DYOR 🔬

This week’s newsletter is turtles all the way down except, instead of turtles, it’s news posts. Because there’s a lot of news this week. Or it feels that way because I’ve been on vacation for two weeks. Either way, here’s what I’ve missed, and you might’ve.

The Good 😇

• Avant Arte has partnered with CryptoPunks to allow Punk holders to order high-end, one-off prints of Punks they hold. Prints cost $647 unframed or $944 framed. Holders can register interest now and order prints for 48 hours, starting October 26 (and if you don’t hold a Punk, you can still buy a print of all 10,000 of them if you so wish):

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri is “still bullish on NFTs,” nft now reports. Mosseri made the comment during a conversation with tech reviewer Marques Brownlee at Instagram’s Creator Innovation Summit.

• NFT marketplace OpenSea announced a new no-code "one-stop shop” for creators to launch and manage digital art and collectibles projects called OpenSea Studio.

• New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is releasing the MoMA Postcard project featuring more than a dozen renowned digital artists. The museum’s partnered with Autonomy for the project, and if you’re confused about how it works, Autonomy has an explainer:

• The Saatchi Gallery in London is hosting its first crypto art exhibition this week, curated by IHAM Gallery’s Grida.

• Hardware wallet-maker Ledger has partnered with Sotheby’s to create a limited edition wallet for collectors emblazoned with the auction house’s branding and tied to educational content on Ledger Academy.

• Do you like Web3 and reality TV? Then Love On Leverage is for you. It’s a reality dating show hosted by Unlonely that viewers can bet on. Because degens are gonna degen:

• Over 2,000 Walmart stores are now carrying Pudgy Toys, plushy renditions of Pudgy Penguins. The toys were originally launched in May and were previously available from Amazon, but having them in a bricks-and-mortar chain is a massive step towards mainstream awareness and (potentially) adoption.

• Phygitals facilitator IYK, which makes the tap-to-claim-a-digital-token used by the likes of gmoney’s 9dcc raised $16.8 million in a round led by A16z.

• Sportswear giant Adidas and luxury brand Moncler have teamed up to release a collection of digital and physical wares:

• On November 2, a statue of Kabosu, the Shibu Inu pupper who inspired the doge meme (and, hence, Dogecoin), will be unveiled in one of the late pooch’s favorite parks in Japan.

• Paris’s second-biggest museum, the Musée d’Orsay, this week started offering visitors NFT souvenirs tied to a new Van Gogh exhibition.

• Facebook CEO and chronic Ancient Roman hairstyle stan Mark Zuckerburg managed to show off metaverse avatars with legs that didn’t look like Nintendo Miis in a video podcast with Lex Fridman:

• Coffee behemoth Starbucks is selling virtual pumpkin spice lattes to members of its NFT-powered Odyssey loyalty program.

• Bored Ape Yacht Club and streetwear brand BAPE dropped a capsule of collab jawnz.

The Bad 👿

• It’s been a couple of weeks for layoffs in Web3, with Ledger, PROOF and Yuga Labs all announcing they’re pruning their teams:

• Messari’s Q3 State of Crypto Fundraising report shows that investments in Web3 dropped to the lowest point since late 2020.

• Digital art platform Versum is shutting shop later this year. The company announced it will halt minting on October 20 and market listings on November 1. The site will be shut down completely on December 1:

  Dear Versum Community,

  We hope this message finds you in good health and high spirits. We have some important news to share regarding the future of Versum.
  After careful consideration and evaluation, we've made the difficult decision to shut down the platform.

  — Versum (@versumofficial)
  11:09 AM • Oct 6, 2023

The Ugly 👹

• Reviews for Going Infinite, the book about disgraced (and likely soon to be incarcerated-for-a-long-time) FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, are starting to surface, and Bloomberg’s Matt Levine has a great take(as usual). Meanwhile, testimony from his former romantic partner, roommate, and business partners are rolling in and the TL;DR is SBF is screwed, and not in the polycule way:

Connect for more 🔌

Once more, you’ve made it to Friday, dear reader. If you’re in the US (and your time-off policy doesn’t suck), we hope you have a wonderful long weekend. Remember, the third day is for hobbies. So go and make something beautiful. Or something ugly. The joy is in the making, after all.

You can find Metaversal on Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky.

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Until next time, see you in the metaverse… or the hobby shop. 🪚