PFP collection which we will be releasing in the next couple of months.

My experience with the community has been incredibly uplifting! The founders, and myself, have been on weekly AMAs with our members, I love jumping into the Discord group to see what everyone is up to, and we also have a mental health therapist, Ouma, who is extremely active in the group! It’s an amazing community!

Are there any CryptoArtists you would love to collaborate with?

I have a few favorites for sure. I’m a huge fan of Deekay Motion and his Let’s Walk collection. WD Willy of Karafuru is also a master of his craft and I’ve always really liked the World of Women collection.

What are you currently working on?

I’ve got my hands in several upcoming projects currently (that I can’t reveal just yet) and we’re working very hard behind the scenes on what’s next for The Humanians!

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Ivelina is the Content Maestro of NFT Plazas. She has a knack for putting complex concepts into simple words.

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NFT

Beginner’s Guide: How to Set Up a MetaMask Wallet

Published

17 hours ago

June 26, 2022

Urban Moolah

Crypto wallets are digital wallets that serve to store digital assets and enable the transaction of these assets on the blockchain network. It is the only form of wallet compatible with the blockchain ecosystem. Crypto wallets can either be hot wallets or cold wallets.

A hot wallet is an online wallet, i.e., it is connected to the internet permanently. It can be custodial or non-custodial.
A cold wallet is an offline wallet. It is not connected to the internet except when there’s a need to transfer assets from or to it. It is a hardware wallet.

What is a MetaMask Wallet?

The MetaMask wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet developed to store and trade NFTs, fungible tokens, and DApps. This digital hot wallet was developed by ConsenSys to store and trade Ethereum-based tokens like OMG, BNT, ETH, and NFTs, to mention but a few.

MetaMask is exclusive to tokens built on Ethereum alone which means it can’t store other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, unless it is wrapped. The MetaMask wallet is available on browsers as an extension and on mobile devices as a mobile app.

How to Set Up a MetaMask Wallet on a Browser Extension

A browser extension is a modest software component that adds some features and also raises the bar of how a browser functions, i.e., it extends the browser’s functionality.

The MetaMask browser extension offers the functionality of the MetaMask wallet on web browsers. Since MetaMask can’t be installed on desktop computers and PCs, its alternative is the browser extension. The MetaMask browser extension is only compatible with Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Firefox browsers.

The following steps outline how to set up the MetaMask browser extension using Chrome.

Open your Chrome browser and type “MetaMask Chrome extension” in the search field, or go to the Chrome web store extension and search for MetaMask.
Ensure you download the certified extension, which has a tick and the web address of MetaMask; all in blue colour.
Click on MetaMask download button, and a page will load up showing the number of downloads and users.

Click on the blue icon that reads “Add to Chrome”. A small page will pop up revealing what you can do with the extension.

Click on the “Add extension” icon on the pop up page and wait for it to download. Downloading shouldn’t take more than a minute.
Immediately after downloading, it loads up and displays the welcome page.

Click on the “Get started” icon, and another page will load up where you’ll be asked to either import your old wallet or create a new wallet.

Click on the “Create a new wallet” icon to create a new wallet. It takes you to another page where you first set up your wallet password; a strong password should be alphanumeric.

Tick the small rectangular box to agree that you’ve read and agreed to the “Terms of Use”. Then click on the blue icon that reads “Create”.
Next is to get your Secret Recovery Phrase which shows on the next page.

Click on the black field with a padlock to reveal your secret phrase. Copy it somewhere taking note of the arrangement. Then click on the “Next” icon.
Another page will load up and you’ll be asked to confirm your recovery phrase by clicking on the correct array of words from the options provided beneath the empty field.
After successfully confirming the arrangement of the recovery phrase, click on the “Complete” icon.
Then a congratulations page will come up. Click on “All Done” and your wallet is ready.

However, the steps are slightly different if you already have a wallet you want to import.

Click on the “Import Wallet” icon and agree to the terms on the page that follows.
Then you input your secret recovery phrase and your new password on the page that comes up. Ensure you agree to the “Terms of Use” before clicking on “Import”.
Allow it to load up for a few seconds before bringing up the “congratulatory message”.
Then click on the “All Done” icon and your wallet will come up after loading for a few seconds.

How to Set Up MetaMask Wallet on a Mobile Phone

To set up a MetaMask wallet on Android phones, the first step is to download the mobile application from the Google play store, which will be automatically installed after completing the download process.
Next is to search for the app icon on your phone and click on it. Wait for some seconds for it to load up with the welcome page that welcomes you to MetaMask.
Click on the “Get started” key at the bottom of the screen. It brings up another page where you set up your wallet. You can import your old wallet or existing wallet with your recovery phrase by clicking on “Import using Secret Recovery Phrase”. Or you can create a new wallet by clicking on “Create a new wallet”.
If you’re importing your existing wallet, you’ll be required to input your Secret Recovery Phrase–by typing or using the QR scanner icon in the field. Then you type in your new password and re-type the password to confirm it in the required field respectively.
Next is to click on the blue icon below the screen that reads “IMPORT”. Wait for some seconds for it to load up; then your old wallet pops up and becomes alive again. There’ll be a pop message on a blue interface that welcomes you to your wallet, and asks if you want to be shown how to buy ETH. If you want to be shown, click on the “Take the tour” icon or the “No, Thanks” icon if you don’t want to be shown.
But if you don’t have an existing wallet or you’ve lost your Secret Recovery Phrase, click on the “Create a new wallet” icon instead. It takes you to another page where you set up your wallet password first–the password must be at least 8 characters. A strong password should be alphanumeric.
You can tick the “Unlock with Biometrics” if you want to use biometrics to unlock your wallet. Then tick the small rectangular box to agree that you understand that MetaMask can’t recover your password for you.
Then click on the blue icon that reads “Create password”. This in turn creates your wallet automatically.
Next is to secure your wallet by saving your Secret Recovery Phrase. The phrase is revealed by clicking on the “Start” icon. It takes you to another page advising you on how to store your Secret Phrase. Click on the “Start” icon again and confirm your biometrics.
Then tap on the eyes icon on the next page to reveal your Secret Phrase. After storing your recovery phrase as you wish, click on “Continue”; you’ll be asked to confirm your recovery phrase by clicking on the correct array of words from the options provided on the lower part of the screen.
After successfully confirming the arrangement of the recovery phrase, click on the “Complete Backup” icon.
Then you have your wallet with a pop up message on a blue interface that welcomes you to your wallet, and asks if you want to be shown how to buy ETH. If you want to be shown, click on the “Take the tour” icon or the “No, Thanks” icon if you don’t want to be shown.