To the Moon (birds)

AuthorAuthor

Austin Miller & John Meyer
June 10, 2022

GM, and welcome to the Mint, where we daydream about what technology will look like in the future 💭

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A Banker Bet

Budweiser and Zed Run are teaming up for an NFT project of Clydesdale proportions (buh dum tss).

Let’s begin with an intro on Zed Run, because it’s pretty sweet. Zed Run is a digital horse racing game—yeah, like Kentucky Derby horse racing. In the game, users mint NFTs of horses that they race against others. There are races happening around the clock, and entry fees to race against others range from $2 to $15.

Zed Run is a play-to-earn NFT game because if you win a race, you take home the prize purse. Games like this are becoming very popular in the space.

“A [Zed Run] NFT is one that has its own unique DNA…. It can breed, has a bloodline, has a life of its own. It races, it has genes it passes on, and it lives on an algorithm, so no two horses are the same.”

- Roman Tirone, the head of partnerships at Virtually Human (Producer of Zed Run)

As of May 2021, over 11,000 horses have been sold on the platform, and that number continues to rise. That’s where Budweiser comes in. Seeing the success of the game, Budweiser announced that they are now the official beer of Zed Run. In addition to the new title, Budweiser is also releasing an NFT collection to use in the game. The collection includes in-game gifts, access to Budweiser Pass events, and entrance into a tournament with a $95,000 prize fund and free beer for a year... if that’s your thing.

Go To Work Without Actually Going to Work

Where is the Nth floor? Accenture employees soon can hold their meetings and have their water cooler chats there, but they won’t need to be in the office to do so. The Nth floor only exists in the digital realm. An early adopter of technology, Accenture stepped into the metaverse pre-pandemic, partnering with Microsoft to build a virtual campus for their remote employees, calling it the Nth floor.

So far, Accenture is utilizing its space in the metaverse for onboarding and retention strategies, training, and virtual events. 150,000 new Accenture employees will experience orientation on the Nth floor this year, and every single Accenture employee creates an Avatar of themselves to interact digitally with their colleagues all around the world.

Our very own John Meyer started his career at Accenture back in 2008, and when asked what 2008 John would think of this 2022 news, he said his brain would have melted.

My brain is still melting in the present, and I can’t wait to see what companies start utilizing this technology next. Shout-out to Accenture for being a technological guinea pig and case study for us all. Let’s see if those employee retention and satisfaction statistics head to the moon!

New Tool For Businesses to Launch NFTs

CRM and cloud computing behemoth Salesforce announced NFT Cloud, an NFT platform to help businesses get into the NFT space.

Salesforce NFT Cloud

The launch of their platform comes at a time when countless businesses are still at a loss for:

a) what NFTs are (unless the business has employees that read The Mint 😊 )

b) how to use NFTs at their company

c) when to launch a project

d) how to manage the project and protect their customers

Because of this, we think that Salesforce will immediately become a major player in the space.

Something cool →

A current issue with blockchain technology is its environmental impact. Salesforce takes great pride in its sustainability, so it knew that the announcement of the NFT Cloud would garner some criticism. So, Salesforce responded by saying that their new platform would align with their net zero emissions commitment, and “will automatically calculate carbon emissions of blockchain options, and allow the user to offset the emissions through trusted, high-quality carbon credits.” They also pledge to collaborate with the Crypto Climate Accord and be a major proponent of driving sustainability in the Web3 space.

To The Moon(birds)- An NFT Project Breakdown by John Meyer

Some of my favorite NFTs that I own are my Moonbirds that come from Kevin Rose and the Proof Collective (more on Proof in a future issue). Any old tech nerds like me may remember Kevin Rose of Digg.com fame. Every day my friend Mark Morgan and I would go to the debate room at Brookings High School, log on to the computers and visit Digg to see what was trending on the internet (I've always been a nerd pretending to be cool).

Moonbirds are a 10,000-piece PFP (which stands for profile picture) project with different attributes and traits. They were released on April 16, 2022, and if you had a Proof Collective pass you received two Moonbirds for free. The remaining 8,000 were sold by raffle at a price of 2.5 ETH (at that time roughly $8,000). Today a Moonbird will cost you about $40,000 on the secondary market - what the hoot!

One of John's Moonbirds

Rose has lots of future plans and rewards for Moonbird holders. Thus far holders of certain traits have received special airdrop NFTs, Moonbird swag, and the wizard birds will receive a private party by magician David Blaine. Rose and the Proof team are also building a project code-named, Highrise, which your Moonbirds will get you early access to. Lots more to come from this project, but one that we are watching here at The Mint.

Minty-Fresh News

Past Mints

Today’s newsletter was written by Austin, John, and Caitlin

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