Non Fungible Tokens or NFTs are digital assets backed by a decentralised ledger, offering a platform for artists to create provable scarce, authenticated artwork. In cyberspace, and now the emerging metaverse, NFTs offer one of the best ways of proving and tracking ownership, allowing for creators to be compensated for their efforts in producing everything from memes to in game items, to crypto art.
The concept is polarising as some find it a struggle to understand how multimedia that can be freely copied and distributed can also be "owned", but for collectors, they are the digital versions of memorabilia, trading cards and other collectibles, as NFTs are one of the few reliable ways to authenticate and track ownership of digital items. According to a report by DappRadar, "In 2021, the NFT space generated over $23 billion in trading volume. Significant trends such as randomly generated collectibles, the involvement of mainstream celebrities in the space, or the rise of play-to-earn, were the main drivers behind a record year for NFTs. The latest metaverse boom was the cherry on the cake."
NFT sales by volume by quarter over 2021. (Image credit: DappRadar)
The explosion in activity with NFTs has led to Collin's Dictionary as choosing it as the word of the year. Merriam-Webster minted its definition of the NFT as an NFT, and auctioned it, with the price now standing in excess of 1.3 million dollars. Here is a look at all the most significant NFTs to drop over the last year.
January 2021
08 | Garbage Pail Kids
Topps has been releasing incredibly timely and relevant digital trading cards, and one of the trends that it surfed included the popularity of Joe Exotic, star of the popular Netflix series, Tiger King. The NFTs were released on the Wax Platform, and are available for trading on third party sites such as NFTHive and AtomicHub.
14 | B.20
One of the big events in the NFT space took place when Metapurse, a crypto fund that has one of the largest public collections of NFTs, acquired 20 1/1 Beeple artworks for about 2.2 million in a record setting Nifty Gateway auction, which was the Beeple Everydays: The 2020 Collection, then holding a virtual exhibition in museums created by Voxel Architects, a studio that specialises in constructing digital spaces. All viewers could get part of the B.20 token, making it possible for art aficionados to own part of the artwork, as well as the museum. The Metapalooza launch event had live music from 3LAU, and took place simultaneously in Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space and Decentraland.
Twobadour, the steward of Metapurse said, "Acquiring the Beeple 2020 collection was only the first step of what we wanted to accomplish for the Metaverse. We were inspired by the idea of not only being able to own the Mona Lisa, but also being able to own the museum it was displayed in, and then sharing that ownership and experience with the public. That is the purpose of B.20. Making money with art is fairly simple and not very imaginative."
What we want to do is to decentralise and democratise art — so token holders everywhere can share in a valuable piece of history. And in the process, create wealth for the entire community.
-Twobadour
14 | Buffalo London
Shoe brand Buffalo London collaborated with digital fashion house The Fabricant to release a digital only shoe known as the Classic BurningFor. There were 100 editions available as video or image on DressX. The shoes were designed to be worn virtually, with the owners digitally manipulating them into images for sharing on social media.
15 | Deadmau5
Mad Dog Jones, an established crypto artist and frequent collaborator with musicians teamed up with Deadmau5 to release the Hypervision collection on Nifty Gateway, containing two NFTs. Block Heater was a single edition, while Park Place was split into five pieces. The former sold for $66,717.66. Later in the year, Deadmau5 would go on to release 4 NFT artworks on Nifty Gateway as well.
16 | DJ Carl Cox
Legendary house DJ Carl Cox released exclusive music in the form of an NFT on Nifty gateway, as part of the Future Art festival in Sydney. The music was accompanied with visuals from Hipworth, an established crypto artist.
27 | Monstercat
Monstercat, an independent music label from Canada got music producer Varien to provide the soundscapes for concept lost civilisation biomes crafted by Giant Swan, a pioneering digital artist in VR. The result was a series of open world environments known as Origins, containing four environments known as Heart of the Mountain, Sands of Time, The End is the Beginning and Cradle of Life. This collaboration is one of those efforts that truly explores the possibilities of the technology, instead of simply cashing in on a craze. The story of the production of Origins is documented on the Monstercat web site, which additionally does a great job of explaining what NFTs are, and the value they contain.
28 | Mark Cuban
The billionaire entrepreneur known for appearing in the US edition of Shark Tank minted his own NFT on Rarible, with 10 editions available. One of the buyers bid for a pair, and immediately burned one copy, increasing the scarcity of the digital asset. The NFT itself is a clip of Cuban dancing in the professional basketball team, Dallas Mavericks gear, known as The RollUp 2021. Cuban himself is an avid collector, and has a large gallery of NFTs.
29 | Soulja Boy
Soulja Boy listed 20 editions of an artwork called Crank That commemorating his 2007 debut single that reached number 1 on billboard charts. Seven of these have been burned, leaving only 13 in circulation.
February 2021
05 | Logan Paul
Bondly Finance, an NFT services provider collaborated with Logan Paul to list 3,000 NFTs on the BondSwap marketplace for 1 ETH, which entered all buyers into a sweepstakes where they could win additional limited edition NFTs, Pokemon 1st edition booster boxes and more. Additionally, those who won the bids of the auctioned Pokemon boxes that Paul had opened on YouTube, would also get limited edition NFTs.
08 | Mike Shinoda
The Linkin Park member released his NFT called One Hundredth Stream on Zora. The release was accompanied with a Twitter thread where Shinoda explained what NFTs were, how the auctioning process worked, how artists were fairly compensated for their creations, and how the value of the NFT would only rise if it was ripped and circulated. The NFT was a piece of music with rudimentary animation.
10 | Ethernity
This one is not just an NFT drop, but the launch of an entire marketplace. A bunch of major players in the Crypto space came together to launch the Ethernity NFT store. The store allows a wide range of digital collectibles, but has a particular focus on Art and Charity. Creators on the platform can engage with their fans and charitable causes at the same time.
11 | Minecraft
Microsoft collaborated with Enjin, an NFT services provider to launch customisable NFTs compatible with Minecraft, to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The NFTs could be earned within an educational space exploration game known as Azure Space Mystery on the Microsoft Learn Platform, after which users could connect to a Minecraft server to claim their in game items. The NFTs could only be earned during the event, with users unlocking an additional quest on the MyMetaverse Minecraft Network. Enjin also upgraded the Enjincraft plugin to support NFTs on any Minecraft server.
17 | 3LAU
About a month after performing live at the Metapalooza launch for B.20, Justin Blau, styled as 3LAU came out with his own NFT collection, Ultraviolet which was among the first music albums to be available as an NFT. The NFT came bundled with additional experiences apart from exclusive music and a Vinyl copy. One of these bonus experiences was the opportunity to create a custom track with 3LAU, which was also tokenized as a 1/1 NFT.
18 | Nyan Cat
A remastered version of the Nyan Cat meme sold for 300 ETH, or roughly $ 600,000 about 10 years after its original creation in April 10. The NFT was made up of a gif with 12 frames, with the design inspired by the creator's cat, Marty. The auction took place on Foundation. The meme is also known as Pop Tart cat.
23 | Christies x Beeple
Christie's became the first major auction house to host an NFT sale, raising $69,346,250 on The First 5,000 Days by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist better known as Beeple. This was the biggest NFT sale of 2021 in terms of value. Beeple started a thirteen year ongoing journey of putting up an original artwork every day on the internet, a collage of which formed the artwork sold by Christie's. It was also the first time that a major auction house had accepted payment for a single lot sale in Ethereum.
Beeple said, "I am beyond excited to have the first 100 per cent digital artwork auctioned at Christie's. I think this is a truly historic moment not just for digital art, but for the entire fine art world. The technology is now at a place with the blockchain to be able to prove ownership and have true scarcity with digital artwork so I think we are going to see an explosion of not only new artwork, but also new collectors and I am very honored to be a part of this movement."
We see this as a pivotal moment for the future of New Media and even the practice of collecting itself.
- Noah Davis, Specialist, Post-War and Contemporary Art
25 | MotoGP
Animoca Brands, the publisher of The Sandbox, a wildly popular metaverse where users can buy digital land in the form of Sand, launched a blockcain based gaming platform in collaboration with MotoGP, called MotoGP Ignition. The play to earn game has in game items that are tokenised in both fungible and non-fungible modes, and are accompanied with collectible cards that are both tradable and salable. The game launched on the Flow blockchain created by Dapper Labs, the company behind NFT breakout successes NBA Top Shot and Cryptokitties.
25 | Pentatonix
To celebrate the release of their album, The Lucky Ones, Pentatonix released a track list collectible card on Sweet.io, catering to music, entertainment and consumer brands, using the Simple Ledger Protocol. All 500 NFTs were sold out within 25 minutes. The launch was followed up with a commemorative coin NFT, with 1,000 available, that sold out in no time as well. Both the collectibles are tradable on the Sweet app.
The collectible, commemorative coin token. (Image credit: Pentatonix)
25 | Shawn Mendes
Avatar technology company Genies launched digital collectibles on OpenSea in collaboration with Shawn Mendes. The items sold as NFTs could be used by the avatars on the Genies platform. Along with a necklace, vest and earrings, Genies created a digital guitar for Mendes, known as Songs from the Heart.
28 | Grimes
Grimes came out with two collections on Nifty Gateway, along with collaborator Mac Boucher. The NFT drops had visuals, some with animations and some accompanied with music produced by Grimes. The War Nymph was an open collection, with as many being sold in a limited time as there were buyers, with a cap of 9,999. There were two pieces in the collection, each costing $7,500, with 303 editions of Earth being minted and 388 editions of Mars. That's $5,182,500 on the War Nymph Collection Vol 1 alone. There were also 4 pieces called Newborns, which were more accessible NFTs, each available originally for $20 each, but have now ballooned to prices ranging from $1,000 to $2,000. There were also 10 editions of Battle of the WarNymphs originally listed for $10,100 and last sold for $40,000, 10 editions of Rokoko Monolith listed for $11,111 each, Gods in Hi Res with a similar price and number, and a single edition of Death of the Old, originally listed for $388,938. The math broke our calculator, but according to Cryptoart.io, Grimes has sold 1,122 artworks with a total value of $6,147,274, or 1,573 ETH. Embedded below is Death of the Old #1/1.
28 | Steve Aoki
Steve Aoki got in the NFT action by teasing an artwork called run on Twitter. The eventual collection, a collaboration with 3D artist Antoni Tudisco, included a number of pieces, both limited and open editions, containing animations and music, all released on Nifty Gateway. A total of 218 editions of run were minted at $1,500 each , and 618 editions of character x at $900 each. The single edition, whales was picked up for $2,000, while another single edition, hairy went for $888,888.88.
A month later, Steve Aoki released another NFT collection, Neon Future, in collaboration with concept artist Maciej Kuciara, with the single edition Morning Routine (embedded below) listed for $12,500.
March 2021
03 | Kings of Leon
Kings of Leon and Yellowheart created the NFT yourself collection to commemorate the release of the album, When You See Yourself. Accompanying the drops were all kinds of goodies, ranging from future concert tickets to vinyl copies of the recordings. While at least 3LAU beat the band to the first NFT album release, Hayley Arceneaux on board the Inspiration4 mission played the never before released track Time in Disguise, marking the first time an NFT track was played in space.
04 | Associated Press
Back in 2020, the Associated Press (AP) had called the winner of the of the 2020 US Presidential election on the Ethereum blockchain. Using the same address, AP collaborated with digital artist Marko Stanojevic to mint a single edition piece of art titled The Associated Press calls the 2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain - A View from Outer Space, which shows a pair of astronauts in outer space looking at the presidential race, using the data that AP published on the chain. The artwork was available on OpenSea.
The Associated Press calls the 2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain - A View from Outer Space artwork. (Image credit: AP/Marko Stanojevic)
AP has a long history of capturing important moments throughout history. Digital historical artifacts like this innovative NFT artwork represent the next step in the evolution of marking historical events digitally
- Dwayne Desaulniers, AP's Director of Data Licensing.
04 | Deal with it
Ryder Ripps created the Deal With It template to users on the social media platform, Dump.fm, in 2010. Over the decade, it became one of the most widely used templates, and an internet meme. In 2021, the original creator sold a tokenised form of the template, along with the full rights to the image and meme on the Foundation marketplace, where it sold for 15 ETH, or $58,668.
08 | Taco Bell
Taco Bell created five NFTs with five editions each and listed them on Rarible, where they were grabbed up quickly by taco aficionados. The highest bid fetched $700, but not everyone was impressed.
09 | Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT on the Valuables by Cent platform which exists solely to allow users to buy and sell tweets. The winning bid was $2,915,835 or 1,630 ETH. Dorsey kept the auction open for a month, then converted the money to Bitcoin, and then donated the Bitcoin to the Give Directly Africa Fund.
10 | Rob Gronkowski
American Football star Rob Gronkowski came out with his Rob Gronkowski Championship Series NFTs on OpenSea, commemorating highlights from his career, with illustrations by Brazilian visual arts and animation studio, Black Madre. The GRONK career highlight card was a single edition with exclusive unlockables known only to the buyer, and was picked up for 229 WETH or $896,196.
15 | Elon Musk
Elon Musk posted on Twitter that he would be selling a track he produced about NFTs as an NFT. Along with the techno music, there was a spinning "vanity" trophy, with the celebratory hand raising emoji (?) and a rocket ship, with Shiba Inu statues arranged in a circle, from the famous Doge meme, surrounded by two layers of inscriptions of HODL (Hold on for dear life) and Computer Never Sleeps. The NFT was never minted, as a day later, Musk said "Actually, doesn't feel quite right selling this. Will pass."
23 | Time Magazine
Time Magazine commemorated its "Is God Dead?" cover from 1966 in which for the first time in the magazine's history had only typography and no visuals. The same iconic design was used in the April 2017 cover, in response to US President Donald Trump, with the words "Is Truth Dead?". Then, in 2021, the design was used again, amidst a surge in popularity of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, with the words, "Is Fiat Dead?". The NFTs were dropped on Superrare. The Easter egg in the series is that "Fiat" is a synonym for both "God" and "Truth".
23 | DVision
Dvision Network, a VR blockchain ecosystem released limited edition characters on OpenSea ahead of the launch of its metaverse, Dvision World. The initial release of avatars were based on major players in the cryptocurrency space, guess who Tesla Man is. The NFT drops allowed the players to use the avatars in Dvision World, and acquire additional NFTs.
23 | Kygo
Kygo released two collections on Nifty Gateway, The Endless Journey Open Editions by Kygo and The Endless Journey Auctions by Kygo. The NFTs have original 3D visuals as well as music, and also included snippets of live music from tours.
24 | Boy George
Boy George released a number of pieces consisting of art only, as well as hand drawn animations accompanied by original music on Crypto.com as NFTs. The drops ranged from single editions to 36 editions, and all encapsulated the breadth of the artist's creative output.
Boy George made a cryptic comment on dropping the NFTs, "I think life turned me into art. My role models were both artistic types and hard working types. I've painted myself and others. I have painted myself into a corner. I love metaphors and mystery and crypto sound like klepto so that makes me a crypto maniac. Art is like a partner? Can you live with it? Digital art is a new emotion and it can be very musical. I'm mixing all of the things I do together, music, art, fashion, poetry and anything else it leads to. I have stopped refusing to be influenced."
I love metaphors and mystery and crypto sound like klepto so that makes me a crypto maniac
- Boy George
26 | The Weeknd
The Weeknd released eight pieces on Nifty Gateway, in with longtime collaborator Strangeloop Studios, that have been producing visuals for The Weeknd concerts since 2015. The collection featured 8 pieces including a 1/1 with an unreleased song, three audiovisual pieces offered as open editions, and four static artworks dropped as 2x silent auctions and 2x drawings. The 1/1 piece, known as The Source, embedded below, sold for $490,000.
28 | Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan dropped her single, Lullaby as an NFT on Fansforever.io, which sold for 1,000,001 TRX, or roughly $77,621. The single, produced in collaboration with DjManuelRiva, was also released on YouTube and other platforms.
30 | Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg teamed released a number of artworks on Crypto.com, including an open edition of Snoop Dogge Coins on sale for an hour, and two 1/1 editions of Young Snoop and The Hustle, animated portraits of a younger version of the artist reminiscing about his experiences and inspirations. Snoop Dogg is active in the crypto ecosystem, and has his own island on The Sandbox metaverse where fans can interact with each other and exclusive content from Snoop Dogg.
I've seen the game change over the years from analog to digital and I'm always happier when the technology lets the fans get to connect with the artists. NFT's are an amazing innovation and it is an honor to do my first drop with Crypto.com.
- Snoop Dogg
31 | Godzilla vs Kong
Coinciding with the release of the movie, Terra Virtua launched a number of Godzilla vs Kong collectibles on its platform as NFTs, which included historical posters as well as original commemorative artwork. The drops were available for purchase for 10 minutes before being cycled out and replaced by the next NFT.
April 2021
01 | Atari
Quidd, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands (publishers of The Sandbox, and MotoGP Ignition) got Atari to release digital versions of cartridges of their classic games, Pong and Centipede as NFTs, as part of the Atari Capsule Collection. The NFTs dropped on Blockparty, with the flagship 1/1 versions of both the NFTs digitally signed by the creators of the original games, Al Alcorn for Pong, and Dona Bailey for Centipede. A fully functioning physical cabinet with the original game was included as part of the flagship NFT drops, along with a VR experience exclusive to the buyers. The collection also included an endless loop by digital artist ARC, known as ARC Cute Pong Cabinet, which is shown below. Atari is also one of the partners of The Sandbox metaverse, where they have their own island. Atari has indicated that iconic properties from the company's history are headed to The Sandbox.
02 | The Atlantic
The Atlantic tokenised the images they produced for their pandemic coverage, in the form of two collages titled llustrations From a Pandemic Year (#1) and llustrations From a Pandemic Year (#2) on OpenSea. Although put for open auction, both the NFTs continue to be owned by the-atlantic, with a single bidder for the former, and two bidders for the latter.
04 | Jacob & Co
The luxury watchmaker auctioned an NFT version of it's Epic SF24 watch, on curated NFT platform ArtGrails. The animated watch was called NFT SF24 Tourbillon, which brought the split flap 24 city vertical time zone secondary display, after which the watch is named, to cyberspace.
05 | Gucci
The first NFT from the luxury brand is a looping video titled Aria, a stacked, three panel, square aspect ratio fashion film co directed by Alessandro Michele and Floria Sigismondi. This NFT is not to be confused with the film by the same name accompanying a runway show of a collaboration between Gucci and Balenciaga. The sale was part of an auction called Proof of Sovereignty, where Christie's collaborated with technologist and cryptoadvisor Lady PheOnix. Gucci partnered with Offsetra to purchase carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of the minting and the sale of the NFT, and donated all the proceeds to support UNICEF's COVAX initiative.
06 | Sotheby's
The auction house worked with the mysterious digital artist Pak. It is unknown if Pak is a person or a team, best known for creating The Archillect, a digital AI curator. Two collections were made available on Nifty Gateway through the auction, limited copies of The Fungible by Pak which has two pieces, Complexity and Equilibrium, and an open sale of The Fungible Open Editions by Pak which has six artworks, called A Cube, Five Cubes, Ten Cubes, Twenty Cubes, Fifty Cubes and Hundred Cubes. All of these pieces are looped animations. Shown below is Equilibrium.
07 | Ja Rule
Photographer Trevor DeHaas captured the underwhelming cheese sandwich at the infamous Fyre festival, then collaborated with one of the festival organisers, Ja Rule to sell the viral tweet as well as the original iPhone photo on Ja Rule's platform Flipkick, which specialises in "physical" NFTs, that are NFTs accompanied with real world benefits. Proceeds from the sale went to support treatment for DeHaas.
08 | Tfue
Popular Fortnite streamer Tfue came out with the NFTfue King of Gaming Collection on OpenSea, which had three animated NFTs limited to thirty three editions, and three bobblehead NFTs that each came with a physical version shipped to the owners. The flagship NFT in the collection was a 1/1 King of Gaming Showdown NFT, which was a collage of all three iconic avatars of the streamer.
09 | Kate Moss
Kate Moss collaborated with the the anonymous artists collective Moments in Time, that is known for open sourcing collections of short, mundane video clips of everyday life and organising into photo chronicles. The NFT wing of the collective, mitnft listed three pieces in collaboration with Kate Moss on Foundation, called Driving with Kate, Walking with Kate and Sleeping with Kate. The artist is verified as carbon neutral by Offsetra, and part of the proceeds went to Gurls Talk, a safe space for young women to discuss mental health, sexuality, social justice and self care.
09 | Success Kid
The image was captured in 2007, when Laney Griner took her 11 month old son, Sam to a beach in Florida. The original, untouched image was made available as a 1/1 NFT, and sold for 15 ETH, or $56,968 on Foundation.
10 | WWE
World Wrestling Entertainment got into NFTs ahead of WrestleMania 37, testing the waters with four tiers of Undertaker themed drops on Bitski. The 1/1 Platinum drop had exclusive NFT featuring the Undertaker, two front row tickets to Wrestlemania 38 or 39 with hotel accomodation, a personalised message from the Undertaker, the original Paul Bearer Urn in a case signed by the Undertaker, and a personalised WWE Championship belt with the winner's name engraved on the sides. The Gold tier was also 1/1 drop, and included a customised belt, as well as a personalised video message. The Silver tier was 1/37 editions, and just a pair of side plates for the belt, without the belt itself. Finally, the Bronze tier had two NFTs in open auction, with each sale running for 15 minutes. Shown below is The Undertaker: Bronze Modern.
13 | Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith partnered up with Semkhor.io, a studio that comes up with unique crypto projects to launch the Jay And Silent Bob Crypto Studio's Smokin' Tokens collection. For those who need a refresher, Jay and Silent Bob are the lead characters of buddy comedy film, Clerks, directed by Kevin Smith, that went on to become a cult hit. The collection contained a number of tokens, as in literally, tiny discs with the characters on them, as well as a Bluntman and Chronic Classic Cover #1 comic book cover, and most exciting of all, The Killroy Teaser token, which was a preview of an upcoming movie by Kevin Smith, Killroy was Here, also to be released as an NFT. The purchaser of the 1/1 Platinum token also won a cameo in Clerks III.
14 | Yao Family Wines
Yao Family Wines introduced wine collecting to the blockchain, by pairing a digital NFT with physical bottles of wine, limited release Cabernet Savignon called "Chop", making the NFT drop a Chop Drop, which took place in collaboration with GFT Exchange. The Napa Valley winery was founded by retired basketball star, Yao Ming. The NFTs are available on OpenSea.
15 | Mick Jagger
The release of the Easy Sleazy lockdown inspired track by Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl was accompanied with an NFT drop, which was a collaboration between Jagger and 3D artist Extraweg, consisting a loop of a section of the song set to animation. The Eazy Sleazy NFT was put up for auction on Nifty Gateway, where it sold for $50,000.
18 | A$AP Rocky
A$AP Rocky auctioned a collection of NFTs on Nifty Gateway, which included tokenised versions of the Rally Testing Benz, the Hello Kitty Porsche, and the All Smiles BMW from his Injured Generation tour, as well as a snippet of an unreleased track, Sandman. Those who picked up the NFTs also got entered into a raffle to win one of the vehicles from the tour.
21 | White Stripes
The release of the Glitch Mob remix of The Seven Nation Army by White Stripes was commemorated with an NFT consisting of looped animations made in collaboration with digital artist, Strangeloop Studios. Four NFTs with different animations and clips of the remix were released as part of the The White Stripes x The Glitch Mob x Strangeloop Studios - Seven Nation Army Remix Collection Open Editions collection.
26 | Eminem
Eminem tweeted out the SNL sketch on NFTs, based on his hit Without Me, with the thinking face emoji on April 20th.
A week later, the Shadycon NFTs dropped on Nifty Marketplace, in three collections, Shadycon by Eminem which had two pieces of animated 3D sculptures, Shadycon: Marshall Masterpiece Card Pack by Eminem with digital trading cards and Shadycon: Open Editions by Eminem which had digital action figures.
27 | MF Doom
MF Doom released an alternate version of the music video for his Dead Bent track, which were bundled with some cool physical items, including the original Kodak 7231 Plus-X Negative Black and White Film and the cannister label. The NFT was dropped on Foundation, the content is NFSW.
27 | Disaster Girl
Four year old Zoë Roth posed in front of an intentional fire set by fireman in 2005, which was posted by her father online in 2008. With the picture going viral on the internet as the "Disaster Girl" meme. Roth was able to cash in on the fame, by auctioning the original photo on Foundation, and using the proceeds to pay off some of her student debt.
28 | Babymetal
Babymetal dropped a 20 digital trading cards, split over three tiers of rarity on Wax, featuring images from the Nippon Budokan show. The Mechapack was accompanied with a gold 2LP pressing of 10 Babymetal Budokan, along with live audio performances.
30 | Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group and Genies announced that a deal had been signed to bring digital collectibles based on the roster of artists with Warner Music Group to the digital avatar platform, marking the first time a major music label, and not an artist signed a deal with a digital collectibles company. Users of the Genie service can wear the collectibles, which includes apparel, accessories and tattoos on their own avatars, and use it on social media and the metaverse.
This partnership allows the leaders of culture to fully immerse themselves into the fantastical realm of the metaverse and build new, direct, and authentic connections with their respective followings and fanbases.
- Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies
May 2021
03 | Kurt Cobain
Photographer Jesse Frohman released images from the final photoshoot by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, which included polaroids, contact sheets and the entire collection of images. The winning bid also got one print of their choice, along with a photo shoot with Jesse Frohman. The cache of images from 2003, called The Last Session were auctioned as a single NFT on the photographer's website, with Frohman releasing two additional collections later, The Nevermind Editions and The In Utero Editions.
12 | Hublot
Hublot commemorated the Uefa Euro 2020 with the Big Bang e UEFA Euro 2020 connected watch, with the first 200 buyers of the watch also getting an NFT as a freebie. The NFTs contained an excerpt from one of the episodes of the Fusion Podcast, and were developed in collaboration with blockchain services firm, ConsenSys. The drops formed the Hublot Loves Football 2021 collection on OpenSea.
13 | Mars Attacks!
Along with the announcement on raising $7 million on an oversubscribed seed round, Curio, an NFT platform dedicated to the entertainment industry also announced the release of Mars Attacks! NFTs, which consisted of posters, static images, and stills from the development of the movie, with some scenes and elements not seen in the final production. All the campy, deliberately dated pieces sold out in minutes.
17 | Charlie bit my finger
Charlie bit my finger became the most viewed viral video on YouTube of all time, unintentionally. The Davies-Carr Family originally intended the video to be viewed only by friends and family. The video was dropped as an NFT on the dedicated website, Charlie Bit Me NFT. Nothing is wrong in the embed below, the video was removed from YouTube after the sale of the NFT.
19 | Jeezy
As an ode to his 2005 double platinum album, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101, Jeezy released five animated AR enhanced NFTs, in collaboration with NFT solutions provider Oasis Digital, sovereign identity and digital avatar services company Liquid Avatar Technologies and augmented reality studio Imagine AR. The NFTs were dropped on Infinite, in an open auction, with successful bidders getting entered into a raffle to win 30 golden tickets, along with autographed copies of the vinyl album.
20 | Steve Harvey
Steve Harvey dropped a collection of NFTs on Rarible, which contained animated loops of memorable reactions from the TV Show he hosted, Family Feuds. The NFTs include Harvey lobbing his shoes, and the "excuse me?" reaction. The NFTs were minted and auctioned specifically to raise money for the Harvey Foundation.
24| Infected Mushroom
When presented with digital art of entities called Shroomeez by digital artist Fargo, the Israeli psy trance artist duo Infected Mushroom imagined a planet full of such creatures and wondered what they would listen to.
The result was a four track album, with each track matching an NFT that dropped on Nifty Gateway. These are Back at It, Ma Osim, You Wanna Stay and Leftovers.
24 | Manchester City
A day after picking up the Championship League trophy, Manchester City Football Club dropped a number of NFTs on Makersplace to commemorate the win. These included animated loops of the jersey numbers signed by the players, animated loops of the club logo in token form, and a dancing footballer like figure made up of tokens, called The Champions Celebrate. The animated loops were produced in collaboration with Jon Noorlander, while a static image was produced by Alan Bolton.
27 | UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley found an innovative way of funding further research at the university, by minting an NFT containing the internal documents used by James Allison to declare a new invention and take steps towards protecting the same, for the discovery of cancer immunotherapy, for which James Allison shared the 2018 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine. The university has also declared its intention of following up with a similar NFT drop of the development of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, for which Jennifer Doudna shared the 2020 Nobel in Chemistry. The drop took place on Foundation.
June 2021
15 | Tim Berners-Lee
Sotheby's put on auction the original source code for the world's first web browser, typed between October 3 1990 and August 24 1991, containing 9,555 lines of code. The source code represents the birth of the internet, and includes descriptions of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The NFT was also accompanied by an SVG of the entire code signed by Berners-Lee, and a readme.md file written in Markdown in 2021 of Berners-Lee reflecting on the process of creating the code, as well as a 30 minute visualisation of the code being typed out. The proceeds from the auction are meant to benefit charities supported by Tim Berners-Lee and his wife Rosemary Leith. CERN has an online simulation of the experience of using the first web browser.
I have never once felt I could relax and sit back — as the web was and is constantly changing. It is not yet the best it can be: there is always work to be done!
- Tim Berners-Lee
15 | Tiger King
Month's after Topps had already surfed the Trends to bring out unofficial Tiger King themed NFTs as part of their Garbage Pail Kids Collection, Joseph Maldonado, professionally known as Joe Exotic and nicknamed Tiger King, came out with official NFTs on OpenSea in collaboration with More. The collection consisted of static and animated artworks, as well as photos of Joe Exotic, as well as trading cards. The drop happened while Joe Exotic was in a federal prison cell at Fort Worth, Texas, with Maldonado calling the NFTs, "never forget tigers".
16 | CNN
CNN launched NFTs on its own website, to sell off historic moments from CNN's news coverage. While most of the drops were related to major news events through the course of 2021 itself, such as the discovery of the Delta variant, the end of the Afghanistan war and the boom in NFTs, one historical "moment" from 1990 showcased the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. The NFT is available for $100 each, and is still available on sale at the time of writing.
17 | Olympic Games
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and nWay, another subsidiary of Animoca Brands focused on sports oriented NFTs announced a deal to put up officially licensed Olympics NFTs on the nWayPlay platform, which allowed users to get Olympic pins by purchasing assorted packs and opening them, buying them on the nWayPlay marketplace from other users who had obtained them by opening the packs, and earning them by playing an Olympic themed competitive videogame to be released ahead of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
22 | Mattel
The toy giant got into the NFT space with The First Editions collection, featuring three Hot Wheels model cars minted as 1/1 NFTs, the Twin Mill first released in 1969, the Deora II from 2000 and the Boneshaker from 2006. The NFTs were accompanied with video animations showing blowouts of the model vehicles, with the auction lasting for a week on Mattel's own website for NFT collectibles.
24 | Marvel
Marvel announced that it's properties would be rolling out as digital collectibles on VeVe, a carbon neutral platform that allows users to display, trade and buy the collectibles through the in app currency, Gems, and even pose them in an augmented reality setting, to share the images on social media. The drops from Marvel included posters, as well as fully readable digital comics. Later in the year, Disney would come on board as well.
Since the beginning, collecting has always gone hand in hand with being a Marvel fan
- Dan Buckley, President, Marvel Entertainment
25 | Jay-Z
To mark the 25th anniversary of Jay-Z's 1996 platinum-plus debut album Reasonable Doubt, Sotheby's held a 1/1 NFT of a commemorative piece of artwork produced by Derrick Adams, called Heir to the Throne. The artwork was commissioned by Jay-Z and reinterpreted the original cover of the album. The artwork was also put on display at Sotheby's art gallery in the Voltaire Art District on Decentraland.
30 | Twitter
Twitter dropped NFTs on Rarible, made up of five pieces of 20 editions each, totaling up to 140, and named The 140 Collection. None of them were a 1/1 drop. The piece titled First Born commemorated the first tweet by Jack Dorsey, in the form of an egg shaped dedicated device, that we wish would have been really existed.
July 2021
01 | Katy Perry
Katy Perry, who few might remember was one of the early YouTube stars to break into the mainstream pop scene, announced that she would be dropping NFTs on the Theta Network, a blockchain based video streaming platform. The trickle of drops since then includes behind the scenes photos of the pop star, as well as physical versions of memorable props used during her live concerts, such as an 8 metre long, 5 metre high golden lion weighing a ton.
04 | Megadeth
Megadeth dropped their first NFT on Rarible, and it is not at all surprising that the NFT was a looping animation of the band's mascot, Vic Rattlehead. While Megadeth has minted only one drop, the band itself seems to be an avid collector of NFTs on Rarible, owning a number of collectible cards from the Weensy collection, including Eiron Musk and Samurai Doge.
05 | Vishal Malhotra
Vishal Malhotra collaborated with Ishita Banerjee to release a short animated video on OpenSea, that also included a meet and greet with the actor on Zoom or Instagram. The piece titled Look Deep Within had soothing ambient music over which a shloka recitation from the Ghagwad Gita by Vishal Malhotra was layered.
05 | Sivaji the Boss
The release of the movie was accompanied with a collection of NFTs on Diginoor.io, that were all designed as trading cards which each captured a memorable moment or scene from the movie. Along with clips from the movies, the NFTs also contained music by AR Rehman. The best thing about this collection is that the auction has not ended yet, and the collectibles are still available for purchase for less than about Rs 1,000 each.
05 | Jay Kila, K-Nav and NLYTN
Jay Kila, K-Nav and NLYTN discovered their mutual love for cryptocurrencies during a jam session resulting in a three track EP, titled No Free Tracks, as well as an NFT to accompany each of the tracks on Foundation. The sculpted hand below is holding the symbol for Ethereum.
The tracks were named Matlab, Teen Patti and NFT, with the last one encouraging artists to take back control of their artwork and realise their financial freedom. The NFTs of the artworks were accompanied with animated loops by Ravi Singh Rudra. If you didn't catch it, "No Free Tracks" abbreviates to NFT.
10 | Zero Contact
The first feature length film starring a major actor was released as an NFT with the Zero Contact Movie NFTs collection on OpenSea. The movie stars Anthony Hopkins, and was a worldwide production undertaken during a raging pandemic, in the middle of lockdowns and restrictions. The movie was produced in collaboration with Vuele, which is a dedicated platform for releasing movies as NFTs. Along with the movie, posters, generated artwork, and an opportunity to shoot and get edited into the film was provided to the flagship token in the collection.
12 | SZA
SZA dropped her first NFT collection on Fanaply as a dual celebration, the four year anniversary of the release of her debut album, CTRL, as well as the American Express Unstated live performance. The NFT dropped contained animated presentations of behind the scenes photos captured during the event, known as "Moments" on Fanaply. There were 14 of these photos tokenised as part of the collection.
15 | ASICS
The Shoe brand ASICS launched its NFTs, listing a number of iconic models from its 44 year long history as part of 1/20 collectible trading cards. The ASICS Sunrise Red collection was available on Opensea, which was followed up by the auctioning of 1/1 Gold Edition NFTs on an in house NFT store by ASICS. The digital drops were accompanied by high resolution 3D models of the shoes, along with the relevant textures for the editions, to be used by buyers in social media or in the metaverse.
18 | Dolce & Gabbana
The fashion house revealed its Collezione Genesi at a Dolce & Gabbana couture event in Venice, which had phygital luxury items, jackets, dresses, crowns, a suit and a tiara. Potential buyers had to get in line for the scheduled auctions, and then bid on the UNXD platform, where the Collezione Genesi is the only drop so far. Some of the items can be worn in the real world and all the items are to be displayed, with the buyer's names attached to displays of the item at the flagship store in Milan as well as any Dolce & Gabbana store worldwide. The physical components of the drop included a year's access to the coutre events in Italy and a private tour of the Dolce & Gabbana atelier (workshop) in Milan.
30 | Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola dropped an NFT lootbox packed with more NFTs inside on International Friendship Day. Packed inside was a wearable bubble jacket that could be worn in Decentraland, a sound visualiser capturing the experience of opening up a can of Coke, pouring the cola into a glass with ice, and having the first refreshing sip, a Coca-Cola friendship card which 90s kids might remember, and a vintage Coca-Cola vending machine from 1956. Strangely, all of these were available as only 1/1 editions, but Coca-Cola threw in a physical retro Coca-Cola refrigerator for the winning bid. The user with the winning bid also got a shareable bubble jacket to share with a friend on Decentraland. The NFT lootpbox was dropped at a special can-top party event on Decentraland with a specially constructed Coke can tower, with attendees getting "Mythic" Coca-Cola wearable t-shirts.
August 2021
03| Funko
Funko released its highly anticipated NFT collection, which were not digital bobbleheads, but trading cards for different characters from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. The drop took place on the Wax platform, and included fan favorites such as Shredder, Krang, Splinter, Leatherhead, April O'Neil, and of course, the four turtles.
04 | Burberry
The fashion brand introduced a number of in game wearable items on blockchain based game Blankos Block Party. The Items are tradeable, sellable and even burnable on the Mythical Marketplace, with users able to wear the items in game. Burberry launched a jetpack, armbands and shark themed pool shoes as part of its B Series collection.
06 | Blondie
In a tribute to Andy Warhol, on what would have been his 93rd birthday, the rock group Blondie released a number of "Hack the Borders" collections on Nifty Gateway. The Open Edition and the Pop and Punk Special Drawings and the Quad Special collections were all collaborations with Hackatao, which reimagined and recontextualised the computer portrait generated by Warhol of the band's frontwoman, Debbie Harry.
20 | Messi
The "Messiverse" collection was dropped on Ethernity, which focuses on Sports and Entertainment related NFTs. The collection included five NFTs designed by Bosslogic, containing looped animations. These pieces were called The Man from the Past and The Man from Tomorrow commemorated Messi's surprise switch between teams. There were also various interpretations of Messi as The Magician, The Golden One and The King Piece.
31 | DKNY
DKNY commemorated its rebranding and launch of a new logo with an accompanying NFT release as well. The NFT dropped on rad.live. The hypnotic, surreal visual interpretation of the logo was generated using AI by Obvious, accompanied by a pastiche of New York sounds, highlighting the connection of the brand to the city.
31 | Banksy
In what was one of the biggest events in the NFT space, that also clearly demonstrated what NFTs were all about, Banksy destroyed a painting titled Morons during a livestreamed event, by burning it. What was left was only the image of the painting, which was minted as an NFT. Usually, an NFT gets produced when minted, and destroyed when burned, but Banksy managed to burn an NFT into existence. The original Banksy Morons was a screen print produced in 2006 showing an auctioneer at Christie's, while the Original Banksy Morons is now an NFT on Opensea.
September 2021
01 | Bacardi
Bacardi launched a five year tradition of releasing a new limited-edition rare rum annually through 2025, and started off with the Bacardi Reserva Ocho Sherry Cask Finish in 2021. The NFT accompanying the release of the rum contains behind the scenes footage and photos from the process of making the rum, captured by Cam Kirk. The auction is taking place on Bacardi's own website, was supposed to end in two weeks, but at least the process of bidding is still open!
10 | Euphoria
Euphoria's album Sale was available as an NFT on Token Runway, an invite only NFT curation project, subsequently listed on Mintable, an NFT marketplace. Euphoaria's album is the only listed past or current drop on Token Runway.
The NFT had downloadable content as well as a sellable token, along with collectible exclusives, but it is unclear what these are. However, the band did put up a "sneak peek" of one of the songs on their YouTube channel.
13 | Nascar
Nascar launched its own NFT marketplace called Racedaynft.com, giving away thousands of commemorative NFTs to fans. A number of tokens specifically designed to boost fan engagement have appeared on the website, including commemorative tickets, blueprints of winning vehicles, images from the race track, and even a Bristol Motor Speedway Gladiator Sword.
22 | Dune
Dune commemorated the release of the film with accompanying NFTs, a collection of collectibles called Future Artefacts. The collection had digital sculptures of main characters from the movie, set to music by Hans Zimmer. Additionally, there was also a painting capturing the moment Paul Atreides feels the spice rich sands on Arrakis. The website for the movie indicates that additional drops are on the way.
22 | Iron Maiden
Funko finally came up with the digital versions of their popular Funko Pop collectibles. The NFTs made for Iron Maiden, featuring the band's mascot Eddie, looked like animated trading cards of a Pop version of the mascot. Still, the Maiden Funko collection dropped on the Wax platform represented two firsts, the first Funkp Pop NFTs, and the first Iron Maiden NFTs.
14 | The British Museum
The British Museum started selling items from its collection as NFTs, on the French La Collection platform. The first lot of drops were postcards by Katsushika Hokusai, the Japanese artist who painted Under the Wave off Kanagawa, better known as The Great Wave. The NFT of that particular image was sold as a 1/10 edition, although a large number of other postcards were put up for auction as well.
30 | Vahdam India
On September 30, Vahdam India, a homebrewn wellness brand specialising in teas, spices, superfoods and drink ware announced an ambitious mission to take its tea into space, and released an NFT titled Ticket to Mars, showing a hot air balloon rising to Mars to hand over Elon Musk, next to a Falcon Heavy, a glass of Vahdam Tea. The wellness brand followed up with an NFT congratulating Parag Agrawal for becoming the CEO of Twitter.
30 | TikTok
TikTok broke the internet by announcing that it would be allowing fans to buy moments that broke the internet in the form of NFTs. The NFTs were launched on a layer 2 platform called Immutable X, which allowed for gas free trades and carbon neutral marketplaces, while based on the underlying Ethereum blockchain for security and authenticity. The NFTs themselves consisted of memorable moments of artists on the platform, with the first creator being Lil Nas X. Subsequently, NFTs from Rudy Willingham, Bella Poarch, Curtis Roach, Brittany Broski, FNMeka, Jess Marciante and Gary Vaynerchuk dropped on the dedicated website for the drops.
October 2021
04 | Shaq
The retired basketball star Shaquille O'Neal collaborated with Justin Miller to release the Shaquille O'Neal: The Eras of Dominance Collection on Ethernity, that consisted of animations of the star from his era of dominance and followed it up with another collaboration on the same marketplace with Visual Lab, that had the more traditional trading cards.
05 | DC
DC announced an NFT airdrop for fans attending the FanDome event for free, with three covers in three tiers of rarity available for Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Harley Quinn from the DC roster of superheroes. Fans initially got a few NFTs for registering for the event, and posting the NFTs on social media bagged them additional NFT drops. The collection dropped on its own dedicated website.
05 | Frank Miller
With the collaboration announced on April 29, Frank Miller's highly anticipated NFTs commemorating the 30th anniversary of Sin City finally dropped on October 05. The NFTs were a collaboration between Frank Miller, the game art studio Concept Art House and Gala Games, that specialises cross platform NFTS interportable between blockchains. The NFTs consisted of looping animations based on panels from the graphic novel. The auction took place on a dedicated website, FrankMiller.io, with a live drawing NFT dropping on October 8 on OpenSea.
05 | Manish Malhotra
Manish Malhotra launched a series NFTs on Indian NFT marketplace Wazirx, which consisted of animations of his sketches, an old photo of Lisa Ray, and a small clip from a 2013 show. The designer said that the NFTs were minted in collaboration with Lakme Fashion Week while announcing the drops.
09 | Wong Kar Wai
As part of it's Modern Arts Sale in Hong Kong, Sotheby's auctioned an the first NFT from the acclaimed director, In the Mood for Love – Day One. The film was edited from never before seen footage from the first day of shooting of Wong Kar Wai's 2000 film, In the Mood for Love and is a short skit that shows the title characters in a new light. The NFT also marked the 30th anniversary of Wong Kar Wai's production house, Jet Tone Films.
13 | Glenfiddich
Glenfiddich partnered with BlockBar, an NFT marketplace dedicated for luxury wine and scotch products to launch its 43 year old Armagnac cask finish Single Malt Scotch Whisky. 15 NFTs were minted, each corresponding to an actual bottle from 1973. BlockBar is a direct to consumer marketplace, where the buyers can consume, collect, invest or resell through the platform itself.
19 | SAW
A series of NFTs from the SAW film series dropped on Autograph, featuring the most morbid traps from all the films, schematics of the traps, keys, and Jigsaw's workshop. The artworks consisted of both static images and animations, all reinterpreted in 3D artwork. The announcement of the drops was done by Jigsaw in a YouTube video.
21 | McLaren
McLaren launched its own platform for NFTs, which has an elaborate setup. Users have to purchase 22 individual car parts, and race against others to assemble them into a vehicle. Those who are able to collect all the parts can get an interactive 3D vehicle, the MCL35M. The first user to successfully do so, wins an all expense paid trip to the Grand Prix in 2022.
23 | Dangerous
Instead of selling a movie as an NFT, Ram Gopal Varma showed he was ahead of the curve by crowdfunded his upcoming film Dangerous, by selling "Danger Tokens" on a dedicated website. The film makers and the lead actors retained 1/6th of the share of the tokens, while the other investors could pick up 5/6ths, consisting of 5,00,000 units costing Rs 149.90 each. Each of the investors get a share of the profits of the movie, with those buyers picking up over 10 lakhs worth of Danger Tokens being invited to the launch party and listed on the credits. As the same objective could have been achieved with fungible tokens, and none of the individual tokens have anything unique about them, it is difficult to consider these an actual NFT, but still, they were put to innovative use.
November 2021
03 | Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan NFTs dropped on Beyondlife.club, which had a whole bunch of physical and digital memorabilia. There were recitations from his father, Harivanshrai Bachchan's poem, Madhushala, in Hindi and English, physical signed posters of classic movies such as Sholay, Deewar and Don, accompanied with pixelated digital artworks of Bachchan's characters from these movies.
03 | Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino announced that he would be putting up pages of the original handwritten script of Pulp Fiction, including those of scenes that did not make it to the final movie. Miramax sued Tarantino saying it undervalued their efforts of ongoing negotiations of tokenising their entire catalogue. Tarantino went ahead with the drop though, through a dedicated website. These drops are in the form of secret NFTs, which means only the owners will be able to see and appreciate the content. Accompanying the script pages are additional media and commentary from the director.
04 | UFC
The mixed martial arts company Ultimate Fighting League (UFC) launched its first NFTs on Crypto.com, ahead of UFC 268: Usman Vs Covington 2. The drops included artwork, belts, posters of the event, fighter profiles and even shards, which are digitally broken off pieces of the event, that potentially can be made whole by also collecting the broken piece.
07 | McDonald's
From November 1 to November 07, McDonald's held a sweepstakes on Twitter, asking users to retweet the invite to the sweepstakes. 10 of these were chosen to receive the McRib NFT on Rarible. The NFT was dropped to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the burger.
11 | Toys"R"Us
Toys"R"Us launched its debut NFT in the form of an animated version of its star mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe. The NFT, titled Geoffrey Stroll is a looping animation created by artist Bryan Lopez aka Exacto. The animation is set to a modern interpretation of the Toys"R"Us jungle, I Don't Want to Grow Up, I'm a Toys"R"Us Kid.
12 | MIA
MIA debuted her first NFT song, Babylon on Foundation, but the artist had been releasing NFTs since April in the year. The Babylon song was accompanied by the animation similar to the artist's first ever digital artwork, which were released earlier in two versions as Kizhi Coin and Kala Coin. Apart from Babylon, a number of other animated gifs, digital artworks, old photos all form the Vickileekx collection.
15 | Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Gavaskar started releasing NFTs on the Always First platform, which are staggered series of releases, initially containing emblem tokens, collecting all four unlocks additional rewards. From January 2022, "moments" from will be released, commemorating important highlights the cricketer's career. In March, there will be the release of a documentary, The Sunil Story.
23 | Star Trek
With the Star Trek collection, Funko finally provided fans with what they expected from the toy company in the digital space. There were Funko Pop NFTs of characters from the Star Trek franchise, but some of these Pops were matched with limited edition physical vinyl Funko Pops as well. Scott, Kirk, Scotty and Klingon were available as these limited edition physical and digital Pops.
26 | International Chess Federation
The International Chess Federation got in on the NFT action by listing a number of collectibles to commemorate the World Championship match between Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi in Dubai. The drops included first moves, particular moves through the game and memorable "moments", which were stylised cuts from the action during the tournament.
The application of blockchain to the classic game of chess has the utmost potential to lift the entry barrier and expand affinity for the sport globally.
- Marco Verdoia, Marketing Director at FIDE
30 | Budweiser
Budweiser dropped 1,900 unique, generative art NFTs and launched the "Budverse" on its own website, after which the drops were available for trading on OpenSea. While the core editions have been sold out, the auctions for 36 heritage cans as "Gold NFTs" is ongoing, all the way through June 2022, which are the VIP tickets for unlocking additional experiences in the Budverse.
30 | Pinkfong
Pinkfong debuted their NFTs on Makersplace, with the 1/1 Baby Shark No 1 containing a primarily instrumental rendition of the viral tune, with limited vocals set to a looping animation. The other items in the collection, Baby Shark: Collection No 1, had similar looping animations, with five pieces for each of the sharks in the family, Baby, Mommy, Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa.
30 | The Matrix
Warner Bros dropped avatars of characters that are trapped within The Matrix, on Nifty's. 100,000 of these avatars created using the MetaHuman Creator from the Unreal Engine. The drop crashed the site, and when it came on, all the avatars had been purchased. Then came the second round of the drop, where all buyers were given a choice, between a red pill and a blue pill, that would take their avatars on different trajectories. The activity took place to mark the release of The Matrix Resurrections.
December 2021
03 | Jimmy Wales
Christie's held an auction for a collection titled The Birth of Wikipedia, with two lots, an NFT of the first edit, and a Strawberry iMac used by Wales to create the website. The NFT sold for $750,000, while the iMac sold for $187,500. The first edit was a simple "Hello World!", and the NFT is titled EditThisNFT. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will go towards supporting Wales' social media initiative, WT.Social.
07 | Ubisoft
Ubisoft launched Quartz, a platform dedicated to acquire NFTs from AAA titles. The Beta version of the platform went live for the game Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which allowed players to acquire cosmetic "Digits", the term used by Ubisoft for its NFTs. The Digits initially include weapons, pieces of equipment, and vehicles.
Our long-term efforts led us to understand how blockchain's decentralized approach could genuinely make players stakeholders of our games, in a way that is also sustainable for our industry, placing back into their hands the value they generate through the time they spend, the items they buy or the content they create online
- Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft's Strategic Innovation Lab
10 | Pepsi
The Pepsi Mic Drop series of NFTs are made up of 1,893 pieces of generative art made using six components, including microphones, stages, eyewear and headwear. 1893 is the year the company was founded. The drops are available on Pepsi's own website.
12 | Yuvraj Singh
This one is a bit intense, so you might want to sit down for this. Yuvraj Singh has collaborated with Colexion to not only launch collectable NFTs that commemorate highlights from his career, trading cards, videos and autograph cards, but also a virtual museum that showcases the cricketer's journey.
Now, to make Yuvraj's signed debut bat even more memorable, Colexion has collaborated with Sent into Space, to send the bat up into space! A screen mounted on the bat itself will allow the cricketer to address his fans from a screen, on top of a bat, in space. You can check out the plan of action below.
16 | Adidas
Adidas has teamed up with NFT pioneers gmoney, Punks Comics and the Bored Ape Yacht Club, to guide Adidas Originals: Into the metaverse, a phygital NFT, the owner of which can claim physical versions of the Firebird Tracksuit, a graphic hoodie, and gmoney's orange beanie from Punks Comics #2.
NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialisation. How sweet – now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well
-Brian Eno to Evgeny Morozov on December 21
30 | Salman Khan
Bollycoin, a platform looking to bridge the gap between Bollywood and Cryptocurrency is dropping the auctioning the first tokens from Salman Khan, which seem to be moments from Dabangg sorted into five collections. The auction goes live on December 30, with drops staggered and auctions scheduled all the way into February 2022.
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