Web3 Round 12-11-23
A roundup of activity in NFT, Metaverse, Gaming and AI
Brand Web3 Activity
FIAT Enters Web3 With NFT Sale
European car manufacturer FIAT is joining the many car brands now involved in the wider web3 ecosystem
FIAT currently has an NFT for sale dubbed “FIAT PASS” which comes with some immediate benefits upon purchase.
Owning a FIAT PASS will entitle the owner to a guaranteed priority order of their latest north American release the “500E Red”
A $180 mobility credit in the FIAT ride sharing app, “Free2Move”
And a unique piece of generative art from Italian artist Stefano Contiero
The NFT will also have future applications such as invitations to FIAT unveilings and future priority preorders of new models.
FIAT Pass is currently being sold for $165
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Louis Vuitton Trunk NFT Has First Offering
About six months ago Louis Vuitton sold a $41,000 soul bound token collection called Treasure Trunks
The Trunks could not be sold or transferred but they did come with a physical counterpart along with promised future utility
Louis Vuitton has just announced what the first utility will be for a lucky number of Treasure Trunk owners:
200 randomly selected trunk owners will have the opportunity to purchase a $6,000 fashion piece titled “Via Tile Trunk” that has been designed by the artistic director Nicolas Ghesquiere
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Funko to Drop NFT Trading Cards Using Disney IP
Popular toy company Funko is no stranger to digital collectibles, and their latest offering is bringing along some of the most iconic characters of all time as well as incentivizing trading by collectors
Titled “Mickey and Friends” the Funkos drop will see Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and more included in the upcoming collection
On December 12th Funko will be selling packs of NFT trading cards
Packs containing 5 cards will retail for $9.99 and packs containing 15 cards will retail for $29.99
Each set of packs has a limited supply of 21,250.
Once packs have been opened, certain sets of cards can be redeemed for the physical limited Funko toy
Collectors will have to trade with one another to get the right set or be extremely lucky upon opening packs
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Native Web3
Pudgy Penguins Announce Pudgy Worlds Game
Popular web3 project, Pudgy Penguins continues to expand the brand beyond the blockchain
Their latest announcement (which was long rumored) is a metaverse style game called Pudgy World which will allow users to utilize their various characters and digital collectibles
The game is expected to release in Q1 2024
Nova Labs Partners with T-Mobile to Support Their Decentralized Cell Network
In 2019, Nova Labs launched the Helium Network which has used tokens to reward individuals who launch nodes with the goal of one day creating a decentralized wireless network
On December 5th, Helium Mobile announced a nation wide $20 unlimited plan that leverages this network
With the average American spending $157 a month on their cellular plan, this has the potential for a huge amount of disruption
Helium Network has also partnered with T-Mobile to cover any service areas
The Helium Network gets individuals to run nodes which then act as node network for cellular calls
Helium Network’s nodes don’t cover entire nation, so anytime a Helium user is not in a covered area T-Mobile will step in and provide coverage
Helium will pay T-mobile every time this happens so they are heavily incentivized to increase their node network.
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Magic Eden Announces Upcoming Multi-Chain Wallet
Popular multi-blockchain NFT exchange Magic Eden is developing its own browser based wallet
The wallet will be focused on cross chain compatibility as well as the user experience of buying and selling NFTs
The rationale behind the wallet came from users Magic Eden needing three separate wallets to experience all the different products available on the exchange
The wallet is currently in closed beta with no release date announced.
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Kingship Experience Launches in Roblox
Fictional metaverse band Kingship is a trio of Bored Apes and one Mutant Ape formed by music label, 10:22 (a subsidiary of Universal Music Group)
An NFT collection centered around the band was minted in 2021 and has proven to be a place for web3 music lovers to gather
Popular musicians Hitboy and James Fauntleroy are also working on music that will eventually be released by the metaverse band.
While the community awaits the Kingship album, Kingship has harnessed Roblox for a fun interactive experience that grows the band's narrative while providing new perks for NFT holders
In the experience, players are tasked with reuniting all the band members on a tropical island
Owners of the Kingship NFT have special access to a secret area within the Roblox experience
The experience currently has had 165 thousand visits and has been favorited 660 times
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AI News
Mountain Dew Launches AI Enabled Competition on Twitch
Mountain Dew has unleashed a new campaign titled “RAID” in partnership with Twitch
The campaign urges streamers to stream with a Mountain Dew product visible on the live stream which is confirmed by AI
Players who stream with a Mountain Dew product will automatically be entered into a raffle where the lucky winners will have their stream featured on the Twitch home page as well as the Mountain Dew Twitch page
The Mountain Dew Twitch page will be cycling through various streamers, thus incentivizing the streamers to have a Dew visible at all times during the competition
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Pika Labs Raises $55 Million and Debuts Demo
Pika Labs is an AI startup founded just 6 months ago and has a beta product titled “Pika”
Pika’s aim is to democratize the field of video production and allow anyone to become their own video director
The demo is impressive and the beta already boasts a community of half a million users
Pika 1.0 can do text to video, image to video, and even video to video.
It seems the wider world of VC’s were also impressed by Pika’s product as they raised $55M
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Amazon launches AI assistant Q
Amazon has launched an AI assistant called “Amazon Q”
Q is a little more businesses/technically oriented than Siri or Alexa
With 17 years of AWS data trained in its model, it can assist developers and IT professionals as well as be given a goal or task and independently start coding towards it
It is early days, but the long term goal is to compete with Microsoft’s “Copilot”.
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Metaverse / Gaming
Eminem Holds First Virtual Concert in Fortnite
Fortnite recently hosted an in-game event titled “The Big Bang” which was the culmination of Fortnite’s Chapter 4
It also teased upcoming features: players were able to jump through portals and test out new game elements as well as see new characters
The event culminated in an interactive digital concert:
Players were greeted with a giant digital Eminem
His first track “Lose Yourself” had players interacting with the performance via a rhythm game while his second track “Monster” saw players on a rooftop while Eminem destroyed a digital city a la Godzilla
The concert was much shorter than previous musical offerings
There was also an Eminem skin for sale in the digital store afterwards
The event had roughly 12M individual users when it went live and has since been viewed many million times more
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LEGO X Fortnite
Fortnite is launching one of it’s most unique and integrated brand collaborations yet, this time with LEGO
Generally, Fortnite brand collaborations are cookie cutter:
A cosmetic skin and other items available for purchase
Change in the map offering branding
Limited time game item or game mode (for example players could play as Thanos during the Marvel Endgame collaboration)
The LEGO collaboration is completely unique in comparison and boasts a full stand alone game
Instead of competing against each other, players are building towns, farming, exploring, and defending their towns from LEGO wolves and skeletons
This experience can be played alone or with up to 7 friends
Many are comparing the game to Minecraft, Zelda and Valheim
And players are loving it: at time of writing there are 2.3M active playing the new game (and less than 1 million active players on Fortnite Battle Royale)
This is the first time in Fortnite’s history that the Battle Royale is not the most played game within Fortnite
Swedish House Mafia has a Virtual Concert in Roblox
Popular EDM group Swedish House Mafia just had their first virtual concert within the popular metaverse Roblox
The experience went live December 1st and was played every hour on the hour until Monday
The experience was closer to something one would expect in a Fortnite concert with players being transported to various digital environments with interactive gameplay elements
It should be noted this was not an official Roblox concert but rather something Swedish House Mafia did independently while utilizing the Roblox platform
The event had 380k visits throughout the duration of the multi-day concert.
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Forgotten Runiverse Recap
Popular NFT collection Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult recently closed the alpha of their upcoming blockchain based MMO RPG game “Forgotten Runiverse”
They released an impressive recap of the week long experience
Highlights include:
The collection of NFT rings that gave some early access utility minted out in 5 minutes
128% more people were playing on Day 7 opposed to Day 1
40% of people playing on Day 1 were playing on the final day of the beta
1123 people max leveled their character
Bosses were defeated 333,629 times, and 482K pieces of equipment were crafted (that can be minted on chain)
Square Enix Holds NFT Auction for Upcoming Game
Square Enix is behind one of the longest running and most beloved game franchises of all time, Final Fantasy so naturally there was a lot of excitement when they announced they would be entering web3 via an NFT enabled game titled “Symbiogenesis”
Square Enix is preparing for the imminent launch of the game on December 21st by holding a round of auctions for in game characters
The game will be free to play for everyone but owning a character grants access to exclusive content provide “a role to play determining the tale’s ultimate ending”
The auction has been heavily gamified with only active community members who took part in “Discord missions and raids” allowed to put in bids
All characters will start as free, but if two or more people attempt to claim the same character an auction will trigger
Furthermore in game bonuses are given to anyone who bids over $100
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Crypto
Coinbase Wallet Adds Peer-to-Peer USDC Transfer Via ‘Link’
Crypto has long been criticized for being unwieldy and complicated to the average person but has become more accessible over the last 4 years as banks working with exchanges like Coinbase offer same day deposits
Coinbase has been a trailblazer in this area and continues to be with their latest offering:
Now users with Coinbase Wallet can send crypto and stablecoins just by sending the recipeient a ‘claim link’
Users with a Coinbase account can generate a link with the currency they would like to send and then send via text, DM or any other means
The recipient will be able to transfer the currency into their account with both users being charged zero fees
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Philippines SEC to Block Access to Binance.
The Philippines SEC has announced that Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world, has been operating in the country without the proper licenses to sell securities
Users of Binance within the Philippines have a three month period to withdraw their investments off the platform
Meta and Google have also been instructed to ban all ads by Binance within the Philippines
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Sinbad Sanctioned by US Treasury Department
Crypto transactions are public by nature of the blockchain however sometimes people would rather be anonymous when transacting
To meet this need applications called “coin mixers” were created which mix together incoming cryptocurrencies in a giant pool and redistribute the same amount of coins at random to the depositors thus ensuring anonymity
The most popular of these were Blender and Tornado cash which were used infamously by the North Korean Hacking syndicate to launder over $700M
Both services were subsequently shut down by the US Federal Government
The developers behind Blender relaunched the app under a new name (Sinbad) and were met with similar results: a sanction by the US Government and their exchange being seized
These actions have spurred a greater conversation within the crypto currency community with regards to the right to privacy and government intervention (as well as the the liability of developers when their products are used for crime)
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Blockchain Interoperability Company, Wormhole Raises $225M
Wormhole is the latest crypto venture to raise money at an eye watering valuation
Wormhole is a developer platform that allows different blockchains to communicate with one another on chain while also developing tools intended to increase cross chain activity
Wormhole was once a part of a broader crypto company called Jump Trading Group, however they recently separated from their parent company and raised $225 million dollars at a $2.5B valuation
The round was lead by former parent company Jump Trading Group and Coinbase Ventures
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Crypto.com Secures Regulatory Approval in the UK
Popular crypto exchange Crypto.com has just added another territory to its portfolio
The UK financial regulator has approved Crypto.com’s application for an Electronic Money Institution License
This license will allow Crypto.com to broaden its crypto related offerings within the UK
The UK has garnered the reputation of being notoriously hard to obtain these sorts of licenses
Crypto.com joins Gemini and Coinbase as the only exchanges which have been successful in obtaining an EMI license.
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