Yuga in the doghouse over the Kennel Club logo, NFT market wars rage and more

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

The Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) logo from nonfungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs is getting a facelift following recent allegations of intellectual property theft.

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

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

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

Solano said the entire debacle “was news to us,” adding that 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 Increase Sales

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

According to data from NFT aggregator CryptoSlam, NFT sales volume has increased by over 101% in the past week compared to the previous week, reaching over $524 million in transactions over the past seven days at the time of writing.

One of the key factors in the increase was Blur’s token airdrop on February 14 that incentivized users to farm drops using the platform.

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

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

OpenSea has recently launched a comeback campaign and has cut its platform fee to zero, adopted optional royalties for creators and more lenient blocks on other marketplaces.

‘Fat-finger’ mistake costs NFT traders thousands of dollars

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

On February 19, Franklin owned up to the broken buy, which led to him buying an NFT from the Azuki project’s BENZ pool for 35 ETH – or around $60,000 at the time – despite the floor price being around 1.7 ETH, or $2,800.

He said he “put in a fat finger collection offer” on the BENZ collection, but actually intended to put in a “much lower bid with a quantity of 35.”

“Instead I’m offering 35 ETH for 1 purchase […] It was accepted before I could cancel. Oops. Doing well.” Franklin tweeted.

However, it appears that Franklin was the owner of Bean #10626 for only a short period of time, as just two hours after the mistaken purchase, it was sold for just 1.77 WETH – an equivalent loss of almost $56,000.

Free Coin Starbucks NFTs are now fetching high prices

An initially free NFT collection launched by global coffee chain Starbucks now sees NFTs implicitly listed for thousands of dollars just two months after its initial minting.

The Starbucks Odyssey Polygon NFT collection is a rewards program that launched in December 2022, still in closed beta. Only four “drops” have been released with 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, they are now asking around $2000 for one token on the Nifty Gateway.

The collection alone accounts for $117,000, or about 80% of the total sales volume for the collection.

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

As the first straw, NFT may be seen as more special for some collectors. Starbucks has also said that the rewards on the NFTs will range from limited-time NFT items, invitations to exclusive events and perhaps a trip to a Costa Rican coffee farm.

Meanwhile, the other drops see much lower floor prices, with another $5,000 drop going as low as $100, while a $30,000 drop is almost halved to just $59.

Other good news

KnownOrigin, the NFT marketplace from eBay, launches smart contracts for creators without code, allowing artists to share revenue and earn royalties as co-creators on collections. A beta version has been tested in recent weeks with 84 contracts deployed and 250 issues of NFTs minted.

Web3-friendly Neal Mohan was named the new head of YouTube, his earlier tentative plans for the platform included the potential for creators to tokenize videos, images, art and experiences to give them additional revenue streams.