Web3 Round Up 3.25.24
A roundup of activity in NFT, Metaverse, Gaming and AI
Brand News
NASCAR Partners with Cryptoys on Digital Collectibles
NASCAR is entering the digital collectibles space in partnership with Cryptoys, a digital toy company that combines toys, gaming and entertainment
The collectibles will also being “playable” suggesting an interactive element
Article links:
https://www.licenseglobal.com/technology/onchain-studios-inks-multiyear-cryptoys-partnership-with-nascar
Neuralink Unveils First Human Patient
Neuralink made waves recently, announcing that they had implanted the first chip into a human’s brain
That patient has made a full recovery from the procedure and is now able to control a computer curser just by thinking
They have now have released a live stream of the 29 year old quadriplegic demoing his new found abilities
Noland says the experience feels like “being able to use the force on a computer” saying the first thing he did when realizing that he could now fully control a computer with his brain was binge his favorite game Civilization 6
Beyond gaming, this marks a major change to his quality of life and will probably usher in a new frontier of medical advancements
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LEGO Makes IP Available in Fortnite Creative
The State of Unreal is a yearly conference where Epic Games shows off the latest developments around the Unreal Engine, usually focusing on capabilities around animation and meta-humans
This time, there were a number of announcements related to Fortnite included deepening it’s relationship and integration with Lego by making those assets available to creators using UEFN
This is obviously a big deal as now for the first time the Lego IP is in the hands of creators who can monetize it via the Fortnite platform
Further additions to UEFN that were revealed were a save feature, first person mode, the ability to follow creators, and save maps
The Fortnite developers are so confident in the new tooling for UEFN that the next season of Fortnite will be built using only tools available on UEFN
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Epic Games Plans to Launch Own App Store on iOS and Android
Recently a court ruled that Apple would be allowed to keep its 30% fee on app revenue via the iOS app store, but Epic would be allowed to embed payment options in its apps allowing consumers to avoid the fee
Epic has now also revealed that they will beaunching their own App Store on Apple and Android devices
Epic plans to only charge a 12% commission from developers which is less than half of what Apple as well as Google charges
The App Store will unsurprisingly focus on gaming as well as encouraging indie developers to launch via the Epic app store
It has not been confirmed if Epic plans to pull popular mobile titles such as Fortnite or Rocket League from the IOS app store and make them exclusive to Epic games upcoming app store
The App Store is expected to launch at the end of 2024.
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Starbucks Shutters its Web3 Loyalty Program
Starbucks announced they would be shuttering the Odyssey loyalty platform on March 31 as well as shuttering their Discord server March 25
There is currently no clarity if this loyalty program will be revived with a Starbucks rep saying, “The Starbucks Odyssey Beta must come to an end to prepare for what comes next” implying that elements may be adapted to existing or new programs
One interesting idea that has been floated is that it is possible for a brand to enter the web3 loyalty space and give new utility to the once Starbucks enabled badges thus co-opting the once Starbucks Odyssey holders
We will have to wait and see what will become of the remaining now defunct Odyssey NFT’s
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Native Web3
Owners Behind Popular Meme WIF Sell Image as an NFT
Crypto is in the midst of another meme-coin mania, this time with different dogs
One stand out has been DogWifHat, otherwise known as WIF
Believe it or not WIF has minted many new crypto millionaires this cycle coming from a market cap of less than $100k to now over $2.2B
The meme behind this popular coin features a dog with a crocheted hat
In true crypto fashion the owners of this dog who posted the picture had no idea that there was a multibillion dollar coin centered around the likeness of their dog
Naturally they wanted in on the action and posted the original photo as a 1/1 NFT on the NFT exchange Foundation which fetched a whopping $4.3M for the dogs owners
At the same time, the WIF community got together and crowd sourced an impressive $700k to feature it prominently on The Vegas Sphere
The $700k is reportedly enough to buy a week’s worth of advertising on the sphere and has been dubbed the “Sphere Wif Hat” campaign
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AI News
Google Bans Gemini From Answering Any US Political Questions
In anticipation of the 2024 presidential election Google has put parameters in place around its chatbot Gemini that will limit its responses pertaining to any questions involving the presidential election
This was first rolled out during India’s presidential election and now Google has decided to make it policy for all elections going forward
The ban on information is very thorough, with Gemini refusing to even answer what day the elections will be held
It seems Google is taking a rather safe approach as they are probably still reeling from their text to image mishap from a couple weeks ago
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Figure Incorporates OpenAI into Robot
Everyday it seems we get one step closer to a sci-fi reality, and this week is no different
Robotics startup Figure has incorporated a generative form of ChatGPT into one of its robots, resulting in a very impressive demo
The demo saw the robot engaged in a conversation with Figure’s lead engineer as well as performing a variety of tasks around a kitchen
Figure claims they have no remote controlling around this robot and everything was done autonomously
Mercedes to Incorporate AI Enabled Robots into Their Assembly Lines
Mercedes has partnered with a 7 year old robotics firm Apptronics and will be using their humanoid AI enabled robots to help out on the car maker’s assembly line
The robots cannot speak or do complicated tasks like Figure, but rather they will be used to automate “low Skill, physically challenging repetitive manual labor”
Mercedes goes on to say “enlisting Humanoid Robots allows us to to put Robots in work environments designed for humans, eliminating the need to redesign the space”
Apptronics Robots are nearly 6 feet tall, weigh 160 pounds can lift roughly 55 pounds of weight and have a battery life of 4 hours
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Metaverse / Gaming
Cypher Clans Launches $1M Treasure Hunt
New crypto gaming project “Cypherland” has issued a challenge to all of web3’s on chain sleuths in what they describe as “Da Vinci Code meets web3”
Participants will need to solve thirteen puzzles, with the first to solve them receiving the keys to a wallet that contains a whopping $1M in it
NFT’s will be minted across thirteen different disciples such as science, cryptography, and classics; the NFT’s themselves will act as clues to one of the thirteen puzzles
The NFT’s will also be tiered, with the more rare the better the clue
Excess NFT’s that do not get purchased will be subsequently burned
It will be a fun experiment to watch play out in real time once the puzzles go live and eager participants are already forming clans in order to tackle the riddles as fast as possible as well as split the cost of clues
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Crypto Gaming Continues to Grow
Crypto enabled games have been one of the most talked about products this cycle with many games going live on mainstream marketplaces such as the iOS App Store and the Epic Games store
It’s been a monumental year for Crypto gaming adoption and many early believers have reaped the reward of skyrocketing token prices
It seems as if this mania is not slowing down as the number of wallets playing crypto games increased by an incredible 20% between February - March 2024 with March logging 1.9 million daily active wallets playing blockchain games
One factor in the rise of players is undoubtedly the number of games doing play to earn airdrop campaigns
These games will usually host some sort of challenge for a limited time around playing the game as well as spreading the word on social media after a set period of time those who participated will usually be rewarded financially via the games native token
Pixels, a popular web 3 game, airdropped over 8 figures to its player base and subsequently experienced a over $1B in trading volume the next day on their platform
Currently there are a plethora of play to airdrop campaigns going across several of the most popular games such as, Nifty Island, the Saga Blockchain, Nyan Heroes, Shrapnel, and more
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Crypto
Apple Exploit Leaves Users Crypto Currency Vulnerable
In very unfortunate news, security experts have found an exploit in all Apple products that incorporate the popular M chip series
The exploit would allow hackers to steal cryptographic keys designed to protect user’s data stored on their device
To make matters worse this exploit cannot be patched and will be present on all past computers
Apple’s newest computers set to launch in October will not contain this exploit
It will fall on wallet providers such as MetaMask and CoinBase to add extra security to their applications to mitigate such an attack
Apple has issued a response that shows how to potentially mitigate such an attack but did not speak on the exploit itself
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Robinhood Launches Crypto Wallet for Android Users
Robinhood is known as an online trading platform primarily for the US stock exchange
They have long been crypto friendly and last year even released their own wallet service for Apple users in which customers could easily store, buy, and sell crypto assets
They have recently announced they are expanding this offering to Android users with the Robinhood crypto wallet set to go live March 20th
Users will have to keep their own seed phrase safe as Robinhood has no access to customers data once the wallet is created
On day one the wallet was downloaded over 10,000 times
The firm currently holds a whopping $14B worth of clients’ crypto currencies, almost double the $8.4B they owned in 2022
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Block Releases Hardware Wallet
The Jack Dorsey led payments company Block has long been friendly to crypto incorporating payment options into their popular service Cash App
Block has taken a further step into the crypto world by releasing “Bitkey” a self custody Bitcoin specific hardware wallet
The hardware wallet will allow users to have self custody over their Bitcoin and not rely on third party custodians such as Coinbase
The wallet is also integrated with Cash App and Coinbase allowing users to purchase more Bitcoin directly from the Bitkey app and have it directly stored in their hardware wallet rather than having to manually transfer it
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Van Eck Lowers Bitcoin ETF Fee’s to Zero
Multiple major financial institutions launched Bitcoin ETF’s on the same day and have been vying for market share and customers ever since
BlackRock currently has the biggest Bitcoin ETF which currently has over $13B in assets under management in their IBIT ETF
Van Eck has felt the pressure and is slashing their fees from .2 to 0 from March 12, 2024 to March 31, 2025 for the first $1.5B in inflows
After $1.5B in funds have flowed into Van Eck the fee will be reinstated
Van Eck currently only has $237M in its Bitcoin ETF so this will hopefully help them attract the digitally curious
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