Solana suffered a massive hack, Tiffany's is going to be making NFT jewelry, Gucci is accepting ApeCoin for its luxury garb, a Care Bears NFT collection is incoming, and frens, it’s only Wednesday!

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Right, let’s get straight into it!

DYOR 🧐

Hacks are bad enough when they affect a handful of wallets or when they’re the result of compromised social media accounts or other vectors where it’s hard to blame users or platforms for their missteps. But they’re even worse when they affect dozens of users and seem to be happening as if by some sort of dark magic.

Sadly, that’s the sort of hack Solana experienced this week, which saw an estimated 9,000+ wallets drained of SOL worth more than $8 million. The affected wallets include Solana wallets from Phantom and Slope and the Ethereum wallet Trust… all of which are “hot” wallets — that is, online wallets accessed via an internet browser extension.Increasingly, it looks like Slope is the primary attack vector, with CoinDesk reporting there’s mounting evidence a bug in Slopes software or security is to blame (affected Phantom and Trust users appear to have had Slope wallets, too).

If you have funds in any of the above, log in to them and remove any permissions for any apps or services immediately.

The next step is to move your funds to a hardware wallet like one from Ledger or Trezor. If you don’t have a hardware wallet, Exodus is one of the Solana wallets that’s been unaffected by the breach, or you could move your tokens to an exchange like Coinbase, FTX, or Gemini (which usually isn’t the advice we’d give, as keeping your cryptocurrencies with exchanges means you don’t really own them, and may not have recourse if they’re compromised).

While it’s bad news for Slope and Solana in particular… it’s great news for the likes of Ledger and Trezor. It’s also just the latest in a long line of reminders that the moment you have enough cryptocurrency that you’d be sad (or worse) if you lost it, you should invest in a hardware wallet. Prevention is better than cure, anon, especially because there is usually no cure in this trustless, uni-directional-transactional space. Pundits call it a feature, not a bug.

💾 Wait until you hit 40! 🥲

Probably nothing 🤔

Magic Eden x Solana 🪄

Before Solana’s hack woes this week, the biggest news about the chain concerned its largest marketplace, Magic Eden, which announced it’s poised to add support for Ethereum-based NFTs. The move mirrors one made by Ethereum’s largest marketplace, OpenSea, back in April. Except that OpenSea has famously seen low volume in Solana sales, in part because it doesn’t seem to understand Solana’s best projects… nor do much to promote them.

Magic Eden is also promising a slew of new features for its marketplace and will demo its new cross-chain capabilities with EZU, the new project from Voltura Labs (the team behind Psychedelics Anonymous), which will allow collectors to mint using either ETH and SOL. We, for one, welcome our chain-agnostic future overlords.

That’s not very punk, Tiffany 💎

Jeweler Tiffany & Company will sell 250 “NFTiff” NFTs on Friday, August 5. Priced at 30 ETH (~$50,000) each, the 250 tokens can each be redeemed for a golden, jewel-encrusted CryptoPunk pendant. Of course, aside from needing the requisite ETH to buy an NFTiff, you’ll also need to hold a Punk in order to have it pendantized.

Each pendant will be made of “18k rose or yellow gold based on the color palette of the NFT,” and will be embellished with “at least 30” gemstones and/or diamonds. You don’t need to be Punk holder to mint an NFTiff, and they’ll be tradeable on major marketplaces like OpenSea… so if you think they’re going to moon, or you think you might want to buy/wear a Punk in the future, you can play too.

Tiffany & Company says consumers will be limited to three NFTiffs each… though how it’s going to police that, or whether it’s going to make any efforts to avoid gas wars, remains to be seen. If anything, for those of us watching from the sidelines, the lack of specifics in the FAQs makes it even more of a grab-the-popcorn drop.

Care Bear market alert! 🧸

Hot on the heels of its nostalgia-chasing Nickelodeon NFT collection, partner to the stars of franchises of yesteryear, RECUR, is back with another drop designed to tug at the heart-and-purse strings of older Millennials/younger-Gen Xers. This time around, it’s Care Bears in the digital collectibles spotlight.

Recur holders can buy a $50 “Care Chest” containing a single digital Care Bear today from the project’s website, and can buy additional ones from a collection of 3,000 tomorrow (August 4) at 1pm EST. The public sale of a further 1,750 opens tomorrow (or today, or yesterday, depending when you’re reading this) at 2pm EST. Sure, “caring is what counts,” but pulling a rare counts even more. Good luck. And may the Care Bear gods cast their favorable countenance upon thee.

Bag boosters 💰

The week — or part thereof — that was (July 29 - Aug 3, 2022) 🗓

There’s some semblance of normality restored to this week’s chart. The top five is dominated by blue chips, and the only real outliers are Nina’s Super Cool World and YOLO Bunny, though the latter may only be on the chart because of some concerted pumping. But don’t worry, we’re sure this return to common sense won’t last… it seldom does.

NGMI ☄️

A textbook case of a bad idea 📚

Andy Bird is the CEO of Pearson Plc, one of the largest players in the textbook game. On Monday, during a chat with reporters following an interim results presentation, Bird suggested the company was investigating the possibility of using NFTs to give it a slice of the secondhand textbook market, Bloomberg reports.

With textbooks already being prohibitively expensive for many, the secondhand market is a lifeline for cash-strapped students. Besides — cumbersome as they are — physical tomes are easier to scrawl notes in than digital ones… and harder to police, which makes us like them even more. Also, gatekeeping education sucks. (Dear Andy, if you’re reading this, despite what some degens might tell you, not everything needs to be an NFT. Yours sincerely, Everyone).

🧙‍♀️ How much for a hex? ⬡

To the moon 🌜

Luxury brand Gucci has announced it will begin accepting ApeCoin as payment for in-store purchases of its goods. Who knows what other sorts “ofcryptocurrencies” might follow?

OG crypto artist XCOPY says he’s making all of his work (except collaborations) CC0, which means owners will be able to remix or rework his creations as they see fit. (For an explainer on why this matters, check out the ‘Thread of the Week’ below.)

On Wednesday, Input published an in-depth profile of two of the Bored Ape Yacht Clubs’ founders: Wylie Aronow (AKA Gordon Goner) and Greg Solano (AKA Gargamel), which makes for fascinating reading.

Generative artist Matt DesLauriers (who coincidentally created the featured work of the week in last week’s newsletter) unveiled “Meridian” a coffee table book offering a deep dive into the 1,000-piece gen art collection of the same name.

OpenSea paid 99 ETH (~165,200) to claim its own ENS name, opensea.eth (lol).

And, British rock band Muse is launching its ninth album, Will of the People, in a new NFT format Warner Records U.K. is pioneering in partnership with a platform called Serenade called a “digital pressing.” Aside from serving as a digital collectible for super fans, digital pressings will count towards physical album sales for chart calculations.

🪡 Thread of the week 🧵

Bedtime reading 📚

Deloitte’s got a new report that, like most documents of its ilk from large consulting firms, tells you exactly what to expect from the title: “Making blockchain real for customer loyalty rewards programs.”

Meanwhile, Right Click Save sat down with Rhea Myers to talk about “blockchain art, smart contracts, and the legacy of Harold Cohen.”

Goats only 🐐

Whether you’re a Care Bear aficionado or more of a He-Man-and-Skeletor kind of person, you should be watching or listening to Goats and the Metaverse.

In each episode, collectibles OG and entrepreneur Stan “The Goat” Meytin and Metaversal co-founder and CEO Yossi Hasson talk about digital and IRL collectibles, NFTs, and the week’s news worth knowing. This week Yossi is flying solo while Stan gets some much-deserved R&R, and he’s looking into the Solana hack and offering tips on how to protect yourself.

Check out the latest episode here:

Aside from providing invaluable insights into digital art and collectibles, Stan and Yossi are also putting together a collection of NFTs dubbed “The Goat Vault.” When the show hits 5,000 subscribers on YouTube, one of those lucky subscribers will win the contents of the vault which, at last count, was valued at over 11.65 ETH (~$19,700).

Prefer listening? Check out Goats and the Metaverse on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, or wherever you get your podcasts.

LFG 🎉

Money <> mouth 💸

Each week we offer you a look at an NFT project we’ve invested in and the motivation behind it. This week we’re looking at “Waterfalls #9” by Nicholas Sassoon.

Sassoon is a French-born, Vancouver-based artist and coder whose work toys with patterns, the aesthetics of early computer graphics, and the potential of pixel art. He’s also become a prolific collector in his own right, particularly on the Tezos blockchain. We love his work, especially his animated work, which tends toward the hypnotic. We suspect he’s going to be… what’s the word… “énorme.”

IYKYK 😉

Until next time, see you in the Metaverse.