NFTs and Metaverse: the latest from Carrefour, Atari, Pinterest and Meta

The latest news in the world of NFTs and metaverse include Letsmint bringing crowdfunding for Non-Fungible Tokens, Carrefour entering The Sandbox, the historic videogames veteran Atari diving into the world of NFTs. 

In addition to that, Pinterest is jumping into Augmented Reality (AR) furniture and Meta is ready for new 3D avatars on Instagram. 

NFTs and Metaverse: Letsmint and crowdfunding for Non-Fungible Tokens

Letsmint is a crowdfunding platform whose mission is to provide artists with all the tools and conditions they need to fund their NFT collections, so they can focus on their art, while providing benefits to their backers.

Specifically, Letsmint offers a package of services to artists involving the financial, marketing and technical aspects (through the creation of the smart contract and the collection landing page), to the launch of the collection itself. 

Co-founder Darina Lysachkina describes all the steps of Letsmint’s plan, while doing a launch giveaway: as a gift there is a mintpass to a random Letsmint collection to the fifth lucky member of the Product Hunter community who signs up or gives feedback. 

Carrefour Group’s entry into the metaverse with The Sandbox

It seems that the French retail giant Carrefour Group has just entered one of the main metaverse on Blockchain, The Sandbox (SAND). Here is the announcement on Twitter by Alexandre Bompard, Chairman and CEO of Carrefour:  

Premiers pas pour le @GroupeCarrefour dans le #metaverse ! L’innovation est au cœur de notre modèle. À très vite pour la suite ! https://t.co/mFW6obvM91

— Alexandre Bompard (@bompard) January 31, 2022

“First steps for the Carrefour Group in the metaverse! Innovation is at the heart of our model. See you soon for the rest!”

The company owns lot 33,147 on The Sandbox metaverse and said the area is equivalent to 30 supermarkets in the metaverse. For now, more details have not been revealed. 

Carrefour has relied on Blockchain technology before, to track poultry, citrus, milk and other products. 

Non-Fungible Tokens from videogame veteran Atari

The historic US video game and hardware company is also entering the world of NFTs, launching a series of blockchain-certified digital works, precisely on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. 

Atari, in fact, was founded in 1972, and the new Atari NFTs, whose collection is called “GFT” (from gift) have been made with one of the most active companies in the industry, Republic Realm. 

The collection is available on OpenSea, and Republic Realm had opened a whitelist in order to get a 10% discount. 

Pinterest and furniture with AR, Meta and the new 3D avatars on Instagram

The growing demand from users for immersive online experiences has led social giants to act on this. 

First, Pinterest introduced the “Try On for Home Decor” feature that leverages Augmented Reality (AR) technology to allow users to virtually place items from US retailers like Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair in their home using the Pinterest Lens camera, and sample them before buying. 

The virtual home decor experience has been launched live on more than 80,000 purchasable Pins, while the beauty experience is currently available on 14,000 purchasable Pins. 

Secondly, along comes Zuckerberg’s Meta, which announced that it is rolling out updated 3D Avatars on Facebook and Messenger and, for the first time, on Instagram Stories and DMs as well. The announcement adds:

“Starting today people in the United States, Canada, and Mexico can show up as their virtual self across apps via stickers, feed posts, Facebook profile pictures and more”.

Not only that, Meta is also partnering with the NFL to bring the option for fans to dress up their avatar to support the Cincinnati Bengals or Los Angeles Rams – or in a neutral Super Bowl LVI jersey that can be chosen.