Nifty News: AC Milan launches NFT collection, Magic Eden accepts Solana projects’ tokens and more

Italian professional soccer club AC Milan will be releasing its first-ever nonfungible token (NFT) project in collaboration with the BitMEX crypto exchange, with proceeds going to Fondazione Milan, the clubs’ charity arm.

The limited-edition collection will feature 75,817 NFTs, a number representative of the capacity of the club’s home ground San Siro stadium, and will depict a 3D image of a jersey found in South Sudan by Danish war photographer Jan Grarup who was in the country documenting widespread flooding last December.

BitMEX partnered with AC Milan to contribute to the project by providing trading discounts and “other benefits” to the first 10,000 pre-orders, BitMEX will also donate to Fondazione Milan by purchasing a “large number” of the NFTs.

As per the announcement, the club says the proceeds will contribute to funding its charitable causes around the world, specifically mentioning the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and a UNICEF project in South Sudan.

Magic Eden to accept tokens from DeGods and Aurory projects

Magic Eden, the largest marketplace by volume for Solana (SOL) NFTs according to DappRadar has confirmed it will accept the tokens from popular Solana NFT projects, DeGods DUST and Aurory’s AURY within the coming weeks.

The marketplace first teased integration of the DUST token in late March, tweeting “brb integrating $DUST” on March 31st. On April 1st, a drawing of a Magic Eden-themed bar with the caption “$AURY” was tweeted.

https://twitter.com/MagicEden/status/1509953696427220996?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

DeGods is the most traded collection in 30 days on Magic Eden according to its own statistics and has an all-time trading volume on the platform of 307,121 SOL, or $33.8 million. Aurory is in third place overall in sales volume for a Solana NFT project according to DappRadar, with an all-time volume of $79.5 million.

Related: Content creators introducing a new paradigm with NFTs

The integration of the tokens may be the latest attempt by the platform to solidify itself as Solana’s native NFT marketplace after OpenSea announced it will integrate Solana, putting the two platforms in direct competition.

According to reports, Tiffany Huang, head of content and marketing at Magic Eden, stated that the platform was looking to integrate tokens from other “blue chip” NFT collections.

Solana NFT sales are gaining momentum

Solana NFTs are seeing a significant gain in volume, in the last 24 hours the NFT sales volume on the Solana blockchain has hit over $9.2 million according to analytics firm CryptoSlam, an increase of 51.5%.

It comes after a drop was seen in the trading volume of Solana NFTs after the announcement that OpenSea would integrate the blockchain, between March 30th, when OpenSea announced the Solana integration, and April 6th, a day before the integration was live, trading volume decreased by 34.4%.

Ethereum (ETH) is still the top network when it comes to NFTs with $49.4 million in sales made in the last 24 hours.

Other Nifty News

Starbucks has announced its foray into NFTs, with CEO Howard Schultz stating that ”sometime before the end of the calendar year, we are going to be in the NFT business.”

Autograph, the NFT platform co-founded by Tom Brady has signed a multi-year partnership with ESPN to create a docuseries and NFT collection titled “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” which details the career of the NFL legend.