Weekly Learnings #22

Hi fam,

Another week in the books. Here’s what I learned and found fascinating this week!

Yuga Labs 💔 Improbable

Yuga Labs seems to no longer be collaborating with Improbable.

The $3.36 billion metaverse company had been building Otherside with Yuga on their M2 network since Day 1.

So is that over?

No, rather the opposite.

Look at the investments / partnerships Yuga secured past months:

1. Hadean (investment) - Improbable’s direct competitor building massive multiplayer experiences

2. AccelByte (partnership) - A massively scalable and extensible backend platform for live game services

3. Bad Rhino Studios (partnership) - Experts in Unreal Engine that develop experiences for PC, PS5, XBOX, Nintendo Switch, and VR

4. Faraway (partnership) - Game studio and publisher building interoperable player-driven universes

5. Roar Studios (acquisition)- a music and metaverse startup

They all have one goal — build Otherside!

What’s the progress?

This weekend, 40 Meebits holders met in Berlin to test a new tech-demo.

They accessed a new city called Meetropolis — built on the Otherside plots.

They all left with excitement and shared their feedback with Yuga.

What's the feedback?

We don’t just want games.

Instead, we desire connections with one another through real-time social experiences accessible from anywhere in the world.

We want to hang out, socialize, and build.

It’s gonna be a long journey, but a lifetime opportunity to get there. 🤞

ENS soon as accessible as .com

Your ENS could soon be used like any other domain.

I’m surprised no one is talking about it.

Here’s how devs from ETH.limo plan to make it possible:

Today, if you type in your ENS and add .limo, it shows you your page.

It’s a great first step, but still too geeky for everyone to use it.

Try vitalik.eth.limo, for example, to access his blog.

But what if you could type directly vitalik.eth?

Or run your personal website on your ENS, accessible by anyone?

That's precisely what ETH.limo is working towards.

A big step for global accessibility. And for ENS.

Nike dotSwoosh sneakers for Web3 holders

If you bought a $20 digital OF1 Box back in May, you will be able to buy the first dotSwoosh physical sneakers this month.

It looks like this:

What makes me bullish is the seamless implementation of NFTs & blockchain.

To buy the shoe, you just open SNKRS App on October 20th.

You login with your dotSwoosh ID and that’s it.

The app will gets data from dotSwoosh and let you buy your sneakers. 👏

Are we getting things for free?

In 2021/2022, we often expected from fashion NFTs to get free clothing.

It now looks it won’t be the case.

Yes, you will get a limited edition of physical shoes that often come with a digital twin to prove it’s not fake.

But, you will still have to pay — $120 in this case.

Will you get them, beast?

Considering it’s the first dotSwoosh sneaker ever, I’m in. 🫡

Epik Ai is making $250k per day

This AI app is a money printer.

92.3M installs in a few days, $7 million generated, #1 on AppStore.

What’s the utility?

You add your selfies, pay $5.99 and get your '90s yearbook photos. That’s it.

Simple, easy-to-use, fun — a proven formula to generate millions.

Web3 fundraising this week:

Blackbird – creating web3 loyalty programs for restaurants – closed a $24M Series A led by a16z

Phaver – assisting with onboarding more people to web3 social – raised a $7M seed round

AirDAO – a fully integrated layer-one blockchain – secured $7.5M from DWF Labs

Takes

Not every new project is down bad in 2023 (though many are) 👇

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and learned with me! 💙

Have a great new week.

Beast