Yuga Labs Acquires Beeple's MENEW And Donates Punk #305 To Museum

GM folks! Last week was the week of FTX that got us praying to the gods of Crypto. This week, it's Yuga Labs saving us from drowning in the ever-growing thread of FTX news by bringing the heat🔥. So what do we have for you today?

• Yuga Labs acquires WENEW and brings in Beeple

• Punk #305 becomes the first donation to a modern museum

LFG!

Beeple to the Otherside.

Yuga Labs isn’t done loading up The Otherside with blue chip NFTs. They began with Meebits and CryptoPunks in March of last year acquiring the NFT project IP from Larva Labs. Yesterday Yuga announced that it has acquired NFT startup WENEW, co-founded by popular NFT artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann.

What we know about WENEW

• WENEW is a web3 ecosystem with luxury goods brand partnerships like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. The company was founded by Mike Winkelmann, the artist formerly known as “Beeple”.

• Guy Oseary is also working on the team (Madonna’s Music Manager and revered NFT Investor), as is Michael Figge (Co-founder of Possible).

• Creators of NFT collection 10KTF, better known for the character Wagmi-san, the world-renowned digital artisan from New Tokyo who heads the digital asset store.

The juicy stuff we know about the WENEW And YUGA hookup

• Yuga Labs hinted Wagmi-san would be coming to the Otherside

• Yuga Labs has stated it will add WENEW co-founder and CEO Michael Figge as its new Chief Content Officer.

• But what about Beeple? Apparently, he’s coming too! According to a statement by the company, he will serve as an advisor to Yuga Labs.

• The terms of the acquisition of WENEW by Yuga have not been disclosed and according to a representative from Yuga, they will remain that way.

Our take

It appears that Yuga Labs has a new go-to-market strategy - growth by acquisition. We have seen them acquire other projects like CryptoPunks and Meebits with them added in Otherside. We are keeping our eyes on you, Yuga Labs 👀

Crypto Punks debuts "Punks Legacy" venture

Yuga Labs did not slow its role or impact on the Web3 community this week. Announcements from the company two days ago revealed Yuga Labs' plans to donate several Crypto Punks NFTs to modern art museums across the globe. Starting with this gal. 

Why this punk? According to an article by Decrypt, Punk #305 was chosen in part because its number corresponds to one of Miami’s phone area codes: 305. Miami is also the hometown of two of Yuga’s co-founders, Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano.

It’s the first donation in a larger initiative called the Punks Legacy Project. Noah Davis, Yuga’s brand lead for CryptoPunks, told Decrypt that “several more” of the NFTs will be donated to other museums in the future.

CryptoPunks for the new to crypto

CryptoPunks is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection on Ethereum. The project was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio,[1] a two-person team consisting of Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson. The experimental project was inspired by the London punk scenes and the cyberpunk movement as a whole.  Since then Crypto Punks has inspired a host of related collections and helped to expand the overall NFT art space. The CryptoPunks IP was recently acquired by Yuga Labs which is integrating it, and other blue chip NFT's to its metaverse "The Otherside".

Our take

Yuga Labs is going beast mode with this move. A decade ago, we saw games finally make it into the Museum of Modern Art with Pac-Man, Tetris, Sim City 2000 and more. It looks like Yuga Labs is hacking its way into museum history and opening the path for successful web3 games to make an appearance in the near future. 

Read the article yourself here.

The sneaky news you may have missed

• The Web3 Awards Show by Polkastarter: The date for the first-ever GAM3 Awards — a new web3 gaming awards event hosted by Polkastarter Gaming — is set to take place on December 15 according to an announcement by Cointelegraph on Nov. 14. According to a Twitter post they will be "awarding the best gam3s in16 categories. 30+ industry leaders in attendance with over $300k prizes. Want more? Check it out here.

Until Next time...

While you enjoy today's loot, I'll be searching through the rubble of FTX for alpha. Hopefully, I find something to share.

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