Weekly Overview: What Happened in GameFi, NFTs, and Metaverse This Week? [February 17–24]

We collect this week’s highlights on NFTs, play-to-earn, and metaverse which are the main topics we hear more and more details about every day.

For those who do not want to miss the most influential news about the industry among dozens of news, we have compiled the top five of the week for you!

Animation Initiative from The Sandbox: Celebrating with Giveaway

Credit: TOEI Animation

The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based metaverse and games company, announced its partnership with Japan’s animation studio giant Toei Animation on February 16. Toei Animation is best known for his previous work in the animation of hugely popular manga such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and One Piece. More recently, The Sandbox has also partnered with the iconic manga series Fist of the North Star and Captain Tsubasa. It is estimated that Japanese anime has nearly 100 million daily viewers and 2.8 billion total viewers.

Animation collaborations of The Sandbox will not be limited to this. The company announced that it will work with Minto in addition to Toei Animation. Minto is also a business in the same industry dealing with advertising, character creation, webtoons, and web3.

Satoshi Shinohara, Managing Director of Toei Animation said:

I am confident that the ‘Fleet’ we have assembled will be able to discover new continents and new routes that will guide the entertainment industry for years to come. I am truly looking forward to seeing the adventures and stories of the various works and characters we have created so far in this new field.”

In addition, The Sandbox will give away a limited number of NFTs to the first 1,000 registered users to celebrate this collaboration, NFTs will be made available to the public soon.

‘Blur’s Season 2 Airdrop of 300M Token Airdrop to Loyal Users

Cover Art/Illustration via Cryptoslate

NFT marketplace Blur, which entered the market claiming to be the biggest competitor to the OpenSea platform and has recently airdropped millions of dollar tokens, continues its incentive programs.

The platform also announced the second airdrop program with its latest statement. A total of 300 million tokens will be distributed with it.

The Blur Season 2 airdrop will also have a loyalty program. The points they get within the loyalty program will also determine the number of BLUR tokens they will earn. In the announcement on Twitter, Blur mentions that it is possible to earn BLUR tokens by just sharing tweets.

However, information on how to calculate tweet interaction and exactly how BLUR will be given has not been given yet.

Spotify Tests Token-Enabled Music Playlists

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Spotify, the most used and most popular music platform, maintains its working activities about token and NFT technologies. Within the scope of the work area, Spotify stated that NFT and token holders can create “token technology music playlists” by connecting the application to their wallets.

Presented by Spotify, this application, which is currently in the pilot phase, can be actively used by users who own tokens on, Fluf, Moonbirds, Kingship, and Overload platforms. The specified playlists will receive active updates during the quarter. In addition, the application will be accessible only through a special link available to community members.

Web3 gaming and media platform Overlord announced in a tweet they shared on Wednesday that users with Creepz NFTs will be able to access the playlist called “Invasion” by connecting their Web3 wallets to Spotify. Spotify also confirmed this collaboration by responding to the tweet.

This feature is currently only available to Android users living in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

Web3 Game Company ‘Kratos Studios’ Receives $20M Seed Investment at $150M Valuation

Credit: cryptotimes.io

Indian-based web3 game company Kratos Studios received a seed investment of 20 million dollars with a valuation of 150 million dollars in the latest investment tour led by Accel.

Kratos was founded in September 2022 by Manish Agarwal and Ishank Gupta. The company also bought IndiGG, one of the largest gaming DAOs in the world, as another big move this week. This purchase used the token exchange model of IndiGG, a sub-DAO of Yield Guild Games DAO.

According to the latest news, it reached a valuation of $ 150 million in an initial funding round of $ 20 million. Kratos said in a statement that the round includes Accel and other investors including Prosus Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Nazara Technologies.

As part of the planned future projection for IndiGG, the focus is on integrating over 500 million gamers in India into the Web3 gaming ecosystem. Also, the platform prioritizes earning for DAO members. It looks like IndiGG will follow a similar path to that followed by Polygon, especially in this region, by acquiring users in the Indian and south Asian populations.

Layer 2 Initiative from Coinbase: Base Network

Credit: Coinbase

Coinbase has recently launched a layer 2 network called Base on Ethereum. To celebrate this milestone, the company has released a free NFT called “Base, Introduced” through Zora, a platform focused on Web3 tools and NFT minting. Anyone can mint one NFT per wallet, and the minting period closes on Sunday, February 26.

Secured on Ethereum and powered by the layer-2 network Optimism, Base aims to eventually become a network for building decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain.

Coinbase’s move to issue NFTs through Zora instead of its own market raises questions about the company’s strategy in the NFT market.

Despite being one of the biggest players in the cryptocurrency industry, Coinbase’s NFT trading volume has remained low, with trading volumes under $8,000 last week. That figure is quite small compared to Blur’s $596 million in trading volume over the same period, even outpacing OpenSea, the once-dominant NFT market on Ethereum.

Currently known as the 2nd largest crypto exchange after Binance, Coinbase has around 110 million verified users and has partnered with 245,000 companies in more than 100 countries since its establishment in 2012.