VeVe Digital Collectibles - The First Digital Collectibles Platform Committed to Carbon Neutral NFTs

If you have been actively participating in the collection of NFTs, chances are you would've heard about this platform called "VeVe", and for those that don't know what NFTs are, here's a simplified explanation for you:

NFTs refer to non-fungible tokens which are pieces of digital contents that are linked to the blockchain. It comes in the form of digital assets such as art, collectibles, Images, videoes, GIFs and many more. Each asset is one-of-a-kind and hold a unique signature that entitles you as the owner. They can also be bought and sold and majorly exists on the Ethereum Blockchain where there is a public ledger that records all transactions that took place.

Fun Fact: A simple picture of a rock was recently sold for $1.3 million...

So, what is VeVe?

VeVe is an app-based marketplace for premium licensed digital collectibles which allows users to participate in new NFT drops or buy/sell them. VeVe usually seeks out collaborations with big brands (and I mean BIG) to have their digital assets marketed to be bought and sold on the app. Some examples include, MARVEL, DC, Disney, Dreamworks, Universal, Givenchy etc.

Users are able to customize and showcase their collectibles in a virtual showroom which is accessible from the app. Also if they wish to, they can make use of AR technology to take pictures with their NFTs.

VeVe's Marketplace

VeVe's marketplace allows you to buy or sell collectibles which were launched on the app. However, these assets are not traded using ETH, but rather it's in-app 'Gems'. You can purchase these gems from the app which will be chargeable to your app store purchases. Each gem currently costs $1 USD, however you might be able to find better deals on VeVe's unoffical telegram market group by trading with others using stablecoins.

As of now, there is still no option for users to cash out their gems into fiat money, however VeVe has stated that in the future this would be possible where users will be able to convert their Gems into VeVe's native token OMI.

I won't be touching too much on VeVe's tokenomics in this post, but definitely look out for one soon!

Oh and 1 thing to note before you go all crazy with this app:

As of now, you still can't transfer out your NFTs to external wallets yet. However this feature is still under development because who wants to own NFTs without true ownership?

How users can obtain drops

Drops are usually released in the "store" segment of the app. There are usually drops every alternate days depending on VeVe. Each collectible drop will be released on a specific date and time, this is when users would be able to purchase these collectibles at their listing price.

Collectibles are released in a limited number of batches, called ‘Series’. A Series may, for example, have 10,000 digital collectibles and within this Series the digital collectibles are divided across five rarity categories, ranging from ‘Common’ to ‘Secret-Rare’.

The drops may also come in a "blind-box" format where users will only know the rarity upon successful purchase. The drops are currently based on a "first-come-first-serve" basis. Each collectibles will also be assigned a random mint-number (example: #04575). This makes each and every collectible a unique one. Usually, the mint-numbers which are lower or have significant representations (date of release of movie/character/comic etc) are deemed to hold higher value in the secondary marketplace.

Due to scarcity and high demand for these IP licensed collectibles, we would almost always see the rarer collectibles selling for a premium in the secondary marketplace. The user base has grown significantly over the months resulting in increasing difficultly to land anything on the drop. Everything sells out within a single second so you have to be super fast to tap the "buy now" button and with a little luck, you just might land one.

A good example is the Walt Disney's Partner Statue. As this was included in the first ever Disney series of NFTs, it was seen as a "Holy Grail" by the community. It sold out within miliseconds! It was originally listed for 333 Gems and is currently selling for 13k Gems at the time of this writing!

Some Other Examples of "Holy Grails" in VeVe

• #100 Todd Mcfarlane's Batman (Listed: 79.99 Gems, Resale: 3.4k Gems)
• Spider-Man - Ultimate Animated Secret Rare (Listed: 250 Gems, Resale: 22k Gems)
• 1939 Marvel Comics #1 - Secret Rare (Listed: 6.99 Gems, Resale: 34K Gems)
• 1963 Amazing Spider-Man Comic #1 - Secret Rare (Listed: 6.99 Gems, Resale: 7.9k Gems)

VeVe's Showroom

Every VeVe user will have their own personal Showroom where they can show off their most prized digital collectibles. The showroom is also fully customizable and you can select which digital collectibles to display, layouts and background images.

Issues Faced by Users

1. Bots... Bots have long been a huge issue for most VeVe users. As each collectible release on VeVe has a certain scarcity, together with the first-come-first-serve basis, bots and auto-clicker users do have a significant advantage during drop days and this has made it harder for normal users to cop the NFT drops. Also, it is almost certain that the secondary marketplace would experience high volume transactions after a drop. Thanks to these bots, it is almost impossible to buy anything for the lowest floor price as these would usually be instantly bought by them. Overall bots have pretty much ruined the experience for most...

2. No true ownership yet. Users who had their accounts disabled/restricted for various reasons and/or breaching the T&Cs (botting/scrips/auto-clicking/emulators), found that they could not transfer both their NFTs and Gems to other accounts. Also, their marketplace access had been restricted, which meant that they couldn't sell their NFTs.

Future Plans for VeVe - Migration to Immutable X

Immutable X is the first layer-2 scaling solution for carbon-neutral non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on Ethereum. Immutable X was created by Immutable, the team behind one of Etherem’s highest-grossing trading card games, Gods Unchained.

As part of VeVe's vision to be a carbon neutral platform for NFTs, VeVe will be migrating its collectibles to Immutable X which will help VeVe transition from a centralized blockchain to Ethereum and enable NFTs to be minted, traded, earned, shared and collected gas-free.

This is a really big deal as users will now be able to enjoy an improved user experience with instant trades and have a peace of mind that their assets are secured in a decentralized blockchain environment.

Overall, I personally prefer to use VeVe to build up my NFT collection, but for those interested in joining in, you should definitely do your own research before making any kind of investment decisions.

Here's a shortcut to the company's whitepaper. Cheers!