🎥 Metaproof Media, Entertainment, IP

Hey friends, this is Sophia from 🎥 Metaproof Media, Entertainment, IP, the weekly newsletter where we update you on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the media, entertainment, and IP industry.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse media, entertainment, IP news every Friday.

💌 A quick thanks to our friends…

Shout out to this week’s sponsor CyberBrokers. A project with futuristic, cyberpunk art and immersive storytelling, CyberBrokers tells an exciting story that takes users through the world of the Paradigm Lost. Create, collect, game, and experience in this journey that brings the metaverse to life. Expand your reality today and go explore the Paradigm Lost. Check them out here!

📲 By the numbers

• This week’s top NFT performers include Implications (65%, 1.5 ETH Floor Price), Bored Ape Kennel Club (33%, 8 ETH Floor Price), and Rug Radio Genesis (33%, 0.4 ETH Floor Price). (Source)

• This week’s top losers are Trump Cards (-26%, 0.18 ETH Floor Price), Mutant Hound Collars (-15%, 0.55 ETH Floor Price), and Cool Cats (-11%, 2.56 ETH Floor Price). (Source)

📫 News & trends

⬆️ Yuga Labs names former Activision Blizzard president as new CEO

The parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club has appointed former Activision Blizzard (ATVI) president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre as its CEO, effective in the first half of 2023.

Boasting an impressive resume, Allergy held leadership roles at global music and media firm Bertelsmann and spent more than 16 years as president of various international divisions at Google. He emerged as president and CEO of Activision Blizzard, a roughly $60 billion dollar company and the powerhouse behind games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

Alegre will replace Nicole Muniz, who sat as Yuga Labs CEO in September 2021. Under Muniz, the Yuga Labs grew its portfolio of IP, acquiring Meebits and CryptoPunks in March as well as Beeple’s web3 ecosystem WENEW and flagship NFT project 10KTF. Muniz will stay on as partner and strategic adviser.

↘️ Trump NFTs tanking as hype dies, floor price down 70%

Following a brief spike over the weekend, Donald Trump’s NFT collection is losing value as sales fall. Trading volume fell 57% from Sunday to Monday, while the floor price for the NFTs has fallen 74% since its Saturday peak. The digital trading cards, minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, saw 44,000 of them selling for $99 apiece in the primary sale, with buyers incentivized by the chance to win a meet-and-greet or dinner with the former US president and other perks. Think of the tokens in baseball-card style, with Trump wearing a different costume and giving users a chance to enter sweepstakes with “interesting” prizes. It’s safe to say that the continued fall is at the center of crypto Twitter and late night TV, with the weekend episode of Saturday Night Live poking fun at the NFT collection.

💰 4th quarter market outlook: The CoinDesk Culture & Entertainment Index (CNE)

The crypto market slowdown looms over the culture and entertainment sector, made up mostly of digital artistic creations, collectible, and applications such as NFTs and the metaverse. Dune Analytics data shows NFT volume fell to $3.3B QTD, although a chunk of the metaverse and blockchain gaming communities brought a silver lining for many builders, particularly with the forming of an “Open Metaverse Alliance of Web3” this year tackling interoperability issues. The CoinDesk Culture & Entertainment Index (CNE) is designed to measure the market capitalization weighted performance of culture and entertainment protocols included in the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS).

🐧 Why is Pudgy Penguins getting so much attention and popularity when the market is going down?

While an underdog, Pudgy Penguins is thought to have a unique advantage over other NFTs. For starters, these collectibles’ art has the potential to “capture the hearts and minds of the mainstream.” Pre-acquisition, Pudgys also took over Twitter with a bunch of organic memes, and just a month after release were featured on the New York Times. Social media marketing also worked its magic on the IP company, with Pudgy GIFs and consistent Instagram and TikTok strategies pulling impressive numbers just five months after the initiative started.

🔥 Activate the power of the Dooplicator: January 2023

Major NFT collection Doodles has teased news of the Dooplicator NFTs on Twitter, citing January 2023 as release time. Back in May, Doodles dropped their free-to-claim NFT, which is described as “a functional piece of doodle machinery with extraordinary powers.” According to NFT Evening, Doodles - along with other “blue-chip” NFT projects - was able to weather the storm when the entire NFT market went through a major rough patch. The Dooplicator, however, is deemed the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Doodles’ ambitious roadmap, which includes its partnership with Shopify.

⚖️ The interplay between NFTs in the metaverse

The metaverse and NFTs go beyond entertainment and frivolity, with the technologies powering them going beyond videogames and multi-million-dollar art pieces. With these digital technologies gaining commercial steam, there are legal as well as business issues to consider going into the metaverse in the new year. Read more to understand intellectual property rights for NFTs, creating a “minter’s checklist,” and rights and restrictions for end users when buying or selling NFTs.

🐵 Yuga Labs releases ‘Trial of Jimmy the Monkey’ trailer

Yuga Labs has revealed the video trailer for the upcoming “Trial of Jimmy the Monkey” straight from its Twitter account, at the same time directing users to the MDvMM website for further details. The website shows a timeline of events with the first one, “Prologue: The Trial of Jimmy, December 21,” already disclosed. Upcoming events are the following:

• December 28: "The Past, Present, Future"

• January 11: "Prepare for the Mint"

• January 18: "Multi-week Interactive Mint"

• February 8: "Mint Reveal"

• TBA: "The Story Continues"

The trailer follows news that "apes who also hold a BAKC will be in tiers of their own'' when it comes to the minting experience for the Trial of Jimmy. While The Bored Ape Kennel Club collection climbed about 40% on that news, this news impacted the market less, with the Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price up just slightly (under 1%) over the last 24 hours.

🎤 Man behind the Korean wave talks about the future of K-pop and what aspiring artistes can do 

It has been over 30 years ago since Soo-man Lee founded SM Entertainment, one of South Korea’s music agencies that brought K-pop to the world. Lee harps on the need to continually innovate and stay ahead of the competition, and he walks the talk working with producers from the United Kingdom and the United States on accompaniment, track songs, kick drum, and bass - adapted to South Korean and Asian culture. Talking about K-pop’s future, Lee believes “the metaverse that everyone is talking about these days is the future”; his outfit has in fact established the metaverse platform SM Culture Universe and launched the metaverse girl band Aespa in 2020 with four real-life members and virtual counterparts.

🔮 7 ways the metaverse could change the entertainment industry

Whether it’s games, movies, or the concert experience, the metaverse is likely to shake things up in the entertainment industry. Many companies are already exploring interactive movies, where the storytelling could involve complex plot lines with branching paths. From true VR gaming to virtual concerts to tourism, here are seven ways the metaverse could overhaul entertainment as we know it now.

😮 CyberBrokers gear up for launch of Mechs

On Twitter, NFT project CyberBrokers offers a sneak peek of its Mechs, a long-awaited release that is poised to enable users to enjoy gamified experiences. Further details are yet to be disclosed, but CyberBrokers issued a call to claim users’ Mech parts before expiration, or by midnight of December 31, 2022 CST. “If you held a CyberBroker or Lupis Model Mecha Arm in your wallet during any of our Quests, you may have claimable rewards … even if you didn’t participate,” CyberBroker tweets.

🤖 Opinion: Metaverse: from sci-fi to a trillion-dollar industry

Once a concept limited to science fiction novels, the metaverse is on track to becoming a trillion-dollar industry. A common misconception, however, is that it's limited to being a virtual world; the metaverse is actually bound to fundamentally shift the conduct of business, communication, along with how people think about themselves. Training, collaboration, and entertainment will likely be the first pockets to reach tipping points, argues entrepreneur and futurist Simone Puorto, highlighting training as an ideal use case for immersive technology as it allows for hands-on learning in a realistic environment.

🌏 5 metaverse trends that will shape the next decade

Virtual social and music events will never be the same again with the might of the metaverse. Rod Stewart’s free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio, happening in 1994, has been the most attended live show (with 4M people present) until Travis Scott performed in the Fortnight Metaverse in 2020, where over 12M players logged in for the virtual concert. Artists like Post Malone, Ariana Grande, and Justin Bieber have followed suit, holding virtual concerts with the metaverse as a platform. Global entertainment giant Live Nation, too, has partnered with Snap to improve the virtual concert and social experience via augmented reality (AR).

💸 Finance buzz

• In his new note, Meta CTO and Reality Labs head Andrew Bosworth shares that 80% of Meta’s overall investments support its core business, with the remaining 20% going toward Reality Labs, a business owned by Meta Platforms. Bosworth assured its public that what won’t change in 2023 is their vision and long-term research to get there. (Source)

• Meta, Microsoft, and Roblox are three metaverse stocks that Zacks Investment Research is bullish on. (Source)

🗣️ Quote of the week

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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse media, entertainment, IP news every Friday.