In this week’s newsletter, read about why a former OpenSea employee convicted for insider trading is attempting to get an acquittal, get the Polygon co-founder’s thoughts on solving the inscription spam issue on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains, and check out Interpol’s report on how the metaverse can help law enforcement agencies. And don’t forget this week’s Nifty News, featuring Donald Trump offering free Ordinals to ramp up NFT sales.
Former OpenSea manager appeals conviction, claiming NFT info isn’t “property”
Former OpenSea employee Nathan Chastain, who was convicted of wire fraud and money laundering related to insider trading, submitted a filing to the United States Court of Appeals in an attempt to get an acquittal. According to Chastain’s legal team, the information he used to profit off NFTs in the marketplace was not considered “protected property.”
The legal team argued that the information “had no commercial value” and wrote in the appellate brief that “not all confidential information is property.”
Polygon co-founder explains how to stop inscriptions from crashing networks
As inscription producers started going from Bitcoin to EVM-compatible platforms, networks were flooded with inscription transactions as it became a way to circumvent traditional NFT minting fees. Unable to keep up with the unusual amount of transactions, the Arbitrum network went offline for over an hour on Dec. 15, 2023. Half a dozen other blockchains suffered the same fate days later.
In a Cointelegraph interview, Polygon co-founder Brendan Farmer claimed that parallelized EVMs may solve the issue. The executive argued that parallelism allows unrelated transactions to be processed more quickly, potentially allowing the blockchains to handle spam by increasing their throughput.
Metaverse tools will improve crime scene analysis and law enforcement: Interpol report
Interpol’s metaverse division published a report that dived into various aspects of the metaverse, exploring potential use cases that could help law enforcement agencies. The report highlighted that metaverse environments could be used for immersive police training.
The report highlighted that metaverse training simulations could be used for recreating crime scenes, sharing information and planning tactics. Interpol said that this may have a positive impact on frontline policing competencies.
Nifty News: Trump NFTs go Ordinal, Zuck’s metaverse a “decade” away and more
The team behind former United States president Donald Trump’s NFT collection attempts to ramp up sales for the controversial Mugshot Edition of Trump NFTs by offering free Bitcoin Ordinals trading cards to users who purchase 100 or more NFTs.
Meanwhile, the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection reached an all-time high on Jan. 17, reaching a floor price of 19.05 Ether (ETH), equivalent to $47,000.
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Thanks for reading this digest of the week’s most notable developments in the NFT space. Come again next Wednesday for more reports and insights into this actively evolving space.