Brayden Lindrea
Luxury jewelry brand Tiffany & Co has announced the sale of 250 diamond and gemstone encrusted pendants for CryptoPunk non-fungible token (NFT) holders.
The handcrafted CryptoPunk pendants were announced by the jewelry brand on July 31 on Twitter, and are priced at 30 ETH, equivalent to $50,600 each at the time of writing.
According to an NFTiffs Frequently-Asked Questions page, the NFTiff token sale is set to launch on August 5 at 9 am (CST), and will only be available for purchase NFTiff tokens via its website.
Each CryptoPunk is limited to a maximum of three NFTiff tokens that allow them to mint a customized pendant. There are 87 different attributes and 159 colors that can be used to custom design the pendants, and the pendant itself will be composed of 18-Karat rose or yellow gold (based on the color palette of the NFT).
Should all the limited edition pendants sell out, Tiffany & Co stands to make 7,500 in ETH (currently $12.7 million).
The campaign was first promoted by Tiffany & Co vice president Alexandre Arnault, who owns CryptoPunk #3167 in April. In a tweet, Arnault revealed his new rose gold and enamel CryptoPunk, which was transformed with a new sapphire and Mozambique-colored set of glasses and a yellow diamond round earring.
Community reacts
The crypto community on Twitter appears largely excited about the new NFT offering from the luxury jewelry brand.
Twitter user markfidelman, CMO of SmartBlocks Agency, called the NFT project an “incredibly tasteful activation,” adding:
“More Web2 firms looking to dip their toes in Web3 need to be learning from the quality of this $NFTiff offering and taking notes.”
The jewelry company first ventured into NFTs in March, when they purchased an Okapi NFT from contemporary artist Tom Sachs for $380,000. Tiffany & Co have since set the rocket-styled NFT as their profile picture on Twitter.
On April Fools’ Day (April 1), Tiffany & Co also produced “TiffCoins”, a limited-release of 400 18-Karat gold coins with the company logo individually engraved on each coin.
Luxury brands are no strangers to the crypto space, with many beginning to accept crypto as payment, such Gucci, Balenciaga, and FARFETCH.
Last April, Louis Vuitton (LVMH), Cartier, and Prada joined forces to launch Aura, a consortium-blockchain that will utilize NFTs so that high-end shoppers can authenticate goods, track products and materials, and also fight counterfeits.
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Brayden Lindrea
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin doesn’t believe that any of the existing attempts by corporations to create a Metaverse are “going anywhere,” pointing to Meta as being one he believes will “misfire.”
Responding to a tweet from Dialectic co-founder Dean Eigenmann, who believes venture capitalists may be wrong about what constitutes an ideal metaverse, Buterin said that while he believes “The metaverse is going to happen,” he doesn’t think any of the current attempts from corporates such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta are “going anywhere.”
The Metaverse is generally described as a highly-interactive 3D online world focused on social connection, with some looking to eventually be powered by augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Buterin’s comments come despite a number of successful metaverse projects recently being launched on blockchain technology like Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND). However, Buterin stated that its use cases are still not clear, adding that he didn’t think Meta’s attempt at creating a metaverse will be successful in its current form.
“We don't really know the definition of ‘the metaverse’ yet, it's far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”
Meta has built a number of AR and VR applications, such as the Meta Horizons Workroom, a VR room for colleagues to connect and collaborate on ideas. Meta has also built first-generational smart glasses that allow users to connect to the metaverse by recording audio and video and being surrounded by virtual worlds.
Other critics are of the view that centralized metaverses such as those proposed by Meta and Microsoft may affect the decentralization of ownership of goods and services within those metaverses.
On the other hand, metaverse developers like Decentraland and Sandbox have come together with several Web3 projects to launch the Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA3), which focuses on building more transparent, inclusive, decentralized and democratized metaverses.
The Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) also strives to build on these values and establish standards for a more open and interoperable metaverse. Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alibaba, Unity and Sony are among the 35 tech companies that became members of the MSF.
This reflects well Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to stakeholders in October last year, where he said that the Metaverse is the next chapter for the internet, adding, "We’re seen as a social media company, but in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier.”
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Martin Young
A cybersecurity firm has issued warnings over a new phishing campaign targeting users of the popular crypto wallet MetaMask.
In a July 28 post written by Halborn's technical education specialist Luis Lubeck, the active phishing campaign used emails to target MetaMask users and trick them into giving out their passphrase.
The firm analyzed scam emails it received in late July to warn users of the new scam. Halborn noted that at initial glance, the email looks authentic with a MetaMask header and logo, and with messages that tell users to comply with KYC regulations and how to verify their wallets.
However, Halborn also noted there are several red flags within the message. Spelling errors and a fake sender’s email address were two of the most obvious. Furthermore, a fake domain called metamaks.auction was used to send the phishing emails.
Phishing is a social engineering attack using targeted emails to lure victims into revealing more personal data or clicking links to malicious websites that attempt to steal crypto.
There was also no personalization in the message, the firm noted, which is another warning sign. Hovering over the call to action button reveals the malicious link to a fake website which prompts users to enter their seed phrases before redirecting to MetaMask to empty their crypto wallets.
Halborn, which raised $90 million in a Series A round in July, was founded in 2019 by ethical hackers offering blockchain and cyber security services.
In June, Halborn researchers discovered a case where a user’s private keys could be found unencrypted on a disk in a compromised computer. MetaMask patched its extension versions 10.11.3 and later following the discovery.
However, there was no mention of the new email phishi threat on MetaMask’s Twitter feed at the time of writing.
Last week, Celsius users were warned of a phishing threat following the leak of customer emails by a third-party vendor employee.
In late July, security researchers warned of a new malware strain called Luca Stealer appearing in the wild. The information stealer has been written in the Rust programming language and targets Web3 infrastructure such as crypto wallets. Similar Malware called Mars Stealer was discovered targeting MetaMask wallets in February.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
