#90 | Canon's Cadabra Marketplace to Empower NFT Photographers

Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

Hey friends,

Wonderful to have you with us! In today's edition, we have a wide range of specially curated stories from Ethereum’s recent Shanghai upgrade to Canon’s new NFT photography marketplace and Thailand’s second round of tourism NFTs. Let’s jump into it!

It’s been a great week for crypto with both Bitcoin and Ethereum breaking past the psychological barriers at $30k and $2k respectively, which are now acting as support levels. Bitcoin hit this new 10-month high at the same time as new macroeconomic data prints from the United States revealed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Inflation (PPI) had evidence of inflation slowing faster than expected helping improve investors' confidence. Ethereum also hit its own positive momentum after its Shanghai upgrade on April 12 saw a brand new Ethereum with new capabilities, so let's take a look at what this blockchain upgrade has done.

Just last year we saw Ethereum go through a major upgrade in “The Merge” that moved Ethereum from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the more turtle-friendly proof-of-stake which resulted in a 99.95% reduction in energy use for the blockchain. The upgrade saw various benefits from its new proof-of-stake (checkout our Eth2.0 merge coverage). Ultimately, it all came from staked ETH being used to validate transactions instead of validators farming power to solve complex calculations like consensus mechanisms of old. However, one of the issues and concerns for traders of the newly merged Ethereum 2.0 was that your staked ETH could not be withdrawn, until now.

This update has been nicknamed “Shapella” because it actually consisted of two updates for Ethereum two-layer blockchain, “Shanghai” happened on the execution layer while “Capella” targeted the consensus layer. With this total upgrade in question, there was more to it than just enabling users to withdraw their staked ETH, with the upgrade also focusing on improving the scalability, speed, and security of the Ethereum network. Although there were many improvements made, one of the most interesting changes comes with a focus on reducing that pesky Gas through a new EIP-1559 transaction format that introduces a “base fee”. This base fee is used to reduce transaction fees while making the process more predictable, with added perks that burning the base fee will reduce the total supply of ETH and hence potentially increase its price.

If you want to learn more about this recent upgrade you can check out this in-depth guide from Cryptoticker, but it's great to see continued development and innovations for one of the world's most interacted with blockchains. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that this Shanghai upgrade brings us closer to the next Ethereum upgrade which has its total focus on improving scaling and making transactions faster and cheaper, what an exciting Ethereum that could be as it continues to become an all-rounded blockchain.

Even if you are not an avid photographer, the brand Canon has made itself a household name by becoming the world's largest camera and imaging company, and now they are making their first major foray into the world of Web3 through the launch of NFT Marketplace Cadabra.

The Cadabra marketplace will give photographers a new opportunity to monetize their artwork through initial drops as well as secondary sales while creating a more accessible gallery for enthusiasts to purchase artwork from. Canon is yet the latest example of well-established brands creating seamless experiences for the onboarding of people into Web3, and Cadabra has a focus on this by automatically fulfilling orders and physical printing of photos for artists while offering buyers fiat, card, and cryptocurrency payment options.

The photography marketplace was previewed at NFT NYC this week, with signs Canon is likely onto something hot through Cadabra as these tokenized photographs help pioneer a new industry in parallel with the traditional tokenized artworks that have garnered so much success in Web3. Its no doubt that Canon is hoping to share some of the limelight of art NFTs by helping mainstream photography, and although they will be in competition with other photography NFT platforms like Quantum Art or Sloika it's easy to see Canon create a popular Web3 photography platform by utilizing its brand's global recognition and trust.

Set to launch later in 2023, Cadabra will be a great test case for how brands can create new forward-thinking initiatives that have the ability to evolve and change how people interact with your market; a more accessible world of photography art and ownership is a great start for Canon to kick off with.

In such a new industry like Web3, it's common to see countries and governments reluctant to explore Non-Fungible-Tokens, but this isn't the case for Thailand, which through their Government Tourism Authority has doubled down on NFTs with its second season of “Amazing Thailand NFTs”. If you're having Deja Vu, it could be because in November of last year, we covered Thailand's first season which had 17,118 NFTs collected opening Pandora's box on a new type of tourism ecosystem that sustains new ways for tourists to explore and discover popular attractions and events, while having a permanent immutable souvenir to take home.

With over 35 million visitors each year, Thailand as one of the world's most popular tourist destinations doubling down on NFTs is great for the future of the technology, and specifically for Amazing Thailand NFTs this second season will have 24,000 tokens distributed across 20 different tourist attractions across five regions of Thailand. These NFTs can be collected for free by tourists who explore the vibrant country, with the NFT granting access to exclusive bonuses like discounts on flights, hotels, department stores, supermarkets, restaurants, car rentals, and other things that help stimulate Thailand's local economy.

Thailand acts as another great example of initiatives that help push us towards mainstream adoption of Web3, collecting Amazing Thailand NFTs has been made a very simple onboarding process where you only need to download the YAKS app before scanning a QR code at the local attraction to receive your unique NFT. The NFT represents the location in different rarity levels contributing to the aforementioned token-gated perks of other activities and stores.

Whether or not these tourist NFTs are an overwhelming success in helping incentivize visitors or help facilitate tourists in the country, the second season of tourism-focused NFTs is a great use of Web3 infrastructure and should hopefully help encourage other countries to also experiment with the emerging technology.

The market’s feeling really bored right now.

How do we know that? Well, this trend has been filling up our Twitter feeds…

That probably seems about right, when the top 2 Trending projects on OpenSea are a Jeremy Booth ripoff and the self-proclaimed “worst community on the internet”.

The other hot flip making the rounds is $PEPE, a meme token that is 99% a pump-and-dump. The fact that influencers have quickly hopped on board and are shilling to their followers, leading to over 5,500 unique holders in under 3 days suggests that… well, the market is indeed very, very bored.

Either way, we’re hoping for more substantial updates next week.

Thanks for joining us today, we hope you enjoyed this edition and hope to see you next time, take care!

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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.