NFT Recap
Weekend of July 2nd, 2021
Republic Realm opens Metajuku in Decentraland
As mentioned last week, Metaverse investment firm Republic Realm raised another $10 million in funding on the heels of the largest Decentraland acquisition to date (a 259-parcel estate purchased for nearly $1 million).
This week, their first installation, Metajuku, was pushed live. Metajuku is a mini shopping district inspired by Harajuku in Tokyo. To watch a quick video tour of Metajuku, click here.
So far two brands have moved in - Tribute Brand and DressX.
Tribute Brand is a high-end digital fashion brand that focuses on “cyber fashion.”
“We strongly believe that digital fashion is the future we should embrace. With no need for physical deliveries and production, it is available without restrictions for any gender, sex or size.
By influencing the users to transfer their identity to a virtual area, this platform aims to change their behavior to act sustainably, leading to decrease of the demand, consequently production and usage of physical clothes. We aim to improve the societal impact of the fashion market, making it more accessible and fairer, and aspire to change behaviors in an only fully sustainable way.”
DressX has a more robust selection of designers and items. To check out their site, click here.
Though I’ll be the first to agree that Decentraland has a long way to go, it’s fascinating to see forward-thinking, digitally-native brands renting space in a virtual Harajuku-themed shopping mall, owned and operated by a virtual real estate investment firm.
Sushiswap in Metajuku?
A proposal was made in the Sushiswap governance forum today to rent space in Metajuku.
The proposal includes the rental of five floors, which would be used accordingly:
An interesting idea for Sushi merch could be to sell “x” number of digital wearables (as NFTs) at the virtual storefront. Let’s say 100 Sushiswap hoodies.
Buyers could wear their digital hoodies in the metaverse.
Alternatively, they could have the option to “burn” their NFT to redeem a physical hoodie. Whenever someone decides to claim a physical hoodie, the digital version becomes increasingly scarce as the NFT is burnt.
Owning a limited-edition Sushiswap hoodie in real life could give you clout in real life. Owning the digital version could give you clout in the metaverse.
This idea is borrowed from Unisocks - Uniswap-themed socks that are each worth $44,396 today. Of the original 500 pairs, 198 have been redeemed. The only difference is that Unisocks can’t be shown off or “flexed” in the metaverse. Nobody can see them in your NFT wallet.
Unisocks socks were initially sold as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. 500 $SOCKS tokens at $100 per pair. Each token can be burnt and redeemed for a real-world pair of Unisocks.
Because some $SOCKS holders are providing liquidity on Uniswap, you can actually buy fractional shares of $SOCKS. Yes - socks can also function as a speculative investment vehicle.
If you bought any amount of the $SOCKS token six months ago, you’d be up almost 800% today.
Well-known but anonymous Punk owner buys Sandbox estate
Danny, owner of Punk #8348, just made the largest land acquisition yet in the Sandbox metaverse.
Here are some examples of what land owners are building in Sandbox:
AxieInfinity Ecosystem Explodes
Play-to-earn gaming is here to stay, and AxieInfinity is paving the way.
AxieInfinity really caught on in the Philippines during COVID. Families in some cities began to realize that they could actually make a living by playing Axies - leveling up their characters, earning SLP (smooth love potions), breeding their Axies, and selling them back to the market.
In the last 30 days alone, $126 million worth of Axies have been traded. In the last 8 weeks, Axie has gone from 38,000 daily active users (DAU) to over 300,000 DAU. The $AXS token also currently sits at a market cap of $615 million. I highly recommend checking out Matty’s thread above for a full breakdown of the Axie ecosystem’s explosive growth.
AxieInfinity is paving the road for play to earn gaming, but more play-to-earn games are on the way. Another one to watch is Illuvium, which will run on ImmutableX - a layer-2 solution focused on gaming & NFTs (disclosure: I own $ILV).