Yuga in doghouse over Kennel Club logo, NFT marketplace wars rage on and more

New logo slated for Yuga’s dog-themed NFT collection

The logo for the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) from nonfungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs is getting a refresh after recently surfaced allegations of intellectual property theft.

Yuga co-founder, Greg Solano, more widely known as “Garga” tweeted on Feb. 18 that the BAKC logo would be changing and the project would “debut the new logo soon.”

Saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us and we’re still investigating the situation. Have reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We’ll be changing the logo and updating it on our site / ask marketplaces to change as… https://t.co/OwtflDXehz

— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) February 18, 2023

Yuga has been in the doghouse over its trademarked logo as it looks remarkably similar to the finished product of a follow-along drawing guide made for children by a company called Easy Drawing Guides.

Easy Drawing Guides released a wolf skull drawing guide on April 5, 2021, a little over two months prior to BAKC’s June 17, 2021 launch. The firm has asserted its intellectual property rights over the drawing.

Thanks for bringing this up @Jdotcolombo. @yugalabs doesn’t have a license to the wolf skull drawing. The intellectual property rights for the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it’s our original drawing and protected by our Terms and Conditions.

— Easy Drawing Guides (@easydrawinguide) February 17, 2023

Solano said the whole debacle “was news to us,” adding Yuga was “still investigating the situation” and had contacted Easy Drawing Guides and the freelance artist contracted for the design.

Blurred lines: NFT marketplace wars surge sales

NFT sales over the past seven days have skyrocketed amid a battle for domination between OpenSea and its rival Blur — with the two sparring over fees and creator royalties.

According to data from NFT aggregator CryptoSlam, NFT sales volume has increased over 101% in the past week compared to the week prior and has hit over $524 million transacted in the last seven days at the time of writing.

One of the key factors in the rise was Blur’s token airdrop on Feb. 14 giving users the incentive to farm the drop by using the platform.

Blur has remained the dominant marketplace in terms of trading volume since the start of the year and has dominated OpenSea in that regard.

Analytics from DappRadar show the trend continuing over the past week — with Blur seeing nearly $400 million in volume compared to OpenSea’s $105 million.

OpenSea has recently spun up a comeback campaign and has slashed its platform fee to zero, enacted optional creator royalties and more lenient blocks on other marketplaces.

‘Fat-finger’ blunder costs NFT trader thousands of dollars

The pseudonymous NFT collector known as “Franklin” has made a “fat-finger” mistake bidding on a collection, which saw him accidentally bidding more than 21 times the floor price of an NFT.

On Feb. 19, Franklin owned up to the bungled purchase, which saw him buy an NFT from the Azuki project’s BEANZ collection for 35 ETH — or around $60,000 at the time — despite the floor price being around 1.7 ETH, or $2,800.

As you may already know, I placed a fat-finger collection offer of 35 ETH on Beanz. I meant to type a much lower bid with a quantity of 35, but I instead bid 35 ETH for 1 purchase (floor of like 1.73 ETH at the time). It got accepted before I could cancel.

Oops.

I’ll be okay.

— Franklin (@franklinisbored) February 19, 2023

He said he “placed a fat-finger collection offer” on the BEANZ collection but was actually meant to input a “much lower bid with a quantity of 35.”

“I instead bid 35 ETH for 1 purchase […] It got accepted before I could cancel. Oops. I’ll be okay.” Franklin tweeted.

It however appears that Franklin was the owner of Bean #10626 for only a short time as just two hours after the blundered purchase it was sold for just 1.77 WETH — an equivalent loss of nearly $56,000.

Free mint Starbucks NFTs now fetching high prices

An initially free NFT collection launched by the global cafe chain Starbucks is now seeing NFTs inexplicitly list for thousands of dollars just two months after the initial mint.

The Starbucks Odyssey Polygon NFT collection is a rewards program launched in December 2022, still in closed beta. Only four “drops” have been released amassing a total volume of $148,000, the first of which is a 5,000-strong “stamp” titled Holiday Cheer Edition 1 Stamp.

The owners of the collection initially received the NFTs for free and, despite the low trading volume, now ask for around $2,000 for one token on Nifty Gateway.

The collection on its own makes up $117,000, or around 80% of the total collections sales volume.

Related: What are the applications of NFTs in supply chains?

Being the first drop, the NFT could be seen as more special to certain collectors. Starbucks has also said rewards on its NFTs will range from NFT holder-only merch, invites to exclusive events and maybe a trip to a Costa Rican coffee farm.

Meanwhile, the other drops are seeing much lower floor prices, with another 5,000-strong drop going as low as $100, while a 30,000-strong drop is nearly half that at just $59.

Other Nifty News

KnownOrigin, the NFT marketplace from eBay, is launching no-code required creator smart contracts so artists can split earnings and earn royalties as co-creators on collections. A beta release has been tested for the last few weeks with 84 contracts deployed and 250 editions of NFTs minted.

The Web3-friendly Neal Mohan was appointed as the new chief of YouTube, his previous tentative plans for the platform included the potential for creators to tokenize videos, photos, art and experiences to bring them additional revenue streams.