Twitter’s potential crypto wallet, and a royalty-free LooksRare

Reddit’s nascent NFT marketplace made a splash in the digital collectibles market by onboarding nearly 3 million new users to Web3 by presenting NFTs to users—rivaling OpenSea’s numbers in the process.

And for those who own a Bored Ape or a CryptoPunk NFT and live in Switzerland, fintech bank SEBA offers to hold these NFTs just like any other customer deposit. This will test whether users prefer to trust a bank with their NFTs, instead of keeping them in their own wallet.

Here are other notable stories that caught the eye of Web3 Watch.

Twitter’s Potential Crypto Wallet

Twitter is officially in the hands of Elon Musk, who formalized his new role by changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” following a $44 billion acquisition.

Ahead of the takeover, researcher Jane Manchung Wong tweeted out some juicy development details about Twitter’s potential plans to launch a crypto wallet.

Wong is known for testing out tech products and new features on social media platforms, including the Twitter edit button for Twitter Blue members.

Since reporting on October 24 that Twitter may be working on a prototype wallet that supports crypto deposits and withdrawals, no other details have been made available.

Musk previously said that “it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter so that it’s easy to send money back and forth, and if you have currency as well as crypto,” during his first Twitter meeting in June.

The domino effect of royalties

First, the X2Y2 and SudoSwap NFT marketplaces took the plunge toward optional royalties for creators over the summer.

So, the Solana giant Magic Eden followed, because “royalties cannot be enforced at the protocol level,” and because of changing market dynamics. In particular, Nansen data shows that there has been a slow exodus of returning Magic Eden buyers per day, while the number of first-time NFT buyers has increased since the October 15 announcement.

Now, rival NFT marketplace LooksRare has also eliminated royalties for creators, but buyers can still choose to pay optional royalties at checkout.

The marketplace will instead share 25% of the LooksRare protocol fee with creators and collection owners. It claimed to be the first zero-royalty marketplace to do so.

In a blog post, LooksRare acknowledged that the zero-royalty marketplace trend has “eroded the overall willingness to pay royalties across the NFT space.” While this may be good for traders, most creators are left without an important source of passive income, it said.

The plan to redirect protocol fees directly to creators hopes to achieve 0% merchant fees through a discount on paid protocol fees.

The protocol fees were previously 2%. Now 1.5% of each trade goes to LOOKS actors and 0.5% goes to collections if they have set up a receiving address.

In addition, the distribution ratio for trade rewards has been updated so that 95% of trade rewards go to sellers and 5% to buyers. In terms of list rewards, the leaderboard now ranks only by OpenSea rolling 24-hour volume.

Time will tell if killing royalties, a revenue stream for many creators, prevents them from providing ongoing utility. What will motivate them to add value to their NFTs if they can’t benefit when new buyers come in?

The latest Web3 smartphone

Would you buy a $41,000 phone? The latest Web3 marketed phone could cost as much as that.

Smartphone maker Vertu launched its latest Android device called Metavertu that can run its own blockchain node and turn photos and videos into NFTs “with one click.”

Metavertu runs on the standard Android operating system while allowing users to switch to Web3 mode. Some advantages of Web3 mode include “instant NFT generation, independent peer-to-peer encrypted communication” and access to decentralized applications (dapps), Vertu said.