Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Blockchain
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Of all the current metaverse platforms on the market, the smallest in terms of active users continue to be based around blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs. As I wrote last month, platforms like The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxel, and Somnium Space have extremity low user rates, with peak concurrencies in the four figures at most (but usually…
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Source: Cryptoslam.io News that former Disney CEO Bob Iger is now joining the board of an NFT-based avatar startup called Genie reminded me that I haven't checked recent trends of non-fungible tokens lately. Turns out that they're not too good! According to the NFT tracker Cryptoslam, sales of NFTs on the leading blockchain Ethereum have…
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NFT? Maybe that should mean Not Friendly Transactions. Allie Volpe of Bustle recently asked me who will be rich in the Metaverse: Virtual plots of land or massive yachts won’t be signs of wealth in the metaverse if other users aren’t on the platform to witness it, especially if outsiders don’t see value in these…
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Remember Larry David's cryptocurrency ad for last weekend's Superbowl, where Larry kvetches his way through human history, always being wrong about great inventions and breakthroughs? It was funny! Looking at the charts of two leading app trackers, however, it also had little or no impact on promoting downloads of the actual cryptocurrency app, FTX Crypto…
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Update, 2/14: In Comments, Ventrella credits his collaborators on this project: "The NFT pool itself was mostly the brainchild of Canton Becker (@canton), and he oversaw the project. Luka Negoita (@lukanegoita) invented the "selfish gene" algorithm that calculates the influence of NFT genes on the evolving population. I want to give a shout out to…
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One advantage of writing about Second Life for so long is it gives me a unique perspective from which to compare the relative strength of any other virtual world/virtual economy phenomenon. Based on official reported numbers and inside sources, there are currently about 500,000 to 600,000 active Second Life users* — i.e. people who regularly…
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Good question and concerning answers (if you're a blockchain/NFT booster) from Philip: Can anyone point me to a blockchain-based game that is being played without the goal of making money? — Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) December 7, 2021 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Besides a few small startup games mentioned there, the thread has few answers. Someone brings up Decentraland,…
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While there's way too much media hype about a putative "real estate boom" in blockchain-based virtual worlds, this isn't to dismiss these worlds out of hand. Recently I've been making some brief forays into market leader Decentraland (that's me, in front of the buff Doge) and it's pretty impressive (if graphically limited) for a web-based…
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Above: Decentraland's dynamic world map. The red dots represent the few actual users in-world Decentraland is a very interesting experiment in blockchain-based virtual world creation that I've been following for four years. And while there's a lot that's noteworthy about it, there's one thing it still sorely lacks: A mass market of actual users. According…
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Remember Entropia Universe, a niche MMO launched in 2003 where players can buy and sell in-game items for real cash? You'd only really read about it when there was a breathless report about another record Entropia Universe sale — like this one, from 2010: How much would you pay for a string of ones and…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 