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

Azuki Announces Anime Series

Chiru Labs, the creator of popular PFP projects Azuki and Beanz, is partnering with renowned Japanese anime director Gorō Taniguchi to create an anthology series.

Known for the iconic projects "Code Geass" and "One Piece Film: Red," Taniguchi reportedly sees this collaboration as a chance to bring anime to new audiences and open doors for Japanese creators. 

Azuki, also teaming up with advertising giant Dentsu, plans to release three stories under this partnership, each with a distinct director and character artists. The series is part of Azuki's strategy to offer diverse content and aims to blend Azuki's universe with innovative web3-driven storytelling. 

Set for release later this year, this anthology represents a dream project for Azuki's art director Arnold Tsang, who said he expects the series to push the limits of web3 storytelling.

Moonbirds Talons Marketplace Opens Jan 9

Attention Moonbirds holders! The Talons Marketplace, a new part of the PROOF ecosystem, launched on January 9 at 10:30am PST. Get ready for a series of exciting Tuesdays in January, as new listings and surprises will reportedly be unveiled weekly.

Described by PROOF, Kevin Rose’s web3 media startup behind Moonbirds, as a community empowerment tool, the Talons program lets members within the Moonbirds PROOF control their benefits. The program also enables artists to connect their work with the right collectors. The system is designed to recognize and reward long-term community loyalty and support.

Members can redeem their Talons for a variety of benefits, including physical goods, art and exhibition access, exclusive experiences, and experimentation opportunities. Talons are distributed in two ways: a retroactive allocation for historical hold time of PROOF items, and an ongoing daily accrual system based on current holdings.

The first season of Talons is rolling out with a detailed timeline that includes physical, virtual, and experiential in-real-life (IRL) reward redemptions. This week, surprises included a virtual chat with PROOF director of research Punk #9059 and IRL Paris experiences.

Check out the full Season One release schedule on X:

Otherside ‘Trip 3’ Trailer Debuts

Yuga Labs' latest move has stirred up a storm of reactions. On January 9, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creators released a trailer for Trip 3, the third playtest of the company’s much-anticipated metaverse project, Otherside.

Set to launch in February 2024, Trip 3 follows their initial playtests in July 2022 and March 2023. The 20-second trailer showcases a small alien-like avatar known as a Koda alongside numerous unique Bored Ape characters. It ends with a peachy sunset over a forest and a shot of a cabin on a clifftop. However, the video quality — caused by what critical fans guess to be a low frame rate — has raised eyebrows, sparking concerns about Otherside's follow-through.

Others stressed the importance of this moment, recognizing the investment Yuga Labs has poured into the Otherside project.

With Trip 3 just around the corner, the BAYC community is on edge. Will Otherside meet the high expectations? The countdown to February 2024 is on, and all eyes are on Otherside's next move in its metaverse saga.

‘Ready Player One’ Is Coming to the Metaverse

Get ready to watch your sci-fi fantasies play out on screens of all sizes. Ernest Cline, author of the science fiction action novel "Ready Player One,” and Dan Farah, producer of the film adaptation, have taken a bold leap into the metaverse. They've teamed up with artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse company Futureverse to create Readyverse Studios. The goal? Build a "Ready Player One"-themed digital universe. 

Described as a platform of interconnected digital experiences, Readyverse will reportedly bring the iconic intellectual property (IP) franchise to the metaverse in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. According to the press release, Readyverse will hold exclusive web3 rights to all future IPs from Cline. 

Could this exciting new initiative be more than a new digital playground? Some hope it represents a commitment to the open metaverse's principles — themes explored in the novel and film through teenage protagonist Wade Watts’ race against corporate villain Nolan Sorrento, who wants to monopolize virtual reality.

In its announcement on X, Futureverse said it would build interoperability, security, and decentralization into its metaverse model, thereby incentivizing community-owned infrastructure. Such values align with the vision of the Open Metaverse Alliance, a coalition formed by industry heavyweights like Hong Kong-based venture studio Animoca Brands and blockchain-based metaverse world Decentraland. 

X Removes NFT PFPs

X (formerly Twitter), under Elon Musk's vision for 2024, has quietly axed the option for paid subscribers to set an NFT as their profile picture (PFP). Launched in January 2022, the NFT PFP feature originally allowed Twitter Blue subscribers to display Ethereum-minted NFTs — either the ERC-721 or ERC-1155 token standard — as hexagon-shaped avatars. Linking PFPs to an Ethereum token validated details about the NFT, including its collection, contract address, TokenID, and minting app used. 

As of January 10, all references to this feature have now been scrubbed from X's Premium support page. Without the ability to confirm minting details, there is no way to verify whether a person displaying an NFT PFP actually owns the artwork.

Those who previously set NFTs as profile pictures at first seemed to retain their hexagonal avatars, but as of January 11, it looks like X removed them.

Mercari To Enable Payment with BTC

Japan's e-commerce leader, Mercari, announced it will begin accepting Bitcoin payments by June of this year. This move follows the company’s launch of an in-app Bitcoin exchange last year. 

Mercari, a popular digital marketplace with over 22 million monthly users, will allow transactions in Bitcoin through its Tokyo-based blockchain subsidiary, Mercoin. While prices will still be displayed in Japanese yen, users can pay with Bitcoin, which Mercoin will convert to yen for sellers. 

The platform maintains standard fees for Bitcoin transactions. The innovative step follows Mercari's impressive profit of 2.8 billion yen in Q3 2023, marking a significant shift in e-commerce towards embracing cryptocurrencies.

OpenSea Introduces Wallet Creation Using Email

Starting this week, all you need to get started on OpenSea is an email address. With our new onboarding experience and Privy’s technology,  you can create an OpenSea account with a self-custodied crypto wallet using your email. 

This wallet is fully integrated with OpenSea: you can use it to buy, sell, add, send, and receive crypto and NFTs, manage your funds, and view transactions on the blockchain, all without a separate wallet extension. You can use it across all nine EVM-based chains compatible with OpenSea. 

Read more in our full blog post, here.