The founder of Linden Lab’s virtual online world Second Life Philip Rosedale will be rejoining the project as a strategic advisor to guide its entry to the Metaverse. While he is negative on content interoperability in the Metaverse describing it as “a total fail” he believes an NFT based future is the way forward long term. Second Life is an online social game universe that launched in 2003, when the word “Metaverse” was only being used by Neal Stephenson fans. Since leaving his position as CEO of Linden Labs in 2008, Rosedale has made a name for himself in the …

Cat themed play-to-earn (P2E) NFT game Nyan Heroes is aiming to save 1 billion cats from euthanization in animal shelters across the U.S. Nyan Heroes is an upcoming NFT battle royal shooter style game built on the Solana blockchain that will enable players to compete with each other using NFTs depicting animated cats that are used to pilot mech-robot NFTs in the game. The U.S. based project has been in development since October and the game is set for release in Q4 2022. Its first NFT drop is currently available for hodling and trading on marketplaces such as Fractal. According …

The share price of Reddit's cult-favorite stock GameStop Corporation (GME) jumped by one quarter (in after-hours trading following a Wall Street Journal report on its upcoming NFT division. The U.S. retail game store giant has been quietly working on an NFT marketplace since May, and ramped things up in October by listing several job openings for Web 3.0 and NFT-experienced software engineers and product marketers. According to a Jan. 6 report from the WSJ, GameStop has now hired more than 20 people to operate its freshly minted NFT unit. An unnamed source familiar with GameStop’s plans told the outlet that …

The leadership at video game firm Sega Corporation’s holding company has suggested that they may avoid nonfungible tokens in play-to-earn model games based on the response from users. In a Dec. 14 meeting of Sega Sammy Holdings’ CEO Haruki Satomi, senior executive vice president Koichi Fukazawa, and Sega Corporation President Yukio Sugino, the trio said they needed to “carefully assess” how to potentially introduce nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, into Sega titles to “mitigate the negative elements” and work within Japanese regulations. The executives cited “negative reactions” from users overseas rewarded in NFTs for gameplay. “In terms of NFT, we would …

The Philippines, a country that’s already been struggling to get back on its feet because of COVID-19, has been hit by a catastrophic super typhoon. Back on Dec. 16, 2021, the typhoon hit landfall and went on a rampage for four days, leaving 334 cities and municipalities in a state of calamity. As of Jan. 1, more than 4 million individuals were either displaced or injured, with 407 dead and 88 still missing, according to the Philippines’ National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. A day after the typhoon hit the country, play-to-rarn gaming group Yield Guild Games (YGG) organized …

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan launched a new blockchain gaming-focused NFT marketplace yesterday dubbed Fractal. Fractal’s Discord group has since amassed more than 111,000 members, despite only being announced two weeks ago. At the time of writing, it appears that the most significant sale on the platform so far was for a Baby Scoot NFT that went for 4 Solana (SOL) worth roughly $680. The Solana-based marketplace enables users to buy, trade and hold NFTs used in blockchain games. In an announcement made yesterday, the firm unveiled its first partnered blockchain games, including The Sandbox, Nyan Heroes, Caveworld and Genopets, to …

The play-to-earn model has quickly taken a once forward-thinking concept of rewarding gamers into a real opportunity. Now, platforms across the globe can earn online tokens that can be traded for money. However, these games can do more than provide income to participants. Alongside the growing communities built around these games, many have recognized their power stems much further and, when channeled in the right way, can help support social initiatives. This may include the promotion of a charity wallet to facilitate anonymous donations or to share a portion of rewards earned in gameplay with a nonprofit. Still, others seek …

Metaverse gaming platform Ready Player Me has announced a $13 million Series A funding led by the respective co-founders of Wise and Teleport, Taavet+Sten, with further participation from the co-founder of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner, alongside Samsung Next, Konvoy Ventures and Gmoney. The platform intends to utilize the capital to advance ambitions for avatar interoperability between metaverse worlds. This initiative supports the thesis of multiple digital dimensions as opposed to a singular model, a critic often leveled at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, amid cautions of their attempts to land-grab, or monopolize, the metaverse space. Aside from this, Ready Player Me …

According to a recent report by Cointelegraph Research, the volume of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) sold this year could eclipse $18 billion. From artwork, music and in-game characters to videos and photographs, these minted certificates of ownership for digital assets on blockchains are well sought after by collectors, investors and philanthropists alike. They can also be freely traded across decentralized NFT platforms such as OpenSea. Without further ado, let's look at the biggest trends developing in the NFTs space. 1. Celebrity and contemporary NFTs Of course, at the number one place this year, as there was no shortage of NFT drops …

Crypto exchange Huobi’s research arm Huobi Research has identified a rising interest in blockchain gaming as a direct impact from GameFi initiatives. GameFi implies the use of decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain gaming that incentivizes users based on a play-to-earn model. According to Huobi Research, on-chain data suggests that GameFi initiatives have seen a steep increase since June 2021 owing to a sizable reduction in transaction costs and improved user experience. The research shows that popular blockchain games such as CryptoKitties recorded a maximum of 140,000 daily active users and 180,000 daily transactions back in Nov. 2017 but lost over …

2021 was a breakout year for the cryptocurrency market in many respects and most investors are absolutely thrilled that Bitcoin (BTC) price established a new all-time high of $68,789. In the same timeframe, Ether (ETH) went on a parabolic rally which saw its price gain 565% from Jan. 1 to hit a record high at $4,859 on Nov. 10. While it was a banner year for large cap cryptocurrencies, some of the biggest gains and most impactful developments came from the altcoin market where decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) rallied by thousands of percent and helped to usher …

Shrapnel is the world's first AAA shooter game built on the blockchain, at the intersection of community, creation, and ownership. The team is comprised of BAFTA and Emmy award-winning talent that has worked on blockbuster franchises such as HALO, Call of Duty, Madden, Bioshock, Destiny, Star Wars, Hawken Skylanders, Westworld, and more. It is built on blockchain gaming platform Forte. In an exclusive ask-me-anything session with Cointelegraph Markets Pro, Don Norbury, head of studio at Neon Media, the game's developer, offered an in-depth take on what the game has to offer. Cointelegraph Markets Pro User: When I think of gaming, …