Welcome to The Metaversalist! This week we:

• Look at the latest news out of Azuki ⛲️

• Get ready for Bored Ape Yacht Club’s toilet-based saga 🧻

• Round up the week’s NFT and digital art news 🗞️

Let’s get straight into it!

DYOR 🔬

This week Azuki unveiled a new virtual playground dubbed Hilumia. In typical Azuki fashion, it offered precious little information, instead encouraging fans to explore the world themselves and try to decode its various hints and easter eggs.

Hilumia is home to several buildings, each of which hints at future initiatives. The description for “Ember Square” suggests it’ll allow Azuki holders to showcase and purchase digital fashion, as it features “the newest designs and styles from the far corners of the garden (and even the alley),” and is “the place to keep up with the styles of today and tomorrow.”

Then there’s the “9 Lives Arcade” that “bridges fans of old classics and enthusiasts of modern gaming.” Anime and gaming fans often overlap, so whether Azuki’s working on its own game or planning to host tournaments for holders, the combination makes a lot of sense.

Naturally, there are plenty of nods and hat tips to Azuki lore, including the “Golden Skate Park,” where “you might just catch one of the nine golden skateboards shredding.”

Intriguingly, Azuki’s also built in a messaging service it calls the “Garden Express” to let fans offer suggestions for what they’d like to see more of in Hilumia or simply suggestions for the Azuki team in general.

Soliciting advice while still building out Hilumia is a great way to make holders feel connected to the project, invested in its future, and like they can help shape it.

We don’t know precisely what Azuki’s got in store… but we’re paying attention. And in web3, that’s half the battle won.

⏰ You won’t be early forever 🐓

Probably nothing 🤔

Sewer update 🚽

At the end of last year, Bored Ape Yacht Club teased the next installment of lore involving a key, a simian digestive tract, time travel, a locked lavatory, and other typically playful and unhinged elements, all under the banner “The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey.”

Now more details have emerged, and the short version is this: If you hold a BAYC or a MAYC you can claim a sewer pass for free. That pass (which you can sell to a non-holder) lets you play a game where you navigate a virtual sewer. The game will last for three weeks, and those with the highest scores will get to mint something special.

Sound confusing? BAYC lays everything out over here.

Gary Vee’s new content collab 🏭

Serial entrepreneur and Vee Friends big papa, Gary Vaynerchuk, has launched a new production studio called VaynerWatt. According to Deadline, the company will “produce original long and short-form content for linear networks and streaming services.”

Vaynerchuk’s partners in the venture include Eric Wattenberg (of Wheelhouse fame) and Matt Higgins, co-founder of investment firm RSE Ventures. Could this mean a Vee Friends show eventually?

🏦 Missed synergy 🚭

To the moon 🌛

• PleasrDAO unveiled PleasrHouse, a new take on web3 auctions that kicks off with a digital artwork memorializing legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the Pentagon Papers which showed how the U.S. government had lied about the extent of its actions in the Vietnam War.

• Digital artist and creator of the record-breaking “Everydays” project, Beeple, has something new coming next week.

• Robin Schmidt (AKA SuperMassive) will run a “metaverse marathon” on January 21 using a VR treadmill:

• Holders of SuperRare’s “RarePass” NFT are getting airdropped a new artwork by digital artist Coldie today.

• The latest Aku drop sold out in 11 seconds:

• The Tribeca Film Festival is offering passes to its 2023 event as NFTs. To do so, the festival collaborated with crypto exchange OKX. The passes cost $899 if you buy with a credit card, or 0.5 ETH (~$730) if you pay with crypto.

🪡 Thread of the week 🧵

Bedtime reading 📚

Sam Bankman-Fried, umm, started a Substack this week. In the first post to it, he tries to explain that he didn’t steal customer funds to make wildly risky bets with sister company Alameda Research and that the whole fiasco is just an honest mistake pleasedonotsendhimtoprison. Matt Levine over at Bloomberg has a great explainer on what it seems SBF hopes to achieve with this tactic… and why it’s unlikely to work.

Goats only 🐐

Whether you’re an Ape staker or an Azuki HODLER, you should be watching or listening to Goats and the Metaverse.

In each episode, collectibles OG and entrepreneur Stan “The Goat” Meytin and Metaversal co-founder and CEO Yossi Hasson talk about digital and IRL collectibles, NFTs, and the week’s news worth knowing.

This week, they unpack the intricacies of staking Ape Coin, and take a look at two new NFT projects: Mutant Hound Collars and DayAway. Check out the latest episode here:

Aside from providing invaluable insights into digital art and collectibles, Stan and Yossi have assembled a collection of NFTs dubbed “The Goat Vault.” When the show hits 5,000 subscribers on YouTube, one of those lucky subscribers will win the contents of the vault, which at last count is valued at more than 10.10 ETH (~$13,500).

Prefer listening? Check out Goats and the Metaverse on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, or wherever you get your podcasts.

IYKYK 🐻

🤝 Follow for more 🐦

You can find more rapid-fire updates, insights, memes, and other malarky from the Metaversal team on any of your preferred platforms, we’re on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon, and TikTok.

This week’s edition was compiled by Metaversal’s content director, Craig Wilson. You can find him on Twitter or Mastodon.

Until next time, see you in the metaverse!