I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

GEC: Discuss gaming, computers and electronics and venture into the bizarre world of STGODs.

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bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Behold the power of smart contracts:

AkuDreams NFT project earns $34 million that its team will never be able to withdraw
Micah Johnson, an artist and former professional baseball player, launched an astronaut-themed NFT project called AkuDreams. The auction was based around a Dutch auction, with the added twist that the lowest bid would set the final price for the NFT and all who bidded higher would be refunded.
The contract suffered from several flaws, however. The first allowed an exploiter to stop all refunds and withdrawals from the contract. Luckily for the team, the exploiter was well-intentioned and only intended to highlight the issue; they removed the block shortly after, leaving a message urging the team to have their contracts audited before release.

AkuDreams were not so lucky with the second issue. A bug in the code failed to account for users minting multiple NFTs in a single transaction, which made it so that the claimProjectFunds function that would allow the team to withdraw their earnings can never successfully execute. This means that the team can never withdraw the 11,539 ETH ($34 million) earned from the NFT sales—it is stuck there forever.

Tweet thread by 0xfoobar
Tweet thread by 0xInuarashi
Remember this any time someone tries to tell you that computer enforced contracts, with no room for humans to override them, is a good idea.

Also the tweets I linked contain screenshots of the code. Just in case you were curious about if they could be understood by the people agreeing to them.
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

NFTs bros try to push into another area they don't understand. This time its medicine.

TikTok-Famous Doctors Are Getting Into NFTs And It's A Mess
MetaDocs’ NFTs were designed to "revolutionize medicine." But its social media–famous doctors can’t prescribe for or diagnose NFT holders.

Emily Baker-White
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Sarah Emerson
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on April 26, 2022, 1:18 am


A group of TikTok- and Instagram-famous physicians say they have a solution for the “red tape” of the current medical system: NFTs of cartoon doctors.

These NFTs, called MetaDocs, are supposed to give buyers access to real doctors, almost like a Web3 telehealth subscription. When MetaDocs launched in December, it claimed that it had enlisted a legion of celebrity doctors — which have a collective social media following of 70 million and included “Dr. Pimple Popper” Sandra Lee and plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Brown of TikTok fame — whom it would make available for private DMs, group “ask me anything” sessions, and one-on-one video chats to those who buy in. MetaDocs founder Dr. Sina Joorabchi said he hoped that from there, it would evolve into a full-fledged virtual clinic in the so-called metaverse, where patients can put on a haptic suit and be examined remotely by a physician in virtual reality.

But now, MetaDocs is facing backlash from the medical community, both because it used doctors' names (including Lee's) without permission, and because it is not actually licensed as a telemedicine service. That means its doctors cannot legally make diagnoses, write prescriptions, or give personalized medical advice to anyone who buys a MetaDocs NFT. A further wrinkle: Doctors are almost always required to be licensed in a state in order to practice there, including through telehealth services.

“At this point, we’re hesitant to refer to anybody as a patient,” Dr. Dustin Portela, a MetaDocs physician and practicing dermatologist, told BuzzFeed News.

According to a recent white paper, the presale cost of a MetaDocs NFT will be 0.2 ETH, or about $570, though the company hasn’t determined an exact price yet. But why would someone pay hundreds of dollars for a cartoon so they could "ask a doctor anything" if they are not seeking some form of medical advice?

Joorabchi, an ear, nose, throat, and facial plastics doctor who refers to himself as a “medical infotainment” provider, believes the MetaDocs NFTs offer other benefits. “Value isn’t just medical care,” he said. “Our deliverable is connecting people with these doctors for a value of whatever they want to talk about or connect with.”

MetaDocs has also run into problems with the doctors it has brought on board to provide services to its NFT holders. It has now removed Lee and at least eight other physicians from its roster, some because they had never agreed to participate, and others because they grew uncomfortable with the project. MetaDocs had also listed as participants a doctor who left his hospital position as a trauma surgeon following remarks related to COVID-19 response, as well as three doctors whose LinkedIn profiles show they are still undergoing residency training.

BuzzFeed News was not able to determine the current qualification and medical affiliation of every doctor listed in the MetaDocs materials. However, being popular on social media appears to be one of the most important credentials.

“If your child is in respiratory distress in the middle of the night, having a surgeon famous for dancing on TikTok text you might not be that useful,” Dr. Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist at University Hospitals in Cleveland who is not affiliated with MetaDocs, told BuzzFeed News.

Joorbachi, who has 1.9 million TikTok followers, said he’s a recent crypto convert, “getting really into NFTs” after investing in the popular Stoner Cats collection backed by Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin and actor Mila Kunis. His wife suggested pursuing a homegrown NFT venture, so Joorbachi combined his two main interests: medicine and crypto.

MetaDocs’ mechanisms are outlined in its white paper, which explains a system where NFT buyers will receive “heart tokens” for each day they own a MetaDocs NFT. Tokens can be redeemed for three tiers of doctor “experiences,” from DMs to AMAs to video chats. The MetaDocs website also states that NFT holders will receive “discounts on selected apparel, personal care products, medical testing, health supplements and much more.”

So far, many users’ interactions with doctors have happened in a now-deleted “Ask a Doc Chat” within the project’s Discord, where hundreds of users, referred to as “patients,” could solicit advice from MetaDocs physicians. Users posted questions about the harms of performance-enhancing drugs, what to say to someone who is dying, and whether they should be concerned about internal organ pain.

In March, one member asked about the effects of diet sweeteners. A MetaDocs doctor identifying as Dr. Shane Williams, a family medicine doctor in Florida, responded that “the general concensus is that these COULD lead to issues down the line (potential GI cancer?). I don't have the research to back it up… Just going off what I've heard through the grapevines.”

But the channel contained no disclaimers or content warning denoting that comments should not be construed as medical advice. Joorbachi told BuzzFeed News that the project’s lawyer, Eli Pollack (who is also Joorabchi’s brother-in-law), is currently working on a type of waiver that patients will sign before interacting with doctors. In an email, Pollack said, “the overall purpose of the waiver is to inform and educate anyone using our initial experiences that the information provided by our doctors are for medical education and informational purposes only.”

Some doctors tried to refrain from giving out medical advice in the Ask a Doc channel. In April, one user posted: “Sometimes I'll wake up with my kidney area in bad pain from sleeping on my side, is this normal?” A lead MetaDocs doctor identifying as Dr. Fayez Ajib, a “Part-time doctor, full-time gamer,” according to their Discord bio — advised the user to see their physician.

Shortly after BuzzFeed News began speaking to Joorabchi and other founders about the project, the Ask a Doc channel in the MetaDocs Discord disappeared. Jon Kim, a MetaDocs cofounder and NFT strategist, told BuzzFeed News that “a lot of chaos” occurred in the channel, so they “decided to stay on the more protective side because there are a lot of bad things that can happen, more than just a public image issue.”

MetaDocs does plan to offer telehealth services by early 2023. “We’re working actively on a metaverse clinic; our team is coding that as we speak,” Joorabchi said. “In the future, a full-blown exam will be done virtually, which I don’t think is that far away.”

Pollack told BuzzFeed News that to provide these telemedicine services, MetaDocs will either need to be subsumed by an existing telemedicine provider or obtain telemedicine licensing of its own.

According to the white paper, MetaDocs plans to launch “virtual clinics” that will be accessible to those “in underserved, third world countries.”

Elizabeth Renieris, a professor of tech ethics at Notre Dame University, compared MetaDocs’ plans to Worldcoin, the crypto project collecting millions of iris scans from countries across the world in exchange for valueless cryptocurrency. “Why is it always the same playbook? Because the laws are not there and the jurisdiction is not there to hold it accountable,” she said.

Since MetaDocs’ announcement in December, it has been fiercely criticized as a “rug pull” scam (or pump-and-dump scheme), and MetaDocs physicians have been accused of trafficking in crypto’s relevancy to financially benefit themselves. In April, members of the healthcare community reacted with confusion when Brent Sugabo, MetaDocs’ community developer and a registered nurse, tweeted a now-deleted promotional video of MetaDocs team members and wrote that they are “putting their reputations on the line to create the future of healthcare in the metaverse!” (At least one of the doctors in the video is no longer affiliated with MetaDocs.)

“There are a lot of hype words thrown around that don’t really convey any meaning,” said Marino of University Hospitals in Cleveland. Even assuming a world in which MetaDocs offered telehealth care, “they don’t guarantee that you could access the doctor your problem needs or even one that has completed medical training.”

Renieris told BuzzFeed News that MetaDocs could create dangerous, warped incentives for both doctors and patients. “If you’re incentivizing doctors to join this [project] based on their community of followers, or generating profit for token holders, it’s hard to reconcile with the ethos of care,” she said.

She also warned against a system that could blur the lines between a doctor providing general information and giving a patient medical advice. “It’s foreseeable that a lot of people will run with the information they hear, whether it’s going to be construed that way or not.”

British cardiologist Dr. Rohin Francis, who posted a YouTube video detailing his concerns with MetaDocs, told BuzzFeed News that “providing general health education online is very different from a direct patient consultation.” He also noted that “parasocial” relationships between doctors and their followers could motivate people to support a project about which they have little knowledge.

As critique has intensified, MetaDocs’ founders started quietly scrubbing information from the project’s documentation. More current white papers no longer include plans to “acquire Metaverse land investments in leading platforms” or develop a medical simulator game. And now, at least nine physicians who were once listed as MetaDocs have been removed. Two of these physicians — Karan Rajan and Muneeb Shah — told BuzzFeed News they did not consent to their names being included. When one Discord user asked about the fact that Lee’s name had been removed from documentation, Joorabchi replied that “truthfully we are still finalizing with her team.” A representative for Lee told BuzzFeed News that she was “still evaluating” whether to join the project.

Additionally, MetaDocs failed to disclose that at least two of the physicians listed in its white paper — both of whom have since dropped off the roster — are residents, or doctors in training. Adam Goodcoff, a resident at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told BuzzFeed News that “after further evaluating the project,” he decided not to participate. Shah, a resident at Campbell University, said the project had used his name without his permission.

On Tuesday, following the departure of several doctors, Joorabchi admitted on Discord that “this was definitely a lesson for us to walk before we attempt to run.”

MetaDocs has also removed from its website the name of an autism charity to which it had originally promised to donate its first $1 million in revenue. Although Joorabchi initially told BuzzFeed News that the group had not selected a charity, the project website initially stated that the money would be donated to The Autism Community in Action (TACA), an organization that has in the past supported scientifically unsound claims that vaccines cause autism. After Twitter users noticed the pledge on MetaDocs’ website, it was swiftly removed.

In a follow-up interview, Joorbachi said he was not aware of TACA’s stance on vaccines and understands why it was “an offensive choice.” “Truthfully, I chose TACA because my wife and I had worked with a member from TACA in Florida,” Joorbachi told BuzzFeed News, noting that his son is autistic. “When you see someone help your child, that means the world to you. That was my bias and my fault. Sometimes emotions can get carried away.”

Even after addressing community concerns, MetaDocs must still navigate a set of rules and advice that dictate how doctors can conduct business and engage with people online.

This is a lesson that one MetaDocs physician learned personally several years ago. MetaDoc Buck Parker, who potential NFT buyers might know from his appearance on both The Proposal and survivalist Bear Grylls’ The Island, stepped away from his position as a trauma surgeon at Utah’s St. Mark’s Hospital in light of comments he made in November 2020, amid a record COVID-19 surge, about pandemic response efforts. At the time, Parker allegedly wrote on Instagram to his 119,000 followers: “Lots of doctors are telling people not to travel for Thanksgiving. Here’s my take. #happythanksgivingbitches.” Parker did not respond to multiple interview requests.

There are various legal and regulatory obligations that come with being a medical influencer. Doctors, for example, are bound to a Federal Trade Commission mandate to disclose relationships with companies whose products they endorse on social media. (A 2016 investigation by Stat News found many physicians in violation of this law.) Juliana Gruenwald, a representative for the FTC, said that it could not comment on any specific project.

Many of the MetaDocs already use their considerable platforms to advertise and share products. In a recent Reel on Instagram, Dr. Tony Youn pushed his line of beauty products to his 1 million followers. Dr. Fayez Ajib, who has 2.9 million followers on TikTok and 357,000 followers on YouTube, has done multiple paid partnerships on Instagram with the digital banking platform Laurel Road. Plastic surgeon Dr. Richard J. Brown, who has 7.6 million TikTok followers and 90,600 followers on Instagram, has posted about his love for a specific brand of overnight oats, alongside posts promoting his breast augmentation services.

Celebrity doctors have occupied this uncertain niche for decades. Dr. Mehmet Oz has long used his television platform to push dangerous conspiracy theories. Yet, the immediacy and pervasiveness of social media has allowed doctors to reach, and potentially influence, larger communities of people. Last year, a network of medical influencers was found to be responsible for 73% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Physicians have also been accused of legitimizing dubious wellness products, such as supplements and diets that claim to prevent COVID-19 infection. Most of the physicians associated with MetaDocs do not fall into this category, and many grew their social media followings by making content debunking popular misconceptions, including COVID-19 misinformation.

Amid all the criticism, MetaDocs’ future is uncertain. “We have a lot of education to do, and a lot of cleanup to do on our end,” Joorabchi said. “We need to stabilize a little bit more on those fronts. So I can’t say for sure when this thing is going to be released.”

For early MetaDocs supporters, the injustices of the current healthcare system could be what’s pushing them toward untested and unproven alternatives. Whether crypto can provide a solution to medical inequality, and quickly, is a gamble they might be willing to take.

“How do I sign up my uncle to get some of the money,” one anonymous Discord user wrote. “He might not make it much longer.”
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

NFT Market Collapses Just As Square Enix Sells Tomb Raider To Bet Big On Blockchain
Square Enix got rid of big properties like Avengers and Tomb Raider at fire sale prices at the worst time
ByJohn Walker
Yesterday 12:55PM


You know what no one could ever have predicted? That a market based on imaginary ownership of infinitely duplicable jpeg images might not be end-game, long-term sustainable. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the NFT market is “flatlining,” down 92 percent from last September. Which makes it just the most incredible time for Japanese publisher Square Enix, famed for properties like Final Fantasy, to sell off most of their Western-facing IP and studios to gamble on the batshit scheme.

Yesterday we learned that Square Enix is intending to sell Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal to the monolithic The Embracer Group, along with IPs for games like Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Thief, and Legacy of Kain. Why? Because, to quote Squenix, “the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud.” Which is to say, its previously announced desire to milk the NFT/blockchain market.

NFTs feel like the most extraordinarily precise emblem of the 2020s. It’s all a glaringly obvious pile of bullshit. Companies are literally selling a line of code on what they call a blockchain, to repackage the extremely old idea of digital asset ownership as the next big investment you should get in on now while the going is good. You’ve been able to own things like video game skins for a long time, of course. Somehow, though, many of these companies are putting a lot of effort into pretending that you can now own a picture, and then pretending that in doing so the picture somehow becomes imbued with inherent worth—all given life by enough idiots clapping their hands and shouting how they believe in fairies.

Unfortunately, a lot of these clapping idiots wear expensive suits and talk loudly in boardrooms, and as with every other aspect of the scam-fest that is “web 3.0,” businesses have been desperately scrambling to profit before the whole illusion blows away on a breeze. And it seems that breeze might have shown up earlier than anyone was expecting.

The WSJ doesn’t mince words in its reporting. The opening line is simply, “The NFT market is collapsing.” Citing not only that 92 percent fall in sales, but also the extraordinary drop of “active wallets” by 88 percent since November.

This is partly due, it seems, to the rising interest rates that are strangling the poorest, but in turn is causing the richest to be far less risky in their speculation. And you can’t get much more speculative than betting on mass delusion of jpeg ownership.

That’s a delusion that’s been breaking for a lot of people of late, who have discovered the promises that NFTs would somehow gain value over time isn’t vaguely true. We recently reported on Sina Estavi’s attempt to sell the NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet (linked so you can own your own copy for free), for which he’d paid $2.9 million, expecting to see bids of, cough, $50 million, and received nothing higher than $3,600. He’s since had a bid of just shy of $14,000, or less than 0.5 percent of what he paid for it a year ago.

Hilariously, as the WSJ reported last month, his reason for not parting with it for this over-payment of $14,000 is, “because I think the value of this NFT is far greater than you can imagine,” and “whoever wants to buy it, must be worthy.”

Unfortunately for us, many games publishers are betting on this one-legged horse, and the consequences could be bleak. From Square Enix to Ubisoft to Sega to Team 17 to Zombie Atari to Konami to GameStop, this industry is thigh-deep in this bullshit.

NFTs are QAnon if it were stock, if believing in a flat Earth could be bought and sold. They depend on the belief in their own existence to exist, requiring faith and religious notions of “worthiness” in order to flourish. As the planet hits the financial consequences of the last two years, it appears such faith is not so easily found.

NFTs were always going to be a bubble, and no doubt they’ll have little spikes, resurgences of interest with each new nonsensical twist, reaching nowhere near as high as 2021's but allowing the True Believers to keep duping themselves and others for a while to come. But let’s hope that this news of a market collapse is finally enough to scare the games industry away from this ludicrous money pit. We’ve reached out to Square Enix to ask if the news has given them any pause.

If not, well, I’ve got these lovely jpegs of some bridges I could sell them.
Good news for most of us. Unless you like the IPs that Square kept, then you should worry about NFTs being shoved into them.
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Crypto Pokémon Clone’s Currency Plunges To Less Than A Penny
The value of Axie Infinity’s breeding potions crash along with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest
ByEthan Gach


Crypto markets are bottoming out and nothing’s immune, not even the potions critters use to breed in the Pokémon-style collectathon Axie Infinity. Called Smooth Love Potions, the currency has been trending down for some time now as players flood the market with it. For the first time in its history, however, it’s now worth less than a penny, even if you round up.

“Axie Infinity’s SLP (Smooth Love Potion) utility currency went to zero! (approximately),” game developer Lars Doucet tweeted Thursday. “It’s now down to $0.004, rounding to the closest cent gives you $0.00.”

In case you haven’t heard, Axie Infinity is supposed to be one of the poster children for the future of crypto-backed, play-to-earn (P2E) NFT games. Players trade, battle, and breed virtual creatures called Axies. The last part of that process requires the SLP currency, which players earn by playing the game. The value of SLP has been tanking, however, as players earn more and more without “burning” it by spending it. A year ago the value of SLP peaked at $0.35, and it’s been trending downward ever since.

The long decline in the price of Axie Infinity’s Smooth Love Potion token illustrates the challenge of play-to-earn gaming. As Axios put it last month, “Players need more than a way to earn some random token, the token needs mechanics that enable it to hold value.”

The developers of Axie Infinity have tried to address the issue by removing SLP farming from the game’s single-player adventure mode and, most recently, allowing players to “burn” SLP when joining tournaments for a better prize pool. But so far none of that has been able to overcome other setbacks, both in Axie Infinity and the larger crypto-verse.

The blockchain the game is on suffered a heist of more than $600 million in March which shattered confidence in the game’s currency. Players keep debating whether to hold out for a recovery or bail on the pay-to-play scheme. Axie Infinity Shards, the other crypto token associated with the game, is down below $20 after peaking last year at over $150.

This tracks with the overall cratering of other crypto currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Luna. The fall of that last one has been especially dramatic. At the start of the month it was over $80. Today it neared $0.01. Some have blamed Luna’s fall on an “attack” in the forms of sudden large withdrawals. Others have called it the inevitable result of the rug being pulled out beneath a Ponzi scheme. In either case, the results have been devastating for some who say they had bet their savings on the token’s future.

In Axie Infinity’s case, however, the developers are continuing to push ahead undeterred. Yesterday, they released a mobile spin-off on Android called Axie Infinity: Origin. “Axie Infinity is now more accessible than ever!” they announced.
Looks like they reached the bottom of the pyramid.
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Someone Stole Seth Green's Bored Ape, Which Was Supposed To Star In His New Show
The actor has been pleading on Twitter with “DarkWing84,” who bought his ape from a scammer, to return it.

Sarah Emerson
BuzzFeed News Reporter


Actor and producer Seth Green was robbed of several NFTs this month after succumbing to a phishing scam that inadvertently threw a monkey wrench into the plan for his new animated series. The forthcoming show was developed from characters in Green’s expansive NFT collection, but in light of the recent hack, the project’s blatant crypto optimism has become a tragically ironic reminder of the industry’s shadier side.

On Saturday, Green teased a trailer for White Horse Tavern at the NFT conference VeeCon. A twee comedy, the show seems to be based on the question, “What if your friendly neighborhood bartender was Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398?” In an interview with entrepreneur and crypto hype man Gary Vaynerchuk, Green said he wanted to imagine a universe where “it doesn't matter what you look like, what only matters is your attitude.”

Embedded tweet with the trailer for the show

Unfortunately for Green, what also matters is copyright law. And when the actor’s NFT collection was pilfered by a scammer in early May, he lost the commercial rights to his show’s cartoon protagonist, a scruffy Bored Ape named Fred Simian, whose likeness and usage rights now belong to someone else.

“I bought that ape in July 2021, and have spent the last several months developing and exploiting the IP to make it into the star of this show,” Green told Vaynerchuk. “Then days before — his name is Fred by the way — days before he’s set to make his world debut, he’s literally kidnapped.” Green did not respond to a tweet from BuzzFeed News regarding the show.

On May 8, an anonymous scammer swiped four of Green’s NFTs in a phishing scheme. Green mourned his “stolen” assets on Twitter, where he announced the losses of a Bored Ape, two Mutant Apes, and a Doodle, which were transferred out of Green’s wallet after he unknowingly interacted with a phishing site.

One of the Mutant Apes was flipped for $42,000, Motherboard reported. Transaction ledgers show the Bored Ape was also sold by the scammer to a pseudonymous collector known as “DarkWing84,” who purchased it for more than $200,000. The NFT was then swiftly transferred to a collection called “GBE_Vault,” which is where it currently sits.

If the current owner “wanted to cause trouble for Seth Green they probably could, because that person becomes the holder” of the commercial usage rights, said Daniel Dubin, a tax and litigation attorney at Alston & Bird LLP.

NFT copyright law can be “a particularly thorny issue,” Dubin said, and has only begun to be tested in court. A growing number of NFT projects are granting owners the right to commercially adapt their works, which has been a useful strategy for increasing brand visibility but has consequently introduced a host of legal disputes. Bored Ape Yacht Club was among the first to adopt these terms, which led to an explosion of Bored Ape merchandise and derivative NFT collections but also set the stage for bitter copyright lawsuits.

Seemingly aware of the problems his ape’s new owner could cause, Green has spent the last several days tweeting at DarkWing84 in an attempt to reclaim the Bored Ape, appealing to them again on Monday to “work it out between us.” A Green supporter even sent DarkWing84 a message by way of an ENS domain that spells out “contactsethgreenontwitter.eth.” It’s unclear if DarkWing84 knew the ape was illicitly obtained when they purchased it, and they did not respond to a tweet from BuzzFeed News.

“Ordinarily, bona fide purchasers are legally protected if they buy an item not knowing that it’s a hot item,” Eric Goldman, an intellectual property and technology law professor at Santa Clara University, told BuzzFeed News. But for buyers of stolen NFTs, the blockchain — which records a chain of ownership — could make it tricky for them to plead ignorance. Goldman theorized “there will be a lot of questions about whether they’re buying a stolen NFT and not doing their homework.”

After this story published, Green responded on Twitter to allegations about what the stolen ape means for the future of his show.
More Butter 🧈
@morebuttertv
·
May 25, 2022
Seth Green’s Bored Ape NFT, which was set to star in its own animated show, was stolen through a phishing scam.

Green no longer owns the commercial rights to the NFT and thus the show cannot move forward.

🔗: https://buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahe ... en-tv-show
Seth Green
@SethGreen
Not true since the art was stolen. A buyer who purchased stolen art with real money and refuses to return it is not legally entitled to exploitation usage of the underlying IP. It’ll go to court, but I’d prefer to meet @DarkWing84 before that. Seems we’d have lots in common.
7:48 AM · May 25, 2022
The NFT marketplace OpenSea said it has frozen the tokens, as it has previously done when assets were reported stolen. All four NFTs taken from Green are now marked with “suspicious activity” warnings. "We do not have the power to freeze or delist NFTs that exist on decentralized blockchains; however, we do disable the ability to use OpenSea to buy or sell stolen items," said Allie Mack, an OpenSea spokesperson. OpenSea is currently facing three lawsuits from NFT owners who lost their Bored Apes to similar phishing attacks.

Because NFTs aren’t physical goods, “it’s interesting to imagine the different ways that IP rights can be affected, and the interesting new IP issues that can arise from the fact,” Dubin said. “I think we’re just scratching the surface.”

Green has speculated that the attack could have been the machinations of “a person, a foreign financial conglomerate, or some massive scam house somewhere,” but assured VeeCon attendees that he is working with authorities to retrieve his NFTs. “Guys, if there’s a door to kick in, I promise I’m gonna kick in the door for us.”
Here's a tweet thread about how messy the commercial rights for an NFT can be
Here's a Youtube video that goes into more detail


I wonder how much money had been spent on that show so far. All wasted because the rights to use one of the characters were bound with an easily solen NFT.
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Double post
bilateralrope
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

The Solana uses something called "Proof of History" to try and manage timekeeping without relying on a centralized clock. Here's a blog post talking about it, with this being the main boast about how well it should work:
“Everybody has this local synchronized atomic clock and these clocks never need to be resynchronized,” Yakovenko says. “So even if we get cut off and communication links go down, our clocks never drift because they are logical based on this SHA256.”
How well is that working out for them ?

Solana's blockchain clock loses track of time, now running 30 minutes behind
by Osato Avan-Nomayo
May 27, 2022, 8:44AM EDT · 2 min read


Quick Take
  • Slower slot times have caused the Solana blockchain clock to drift significantly and the on-chain time has fallen half an hour behind real-world time.
  • While the issue does not affect network operations, it could contribute to reduced earnings from staking rewards.
Solana’s (SOL) blockchain clock is currently adrift of real-world time by about 30 minutes due to longer than ideal slot times on the network, the project reported via its status page on Thursday.

According to the notice posted at 3:34 UTC, the issue does not have any impact on network performance. Transactions on the network will, however, show timestamps that are different from “wall-clock time,” as the statement put it.

This time disparity is one of the effects of the current slower slot times on Solana. Slot time refers to the time interval within which a validator can submit a block to the network.

Solana’s ideal slot time is 400 milliseconds (ms) but this value has almost doubled to about 746ms, according to data from the Solana blockchain explorer dashboard.

While Solana is a proof-of-stake blockchain, the network also uses proof-of-history (PoH) as a consensus algorithm. PoH takes care of Solana’s timekeeping by enabling each node on the network to maintain an accurate record of time.

Solana uses clusters, a collection of validators that are responsible for processing transactions on its blockchain. PoH allows for decentralized timekeeping across all the nodes in a cluster.

When slot times become significantly longer than 400ms, the cluster’s clock begins to drift, that is to say, it loses synchronicity with real-world time.

Apart from on-chain timekeeping being out of sync with real-world time, the slow slot time issue could also have some economic consequences related to annualized staking rewards.

When slot times are slower, epochs become longer since there must be 432,000 slots in every epoch. At the ideal 400ms slot time, there are 182 epochs per year with each epoch lasting between two and three days. Slower slot times, therefore, mean fewer epochs.

Solana’s staking rewards are paid on each epoch. As such, fewer epochs will mean a reduction in the earnings collected by delegators and validators on the network.

This reduction in staking yield is also in addition to the fact that SOL, like other coins, has declined significantly since the start of the year.

Solana is no stranger to these operational and performance issues. The network has suffered outages on different occasions with the blockchain not processing transactions for several hours at a time.
This piece of crypto news is the one that got the biggest laugh from me.
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Dominus Atheos
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by Dominus Atheos »

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

What does the Titanic have in common with NFTs? Not much. One lives on in the collective psyche as a monument to hubris while the other refuses to just sink already.

Still, apropos of nothing except the smell of filthy blockchain-adjacent lucre, RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which has been collecting artifacts associated with the ship since the 1980s, has hooked up with NFT flinger Artifact Labs and Venture Smart Financial Holdings to "bring the RMS Titanic and its physical artifacts into Web3."
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/titanic_nfts/
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

I wonder how many Titanic artefacts will be destroyed to promote those NFTs. Because it's happened before.

Hopefully it's just a rug pull.


Also, Here's a blog post from the start of last year about Web3 centralizing and how easily his NFTs were censored.
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by Dominus Atheos »

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ify%20wall
Crypto Investors Had Their Funds Frozen. Now They Might Have to Pay Taxes Too

Roman Smolkin thought things couldn’t get any worse after his account with bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network was frozen, trapping more than $200,000 of assets.

The arrival of a 1099 tax form renewed the pain. Despite not being able to access his funds, he still owes income taxes on the $8,000 in interest he made in 2022, according to the form.
If you feel bad for this guy, always remember this onion article:
Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him

“If only a thousand—or even a few hundred—more friends had told me about the risks of putting my entire savings into Dickcoin, I might not be where I am today,” said Branton, decrying how no one had alerted him to the inherent instability of digital currencies except for dozens of coworkers, family members, podcast hosts, and respected economists.
https://www.theonion.com/man-who-lost-e ... 1848764551
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Oh No: Pokémon Could Be Getting Into NFTs
The Pokémon Company is currently hiring a senior NFT and metaverse expert
By Sisi Jiang
Published Yesterday


NFTs. Blockchain. The metaverse. It happened to other gaming companies, and it can happen to a Nintendo property, too—in fact, it just might. Last week, The Pokémon Company posted a job on LinkedIn that requires experience with NFT, blockchain, and the metaverse. When it comes to Pokémon, I wanted to catch ‘em all. But not like this.

The listing spends a lot of words describing the vague duties of a “corporate development principal” who’s paid six figures to have an advanced business degree. But if you read down to the candidate requirements, you’ll see what all of this is really about: NFTs. The corporate development principal must possess “deep knowledge and understanding of Web 3, including blockchain technologies and NFT, and/or metaverse.” The ideal candidate is “deeply connected to a network of investors and entrepreneurs in the technology sectors above (Web3 and metaverse).”

Bleh. I wouldn’t be worried about this if this was a small gig in some experimental tech department that will fold within a year. But this role has the direct ear of the executive leadership team—and works just two levels below the president. TPC isn’t just looking to hire a clown. It’s hiring a clown teacher to turn the company into a circus. Kotaku reached out to TPC to ask about whether or not this job is reflective of the company’s future priorities, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Maybe we should have foreseen this all along. Neopets, a pet collection franchise, had experimented with crypto collectibles last year. Axie Infinity was a Pokémon clone where finance bros exploited low-paid workers to farm resources. Logan Paul’s fans have lost thousands of dollars on CryptoZoo, a game where players hatch NFT eggs and trade exotic digital animals. Even within the Pokémon community itself, players have been buying and selling shiny Pokémon over eBay for years. Other people saw the NFT potential of collectible Pokémon before TPC did. So maybe it was inevitable that its executives might get the idea to create their own. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a shit idea. Associating the child-friendly IP with an ecosystem rife with fraud and scams would cause significant damage to Pokémon’s public image. Did I mention that the NFT community that TPC is trying to court is filled with scammers and hackers?


I don’t want to purchase the image of an ugly Charizard to play a Pokémon game, and neither do most Pokémon fans. Hopefully TPC realizes that before they lose too much money on metaverse bullshit.
Another company that hasn't been paying enough attention and thinks that NFTs are a good idea despite how badly they have gone for everyone else.

Or board members have put a lot of their own money into crypto and want to give it a boost so they can cash out at the companies expense.
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Re: I'm not high I think... I just want you to crtitque my crypto-currency NFT gambling game.

Post by bilateralrope »

Some more things happening in the crypto space. First a teaser for the crypto game by Square Enix. Complete with the dislike button disabled even for people with the "Return Youtube Dislike" extension.



Now for the Epic store:
Fortnite Dev Epic Claims Folks Like Crypto Games In Its Store
Some of them are even 'pretty well-played,' GM Steve Allison told Axios
By Ashley Bardhan
Published Yesterday


Enthusiasm for the blockchain isn’t as spirited as it was before someone kidnapped Robot Chicken co-creator Seth Green’s embarrassing, allegedly non-fungible token, or before the last year of high-profile scams and monumental crashes. But Fortnite developer Epic says people like the crypto-based games living in its store enough. Sometimes, they even play those games, Epic Store group General Manager Steve Allison tells Axios.

All right, that’s not the highest praise, but it could be worse for cryptocurrency-based games , Epic’s ugly duckling. There are currently five of them, including the free-to-download role-playing game Chainmonsters and Roblox-style Blankos Block Party, which I accurately noted in September looks “awful.” The latter, which was the first crypto game to land in the Epic Games Store, is “pretty well-played,” Allison said, seeming to channel the same amount of lukewarm passion you’d have when talking about how cold it’s been lately. It has been kind of cold lately, though.

Core, which is described opaquely on Epic’s store as “a metaverse of free games to play and worlds to explore designed by a global community of creators,” is the one that does “pretty well” in terms of traffic, Allison said, and it’s also free-to-download. All of these games make their money by integrating NFT elements into gameplay, often in the form of cosmetics or in-game currency. They operate similarly to traditional “pay-to-win” games, except those rooted in crypto tend to be less attractive and fun or interesting and satisfying, etc.

It’s easy to lower your standards when you’re already in too deep. Valve banned NFT games on Steam in 2021, and Epic decided to make it official with crypto in 2022. The developer is now set on staying faithful, planning on distributing almost 20 additional crypto-backed games through the start of 2024. Elsewhere in gaming, The Pokémon Company is also plotting its crypto ventures, posting a job listing requiring “deep knowledge and understanding of Web 3” just last week.

And, you know, there’s another side to this. “Let’s just be honest about what was really happening there,” Epic founder Tim Sweeney told Axios about other online marketplaces’ crypto bans. “The other stores aren’t blocking crypto games because they think ‘crypto’ equals ‘bad,’” proven by the fact that those stores “distribute all kinds of bad stuff” anyway.

“They just want to collect their 30% fees and they’re blocking everybody who doesn’t go along with it,” he said. Fair enough.
Crypto games might be looking good on Epic compared to other games purely because, unlike other games, Epic is the only major PC storefront willing to touch them. Everyone else wants nothing to do with crypto scams.
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