If we sound like insiders, it’s because we are insiders. The team at Metaversal builds and invests in iconic NFTs and the technology behind them. We are collectors, investors, creators, rascals, jesters, snarksters, and artists.

The Metaversalist helps you stay on top of what’s essential in the crypto art space. Delivered fresh each week, seasoned with our signature spice, and topped off with the week’s best memes. Mmm, delicious.

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In this week’s edition:

• Apple keeps the gates to the kingdom locked 🗝

• Reddit rebrands “NFTs” with shocking success 📛

• The “Chief Twit” starts his new job 🐦

• A very expensive web3 phone 💸

Right, let’s get straight into it!

DYOR 🔬

Apple is cooked 🍎

On Monday, Apple updated its App Store Review Guidelines for developers, which include a portion concerning how it intends to govern NFTs on its platform, and it’s gotten hackles up. Rightly so. Because in its response to those developers looking to incorporate a once-in-a-generation technological advance into their products, Apple’s being a bully, pure and simple.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Apple didn’t become the most successful rent-seeking terror on the planet by sitting back when challengers seek to use its platform to make a buck.

Apple has held out on using the global standard USB-C connector in its iPhones because it makes a fortune from its proprietary Lightning connector, its ecosystem of accessories, and the licensing fees it collects from third parties looking to make accessories of their own. That’s not going to be the case with the next iPhone, but only because European legislators had the guts to stand up to the Cupertino colossus.

Similarly, Apple takes a 30% cut on almost everything in the App Store because developers have no alternative if they want to reach Apple’s lucrative user base. Where it makes exceptions, it only does so with similarly gargantuan businesses where the revenue lost on in-app purchases or subscriptions is extracted in other ways.

When Epic Games sought to circumvent the so-called Apple Tax, Apple summarily made its games — including the hugely popular Fortnite — disappear from the App Store with the click of a mouse (or trackpad) to make an example of it. Epic can afford the legal wrangling that’s followed, but smaller developers aren’t as flush.

And that’s what’s most troubling about Apple’s move. It’s effectively canceling developers’ ability to use NFTs for token-gating in-app features. This removes one of the core benefits of using NFTs in the first place.

The full text from Apple’s amendment to its guidelines:

In other words, if Apple can’t take its fat slice of the pie, it’s not going to let you sell the pie on its platform at all. For smaller projects or innovative startups looking to harness the potential of NFTs via smartphones, handing over 30% of their revenue could render them dead on arrival.

Apple’s not the only company intent on extracting its share from the architects of the new economy. Meta wants a 50% cut for digital fashion and accessories sold in its Horizon Worlds metaverse. This week Meta revealed it’s lost billions of dollars on its metaverse efforts this year ($9.4 billion, to be precise), so market forces may yet compel it to reconsider.

Also, we expect that sort of behavior from Meta. But Apple is different. Or, at least, it’s meant to be, and it sure wants us to think of it as a noble enabler of creativity and a champion of fresh thinking. Steve Jobs was notoriously ruthless, but we admired him anyway because, ultimately, he stood for innovation and progress. Apple literally made an advertisement decrying big tech’s efforts to exert an Orwellian grip on the future. If Jobs were alive today, he might well be a degen, and he’d likely marvel at the promise of web3.

Developers may need to avoid Apple’s ecosystem if they’re ever going to collectively exert enough pressure on it to amend its stance. That approach has an added advantage: If web3 builders develop without kowtowing to Apple, by the time Apple comes around, we may no longer need it.

😱 True horror 🍫

Drop alert 🚨

Minting Nov 2 | New Mycelium Network

New Mycelium Network is a series of collaborative art and music NFTs commissioned by OpenLab and powered by TokenTraxx. Inspired by the networked roots of fungi, the premise of this collection is about “collaboration as a jumping-off point for imaginative and creative departures in difficult times.” Five 1/1 NFTs will be released on Foundation and TokenTraxx at the same time.

Looks rare 🖼

Turn on, tune in, hang out 📻

Tonight we’re going to be hanging out with our friends at nft now on Twitter Spaces. But don’t just come to hear what our investment analysts Matt Miller and Jameson Mah have to say — or to bask in the glow of Matt Medved’s sultry vocal stylings — come for the inimitable line-up of guests.

Joining the session are none other than Moonsama/Exosama head honcho Donnie Big Bags and generative art pioneer and father of Fidenzas, Tyler Hobbs. It’s going to be chaotic, in the best sense of the word.

Probably nothing 🤔

They’re called “digital collectibles,” darling 💅

Last week, we spoke about Reddit’s runaway success with its tokenized avatars, made in partnership with leading digital artists. The website single-handedly opened more people’s eyes to the wonders of digital ownership, low-friction trading, and flex-value of blockchain-powered assets. Well, the hype hadn’t died down. In fact, it’s only grown.

So how did Reddit get a group of people known for their vitriol — and for many of whom “NFT” is effectively a four-letter word — to embrace the technology? By calling them something else.

What’s in a name, you might ask? It turns out a lot. Euphemism and propaganda go together like Matthew Perry and bad takes about Keanu Reeves. Reddit’s genius was in branding its wares “digital collectibles” and not “non-fungible tokens.” A few people have had good takes on the other reasons Reddit’s play succeeded, but the key takeaway is that words matter.

How we talk about the ongoing revolution NFTs are ushering in matters, especially to those who haven’t yet joined the revolution. Continuing to call them “NFTs” may be shooting ourselves in the feet.

Twitter wants to be your bank 🏦

This week Twitter gets a new porcelain-slinging, wise-cracking overlord “chief twit.” Whether you think that’s good news, bad news, or irrelevant, likely depends on how much time you spend using the service… and what you think of Grimes’ baby daddy.

But just because the richest man on earth is taking over your company doesn’t mean the innovation stops. Frontend engineer and serial future-feature-finder, Jane Manchun Wong, has unearthed Twitter’s latest project.

Details are few and far between, but given former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey’s enthusiasm for crypto, the rebranding of his payments business Square to Block last year, and the fact that Twitter users can change their profile pictures to an NFT, the move isn’t wholly surprising.

The question, though, is how much demand there will be for a digital wallet from a social media service? It took Twitter more than a decade to introduce an “edit” button, after all. Can it really be trusted with our cryptographic keys?

📊 Tax-loss harvest season soon, anon 🥹

NGMI ☄️

The 26.6 ETH smartphone 📱

In a word: LOL. In two words: hard LOL. English smartphone maker Vertu thinks ceramic components, diamonds, a sliver of crocodile skin, 10GB of storage, and a dedicated concierge button are going to make degens part with as much as $41,500 (~26.6 ETH) for an Android-powered smartphone that will, inevitably, be outdated in a year or two. That’s a lot of money they could spend on NFTs instead without having to suffer the indignity of green text bubbles.

Vertu’s entire value proposition is targeting people with more money than sense, and it shows. This is the same company that previously created a $30,000 Ferrari-branded phone that shipped with an outdated version of Android and which reminded us just how disposable smartphones are.

Sure, if you ditch the diamonds, you can get a “Metavertu” for as little as $3,600 (~2.3 ETH)... but even at that price, you’re still going to look like a chump who’s been separated from a not-insignificant chunk of change.

To the moon 🌛

• Google Cloud is making moves into web3 and has launched what it’s calling Blockchain Node Engine, which TechCrunch reports it’s billing as “a fully managed node-hosting for web3 development.” Probably nothing, right?

• Azuki’s “proof of skate” auction of eight 24-karat-gold-plated skateboards with its new BEAN chip embedded in them raised $2.5 million in ETH.

• The Okay Bears NFT project has updated its licensing agreement for holders, which grants them commercial rights to any Bears they hold for as long as they hold them.

• Artnet’s latest intelligence report is out (paywalled), and it’s focused on how artists can get the upper hand on flippers.

• Switzerland’s Seba Bank wants to help protect and secure your most valuable (or most sentimentally valuable) NFTs.

Solana is considering embracing a new Metaplex standard that would make NFT royalties enforceable on-chain.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta is losing billions with its efforts to create and control the metaverse, but its emperor boss is doubling down on the strategy nonetheless.

Bicycle Playing Cards bought Bored Ape #1227 and intend to use it in a forthcoming set of playing cards due out next year.

Bag boosters 💸

The week that was (Oct 20-27, 2022) 🗓

Though Reddit’s “Spooky Season” collection of “digital collectibles” pumped hard earlier this week, things have since settled down and returned to something resembling normality for the top five: it’s blue chips all the way down. The only newcomer is Degenheim, which minted last week but remains pre-reveal, prompting some healthy speculative action.

Bedtime reading 📚

We’re a little late to this piece from a16z, which was published on October 13 (AKA half-a-lifetime ago in web3), but it’s still worth a look, especially if you’re a web3 company considering partnerships and trying to work out what to look for in one.

Goats only 🐐

Whether you call them “digital collectibles” or “NFTs,” you should be watching or listening to Goats and the Metaverse.

In each episode, collectibles OG Stan “The Goat” Meytin and Metaversal CEO Yossi Hasson talk about the latest NFT news, projects, and controversies.

This week, they unpack Azuki’s $2.5 million skateboard sales and Reddit’s NFTs, and interview Zeneca_33 from the Zen Academy about the current and future state of the NFT market. Check out the latest episode here:

If you enjoyed Goats and the Metaverse, why not share it with a friend? When the show hits 5,000 subs, one lucky subscriber will win the contents of the “Goat Vault,” a collection of NFTs worth over 10 ETH (~$13,000)!

Prefer listening? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Anchor.

IYKYK 😉

Follow for more 🐦

Congrats on making it all the way down here, fren! Thanks for reading, we really appreciate it.

This week’s newsletter was brought to you by the beady eyes and nimble digits of @craigwilson and @juliataoo from the @HelloMetaversal team.

Until next time, see you in the Metaverse.