
Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.

To Watch This Week
AIRDROPS + ALPHAOct 9, 2024

Gaming
‘Decentraland’ Reveals Huge Visual Upgrade via Upcoming Desktop Client
Decentraland has revealed launch plans for its long-awaited desktop client, which brings a significant visual upgrade, improved performance, and new mechanics to the Ethereum metaverse game. This huge update marks a pivot for the game’s vision to focus on the “social’ aspect of the metaverse. Currently, Decentraland is played in-browser, which has limited the game’s graphical capabilities and performance and arguably stunted the evolution of the game in recent years. Set to go live on October 22...
Nov 2, 2023

Markets
Not Just Solana: Gaming Tokens Are Booming as Decentraland's MANA Pumps
Solana (SOL) might be this week’s biggest gainer, but gaming and metaverse tokens have also seen a steady ascent—with Decentraland’s MANA leading the charge. MANA has posted a nearly 12% gain over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko, jumping to a current price of $0.40 per token. Overall, MANA is up 16% over the last week and a towering 47% in the past two weeks. It’s the biggest gainer across all of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap over the last day, per CoinGecko, but...
Mar 25, 2023

DeFi
All Centralized Firms Are Alike—But Every DAO Is Decentralized in Its Own Way
Decrypting DeFi is Decrypt's DeFi email newsletter. (art: Grant Kempster) Just as DAOs find more traction in the industry, so too have a series of different tools to measure how decentralized autonomous organizations stack up alongside one another. Now the question emerges: What makes one DAO better than another? Sure, you can use the size of their treasury as a metric, but it’s also important that an autonomous organization is also decentralized, something one may crudely measure by determining...
Jan 2, 2023

Markets
Metaverse Tokens ApeCoin, Axie Infinity Ring in New Year With 6% Surge
The prices of metaverse-related cryptocurrencies including ApeCoin (APE) and Axie Infinity (AXS) have shot up by around 6% in the past 24 hours. Per data from CoinGecko, APE is up 6.3% to $3.88, Axie Infinity's AXS rose 6.9% to $6.41, while The Sandbox's SAND rose 5.2% to around $0.40. Decentraland’s MANA posted more modest gains of 4.4% to reach around $0.31. In contrast, the broader cryptocurrency market cap is only up around 1.6% in the last 24 hours. The news came as APE recently finalized...
Aug 31, 2022

The Landscape
What Is Virtual Land? How NFTs Are Shaping the Metaverse
Real estate is often considered to be a good investment—but what about virtual real estate? Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing virtual land have become a hot topic since the advent of the metaverse—and there’s gold in them thar digital hills, with some plots of virtual land selling for millions of dollars. Virtual land forms the backbone of crypto-powered metaverse platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox, and with legacy big tech players like Meta drawing up plans for their own metavers...
Feb 17, 2022

The Landscape
What is the Metaverse? The Immersive, NFT-Powered Future Internet
If you pay attention to the tech, gaming, or crypto worlds, then you might have heard about the metaverse well before late 2021. But even if you aren’t immersed in those spheres, chances are good that you’ve seen the marked increase in chatter since Facebook marked out its grand plans to build the metaverse. What is the metaverse, exactly? Well, that’s tough to pin down in a quick snippet. Effectively, it’s a future vision of the Internet that could be more immersive and all-encompassing, with v...
Feb 16, 2022

Business
Metaverse Crypto Decentraland Up After JP Morgan Calls Niche a '$1 Trillion Opportunity'
LAND, the token of metaverse platform Decentraland, is up over 8% on the day, following the release of a report from JP Morgan calling the metaverse a $1 trillion market opportunity. JP Morgan's report coincided with the launch of the bank's virtual Onyx Lounge in Decentraland's Metajuku district, complete with a wandering tiger as well as a floating portrait of the bank's CEO and noted crypto skeptic Jamie Dimon. Other metaverse-linked tokens including Axie Infinity and Enjin Coin have enjoyed...
Jan 6, 2022

Business
Samsung Opens Metaverse Store in Decentraland
Electronics giant Samsung is venturing into the metaverse with the opening of a virtual store in Decentraland. Named after Samsung's flagship 837 store in New York, the Samsung 837X virtual store will open for business for a limited time from today, per a press release from the company. Decentraland users will be invited to explore an "experiential playground" and earn NFT rewards by completing quests. Samsung 837X is now in the Metaverse 🌐 at #CES2022 Join us and experience the world of Sams...
Nov 26, 2021

Gaming
Decentraland Virtual Land Plot Sells for Record $2.43 Million
A plot of virtual real estate in crypto-powered metaverse Decentraland has sold for a record $2.43 million in cryptocurrency—more than double the previous record of $913,000. The land was sold to NFT-based virtual real estate company Metaverse Group for 618,000 MANA, the native cryptocurrency of Decentraland, according to a statement by Metaverse Group parent company Tokens.com. Per the statement, the virtual land will be developed to "facilitate fashion shows and commerce within the exploding d...
Nov 12, 2021

Business
Grayscale's Metaverse Bet Is Paying Off: MANA Climbs 253% in Two Weeks
Early investors in “metaverse” plays are today reaping large rewards, including the biggest asset manager in crypto, Grayscale. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein, who spoke at the Decrypt and Yahoo Finance Crypto Goes Mainstream event earlier this week, said the firm has seen “strong receptivity” to its Grayscale Decentraland Trust as a passive way for investors to get exposure to the metaverse. The metaverse pairs the virtual world and character building mechanics of games like SimCity and Min...
Oct 29, 2021

Coins
Decentraland's MANA Up 44% as Metaverse Tokens Surge in Wake of Facebook's Meta Rebrand
Cryptocurrencies associated with the metaverse—a persistent, virtual shared universe—saw double-digit gains over the last day, in the wake of Facebook's announcement that it would rebrand as Meta, with a mission to "bring the metaverse to life." Decentraland's MANA token led the pack, with 24-hour gains of over 44.6%, bringing its price to around $1.15. The Sandbox's SAND rose by 21.5%, taking it to $1.02, while Enjin Coin (ENJ) saw more modest gains of 10.8% on the day, taking it to $2.44. Meta...
Jun 9, 2021

Business
A Blockchain Project Just Bought $704k in Digital Real Estate To Build a Virtual Mall
In an attempt to connect real-world shopping with the virtual world of games, Boson Protocol bought a plot of land for $704,000 on the Web3 game Decentraland. Decentraland is a web browser-based game that lets you explore and build like Minecraft and socialize like Second Life. But unlike those other games, Decentraland is a game of the Web3, allowing true ownership of virtual land and in-game items thanks to blockchain technology. The company will build a mall for global brands to open up sho...