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Overseas quietly issued, NFT big factory showdown

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Well-known Chinese companies such as Baidu, B-Station, Alibaba, and Yinguniverse have released several series of native NFT through various means, such as incubating independent teams or cooperating with overseas institutions.

原文标题：《海外悄悄发行 NFT 大厂们摊牌了》

Original article by Kyle, Honeycomb Tech

Bears with different styles, small mushrooms with strange shapes, and cartoon figures holding wine bottles to make a toast... There is a common name behind these popular NFT projects in the overseas NFT market -- China Dachang.

When the domestic popular game groups gathered in Ali Qitan, Baidu Super chain, NetEase Planet and other platforms to grab the first launch, open the blind box, little did they know that Dachang had already quietly entered the original NFT market, from the domestic platform transformed into the creator and publisher of NFT.

Up to now, well-known Chinese companies such as Baidu, B Site, Alibaba, and Yinguniverse have released a number of series of native NFT through various means such as incubating independent teams or cooperating with overseas institutions, and launched them on open trading markets such as OpenSea. Compared with the domestic digital collections that grow in the alliance chain and are not "decentralized" enough and are restricted from trading, the native NFT that can be kept and circulated by users themselves is more the product of Web3, becoming another experimental field of Dachang to test the water of Web3.

From the perspective of layout, Baidu and B sites are not just dabbing in the field of native NFT. They not only use the ability of AIGC to create, but also continue to empower their NFT and create community culture by constructing the main story line, holding community activities and linkage marketing. The effect is not only good, and some of them are even better than Web3 "fundamentalism" project.

Big Chinese factories with their own IP and traffic break into the NFT circuit, secretly bringing competitive impact to the original NFT ecology, "small workshop" factory NFT projects are becoming more and more difficult to play.

Go out to the NFT market

"Guys, I'm DUDU!" On OpenSea, a well-known overseas NFT market, "DuDuLab Project" greets the world of NFT in its introduction.

Ten thousand cuddly bears make up the DuDu NFT collection. DuDu bears are dressed in different costumes and decorations. Some wear magic hats, blow bubble gum, and hold roses. Some are wearing hip-hop hats, carrying small guitars and spinning basketballs in their fingertips.

DuDu was created on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain on November 15th, 2022. Users can participate in the casting of Dudu via the project's official website. The initial casting price is 0.02ETH (about 175 yuan at present). On the same day, the floor price of this series of NFT on OpenSea rose to 0.09ETH (about 804 yuan at the time), 4.5 times more than the casting price. On January 11, its floor price was 0.035ETH (about 312 yuan), still up 75% from the offer price. Such performance is rare in the NFT market, which has been quiet for a long time.

DuDu NFT Series

DuDu Bear's background is a big part of why users are willing to pay. Although the publisher "DuDuLab" is not familiar, there is a well-known name behind this set of NFT in China - Baidu. According to public information, DuDuLab is an independent NFT project team incubated by Baidu. The core members are mainly original cryptographers, with a team of about 30 people.

DuDu Bear NFT is based on Baidu's mascot image "Baidu Bear". Hence, Baidu is described as the first Chinese Internet giant to cast its official image as NFT on a public chain, and the first to operate and sell NFT overseas.

Baidu's pursuit of the NFT wave is obvious.

In China, Baidu has launched several collection platforms based on its affiliate chain "Baidu Super Link", including "Baidu Super Link Digital Collection" embedded in Baidu App, and "Chaoyun digital collection platform" embedded in Baidu Webdisk App. However, due to the strict prevention of the financialization of digital collections in China, the domestic digital collection market has cooled rapidly after a wave of speculation, and the Baidu index of "digital collections" has dropped to three digits from the peak of 350,000 on May 10, 2022. On the other hand, in the context of Alibaba, NetEase, Jingdong and other big companies in the layout of digital collections, Baidu coefficient hiding platform is not the first in China.

Going to sea is one way to explore Web3, and DuDu NFT isn't Baidu's first. As early as September 2022, Simeji, an overseas input method under the internationalization division of Baidu, jointly launched the CryptoSimeji NFT project with Japanese game developer ITI. The initial casting method was "free casting for whitelist users". The project is based on the prototype of IP Mogu, a Japanese national input method Simeji App released by Baidu Japan, to create a pixel wind Mogu NFT avatar.

CryptoSimeji series 10,000 NFT sold out within 24 hours, and the floor price of the series rose to 0.3ETH (2,600 yuan at the time) on OpenSea, becoming a phenomenon at that time. To date, CryptoSimeji's Discord community has accumulated over 70,000 members and 110,000 Twitter followers, making it popular in both NFT's social media mainstream.

Baidu is not the only Chinese Internet company to "quietly" issue NFT overseas.

Artifact Labs, an NFT company, was founded by Alibaba's South China Morning Post in March 2022 to transform Artifact LABS into an NFT for pages and news photos of historic news events. To date, the company has released NFT collections such as the 1997 Premium Series. The content covers major events in 1997.

A month later, Bilibili officially authorized CryptoNatty to sell the Cheers UP NFT series, which was released on Ethereum with an initial casting price of 0.12 ETH (about 2,400 yuan at the time). Later, the Bilibili overseas version of the App allows users to connect to MetaMask encrypted wallet to check their own NFT, and can be used as a profile picture.

In June of the same year, Inke Interactive Entertainment Group changed its name to Inke Universe, at the same time officially announced its meta universe project Hoot Labs, and released INKEPASS NFT on Ethereum, a total of 1,111 pieces. According to the introduction, INKEPASS is the core equity token of Inke Meta universe and the key to open the journey of Inke meta universe.

In addition, in July 2022, WanderingLabs announced that Wandering Planet, a collection of NFT books, was Wandering Planet by Wandering Planet, the parent company of Moo and Tantan, Artwen Group, in an IP license.

When the digital collection is not clear in the domestic market, the domestic big factory enters the NFT circuit and seeks to establish more connections with the Web3 world in the more open and broad overseas market.

Stir up the NFT market pattern

For Chinese Internet giants such as Baidu and Alibaba, the strategic significance of entering the NFT market is obviously greater than the revenue purpose. Not long ago, Yin Yingli, general manager of the Marketing Department of Baidu Mobile Ecological business Group, pointed out that the wave of Web3.0 has been surging. If you stop, you may be slapped on the beach.

However, NFT originated from public chains such as Ethereum and Polygon is undoubtedly a more "Web3" existence than domestic digital collections: published on open public chains, users can freely query the chain address, smart contract, transaction information, etc., after buying, they can also control and change hands by themselves. In contrast, most domestic collections are issued on relatively closed alliance chains. After purchasing collections, users can generally only see the address on the chain corresponding to the collection, and some do not even provide blockchain browsers to query the collection information, let alone master the ownership and trading rights of the collection.

Under the red line of regulation, the distribution platforms of digital collections arranged by domestic Internet giants have been deliberately weakening the financial attributes of digital collections, which also makes the Internet companies pursuing wind look "less Web3". Now, it's as if the big companies have "learned the ropes" -- given the constraints at home, they are embracing Web3 by incubating independent teams, partnering with overseas NFT developers, and so on.

Dachang's exploration of Web3 overseas has not been limited. In the case of DuDu NFT, the project adopted the AIGC approach, using AI to establish DuDu bear's IP image. In order to maintain the long-term vitality of NFT, DuDuLab constructed a novel for DuDu's life experience to build DUDU Island community. The novel integrated 80% of the world's cultures from different races, different countries and different classes, and throughout the plot of the novel, DuDuLab will invite users to accompany DuDu on singer sessions, adventures, graffiti and more to foster a sense of community. DuDuLab also plans to incorporate an NFT growth system that will integrate the formative game into the NFT gameplay.

CryptoSimeji provides holders with a series of rights and interests, including obtaining NFT airdrop or whitelist of CryptoSimeji partner IP, obtaining VIP rights of Simeji app, participating in Simeji peripheral lottery, etc. In addition, CryptoSimeji has designed a holder incentive process. In short, the more and longer users hold the NFT, the more points they can earn, which can be redeemed for ETH in the prize pool. CryptoSimeji also designed type2earn gameplay. NFT holders can mortgage points in exchange for "type2earn" passes, which they earn by using the Simeji input method.

"Station B" Cheers UP NFT with the same emphasis on the long tail. Since the launch of NFT, it has held community events such as "66 Cheers Festival", "Cheers Music", emoji airdrop, and coloring contest, so that NFT holders can continuously capture the sense of value gain. In terms of marketing, the Cheers UP community also works with CryptoSimeji to set up whitelist tasks and build a diverse community.

Cheers UP hosts a meme airdrop

Chinese Internet companies, who are good at invigorating the traffic market, will directly input their operational capabilities into the community valued by the NFT world, which will undoubtedly intensify the competition in the entire NFT project market, and may even change the game rules of the NFT track.

Compared with many NFTS published anonymously by "small workshop" teams, the big factories with the brand aura value the beauty of the NFT and have the financial resources to sustain the operation. At the same time, "Dachang production" often has its own traffic effect, in the early start-up stage, can attract more attention, which is also the advantage of new venture NFT projects do not have.

From the price performance, the current floor price of CryptoSimeji series NFT for free casting is 0.058ETH, and the current floor price of DuDu NFT for initial casting price 0.02ETH is 0.035ETH, up 75%. Cheers UP NFT made at 0.12 ETH now sells for 0.6ETH (515 yuan), up 400%. On the other hand, most of the new projects except blue chip NFT have a short life cycle, and sometimes the heat of the transaction cannot be maintained for 48 hours. There are many new projects that break or even return to zero.

According to the law of the business world, when the "regular army" joins the rapid development of the NFT ecology, it will continuously push the NFT project towards higher quality and more sustainable development, and at the same time add fresh water to the NFT creation.

Of course, many native NFT projects are exploring new paths. Projects such as NBA's Top Shop have begun publishing live, dynamic NFT classes, and BAYC's parent company has begun creating meta-universes for NFT apes. However, the current NFT attempts of Baidu and B stations are still in the picture stage. How to increase more creativity in the form and play of NFT and change from the role of the trendseeker to the leader is the key for Dachang to gain a long-term foothold in the more competitive NFT market.