But how has news of this potentially revolutionary NFT update come about and why is the NFT market still strong despite the crypto winter season that has led to massive price falls? Let’s take a look.

Entering 2022, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) markets are red hot. While the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum and a majority of the altcoins have corrected by more than 20% in the last 4 weeks alone, NFT collectables and the marketplaces are on track to record a sensational and record-breaking month in terms of trading volume. January has already seen more than $3 billion worth of trading volume take place using just Ethereum on Opensea, with $3.5 billion being the highest monthly volume for any NFT marketplace.

Generally, cryptocurrencies and the NFT markets run in parallel, but 2022 and the final quarter of 2021 are an exception. When cryptocurrencies started correcting in November, many expected NFTs to follow a similar suit. Since Ethereum controls a monopoly over the NFT market, the 50%+ price correction had many investors wary.

Turns out, NFTs have been exploding the last few months, because of the cryptocurrency flash crash itself. Dragos Dunica, the Co-Founder and Chief data officer of Dappradar has said the following, “NFTs are continuing to perform well not necessarily despite falling crypto prices, but arguably and in part because of that”.

The reason for this is that investors are getting a massive price discount, in fiat currency while purchasing NFTs on various marketplaces. Since Opensea requires customers to purchase the assets with Ethereum or Polygon itself, current buyers have more than a 50% discount on the value of Ethereum, compared to 3 months ago.

With the rumours of Ethereum’s much-awaited update coming soon, people are betting on the price of the token going up. But, one big development has been the reduction of ETH’s monopoly in the last year.

Despite Ethereum being the most used token for NFT marketplace integrations especially through OpenSea, Solana has surpassed more than $1 billion in trading volume in January for the first time ever. Analysts at JPMorgan have also billed Solana to be a major threat to Ethereum’s NFT market dominance since its monopoly has shrunk from 95% at the start of 2021 to 80% currently.

Solana has become the preferred token of choice for many NFT marketplaces, due to its considerably lower transaction costs, higher throughput and speed. Ethereum on the other hand has been experiencing a drop in usage due to the insanely high gas fees and low transaction throughput. While ETH manages to complete only 15–20 transactions per second on its blockchain, Solana has the capacity to conduct more than 75,000 transactions. Solana’s fees are also lesser than a dollar, while Ethereum’s gas fees have gone higher than $350 in their peak.

Despite these changing market positions, Ethereum had not much to fear about with its upcoming updates, but all has changed in the past week. Breaking news coming out of OpenSea is that the marketplace is working on integrating Solana as an option of choice for NFT creators and buyers.

Most investors and followers of the NFT space know OpenSea is the number 1 NFT marketplace in the world. ETH’s dominance in the space is attributed to the fact that only their token along with Polygon’s (MATIC) have been made available to buyers and sellers.

But the leading NFT marketplace is now looking to support Solana into their ecosystem, as per major leaks and screenshots coming from Jane Manchum Wong, a well-known blogger who has managed to release features from companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram before they were even announced.

https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1486072506532626432?s=20&t=zPVsQs0FTlumVeksf8NHYg

Jane took to her Twitter to share a screenshot of the OpenSea server, confirming that she found references of Solana’s possible integration after reverse-engineering OpenSea’s website.

Speaking to Decrypt on the subject matter, Wong said that there were references to this in the user interface which OpenSea tried to hide.

OpenSea in response to this breaking news has termed it as ‘old speculation’, with the company’s representatives refusing to comment anymore about the update. Ethereum has tallied more than $23 billion worth of trading volume in 2021 through NFTs, with OpenSea being valued at almost $15 billion.

If the update is confirmed, Solana will have access to this huge marketplace, which will give NFT developers and buyers the opportunity to still use OpenSea whilst using a cheaper alternative to Ethereum.

Currently, huge NFT collaborations with Michael Jordan, the Solana Monkey Business and Degenerate Ape Academy have allowed Solana to collect more than a billion worth of trading volume, but confirmation of the OpenSea integration will most definitely sky-rocket interest in the token once again.

Many mainstream tech companies have also shown interest in wanting to enter the NFT marketplace, making Solana a great choice if they are available on OpenSea. YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki recently hinted that the platform will be considering integrating NFTs in the coming year, giving creators another way of monetizing their content.

Meta also has addressed their plans of getting into the space, along with big tech companies like Microsoft as well. Currently, Solana is the second biggest player in the Non-Fungible token space, but if the new update goes ahead on the OpenSea Ecosystem, the Ethereum Killer will start to live up to its name.

We’ve added another high potential project to our incubator, and today we are excited to announce them!

Meet Mozik, a decentralized music NFT platform that aims to build a healthier and fairer music economy ecosystem. Mozik, through the blockchain, wants to eliminate the monopoly of the centralized system.

The Music Industry Needs a Rebalance

The internet has changed how people consume music dramatically over the past few decades. Without the need for media-curated filters or advertisements, control over the industry has shifted from big labels back to the people.

Although the music is consumed effortlessly, the musician isn’t rewarded in kind. A recent study by Citigroup stated that artists only gained 12% of the $43 billion generated through the music industry in 2017. The stats prove that while the overall industry is still profitable, its main actors, the music artists who contribute their talent, are left without. This stat is made even worse by the fact that even Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming app, pays rights holders between $0.006 and $0.0084 per play. Most times, the rights holders are the labels, not the artists.

The music industry suffers from other issues, too; the sky-high expectations for example. Back in the day, artists who signed a contract had time to grow, experiment, and even fail — they had time to mature. Now, because the money is tighter, the industry demands a finished product at the first try.

Moreover, the democratization of music with Soundcloud, YouTube, and other platforms poses additional hurdles for artists. They not only have to produce great music but be exceptional marketers, making the most of every opportunity they get.

How Mozik Intends To Disrupt Music with NFTs

As the music industry becomes increasingly dependent on streaming services and other forms of revenue, it’s only fair the artists get an equal piece of the pie. Mozik intends to make that happen utilizing NFTs.

NFTs, also known as non-fungible tokens, are similar to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. NFTs are unique, however, and no two of them are alike. An NFT can consist of images, music, art, and GIFs.

Mozik believes NFTs have the potential to change the way the music industry works entirely. Artists can create, showcase, and sell everything from exclusive videos to entire albums on the blockchain without signing a label contract, going through publishers, or spending heavily on marketing.

Through Mozik’s decentralized NFT platform, artists can also register earnings through music copyright, super-star IP, celebrity traffic, and IP derivatives on-chain. Mozik’s platform ensures all participants in the music ecosystem — from the creators to publishers to the fans can fairly participate. Through Mozik, artists make what they deserve and are incentivized to create more and better quality music. Through the blockchain, Mozik can lower publishing costs, and the true decentralization the technology provides can raise engagement from fans. All participants can share in the rewards, thus creating a healthier and fairer music ecosystem.

About Mozik

Mozik is a decentralized music NFT platform aiming to build a healthier and fairer music ecosystem.

Social media: Website, Telegram, Twitter, Medium, Reddit

About FUEL

FUEL Incubation is a joint venture between Master Ventures and PAID. It is an incubation program that brings together Master Ventures’ combined 30+ years of blockchain and cryptocurrency experience and network of investors and advisors with PAID’s strategic marketing resources and its IDO sales platform, Ignition.

FUEL will supercharge Ignition projects by opening market access, building a project community, raising funds, and building an investor and influencer network, as well as assisting in the construction of token economic models. From the same team that grew Elrond and Ultra, every new project incubated by FUEL will have the resources it needs to perform exceptionally.

FUEL lays the groundwork for a project’s successful moon mission.

About Master Ventures

Master Ventures is a blockchain-focused venture studio helping to build the next generation of blockchain-based Web 3.0 system innovations within the crypto industry. Launched in 2018 by Founder and CEO Kyle Chassé, the company’s ethos can best be summarized in the acronym #BeBOLD: Benevolent, Open, Love, Decentralized.

Master Ventures co-creates with entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide to turn the best ideas into innovative and disruptive products. They do this by investing as strategic partners through offering advisory services to the projects they believe in. To date, Master Ventures has invested in over 40 crypto projects, including the likes of Kraken, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Reef, DAO Maker, Mantra DAO, Thorchain, and Elrond.

For any questions, please feel free to reach out to us on:

Website: https://master.ventures/

Telegram: https://t.me/MasterVentures

Twitter: https://twitter.com/master_ventures

To get started:

2. Enter your country code followed by your mobile phone number (+11234567890). A dropdown menu will help you select your country and associated code.

3. Enter the One-Time PIN sent to your mobile number for confirmation.

4. Enter the Be One referral code: BE 002349.

5. Face the camera and smile for facial verification.

6. Tips: (a) Please do not wear hats, glasses, or use filters, and make sure that the lighting is sufficient, and (b) To take the selfie you have to smile, smiling is what captures the photo.

7. Take a Photo of your Official ID or Passport. Fit ID into the frame (touch to focus).

8. Tip: Make sure the photo is in focus and that the text is legible, otherwise your account will not be able to be verified.

9. Enter a 6 Digit PIN. This 6 Digit account PIN will be your own personal password.

10. Kindly wait for your account verification.

11. Note: It can take up to 24 hours for account verification depending on the ID used but often takes much less time than that when you use an International passport.

12. Again, should you have any questions or issues, please join our Discord community or Telegram community and a team member will be in touch shortly!

13. 
    

1. An article on Trias Metaverse has been published: Trias Mainnet is made up of 7 eco-projects in the Trias ecosystem. Each project has its own value proposition, technical architecture, token economy, applications and ecosystem. Details: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1475839454875361289?s=21

2. An illustration on NetX has been published by Trias CEO on LinkedIn. The Chian-Native Internet for the Digital Living of Trustworthy and Reliable Autonomous System will be built. Here is the detail: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476907483767914496?s=21

3. Trias 2021 review has been released. 2021 has been a challenging but fruitful year for Trias. Thanks to all Triasurers for supporting us. Here is the review: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476596600793595906?s=21

4. Ethanim, one of the 7 eco-projects in Trias ecosystem has been launched in Trias roadshow. As a metaverse infrastructure, Ethanim helps metaverses last forever without being controlled by any organization or individual. Here is the recap of roadshow: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476532101495549953?s=21

5. Another eco-project Tusima has been introduced by Trias CEO Dr. Anbang Ruan in Triathon AMA. As one of the seven chains, Tusima aims to be an Etheruem-compatible public chain created by the participation of Trias community and will also bridge all other Ethereum-compatible public chains and improve them on the $Trias -1 layer.

6. Two quiz events have been launched. Participate in the events to win $TRIAS and Triathon NFT parts.

7. Ethanim quiz: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476542232878809092?s=21

8. Trias quiz: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476596600793595906?s=21

9. An airdrop event has ended and winners will be announced and receive the rewards soon. Here is the detail: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1475839454875361289?s=21

10. The winners’ list of Trias Christmas event has been announced. Congratulations to all the winners and the sneakers will be sent out as soon as possible after you fill out the form. Details: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w_0Hw6SCm-z6WF5PgCXvWWwNQ_ZVZ_mjqixycnGcezU/edit?usp=sharing

11. The number of addresses holding TRIAS on BSC has increased to 5335 last week. Note: the top 2 holders are all the TRIAS held on Kucoin, which combines all TRIAS trading users into two accounts and serves as the cross-chain bridge for HECO, ERC20 and BEP20.

12. Triathon

13. A CEO AMA has been held. In the AMA, Dr. Anbang Ruan shared Triathon outlook, EGON token and Tusima with the community. Here is the recap: https://twitter.com/triathonlab/status/1475838425454755842?s=21

14. 2.Mainstage of Triathon testing framework has been launched on Battleground and an event to join it has been released. Participate to get 1000 GEON each: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476903887928201217?s=21

15. An article on the red-blue simulation on Battleground has been published. details: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476903455813869572?s=21

16. 4.Triathon Vlog Contest has been launched. participate to get GEON: https://twitter.com/triathonlab/status/1476165474870513666?s=21

17. Ethanim:

18. The social media channels of Ethanim have been set up. Follow Ethanim to keep updated: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476880343278194693?s=21

19. Ethanim whitepaper has been released. Read the whitepaper to explore the vision, utility, tokenomics and roadmap of Ethanim: https://twitter.com/triaslab/status/1476880456305971206?s=21

20. The consensus of Trias super node has been upgraded to the latest version of tendermint.

21. https://github.com/trias-lab/tmware/commit/c729210516c833147837cae5c7fe7b81721d843a

22. Trias-BSC

23. Part of the code details of BSC has been modified according to the testing feedback of Trias-BSC version.

24. https://github.com/triasteam/trust-bsc/commit/dbc735b131a618be58952e8b5b53e7b4f9ed5f0e

25. The function of checking whether the signature is empty has been added.

26. https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/commits/master

27. Trusted configuration item for Trias-BSC has been added.

28. https://github.com/trias-lab/tmware/commit/024b540d6101b192c2b86394b66640ed297d7c47

29. Fields related to Trias Ladder have been added in the Trias-BSC block.

30. https://github.com/trias-lab/tmware/commit/8c103123d6257beefd60366c2ea84ca0fa85949a

31. Trias-BSC has been optimized and the validator has been changed according to Trias Ladder.

32. https://github.com/trias-lab/tmware/commit/2dffd0c6120ddfb106dfb28aacb46a9432229ba9

33. The type of block proto of Trias-BSC has been modified.

34. https://github.com/trias-lab/tmware/commit/d2b4ac6fdd8cc4b70857a95af6adda44e8a24f45

35. Tusima

36. The first version of the home page has been developed.

37. https://github.com/triasteam/tusima_frontend/commit/233b7ea729fa7c98a6efca3bafc42f1f5ac49ad0

38. The back end of the testing framework has been developed.

39. https://github.com/triasteam/T-Center_backend

40. The back end of the faucet has been developed.

41. https://github.com/triasteam/faucet

42. Triathon

43. The back-end recorder of ReSA contract has been developed.

44. https://github.com/TRIAS-DAO/triathon_geonswap_backend/commit/365d84fe88c45d00627cda413205a51bde55e633

45. A new staking contract of composing NFTs has been developed.

46. https://github.com/TRIAS-DAO/trias_contracts_private/commit/1f339a5f02ad82a5bb6f3dc0d289ffc97e5f6131

47. Official website: https://www.trias.one

48. Whitepaper: https://www.trias.one/whitepaper

49. Telegram: https://t.me/triaslab

50. Twitter: https://twitter.com/triaslab

51. Discord: https://discord.gg/uSHpezwKWZ

52. Trade on Pancake: https://triaslab.medium.com/how-to-buy-trias-on-pancakeswap-d9bd1628e69f

53. 
    

When I said retire very early, I was being genuine, although as I am already 37 years old I have missed the boat on very very early. One ‘very’ will just have to suffice. Semantics aside, my plan is to be financially free by the time I turn 40, and with a pot of money where I’ll definitely never need to work again a year or two after that.

It’s admittedly an ambitious goal, although the year 2022 has started off well with my investment into DRIP on January 1st, which makes this year likely to be my biggest single leap of progress towards early retirement since I started on my journey to financial independence three years ago.

Why the focus on a big pot of money to be free? Here is a beautiful article by Patrick Cryptozoa that provides some great examples:

cryptozoa.com

Here’s a quote from the article linked to above, in response to someone who thinks they may already be free and don’t need the pot of money:

Can you rise up from your desk, right now, and go on a 2 month trip to ski in Chamonix without telling your boss? No? Well maybe you need to wake up, and realise you’re a slave.

So how did I get here anyway, posting my first Medium article on my plan for financial independence through crypto? In short, I’ve spent the last three years reading, thinking and trying out new things.

I consider the official start of my journey to financial independence to be when I first read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kyosaki in January 2019. It was the right book at the right time for me, and it really shifted my perspective on the fundamental aspects required for wealth.

An asset generates income, a liability generates expenses. — Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

The big idea that I took away from this book was that many things that people often take for granted, such as the house they live in being their biggest asset, may not actually be completely accurate. In a nutshell, the house you live in generates expenses for you like maintenance, bills and taxes, and does not generate any income unless you rent it out and don’t live in it, so it is actually a liability rather than an asset. Yes, it may be going up in value, but until you sell at a profit and realise your gains, that profit remains theoretical and doesn’t help pay for your life. That book opened my mind to start questioning every other money assumption I had to see if it held up to scrutiny.

I continued to read around the theme of financial independence and started to see the flaws in my previous assumptions. Namely that retiring early would just be living cheaply and unhappily without a job instead of living well but with a job. I began to see that there were a thousand little decisions that could be made to fine tune each person’s journey to financial freedom and make it suit their personal preferences. I started to view purchases differently as well, asking myself if buying something big was worth postponing my retirement for, or if I should do without now and take my time back earlier. More and more I started to choose the latter. I see now that this was me still approaching the situation from a mindset of scarcity rather than abundance, but more on that in a future article. Either way, I started realising that the consumerism hamster wheel I found myself running in was not a route to real happiness, and that time is actually the most valuable thing you can truly own and control.

Once I stopped wasting most of my income, the investable portion of my salary increased dramatically, and at the same time I also became much happier with the direction my life was taking. Who would have thought that spending less money on things that are supposed to make you happy, doesn’t make you less happy but actually makes you happier? I certainly didn’t expect that to be the case.

I tried a few stock market investment strategies early on, the first being index fund investing after reading The Simple Path to Wealth by JR Collins. I still believe in this strategy for making you rich in 30 or 40 years, and if you have the presence of mind to invest in a broad all-world index fund with low fees when you are 18 and have the discipline to not touch it until you are 65, you could very well be rich and old one day.

Next, I stumbled across the strategy described so convincingly in The Little Book that (Still) Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt. I also still believe in this strategy for making you rich in 15 or so years, depending on how aggressively you keep adding money to the pot. What turned me away from it was not that I don’t think it will work, because I’m fully confident that the fundamentals are sound, but I’m losing my confidence in fiat currency in general and have become convinced that crypto is the future.

Essentially, I want to retire closer to 40 years old than 50 or 60, and I want to have some spending money in the meantime too.

This brings us, finally, to crypto and of course the wonderful world of DRIP. I found out about DRIP a few months ago, amidst an overwhelming amount of news about new crypto projects making millionaires, but in typical fashion I kept changing my mind about which project to invest in. It’s easy to look back now and know I should have invested in DRIP when I first heard about it, but I also fully believe it is still early enough to get in right now. It is not too late to get into DRIP for you either!

In a nutshell, it’s a crypto project where you lock up your funds (you can’t get your deposits out again), and then you receive 1% of those funds back every day for a year. That is a 365% return on investment in exchange for spending a year to receive it. This would be pretty good already, but there’s more. You can hydrate (compound) that 1% return each day, resulting in closer to a 3678% annual return! (excluding fees and taxes)

Even if the fees and taxes that are charged by the network to keep things sustainable take up a quarter of your earnings (which they don’t), this would still be a pretty glorious return on your investment. Most of the taxes on the DRIP network are 10%. For example, when you sell, deposit, airdrop, send or claim your DRIP, 10% tax. For why taxes in DRIP are a good thing, here is an article from Catalyst:

cryptozoa.com

Sorry (not sorry). That was a terrible joke, but what actually kept me from investing? No it’s not pier pressure, but I applaud your sense of humour.

Was it the whole “deposit your money and you can’t take it out again” thing? No that wasn’t it either, although it’s a pretty good guess. To be honest it did put me off a tiny little bit, but to be perfectly frank, and this is somewhat embarrassing, it was something much more minor that prevented me from taking the leap earlier…

The mere fact that you have to log in each day and hydrate (compound) your earnings to get the maximum return is what really put me off. And that you have to do it for each wallet you create. At the time, I didn’t want to be tied down to taking daily action for one project when I didn’t know if it would be worth my time, and when some of the other crypto projects I was hearing and reading about are much more hands off.

For example, STRONG nodes keep generating STRONG tokens whether you log in or not (unless you forget to pay your maintenance fees and lose your nodes completely). The various Olympus DAO forks promise to take your investment to the proverbial moon with no extra effort on your part as well. I am now of course kicking myself for my earlier laziness, finally realising that spending less than ten minutes each day clicking some buttons for a potential return in the millions of dollars and becoming completely financially free in several years is a complete no brainer and possibly the best return on my time I’ll ever see in my lifetime. How I ever thought otherwise is a mystery to me, but perhaps worth unpicking in a future article. Suffice it to say that I wish I had taken the leap several months ago.

You do not need to make the same mistake I made. If I had invested even just one month ago, I would have enjoyed a DRIP token price increase of 341% (from $26.13 to $89.27). It’s a shame I had to learn that lesson the hard way, but you don’t have to!

With several new DRIP projects launching in the next few weeks, the price of DRIP is likely to keep increasing as more and more investors flock to the project.

For me, I’ll be happily clicking mostly hydrate and occasionally claim every single day I can for the next several years, and then I will be free.

Water you going to do in 2022?

That’s it, you have started your journey to financial independence through DRIP. Make sure to come back often to hydrate (compound) or claim your generated DRIP tokens.

Nothing in this article is to be construed as investment advice. Neither the author nor the publication takes any responsibility or liability for any investments, profits or losses you may incur as a result of this information. The article may contain affiliate links. ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

I am part of the Cryptozoa DRIP team. We are a global community of DRIP enthusiasts who are welcoming and helpful. We converse on our own private Telegram group where we share DRIP tips, strategies, breaking news, and more. If you would like to join in the conversation, please join the Cryptozoa team (buy getting into DRIP and using my Buddy address above), and then head over to the Cryptozoa Telegram Gateway. Let the admins on duty know that CryptoMarky sent you — then once you are onboard find me and DM me, I’d love to hear from you!