TruBlo Newsletter #6

March 5, 2021 Website: Trublo.eu

Webinar: How to apply to the TruBlo Open Call

Last Friday TruBlo offered a one hour webinar, providing an overview on how to apply to the open call. The video of the call is now online. If you plan to apply this provides a good overview and answers a number of questions. LINK

Apply to Open Call #1 until March 19,2021

Updates this week:

Trust and Content

Square buys majority stake of music-streaming platform Tidal

Square, a payments platform headed by Jack Dorsey (who also co-founded and manages Twitter) buys a majority stake in Tidal. The streaming service is owned by performing artists like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna and others. Square will pay $297 million in cash and stock.

Jack Dorsey in a tweet:

“It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers.”

Link

Brave buys a search engine

“Brave, the maker of the identically named privacy-focused web browser, has acquired its own search engine to offer as an alternative to Google Search and competing search engines that exist but aren’t all that visible in Google’s shadow.”

Instead of competing head-to-head with Google the idea is to offer a full package of privacy-focused tools as an alternative for some users and markets.

The search engine technology comes from German publisher Hubert Burda Media, from a project which was cancelled in 2020. Brave currently has an estimated 25 million monthly users. The platform is headed by Brendan Eich, a leading technologist, famous as the creator of the JavaScript software and formerly a key manager of the Mozilla foundation (Firefox browser). LINK

Education platform Coursera plans an initial public offering

More and more content is moving online, including educational material. The pandemic has accelerated this trend. Coursera, one of the larger educational platforms plans an IPO.

The company recently added services for business and traditional educational organisations. “Coursera for Campus” helps colleges to provide courses, including a module for exams. TechCrunch reports that the services are used by 3.700 schools around the world. Founded in 2012 Coursera has an estimated value of $5 billion. LINK

BLOCKCHAIN

NBA Top Shot with digital sales of more than $100 million

“NBA Top Shot” is remarkably successful in selling digital moments to basketball fans, the platform is a pioneer in the field of digital merchandise. Based on recent market data the website has crossed the mark of $100 million in digital sales, which is remarkably high.

Here is what the platform offers:

But what is NBA Top Shot? It sells packs of Moments – often five of them – which are video clips of basketball plays with animations. Much like physical cards, users won’t know what’s in the pack before they open it. Each Moment has a nonfungible token (NFT), which is unique to that specific Moment. With an NFT when a Moment is traded, its authenticity can be proven. And without the need to send physical memorabilia, the transfer is very quick.

LINK

Kinks of Leon release album as NFT

The rock band is the first group to release an album as NFT, starting today (March 5, 2021). Buyers get tokens which will then unlock “special perks” like limited vinyl records or front row seats in future concerts.

Via Rolling Stone: “The band is actually dropping three types of tokens as part of a series called “NFT Yourself,” people involved in the project tells Rolling Stone. One type is a special album package, while a second type offers live show perks like front-row seats for life, and a third type is just for exclusive audiovisual art. All three types of tokens offer art designed by the band’s longtime creative partner Night After Night; the smart contracts and intelligence within the tokens were developed by YellowHeart, a company that wants to use blockchain technology to bring value back to music and better direct-to-fan relationships.”

LINK

A beginners guide to NFTs

Given all the talk about NFTs, here is a great article helping you to understand this concept. Worth your time, well written and comprehensive.

Short quote:

What are NFTs? Non-fungible token (NFT) is a term used to describe a unique digital asset whose ownership is tracked on a blockchain, such as Ethereum. Assets that can be represented as NFTs range from digital goods, such as items that exist within virtual worlds, to claims on physical assets such as clothing items or real estate.

LINK

Are NFTs just this cycle’s ICOs?

A good podcast here on the topic of NFTs, via Coindesk. For context: ”ICO” is the acronym for “initial coin offering”, a practice popular for projects in 2018. New platforms sold coins to get initial funding, an ICO was kind of a simpler, faster IPO. Many of these projects were not successful. So, are NFTs something similar? LINK

Ethereum now available on Amazon AWS

Amazon Web Services announced that Ethereum is now available on the Amazon Managed Blockchain services. AWS is a significant side business of Amazon where the company provides cloud-based technology infrastructure. AWS is used by many start-ups and large companies, such as Netflix. AWS users can no set up Ethereum nodes. AWS started to offer these services in 2019, at first only in the US. By now availability has extended to Asia and Europe. LINK

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