Facebook’s ex-gaming chief says Apple holding back crypto gaming, for now

Crypto gaming is struggling to gain traction, and at least one person believes the world’s biggest company is partially to blame or at the very least isn’t helping.  Owen O’Donoghue, who spent m...

Yuga Lab’s NFT collection Meebits drops a collectible music album

Yuga Labs’s NFT collection Meebits launched a music album that’s also collectable as ERC-1155 NFTs.  The album resulted from a collaboration with WarpSound, a subsidiary of the gener...

Metaverse market down 96% overall since the beginning of the year

While Metaverse platforms brought in $49.2 million in monthly trading volume in January, that figure dropped to a mere $2 million in November, a decline of 96% from the start of the year, according to...

Generative NFTs largely avoided the market mayhem of this year

Generative NFTs have not faced the market pressures that affected other NFT collections over the course of 2022, according to a new report from The Block Research.  “Although the NFT...

Argentine fan token sinks 57% following World Cup win

Argentina won the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, but a fan token connected to the team is collapsing. The Argentine Football Association Fan Token, offered through partnerships with Socios, jumped to $...

Christie’s NFT sales fall 96% in 2022

Art auction house Christie’s saw a tremendous decrease in NFT sales this year compared to 2021, despite a bumper year elsewhere in its art business.  Christie’s sold 87 NFTs in 2022 ...

Polygon’s next web3 play is NFT debit cards

Polygon has partnered with the neo-banking app Hi to introduce a platform that allows users to mint NFTs for a web3-focused debit card.  Called the NFT Debit Mastercard, card holders can spend e...

a16z’s Chris Dixon is ‘really excited’ for next year’s web3 games

Chris Dixon, founder and general partner of a16z, is excited for where web3 gaming could go over the coming year.  “There’s a whole bunch of launches within the next 12 months that I...

Trump’s NFT collection swings up and down over the weekend

The floor price for Donald Trump’s NFT collection went up and down during its first weekend. The former president’s collection sold out hours after its release on Thursday. The so-ca...

The Block: Here are the top cryptocurrency stories from past week: SBF, Trump and more

Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried dominated headlines once again as the one-time celebrated wunderkind was arrested in the Bahamas and formally charged with fraud. U.S. lawmakers then followed w...

Swanky crypto meet-up scene unlikely to cool down much despite downturn

Optimism may remain in short supply across the cryptoverse for some time to come, but that isn’t stopping conference organizers from staging a staggering number of events in the year ahead.  Cha...

Donald Trump NFT collection sells out within hours

A 45,000 item NFT trading card collection created by the former U.S. president Donald Trump sold out within hours and has already racked up more than 648 ETH, or about $785,000, in trading volume, acc...

Failed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital estimated assets at $1 billion in July

Three Arrows Capital (3AC), the now-bankrupt crypto hedge fund, estimated its assets at around $1 billion as of July, according to a document obtained by The Block. The document, prepared by 3AC...

NFT infrastructure protocol Decent raises $3.5 million from Y Combinator and others: Exclusive

Decent, an NFT infrastructure protocol that helps artists monetize their work, raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round. Crypto-focused venture capital firm Archetype led the round, with Y Co...

Magic Eden bolsters gaming support via Polygon NFT minting and trading

Magic Eden, Solana’s biggest NFT platform, now supports Polygon NFT minting and trading.  Magic Eden extended support for the Polygon network on Nov. 22 in an effort to add multi-chain fun...

Former US president Donald Trump unveils NFT trading card collection

Donald Trump, the former U.S. president long-known for releasing branded products, has added another to the list: an NFT collection. The so-called Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection wa...

Not Boring Capital, Polygon Studios back virtual-pet company in $3-million round: Exclusive

Developers of the recently launched augmented-reality NFT project Onlybots secured an additional $3 million investment in a funding round led by Polygon Studios, Not Boring Capital, HashKey and others...

Magic Eden introduces discount and rewards system for marketplace users

Magic Eden announced a rewards system that allows users to receive rewards, discounts and other perks based on their activity on the platform. Magic Eden Rewards, as it’s called, will officially...

Valhalla and Cockpunch NFTs draw in combined $18 million in seven days

Two new NFT projects saw over $18 million in transaction volume within the last seven days.  The depressed market conditions of 2022 spared no one, not even blue chip NFT projects, but these pro...

Scottie Pippen unpacks the power of flexing in the metaverse

Episode 124 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded live with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and NBA legend Scottie Pippen and Orange Comet CEO Dave Broome. Listen below, and subscribe to The Sc...

A Deep Dive on DeGods and y00ts

December 12, 2022, 3:39PM EST • 9 min read Quick Take DeGods and y00ts have monopolized the mindshare in the Solana NFT market, despite getting off to a bumpy start that almost prompted the team to th...

Ripple sees promise in carbon credit and gaming NFTs despite market downturn

While Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz says he still gets most excited about payments, he’s also got his eye on carbon credits and gaming NFTs. “We’re really excited about carbon c...

Digital collectibles firm Forum3 raises $10 million in seed funding

Digital collectibles company Forum3, the firm that helped power Starbucks’ recent web3 loyalty program, raised $10 million in seed funding. Venture firm Decasonic led the round, with addit...

NFTs on Uniswap Gain Modest Momentum

December 8, 2022, 1:37PM EST • 5 min read Quick Take Rapid Insights provide a deeper analysis of the current crypto landscape in a timely fashion. Uniswap launched an NFT aggregator last week that has...

Decentraland now lets you become a virtual landlord

Virtual world platform Decentraland now allows land owners to rent out their property.  The new system lets owners of Decentraland land NFTs, called LAND parcels, to find tenants in what the com...

Magic Eden hires its first Chief Gaming Officer

The Solana-based NFT platform Magic Eden has hired its first Chief Gaming Officer.  Chris Akhavan joins Magic Eden from Forte, a blockchain-based gaming firm that raised $725 million in Series B...

Starbucks NFTs are now available to beta testers

Bringing a whole new meaning to javascript, Starbucks is expanding its coffee empire to web3 in earnest, as it rolls out its loyalty program in the U.S. to beta testers. The Polygon-based initia...

a16z leads $6.9 million investment in decentralized video platform Shibuya

Shibuya, a decentralized video platform co-founded by Emily Yang of pplpleasr fame, has raised $6.9 million in seed funding.  Crypto investment firms a16z and Variant led the round, with additio...

The Block: Defense against an AI-bot apocalypse: Give them pets

One new company may have come up with our best hope of preventing AI bots from ushering in an apocalypse: Give them pets to play with.That’s the concept behind augmented reality start-up Anima’s new p...

ConstitutionDAO2 selling NFTs in fresh bid to buy US Constitution copy

A new group called ConstitutionDAO2 is trying to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution, a year after the original attempt by a different group.  The original ConstitutionDAO shot to fame last year...

Virtual world game maker The Mirror raises $2.3 million in pre-seed funding

The Mirror, a game development platform that lets indie developers build virtual worlds, raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by Founders Found, the Silicon Valley venture fund that ...

Winamp goes web3 with NFT music support in new update

Old-school media player Winamp now supports Ethereum and Polygon-based music NFTs in its latest desktop update. The new web3-focused support allows users to connect their Metamask wallets from w...