SUPERCELL INVESTS IN MOONFROST
Supercell's (Clash of Clans) first investment in the NFT space came with Moonfrost. Oxalis Games managed to raise $4,5 million in the seed round.
Rick Moore, the founder of Oxalis Games studio, promises the release of the first version of the game by the end of 2023.
ORIGIN DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Axie infinity have posted some new development plan that they are going to stick to.
$46M INVESTMENT ON WILDCARD
Paul Bettner, co-founder of Playful Studios, wants to attract a huge number of new players to Web3 with the new Wildcard game. Paradigm, backed by Griffin Gaming Partners and Sabrina Khan, led the funding round.
Wildcard is a hybrid MOBA, real-time strategy and collectible card game where players will have to face off in an arena.
CHAMPIONS: ASCENSION UPDATE
Many promises from the champions are starting to slowly come true. The owners of champions will be thrown into the wallets of the promised pets this summer.
The virtual world demo of "Slice of Messina" will contain several locations, we are promised not a boring world and it is expected that mini-games will be available in the world.
IMMUTABLE LAUNCHES $500 MILLION FUND
There is nothing to add to the current market situation. Everything was described earlier and recommendations were given from January and May. WHere и here. Therefore, we will not focus on this.
Much more interesting to watch venture investments at this time. Someone is being liquidated or reducing staff, while someone is rushing ahead and investing half a billion. Since April, I have been watching the 4th new fund with a focus on web3 with a raise of more than $500 million. So the Australian Immutable pulled up to support the development of the ecosystem. They want to attract developers and give them grants, which is quite risky in the current macroeconomic situation.
Robbie Ferguson is more ambitious than ever, he says that in two years, mid-sized game studios will make a breakthrough in web3 and be ahead of everyone else in this market.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE OF THE METAUNIVERSE FROM GAMES AND WHERE DOES THE BLOCKCHAIN DO?
Recently, there has been more and more talk about the metaverses, and this despite the decline in interest in high-risk assets. Investment in the metaverse continues to flow, predictions and reports speak of a nascent trillion dollar industry.
I will give my opinion on this matter and the characteristics of the metaverse that distinguish it from games. Let's go in order:
The Metaverse is not the future. This is real. Thanks to the development of the Internet and social networks and the gaming industry, we are already in some kind of nascent metaverse, but only in 2D. Our personalities are digitized and stored in databases. Companies have a great idea about us, this data can be transferred / used on different platforms and where personalized recommendations will be created. People are working to create content and even gamify the process of communication in social networks. All it takes is to create a 3D interface to take gamification to the next level and further equate digital and real identities. The benefits may be an increase in Retention, Sales and a reduction in business costs.
I often cite Telegram as an example. Imagine that Telegram is a kind of Decentraland only in 2D. User avatars are here. We know many people in chats only from them and have formed an opinion about them without ever encountering them in real life. The channel is an analogue of the earth. Chat is an analogue of the open world.
At the same time, socialization and the first impression remain important, so buying a unique avatar with a proven fact of ownership would be a reasonable feature. Land can be a profitable investment for brands and influencers.
And imagine that you will navigate not with the help of a cursor through channels and chats, but with the help of a digital avatar in the clothes that you possess. From chat to chat (space), from channel to channel (lands) and all this with gamification, storytelling in a 3D MMORPG-like world and achievements can influence your identity in real life through a digital passport and rating (in a good sense of the word) .
There are seven important aspects of the virtual world that characterize it as the Metaverse. They were formulated by venture capitalist Matthew Ball. Author of the book “The Metaverse. And How It Will Revolutionize Everything.” And for some of the characteristics, just the same blockchain and NFT may be suitable. I have taken the liberty of adding comments to these characteristics of the metaverses. This can be used in disputes with critics of the concept and those who have recently become interested in the metaverse.
• UGC. Users should be able to create content for the metaverse.
• All events within the metaverse occur in real time, and actions do not depend on external factors.
• There are no restrictions on the number of users. Not at all. Anyone can join.
• The Metaverse is infinite and always functions. It cannot be turned off or stopped or past events changed. Here we recall blockchain and decentralization.
• Economy. People work in the metaverse and get paid for it. They also own property, can sell/buy it and create it. Therefore, this story is closer to NFT with storage on your wallet, and not on the company's proprietary servers. If Roblox or Epic Games or whoever is planning to create a real metaverse, then they should give ownership to the citizens of the metaverse.
• The metauniverse and the real world should not exist separately, they should be intertwined with each other. At the moment, phigital items that brands give away via NFT are just merchandise that lives its own life after release. If we sell a physical item, then this does not affect the NFT in any way. Events in real life and in the metaverse must affect both realities.
• Interoperability and cross-platform. Content should be able to be transferred from one platform/game to another. Again, we come to the concept of NFT, where the item is stored in the user's wallet and another platform connects to the user's wallet in order to check for NFT to display the content. This should not be on the servers of one company, or all companies should join the same creator of the metaverse, which will lead to other problems and is unlikely, or the metaverse should belong to a global government that sets standards and rules, but while the metaverse is seen more as a decentralized structure, this is possible not this way. In addition, the created content should be able to be easily transferred to the virtual space. The Metaverse must be accessible from different platforms.
Not all MMORPGs have these characteristics. At the moment, closest to the metaverses in some traditional sense: Fortnite, Roblox, Second Life, Meta, Minecraft. Mainly because they already have a huge user base and have huge funds, staff and experience to create something like this. Didn't mention Decentraland, Otherside, The Sandbox just for this reason.
But the first must embrace the concepts of web3. without them, they will not be able to fully embody the real metaverse, and it will be easier for them to do this than to gain a user base second. If they want to compete for a place in the sun, and not be absorbed, they need to grow very quickly, be flexible, have a reserve of liquidity in order to survive the crypto winter and provide unique features. There are features. The same decentralization and DAO to be able to create political associations. But while DCL, TSB, Otherside are far from being able to create a metaverse that is capable of aggregating a trillion-dollar economy, the GDP of which is capable of exceeding that of the US, China or the EU at least to begin with, not to mention the flip moment when the metaverse will be larger than the world economy, which quite likely in the future.
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1. Can blockchain not harm, but help the environment?
Cryptocurrency owners are often criticized by eco-activists: indeed, to mine, say, one bitcoin, you need to spend a huge amount of electricity. The same goes for many other cryptocurrencies. However, the situation is starting to improve little by little - since there are a lot of crypto-investors, they care about their reputation and take the first steps towards the environmental friendliness of the crypt.
Just for the sake of understanding, bitcoin mining around the world now consumes as much energy as the entire population of a small country consumes in a year. How to minimize damage to the environment? We share several ideas that are already partially applied in different countries.
Among the energy sources there are relatively useless ones - for example, gas that is released from oil drilling rigs is usually referred to as such. Traditionally, this gas was simply burned in the process of oil extraction: this process is called "flaring" - the fact is that it was too expensive to collect this gas and somehow use it, because it required high-quality infrastructure. This was the case until bitcoin rose in price: mining equipment began to be installed directly on the drilling sites - it runs on energy that is generated by “flaring”. Some companies in the Middle East are already exploring the possibility of introducing such practices centrally.
Blockchain can make energy production more efficient: part of the money that is earned on cryptocurrency mining can be directed to the development of renewable energy sources - unlike oil and gas, they are inexhaustible and do not harm the environment too much. As an example, the construction of geothermal power plants in El Salvador, the country of the victorious bitcoin. The project can give impetus to the development of the economy of the whole country.
Blockchain can finally become the technological basis for creating a system that will distribute energy more efficiently. The integration of blockchain into the energy sector will allow ordinary consumers to bypass retailers to contact wholesale distributors directly – potentially reducing the electricity bill by 40%, since small firms’ staff are usually paid for services such as billing or monitoring meter usage. If there is no need for this, then it will be possible to seriously save not only your money, but also the energy itself - large distributors who will have to fight for customers will be forced to provide the most convenient tariffs, thereby minimizing losses and improving their technologies.
2.TON is a cryptocurrency, the creator of which is unofficially considered Pavel Durov. What is the future of it and how is it different from other blockchains?
As in many businesses, blockchain appeared in Telegram in order to attract additional investments in a new way.
Having gone through fire (American litigation) and water (breaking off part of the team), the project is now forming copper (rather, even in Dubai gold) pipes, through which they have already received $ 1.2 billion in capitalization. The peak value was reached in December at around $5.86 billion. The project has hundreds of specialists who work daily to increase the exchange rate and confidence in it. The price of any cryptocurrency directly depends on attention, and TON is well aware of this. They actively use marketing and hype, for example, in January, the rate grew by 15% during the day after the release of Morgenstern's video - in it he sang "sold all the bitcoins, bought TON, withdrew the bitch and paid with crypto."
In addition to the purely financial component, blockchains have long become platforms for creating various projects. The technical features of the sites, for example, allow you to record content based on them and make games. Today, the most important factors for the success of the cultural component of a particular blockchain are the price of a transaction and throughput.
Users of the main "cultural" cryptocurrency Ethereum suffer from high prices for transactions, during the sale of high-profile projects, it can reach several thousand dollars. Rarely at what time does the purchase of NFT on ETH cost less than $10-20. In TON, this amount is measured in fractions of a cent.
The disadvantages of most successful NFTs on TON are that they can hardly be called truly original and accepted by the community of crypto-collectors. Here, so far, they often rely on the almost complete copying of successful collections from Ethereum and an aggressive marketing strategy within Telegram, aimed at an inexperienced audience. The primary price of such tokens is $50-150, judging by the chats, most of the target audience is satisfied with the same amount received from above after the resale.
The crypto community does not treat art and collectibles on TON with special respect. It is difficult to imagine how TON is going to improve the status and whether they need it in principle. It can be assumed that in the blockchain they do not aim to become their own in the formed community and want to create their own through a different approach to promotion (unlike collections on TON, most blockchain projects are promoted on Twitter and Discord).
The main gaming blockchains Solana and Polygon are trying to solve the problem of throughput and stability - at times, the influx of players can bring networks down. In Solana, this was due to Stepn, while Polygon as a whole still often slows down. TON developers promise that millions of people will be able to play games on their platform without any problems. It has not yet been possible to verify this - all projects are at the development stage. The prospects for games on TON seem much more rosy to me - the audience of crypto games is not as picky as crypto art lovers. People may well be interested in the possibility of earning money in stable projects.
The competition of blockchains can be compared to the struggle of operating systems or browsers. TON is successfully fulfilling this mission and is already in the top 200 blockchains. Perhaps it is still far from the title of "true", but it can definitely be called non-trivial and different from hundreds of other projects.
Durov's style is clearly visible in it: an unusual approach to marketing, the creation of his own rules of the game, the desire for mass production at any cost and the easy borrowing of successful solutions.
The crypto world lives by its own rules, success in the ordinary world may mean nothing in web3. It seems that Pavel Durov is actively trying to get into a new wonderful world and become a prominent figure there. Only time will tell how successful he will be - there are only 300 million cryptocurrency users on the planet now, and this is comparable to the Internet audience in 1999.
3. El Salvador lost half of its investment in bitcoin due to the depreciation. The country is predicted to default.
As of June 14, 2022, El Salvador's bitcoin investments are worth roughly half of what the country paid for them.
In October 2021, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador bought 420 bitcoins in a "recession" at a price of more than 60 thousand per bitcoin. On May 9, he again bought 500 bitcoins on the "recession" at a price of more than 30 thousand per bitcoin. Now the value of the cryptocurrency has dropped below $22, the lowest since the end of 2020.
El Salvador now holds 2301 bitcoins, which is worth about $53 million at the time of publication. Bukele has invested $105,6 million in cryptocurrency.
These funds represent about 20% of El Salvador's GDP.
Protests have begun in the country due to “bitcoinization” – locals are afraid of a worsening economic situation. The protesters opposed Bukele, who, in their opinion, has concentrated too much power in his hands and weakened the independence of the judiciary - in response, he ironically called himself on Twitter "the coolest dictator."
In May 2022, the risk of default in El Salvador increased: Bukele planned to issue crypto-bonds, but their release was postponed due to the depreciation. The national debt of the country exceeded 24 billion dollars.
4.TAG Heuer will allow NFT owners to demonstrate through hours
The Swiss brand TAG Heuer, founded in 1860, offered watch owners the opportunity to showcase the NFT collection on their TAG Heuer Connected Caliber E4.
“I took a close look at the NFT universe, which echoes TAG Heuer's tradition of being avant-garde and innovative in technology. Our watches allow users to showcase their digital identity,” said TAG Heuer CEO Frédéric Arnault.
To develop the new feature, the brand consulted with the key communities of BAYC, Cryptopunk, Clone-X and Wow. After hours, it will be possible to connect to the crypto wallet to view NFT collections.
The proof of ownership is rendered as a hexagon with a cloud of particles rotating around the image.
The Swiss showed an excellent example of entering the world of web3 from a company with a long history. It would be interesting to see a logical continuation of the story and a project in the metaverse - for example, a quest with collecting NFT gears.
5. HTC will release a smartphone for the metaverse
The Taiwanese smartphone and tablet maker announced a Metaverse phone in its twitter. The release will take place on June 28.
HTC first mentioned the creation of a meta-smartphone at the Mobile World Congress conference in March, and the launch of the finished product was delayed due to disruptions in the supply chains.
The corporation did not disclose the characteristics of the created device, but claims that this is the flagship. At the event, HTC also spoke about the launch of a new brand viverse, under which all equipment designed to work with the metaverses will be released, including VR helmets, the prices of which start at $499.
“Viverse guarantees a seamless experience, available on any device, anywhere, powered by virtual and augmented reality, high-speed connectivity, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, which HTC has invested in over the years,” said Sher Wang, chief executive of HTC.
HTC was one of the leaders in the smartphone market in the 2000s. Blockchain released in 2019smartphone HTC Exodus 1, which was sold for $699 in fiat money, Litecoin and Binance Coin. But then it did not cause much excitement, I wonder what the reaction will be to this model.
6. Dubai will create 42000 jobs in the metaverse and add $4 billion to develop the industry.
The Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan, even created a committee to oversee the strategy for the development of the UAE metaverse. The immediate objectives of the program are to improve the work of surgeons by 230% and increase the productivity of engineers by 30%.
The sheikh promised to create at least 42 new jobs and allocate $4 billion for this.
The most important goal of the strategy is to increase the contribution of the metaverse to the emirate's GDP to 1%.
According to state news agency Wam, the crown prince and his colleagues are currently forming a task force to track the latest developments in the digital economy, including metaverse technologies and trends.
Sheikh Hamdan said: “We want to keep an open mind to the future and form the foundation for a happy life for future generations of Dubai residents. This move will help us fully understand the new reality and explore unique insights that will shape a brighter future for the entire UAE, maximizing future business opportunities.”
At the meeting of the highest officials of the emirate, artificial intelligence was also discussed. The participants agreed that the metaverse will expand the boundaries of trade and reach millions of people who are not physically located in Dubai.
Dubai has long planned to become a key player in the virtual world, and is developing a regulatory and legislative framework for the sector.
Local financiers expect that business revenue from the metaverse could grow to $400 billion by 2025.
A couple of weeks ago, the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) opened its metaverse headquarters, making it the first regulator to have a presence in the emerging digital space. VARA aims to popularize a decentralized model for managing anything.
7. Vitalik Buterin: Bitcoin and altcoins will never replace fiat currencies
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who knows how to act in any difficult situation, spoke about the possible replacement of traditional state currencies with crypto. He adheres to a point of view that is not very popular in the crypto community: cryptocurrencies will never replace state currencies.
In the past few months, the global economy has been bursting at the seams. Given the ever-increasing prices of literally everything, the picture of the near future is very bleak. These trends make experts suggest that national currencies will soon begin to fade into the background due to the loss of purchasing power, giving way to alternative assets.
News for the category unincluded borrowed and verified from the channel BCC BLOCKCHAIN CULTURE