Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the most interesting news in the world of NFTs, culture, and the metaverse. Email marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
When it comes to NFT art, most of the attention—and most of the sales—are going to male creators. A study by research agency Art Tactic from November found that as much as 77% of all NFT art sales go to men.
In an effort to change this stark disparity, NFT marketplace MakersPlace partnered with Excedrin, by the British health care company Haleon, to start Equal Bytes, an accelerator program focused on women artists in Web3. A minimum of 100 artists will be accepted and receive guaranteed bids of around $800 (with gas fees covered) for an artwork they create. Applications for the program are open until Nov. 2.
“It shouldn’t be this way in digital art. It should be a place of equity for all, but it still remains that less than 20% of sales go to female artists,” said Rishi Mulgund, the brand director of pain relief at Haleon.
The Equal Bytes cohort will be selected by a group of accomplished Web3 artists, including Shurooq Amin, a Kuwaiti artist who turned to NFTs and digital art after an art exhibition of hers was censored by Kuwait’s government.
Amin, the first Kuwaiti artist to mint NFT art, said she’s faced criticism and attacks for her art, which explores gender disparities, homosexuality, and questions taboos in the Muslim world. Still, digital art and NFTs can be a way for women, especially in Muslim-majority countries, to freely create and sell art when traditional markets aren’t made available to them, she said.
“You don’t need to be represented by anyone. You don’t need to wait for someone to discover you. You are already your own boss,” Amin said.
All of the pieces will be displayed in an online exhibit on MakersPlace and auctioned off on Nov. 21. And although the minimum bid for each piece is $800, competitive bidding could push the prices much higher.
It’s no secret that companies are increasingly experimenting with the metaverse. One of the companies helping other companies create and test their own so-called metaworlds is Surreal Events, a two-year-old firm that’s already created virtual worlds for clients including the Atlanta Braves and Epic Games.
Surreal’s platform uses pixel streaming, which allows Unreal Engine–based metaworlds to run in a browser without any downloads, and gives companies a chance to prototype, deploy, and manage realistic-looking virtual worlds that can be launched in about six weeks.
One of Surreal Events’ main selling points is that it gives companies a chance to quickly roll out a metaverse experience, rather than spending months testing something that might flop, CEO Josh Rush told Fortune.
“It’s more than a white paper, and it’s more than screen screenshots on a Discord server,” Rush said. “It’s an actual live environment that can be pushed out as a prototype, or for the community, as you’re building the runway for takeoff.”
Epic Games has already used Surreal Events’ platform to create Detroit Lab, a virtual innovation center that’s open to anyone.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has the NFT industry, and now apparently Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs, in its sights. Bloomberg reported in March that the agency had opened a probe into the NFT industry. That probe apparently includes some NFTs from Yuga and the cryptocurrency it has adopted for its Otherside metaverse, ApeCoin.
Meta released its upgraded Quest Pro VR headset this week. But with a price tag of $1,500, some have doubts that a mainstream metaverse is within reach—despite the billions Meta has invested.
CNN shuttered its NFT marketplace, Vault by CNN, which sold digital versions of CNN reports and related art. The company said it would compensate collectors to the tune of about 20% of the original mint price for each NFT, but some still felt rugged by the news network.
Snoop Dogg is the king of NFTs, or at least paying for them, according to a study by CoinGecko. The rapper, who goes by the name Cozomo de’ Medici on crypto Twitter, paid $7.08 million for digital artist XCOPY’s Right-click and Save As guy. To nab the top spot, Snoop beat out Gary Vee’s $3.9 million purchase of CryptoPunk #2140 and Justin Bieber’s $1.3 million purchase of Bored Ape #3001.
After reports broke that the $1.2 billion metaverse Decentraland recorded 38 active users in a 24-hour period, an unlikely critic, Ethereum cofounder Anthony D’Onofrio, said in a tweet that the whole concept of the metaverse is “dumb af.”
Speaking of Decentraland, Felipe Escudero, the founder of architecture studio Estudio Felipe Escudero in Quito, Ecuador, has created the tallest multi-use tower in the virtual world Decentraland for LEDY, a leading metaverse developer. The structure, Crystal Tower, rises 548 metaverse feet high and is replete with an observation deck, a gallery, and a public event lawn the size of two virtual football fields. Visit here.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
More from Fortune:
IBM’s former CEO downplays the importance of a college degree for six-figure earning ‘new collar’ jobs
American cities are preparing for the worst
Managing Gen Z is like working with people from a ‘different country’
‘Ridiculously stupid’ economic policies have the U.S. hurtling toward a ‘perfect storm’ of economic pain, Ray Dalio says
(Bloomberg) — Rupert Murdoch is exploring options to recombine his Fox Corp. and News Corp. businesses, putting back together a media empire that he split in 2013.Most Read from BloombergRolex Prices to Drop Further as Supply Surges: Morgan StanleyPutin Tried for Years to Stop His Military From Using Western Parts — And Mostly FailedWorld Faces New Threats From Fast-Mutating Omicron VariantsStocks Upended by Inflation Survey’s Sobering View: Markets WrapUndervalued US Stocks Could Soar 30% Next
New York-based unisex label Dion Lee has teamed up with creative agency MA+Creative alongside NFT…
Thursday’s ludicrous price action across asset markets shows just how weird things can get when the Federal Reserve is driving the bus.
The fox is getting an upgrade thanks to one stinky fish.
Are creator NFT royalties on the way out on Solana? Zero-royalty trading platforms are quickly gaining traction, and Magic Eden is adapting.
In just a few days, Diwali Celebrations will be happening around the world and right here in Houston. We have details about the festival happening in our neck of the woods.
The Boo at the Zoo starts on Saturday and runs through the rest of October.
Apple’s mixed reality headset is reportedly on the horizon, but will its immersive vision tie into the Web3 metaverse?
Chapek was thrown into the corner office at a tumultuous time. Former CEO Bob Iger handed him the keys to the kingdom in late February of 2020. Disney would shutter its domestic theme parks two weeks later — for four months on one coast and more than a year on the other — in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
Robbie Coltrane, the actor who played Hagrid in the Harry Potter film franchise, died on Friday, Oct. 14. He was 72 years old.
The "Dancing With the Stars" alum posed in a yellow bikini to share her thoughts on ageism.
You'll have to chip into your savings if you want to get your hands on Balenciaga's new Lay’s-inspired handbags, which are selling for $1,500 each.
When I saw the title of John Banville’s new novel, I did a double-take. The Singularities is such a Banvillean title, surely there must be one by that name already? But no: this one is all new – up to a point. In fact it’s apt that the title seems so familiar, because this novel is essence of Banville, slurping up elements of his previous work and producing what feels like a career summation.
The Bachelor’s Peter Weber and Kelley Flanagan are launching their relationship on social media again after breaking up two years ago.
BravoAfter much speculation that Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star and social-media terror Lisa Rinna would skip out on this year’s BravoCon, the soap actress showed up in an attention-grabbing orange suit to a chorus of loud booing—and also some cheers—from the animated crowd, whom she gave the middle finger as she walked onstage.Her appearance at the “Thrills in Beverly Hills” panel on Friday with the rest of her co-stars (sans Diana Jenkins) came as a surprise to most of the rowdy audienc
Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan breaks down the federal investigation on Elon Musk over Twitter deal.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges that he 'sort of missed' some things in the social media sphere and calls TikTok 'a very effective competitor.'
The singer first met the late monarch when he performed at her Diamond Jubilee in 2012
Joaquin Phoenix needed a break while recording audio for sex scenes for Spike Jonze's 2013 film Her, which Scarlett Johansson said was "one of the most challenging jobs that I've done"
Mark Wahlberg made a big change for his family.
