This Week in Web3: Friday, December 31st, 2021
Oculus record downloads, New Year's Eve in Decentraland, the dark side of the Metaverse, NFTs and the world of fashion, and the top 20 crypto moments of 2021.
Hey friends,
Yep, this is a day late, apologies. Happy 2022! I think this is going to be an extraordinarily interesting and exciting year, especially if 2021 was anything to go by.
Enjoy this week’s digest of what’s happening in the world of Web3.
News we’re following
Meta’s Oculus was the US’s most-downloaded app on Christmas
The holiday season has been kind to Meta Platforms, the Facebook parent company that recently rebranded to tout its commitment to building the metaverse.
Downloads of the app to support Oculus, Meta’s virtual reality brand, rose to the top of the mobile app store charts after Christmas, suggesting its headsets were popular gifts this year. Before this week, Oculus was a top 10 iOS app in only one country—the US—but by Dec. 26 became a top-five app in 14 different countries and the number one app in the US, according to Justin Patterson, an equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. The app topped the Google Play store on Android devices as well.
New Year’s Eve Party Comes to the Metaverse as Times Square Building Owner Enters Decentraland
Real estate firm Jamestown snatched up 170 parcels and is hosting a virtual New Year’s party concurrently with its meatspace counterpart.
“The real estate firm behind one of America’s most glitzy traditions is ushering in 2022 in – where else? – the metaverse.
Jamestown, the owner of One Times Square, is recreating the 26-story tower at the heart of New York’s New Year’s Eve ball drop in Decentraland. The company announced the plan Wednesday as a partnership with Digital Currency Group (DCG), the longtime Decentraland backer with major holdings in the platform’s MANA and LAND tokens. (DCG is the parent company of an editorially independent CoinDesk.)”
Sotheby’s NFT Sales Reach $100M in 2021
The auction house said in a report that it has seen an overall “rebound” in sales as clients respond to a seamless digital and physical experience.
Sotheby’s, the 277-year-old British auction house, said sales of its non-fungible token (NFT) works reached $100 million in 2021.
Sotheby’s said NFTs have further expanded its audience attracting a new demographic of collectors.
In April, Sotheby’s held its first sale of NFTs by the pseudonymous artist Pak. The sale fetched $16.8 million over a three-day drop.
Other notable NFT sales included a single CryptoPunk that sold for $11.8 million and a single Bored Ape selling for $3.4 million.
The auction house reported that it has seen an overall “rebound” as clients respond to a seamless digital and physical experience. Sotheby’s consolidated sales for 2021 reached $7.3 billion with auctions at $6 billion and private sales achieving $1.3 billion,
Sotheby’s said the “meteoric rise” of NFTs and the launch of its new platform called “Sotheby’s Metaverse” has attracted a new audience, with 78% of NFT bidders being new to Sotheby’s and more than half of them under 40.
The Sotheby’s Metaverse allows visitors to view digital artworks available at auction, as well as learn about the collectors and artists behind NFTs.
The auction house has also created a virtual gallery in Decentraland to showcase the NFTs.
Sotheby’s has also been accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment for physical artwork.
Things we’re reading
The Metaverse’s Dark Side: Here Come Harassment and Assaults
As Meta and other companies bet big on an immersive digital world, questions about its harms are rising.
“Bad behavior in the metaverse can be more severe than today’s online harassment and bullying. That’s because virtual reality plunges people into an all-encompassing digital environment where unwanted touches in the digital world can be made to feel real and the sensory experience is heightened.”
Everybody Into the Metaverse! Virtual Reality Beckons Big Tech
Tech’s biggest companies are joining game makers and start-ups in pursuit of an immersive digital world that some have been working on for years.
“The metaverse, one of the most buzzy terms of the tech industry, could be many things. It could be a virtual world where imagination is the only limit. Or it could be a less fantastical place for holding business meetings without leaving home.
For the tech titans getting behind this big idea, the metaverse could be something more tangible: the next great way to make piles of money.”
“On Thursday, Los Angeles-based retailer Fred Segal debuted a “dynamic retail experience” called Artcade in its Sunset Boulevard store. Created in partnership with media tech holding company Subnation, the experience includes an NFT gallery with digital wall displays, physical and digital products for sale, and a streaming studio. The retailer follows several others that have launched physical activations around NFTs as they’ve increasingly entered the NFT space. These include Dolce & Gabbana, which staged an NFT installation in one of its flagship stores, and Rebecca Minkoff, which held an NFT exhibition for New York Fashion Week.
The items being launched as part of the new experience at Fred Segal include IRL collectibles, limited-edition apparel and gaming hardware. Visiting customers can use cryptocurrency to purchase virtual products including NFT artwork and digital skins online via Coinbase. The retailer is working on allowing cryptocurrency to be used in-store to purchase items.”
Things we’re listening to
10 Predictions About Crypto in 2022 with Ryan Selkis
(Note: We shared the full 160 page trends report last time, but this is a helpful digest)
Ryan Selkis is the Founder and CEO the data analytics platform Messari. In Ryan's past Bankless appearances, we've debated ETH as money and the Triple Point Asset thesis. We've tackled crypto regulation and taking an aggressive stance on policy.
Now it's time to add it all together and decide what's next—what's important for the industry and the world as we head into 2022. Ryan wrote a 150+ page beast of a report titled 'Crypto Theses for 2022,' which covers the space from top to bottom. From DAOs and DeFi to Regulation and NFTs, there is no stone left unturned in this report.
In this episode, we digest the mountain of information Ryan puts together on an annual basis to answer the question: What's in store for Crypto in 2022?
Tales from the Crypt: A Bitcoin Podcast, By Marty Bent
Tales from the Crypt is a podcast hosted by Marty Bent about Bitcoin. Join Marty, Editor in Chief of "the best newsletter in Bitcoin", as he sits down to discuss Bitcoin with interesting people.
Join Marty and Matt as they sit down with Mike Brock, lead at TBD, to discuss:
What "is" and what "ought" to be
Mike's history at Block
How bitcoin got integrated at Cash App
How TBD came to be
Creating a decentralized system with limited trust in tbDEX
Creating bitcoin on-ramps for people is a massive hurdle right now
Is tbDEX transitional?
2021 ROLLUP: Top 20 Crypto Moments in 2021
Bankless Podcast: As the year comes to a close, it's time to ask ourselves: What are the Hottest Stories of 2021?
This has been an unquestionably historic year for Web3, and massive events happened both in and outside of the space. From NFTs to the Infrastructure Bill, we narrowed down this year into 20 overarching themes and narratives.
Project’s we’re following
Polygon and Seven Seven Six Launch $200M Social Media Web3 Initiative
Over the past few years, there has been a realization that social media businesses have a profound impact on society, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder & chief operations officer at Polygon said.
“We are still in the early days of Web3 and the most obvious opportunities right now are in gaming and social,” said Alexis Ohanian, general partner and founder of Seven Seven Six. Earlier this month, Polygon acquired a zero knowledge startup Mir in a $400 million deal to scale Ethereum and bring more users to Web3”.
Research Paper: Privacy and Security Issues in Web 3.0
We at Brave Research just published a technical report called “Privacy and Security Issues in Web 3.0” on arXiv. This blog post summarizes our findings and puts them in perspective for Brave users.
DeFi resembles a financial Wild West: new sites pop up every other day, others implode, people make and lose a lot of money, without any safety nets or sound governance. What role does security and privacy play in all of this? Our paper set out to answer this question.
Nouns are an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities. While projects such as Cryptopunks have attempted to bootstrap digital community and identity, Nouns attempt to bootstrap identity, community, governance and a treasury that can be used by the community.