Edition #5 - 18 FEB 2022
It also becomes the first major bank to enter the metaverse by opening its own “Onyx lounge” in Decentraland.
Check out this week's big read here.
gaming developments
Blockchain gaming and infrastructure saw investment inflows of almost $1 billion in January alone, signalling positive outlook for 2022. In comparison, the industry raised $4 billion over the whole of 2021;
Splinterlands, the collectible card game, remained the most popular blockchain game this week, with over 514,000 unique wallets connected in the last 7 days;
Sky Mavis, the developer behind Axie Infinity, has revealed future plans to expand into a free-to-play model. The free “Trainer Axies” will not be NFTs and will not be able to earn SLP – at least for now;
A piece of Decentraland’s land was purchased by Portion.io for $1.2 million last week, one of the largest in-game sales to date.
metaverses & vr
NFT Sales volumes drop another 30% this week, with OpenSea and LooksRare reporting a decrease of 65% and 70% week-on-week volume respectively;
The New York Stock Exchange has filed patents for trading of various digital assets, including NFTs and digital currencies;
Bandai Namco, the publisher behind Tekken and Pac-Man, is set to invest $130 million in building its own metaverse;
A rare “Alien” CryptoPunk NFT has sold for over $23 million, almost doubling the previous record sale;
Snoop Dogg’s newly acquired label Death Row Records is aiming to become the “first NFT-only record label in the metaverse”.
zen portfolio highlight
This week we highlight our portfolio company Arcade, a pioneer GameFi utility platform, providing investors direct exposure to significant P2E yields by pooling and investing assets in leading metaverses without the need to engage in management or gameplay.
The platform has already raised over $8 million in Seed and Private funding from top tier VCs and is on track to successfully bridge the current P2E segment and DeFi by bringing the concept of "Protocol Controlled Value" into gaming.
Arcade is set for its highly anticipated public listing in Q1 2022. Stay in the loop with the latest developments on Twitter, Discord and Telegram.
defi
Build Finance DAO has suffered one of the first “hostile takeovers” on-chain to date: a single DAO participant was able to formally suggest and, subsequently, vote-in a proposal to access control of the DAOs assets, resulting in $470,000 siphoned from the treasury;
Coinbase, in coalition with 17 other crypto firms, announced the Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST) this week, a major step towards a standardised crypto compliance framework;
The team behind LooksRare, the booming NFT marketplace, cashes out over $30 million to personal wallets amid a plummeting token and community uproar;
Ride hailing company Uber has confirmed it will “absolutely” begin accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment in the future;
Argentinians are increasingly turning to crypto, specifically Bitcoin credit cards, in a bid to hedge their savings against the Peso’s 50% annual inflation rate.
funding rounds
Axelar, a platform connecting users and dapps across multiple networks, completed its $35 million Series B this week, led by Polychain Capital. The latest round valued Axelar at $1 billion;
Sequoia Capital, the premier traditional venture capital firm, is raising $600 million for its first crypto-specific fund, marking a shift in the company;
Circle, the company behind USDC stablecoin, is pushing ahead with a SPAC listing on NYSE. Circle was valued at $4.5 billion just six months ago – it now seeks to list at at $9 billion, citing improvements in its financial outlook.
Does cryptocurrency make you more desirable in the dating arena? Apparently, it does, according to a study by eToro, a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
Out of 2,000 samples, more than 40% of men and 25% of women indicated to be more interested in a dating profile mentioning cryptocurrencies. Almost 74% of respondents would be inclined to go on a second date with someone that has paid the first date’s bill in crypto.
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