#69 | World's Largest Cosmetics Brand Launches NFT Beauty DAO???

Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

Hey friends,

Welcome back to our 69th newsletter (nice)! Today we have curated recent NFT news that pushes the boundaries of “JPEG” technology further, from funding movies to authenticating jewelry and creating cosmetics communities. Let's jump into it!

Steaming Headlines ♨️

NFT-Funded Film Wins Award At Sundance

NFTs have opened a wide range of doors for creatives, with the latest example in this new community-sourced revolution being the NFT-funded film ‘Calladita’ which took home the Andrews/Bernard Award, including $100k in post-production funds. You may have seen the “Sundance Award Winner” sticker on a movie poster before, with the independent film festival being one of the most respected and celebrated in the United States since its start in 1978, and this year saw a pioneering film from director Miguel Faus pushing the boundaries of NFTs and Web3 and coining a new term — Film3.

Calladita “explores themes of class differences and injustice from a profound and sophisticated perspective” through the story of protagonist Ana. Unlike traditional films, this Film3 was completely financed through NFTs.

This “Film3” term has been starting to catch on recently, with many including Miguel marking this as the future for independent cinema. Even back early last year, we covered Russel Crowe's film “Prizefighter” being funded through NFTs; NFTs represent a new frontier for filmmaking that merges the independent financing of films with the curation of communities, where movie buffs can own a collectible of digital movie history all while funding the next Hollywood blockbuster. Web3 is continuing to create direct connections between creators and their audiences, so it's likely we will literally see more Film3s to come.

Jewelry Brand Taps NFTs as Authentication and Collectibles

NFTs have been praised for their revolutionary ability to authenticate digital items in our online world, but it's quickly becoming apparent that NFTs hold the key to robust verification in the physical world too, from NFT car titles to NFT music festival tickets.

Next to push the boundaries of NFTs in our real world has been the high-luxury jewelry brand L’Dezen, which recently launched both physical and digital rings to customers at the Meta Z Lounge in Seoul. Having recently partnered with Digital Twin for these phygitals, the auction site said “Fine jewelry in itself is a highly collectible form of art, and the authentication and trade-ability of NFTs resolves the traditional pain points for collectors”.

The product in question is the brand's popular ​​“Blooming of Ages” ring which features 24-carat diamonds and attracts an eye-watering $75,000 price tag. The NFT that accompanies this elaborate ring was created in collaboration with creative studio Gallerie X to create not only something to forever authenticate your $75k ring, but also provide a unique piece of digital art to represent it. L’Dezen also sees NFTs as a new avenue for connection with their customers, saying “The essence of luxury is in heritage and storytelling, which has been conveyed through traditional means. Now, utilizing blockchain technology, NFTs are a new medium to educate consumers and relate a compelling story, amplifying brand resonance and creating more value”.

Although not as revolutionary as a Fortune 100 company incorporating NFTs into their business model, we highlight this story to continue keeping us on our toes for what NFTs really are being used for. The intersection of verification, digital art, and brand building for the jewelry industry truly exemplifies the infinite possibilities that Web3 and NFTs have opened up.

L’Oreal Brand Launches NFT beauty DAO

Continuing the theme of curious NFT stories from this week, we have just seen the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company L'Oreal get involved with NFTs through their subsidiary brand NYX Professional Makeup, launching the world's first beauty DAO.

If you're wondering how beauty and cosmetics can have a Decentralised Autonomous Organization, the community made up of FKWME NFT Pass holders will serve as a place where digital creators can thrive, while voting for important decisions like future project funding, exclusive drops, and more. This “future project funding” acts as an interesting utility where each holder will get NFT airdrops from seasonal collections funded by the DAO.

The 1,000 FKWME NFTs drop for a modest 0.19 ETH, with the NYX GORJS DAO also giving up-and-coming creators access to the creator suite consisting of NYX team leaders, NFT experts, and talented artists. The DAO claims to be community-focused with token allocations determining governance over the future of the project and which projects they want to fund. With an impressive advisory board consisting of members like Co-Founder of The Sandbox Sebastien Borget and Polygon Labs’ Brian Trunzo, it's hard not to be intrigued by this new initiative. 

NYX Global Brand President Yann Joffredo furthers the community focus saying “GORJS is elevating 3D creators across the industry, and cultivating growth, equity and innovation within the community, and ultimately, providing them a path to success within the Web3 ecosystem”. Whether you are interested in cosmetics or not, it's no doubt great to see yet another avenue of the world that Web3 and NFTs have infiltrated, we can't wait to see what's next.

We hope you enjoyed this week's interesting curation of stories! It's always amazing how NFTs continue to be used in every which way possible; we really are looking at the infrastructure for the next generation of the internet. Have a great couple of days, and take care!

What's the NFTea? 🍵

While relative newcomer EVM chain $CANTO has recently become the newfound darling of crypto and NFT Twitter, things over there seem a little too early to cover in-depth. Although one fun little titbit is that renowned whale dingaling splurged so much on NFTs over there that he covered 10% of the all-time marketplace volume on his own. Now THAT's a whale.

So, instead of talking about Canto Longnecks and Shnoises, we're going to take a step back and move over to some piping-hot Solana NFT drama revolving around Okay Bears.

The royalties debate on Solana has been going on for months, with the overarching saga ending in an update in Solana's native NFT token standard to the pNFT (programmable NFT) that allows collection owners to enforce royalties by removing token-gated access for violators and/or potentially removing the metadata images that represent each individual token as well. While this protects the rights of creators, people within the ecosystem have expressed concern at the added layer of centralization that this will bring to the table.

Among the leading NFT projects on Solana (discounting DeGods and y00ts since they will be bridging to Ethereum and Polygon respectively in Q1 2023), Okay Bears is probably the highest profile project which has opted into the new pNFT token standard, turning royalties back on to 5%.

While most holders support the move with the rationale being more project funds = the team will have more revenue to support building out the project, prominent voice and Okay Bears holder HGE spoke out on his thoughts on the matter.

This escalated with HGE calling it one of the worst moves ever made, and one of the Okay Bears co-founders rebutting with the argument that their CTO was "doing his due diligence". 

Who's right and wrong in this debate? While protecting royalties is important for maintaining a project's revenue stream, whether an NFT is truly decentralized and/or fully owned by the token holder is a rather important concept for the entire NFT ecosystem. 

Which side are you on? Tweet at us @MorningNFTea to let us know.

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DISCLAIMER: 

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.