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Rick and Morty creator launches NFT set

With the NFT collectible digital art market set to boom in 2021, the Winklevoss-owned Nifty Gateway is looking to make a splash with an exclusive digital art collection from the co-creator of cult animated series Rick and Morty.

The Nifty Gateway digital art marketplace has released an exclusive collection of original artworks by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. Nifty Gateway is a platform for digital goods and collectibles. Users can buy and manage non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Artists regularly release collections of digital art for purchase. These collections are called ‘drops’.

Nifty Gateway was founded in 2017 by twin brothers Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, and acquired in 2019 by fellow twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Nifty is now part of the Gemini Exchange ecosystem.

The Roiland collection

Justin Roiland is the co-creator and voice actor of the animated series Rick and Morty. The series follows the interdimensional adventures of mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his kind-hearted but anxious grandson Morty Smith. The show has a cult following, and is especially popular within geeky communities such as the physics and engineering fields, and the blockchain and crypto communities. For example, Elon Musk is a fan, and he made a cameo appearance as himself (Elon Tusk) in episode 3, season 4. Elon Tusk Rick and MortySource: Elon Tusk on Rick and Morty

The artworks available by Roiland are not directly related to Rick and Morty, but his distinct style is unmistakable nonetheless.

Below are three of the four limited editions from the Roiland collection. Quantity available is as follows – 100 available, 20 available, and 10 available.
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

Source: Nifty Gateway

The following three open editions are also available. They are priced at $333, $666, and $999 respectively, however, each will be available to purchase for five minutes only.Pic 4
Pic 5
Pic 6
Source: Nifty Gateway

What is an NFT?

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a type of cryptographic token which represents a unique asset on the blockchain. Non-fungible tokens are not mutually interchangeable by their individual specification in the way that crypto assets such as bitcoin are. That’s because NFTs are designed to be unique and collectible rather than interchangeable. Non-fungible tokens can be used to create verifiable digital scarcity. NFTs are especially useful for any applications that require unique digital items such as digital art, digital-collectibles, and in-game items.

The easiest way to understand NFTs is to think about real-world collectibles such as stamps and baseball cards, and digital collectibles such as Fortnite skins and Neopets. The problem with in-game items such as Fortnite skins is that if you shut down your Fortnite account you lose your skins as well. NFTs live on the blockchain, so no one can ever take them away from you, not even the person who created it, or sold it to you.

Collectible crypto art is the first NFT sector to break out

Collectible digital art was the most successful NFT sector of 2020, with volume exploding in Q4. Blockchain-based collectible digital art has found product-market fit and it’s expected that the market will continue to grow exponentially in the years ahead.

In 2020, digital art platforms such as SuperRare and Makersplace attracted new users who were eager to purchase NFTs. Nifty Gateway had an especially strong Q4 thanks to a series of high-profile drops with well-known artists who took the leap into the NFT art scene.Pic 7
Source: Delphi Digital

One of the keys to the rise of Nifty Gateway is the success of its curated “drop” model. This concept of a drop is regularly used in the fashion world. Highly coveted street fashion brands such as Supreme pioneered this model by releasing a limited-edition product or collection in small quantities at selected retail locations, with no advance warning. The effect is to create a sense of urgency and scarcity among consumers.

Nifty has also had success by attracting already successful artists from the street art world and working with them on highly orchestrated NFT drops. This culminated in December with a very successful drop from Beeple which made history generating $582,000 in just 5 minutes on Nifty Gateway.

Beeple has now sold over $2M in digital art NFTs across two different collections with a variety of limited edition pieces. Pic 8 multishotSource: Beeple digital art on Nifty Gateway

Beeple is Mike Winkelmann, a graphic designer from Charleston who has worked on concert visuals for Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, and Eminem. One of the originators of the current "everyday" movement in 3D graphics, Beeple’s satirical take on pop culture themes has become very popular in the digital art space.

Look for the NFT space to mature this year

A report from Delphi Digital suggests that investment and experimentation into the nascent NFT sector has only just begun.Net salesSource: Delphi Digital

Interestingly, the chart above shows there was a decrease in marketplace activity due to high Ether gas fees during the DeFi boom of 2020. While the amount of NFTs sold per month declined, the average sale price went up. “This is likely indicative of gas fees forcing users to focus on buying quality over quantity, whilst smaller transactions on mainnet were prohibitively expensive forcing them to shift to layer 2s such as Matic, or not take place at all,” wrote Piers Kicks for Delphi Digital.

With both the NFT and Defi spaces experiencing rapid growth in 2020, as the crypto markets continue to heat up, there is no reason these trends will not accelerate in 2021. Delphi writes that “we have already seen a dramatic expansion of options for investment as projects explore tapping into this emergent universal digital representation layer. The landscape remains dominated by the universal marketplaces, but we are seeing activity fracture into specialized venues. We expect this trend to continue as in the long run, not all users will be happy to mix focus and governance cross-category.”Final pic


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