Welcome to the OpenSea digest. Let’s look back through the biggest NFT and web3 news of the week.

Art Blocks introduces Art Blocks 500

After five years, Art Blocks is gearing up to mint their 500th flagship project, set to launch in November 2025. The milestone includes projects across all six of its categories: Curated, Playground, Factory, Presents, Collaborations, and Explorations. 

Art Blocks is treating the Art Blocks 500 as a complete and finite collection, preserving a foundational chapter in the generative medium.

The final two Curated releases will mark the end of their curatorial program at Art Blocks and the final three Explorations projects will be community focused, closing out the Art Blocks 500 to coincide with their five-year anniversary. Explore the AB500 projects here. 

YGG Play signs publishing deal with Gigaverse, launches on-chain revenue sharing

YGG Play, the publishing division of Yield Guild Games, has signed its first third-party deal with Gigaverse, an on-chain role-playing game developed by GLHF. 

The partnership includes a revenue-sharing model recorded and enforced directly on the blockchain, which offers real-time visibility for both parties. 

According to the press release shared with OpenSea, Gigaverse has already reached over $6 million in annualized revenue within three months of launch, despite no outside funding or marketing. 

To mark the partnership, YGG Play and Gigaverse launched a limited-time in-game event across both of their titles, LOL Land and Gigaverse, which are available on Abstract Chain. 

LOL Land now features a Gigaverse-branded game board called Gigaland, while Gigaverse is offering LOL Land character skins for a short period.

The activation also includes a slate of livestreams from content creators such as Elisa, YellowPanther, Iceyyy, Raiden and Storming, who are playing both games and sharing gameplay with their audiences online.

Animoca backs My Pet Hooligan and buys $KARRAT to support new gaming blockchain

Animoca Brands has partnered with AMGI Studios, the creators of My Pet Hooligan, and is purchasing $KARRAT tokens directly from the open market to support the game’s ecosystem and upcoming blockchain, Studio Chain. 

$KARRAT is an ERC-20 token used for governance and transactions within both My Pet Hooligan and Studio Chain, a new Layer 2 network built with Arbitrum and designed to help developers launch games, AI tools, and interactive media. Studio Chain is currently in testnet, with Animoca contributing development support, liquidity, and go-to-market strategy. 

In a separate press release shared with OpenSea, Animoca’s research arm published a report on Pudgy Penguins. In it, the venture firm details the Penguins’ growth into a commercial intellectual property (IP) brand with toy sales, licensing tools, and the December 2024 launch of the PENGU token, which has now progressed to acknowledgment by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an ETF listing in July 2025.

Phantom acquires Solsniper

Crypto wallet company Phantom has acquired Solsniper, a Solana-based trading and analytics platform. 

Founded in 2021 by engineer Max Zhuang, Solsniper provides tools that let users track wallets, monitor token launches, and respond quickly to market shifts. 

The platform will reportedly continue to run independently as Phantom integrates its features to better serve active and professional traders. The move is part of Phantom’s larger goal to evolve from a wallet into a full-featured finance platform built for the on-chain economy.

Visa adds support for new stablecoins and blockchains in global settlement network

Visa is expanding its crypto settlement capabilities by adding three more stablecoins and two additional blockchains to its global payments infrastructure. 

The company will reportedly now support PayPal USD (PYUSD) and Global Dollar (USDG), in partnership with Paxos, as well as EURC, a euro-backed stablecoin issued by Circle. 

Visa is also integrating Stellar and Avalanche blockchains alongside its existing Ethereum and Solana support. 

The expansion allows select partners to settle transactions using both U.S. dollar and euro stablecoins, giving banks, fintechs, and developers more flexibility when moving money across blockchains.

The move comes shortly after the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a bill aimed at creating clear regulatory standards for stablecoins in the U.S. Visa has publicly backed the legislation and sees it as a turning point that could help stablecoins scale as part of the global payments system, especially when paired with Visa’s existing infrastructure, which the company says handles billions in crypto-related flows.

Takashi Murakami drops reimagined 108 Flowers NFT trading cards on Base

Takashi Murakami’s 108 Flowers is back, this time as digital trading cards collectors can mint and reveal on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 network. The updated drop builds on the original project’s pixelated flower art, inspired by 1970s Japanese video games and the Buddhist concept of bonnō, or earthly desires. 

The new packs contain five cards in varying rarities and can be minted through Aug. 8 on the Kaikai Kiki Marketplace using a credit card or Base cryptocurrency.

Early collectors are already showing off Super Rare pulls and unopened packs on X, as Murakami maintains his stature as one of the prominent artists experimenting with more accessible, on-chain tools.

Sasha Stiles brings AI poetry to MoMA in upcoming fall exhibition

Poet and AI researcher Sasha Stiles will appear in an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The show, titled A LIVING POEM, features an infinite, self-generating text created with her AI alter ego, Technelegy. Displayed on a digital screen in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, the piece rewrites itself every hour using custom algorithms, datasets, and a typeface that combines binary code with the artist’s handwriting. 

Stiles’ work examines identity, authorship, and the future of communication. She uses machine learning tools not to mimic human writing, but to question what makes language meaningful. Her MoMA debut marks a shift as literary arts take a more visible place in digital and conceptual art spaces.

Note: The mention of a token is for informational purposes only nor is it intended as financial or investment advice.