https://ift.tt/aF7HBvG News: OpenSea passes customer service to Metalink

Today’s NFT news involves the new choice of one of the leading Non-Fungible Token marketplaces, OpenSea, to switch its customer service from Discord to Metalink’s platform, to mitigate the vulnerability of the instant messaging platform.

Not only that, banking giant JPMorgan has also set up shop in the Decentraland metaverse, while new platforms are springing up. These include Cere Network and Polygon, the NFT Content Monetization company Davinci and the new $30m Play-to-Earn fund launched by Animoca Brands and business accelerator Brinc.

NFT News: OpenSea chooses Metalink to support its customers

Popular marketplace OpenSea has announced that it will cease using its customer service through direct messages (or DMs) on Discord to switch to Metalink’s platform. 

Steve Tromberg, Head of Community at OpenSea, and Jake Udell, CEO of Metalink, joined @farokh for a Twitter Space to announce the partnership and thoroughly explain their work together.

The choice was made to mitigate ongoing Discord vulnerabilities, thus having verified representative profiles and protecting users from scams. Here is the OpenSea announcement reported by Metalink on Twitter:

“Opensea will be partnering with Metalink as we seek to engage more deeply with the NFT ecosystem. Starting today, there will be a dedicated OpenSea server toward the bottom of the collection menu on Metalink.

Our goal is to create a direct channel for you to interact with OpenSea to get support, offer feedback, receive updates, and to share any other information that will help us better serve you. We will have dedicated community support staff from OpenSea spending a few hours a day in Metalink. all of whom will be marked as verified Opens staff”.

JPMorgan is the first bank to enter the metaverse 

US banking giant JPMorgan looks to set an example for its entire industry by becoming the first bank to enter the metaverse, choosing Decentraland. 

The Bank announced on Tuesday the opening of Onyx Lounge, a new room in Decentraland, which features an image of the Bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, morphing into a jpeg image of Onyx’s Christine Moy. A spiral staircase leads users to a room with nondescript chairs. 

According to one of its published reports (titled “Opportunities in the metaverse”), JPMorgan noted: 

“We see companies of all shapes and sizes entering the metaverse in different ways, including household names like Walmart, Nike, Gap, Verizon, Hulu, PWC, Adidas, Atari and others. […] Supply and demand dynamics are driving more people into the meta-economy. In turn, this will require the development of new skills and will also generate new way[s] of making money. After all, people will have to develop and build the products that are consumed in the virtual world—establishing huge opportunities for the creator economy”.

New NFT marketplaces and new funding for Play-to-Earn

Cere Network and Polygon have launched a new NFT marketplace called Davinci, to strengthen the security of Non-Fungible Token data. It is an all-in-one Web3 media platform that leverages Cere’s decentralized data cloud (DDC) platform and Polygon’s Proof-of-Stake blockchain network.  

Speaking of which, Fred Jin, the co-founder of Cere Network said that NFT content not being stored properly is a problem. Here is his statement:

“Most NFT content is not stored securely on the blockchain. This is a problem, simply because your NFT can lose its content and associated value. The Davinci platform solves this problem via Cere DDC’s secure decentralized content delivery innovations”.

Davinci hopes to offer creators benefits such as a guaranteed share of the royalties from each sale and a way for continuous delivery of new exclusive content. Artists would also be able to access audience research and analytics tools to tailor their content to NFT holders and fans. 

At the same time, Animoca Brands and business accelerator Brinc launched a $30m Play-to-Earn corporate fund.

“Animoca Brands and @brinciot launch new US$30M Guild Accelerator Program to build and grow #PlayToEarn (#P2E) guild ecosystem globally”.

Guild Accelerator Program (GAP) participants will receive “up to $500,000” to help support the industry. Animoca Brands says the GAP aims to “enable millions of people around the world to generate income by participating in P2E gaming via crypto gaming guilds”.