Metaverse Digital Fashion Week 2023
White Star Capital Digital Asset Fund - newsletter #120
This week, Metaverse Fashion Week will run from March 28th-31st across Decentraland, the largest user-owned-and-operated virtual world, under the theme ‘Future Heritage’.
It boasts an impressive list of participating luxury brands, including Dolce & Gabbana, Balmain, Coach, and Tommy Hilfiger, as well as digital fashion native brands like The Fabricant and DressX. With the various activations, participating brands’ ROI will mostly come in the form of awareness among a new audience and alignment with tech-forward brands. ‘Participating in MVFW can heavily influence a fashion house’s branding, shaping them as a technological trailblazer or a company on the pulse,’ said Justin Banon, co-founder of metaverse commerce layer Boson Protocol. ‘The event also enhances brand exposure to new, future-looking audiences with an engaging style that is much more interactive than visiting a brand’s website or social pages.’ For example, Tommy Hilfiger will host an AI design competition within Decentraland, allowing users to leverage creator tools to create a piece of digital fashion in the brand’s signature preppy style. The winner’s submission will be created by DressX as a digital fashion collectible, AR filter and wearable for Decentraland.
Beyond user-generated fashion, high-end designers are also exploring how virtual fashion can enable new possibilities for design. Vogue Singapore partnered with ‘phygital’ fashion forerunner Ilona Song to create eight collectibles available for purchase via OpenSea, Decentraland and Ready Player Me. In a sign of digital identity and expression becoming increasingly significant in our online world, community members will be able to dress their avatars in Ilona Song dresses across the Spatial.io and Decentraland platforms, with the added function of accessing digital try-ons by scanning QR codes in the spaces.
Last year, more than 108,000 guests logged onto the debut of MVFW and attended the virtual concerts, store openings, fashion shows, exhibitions and afterparties. And during its five days, more than 7,000 wearables were bought, totalling around $77,000. Since last year, the user experience has also significantly improved, with attendees able to buy featured items using credit cards, and the new welcome area and maps meaning that it is far more accessible. ‘It’s almost like walking around with Google Street View’, said a marketing executive who was at the event last year.
In a major push for interoperability, it will also be a multi-platform metaverse event, taking place across several interconnected metaverse worlds including Spatial (our portfolio company) and Over. The cross-platform agenda expands the aesthetic possibilities for creators and fashion designers. Social media lead, Kim Currier, commented that ‘technically, people can’t jump across [worlds] exactly the way they are. That’s not possible yet. But what’s really exciting is the intention of interoperability showing the way of what’s possible.’
Tune in this week to Decentraland or Spatial.io to see the range of events for yourself.
🔦 White Star & Portfolio Spotlight
Exclusible teams up with The Sandbox and Partouche for French Week
Users can explore the Exclusible Grand Palace, uncover secrets, and find the legendary Joker until April 6th
Cometh becomes an official Polygon Supernets implementation partner
Cometh wants to further develop its infrastructure through this alliance with the Polygon network
Superfluid announces the new Stream Scheduler
Users can now specify start and end dates (or the amount they wish to transfer) for Superfluid money streams, putting your payments on autopilot
ALEX announces Ethereum to Bitcoin bridge
ALEX will partner with xverseApp to make onboarding Ethereum liquidity to the Stacks layer as smooth as possible
Haruko announces partnership with CryptoUK community
CryptoUK represents businesses across the crypto asset industry who seek to share best practice, respond to industry developments and help inform regulators and policymakers of the benefits of the industry
🏦 Enterprises & Institutions
F1 Team adds crypto sponsor in Kraken after FTX, Tezos exits
Formula 1’s crypto presence shrank in recent months, but the pool is growing again as Kraken teams up with Williams Racing
AllianceBlock strikes deal with Crunchbase to bring traditional business data to DeFi
AllianceBlock Data Tunnel users will be able to import Crunchbase data alongside DeFi data
Fidelity is building out a crypto and token research team
Fidelity’s journey into the crypto market continues with a new research team
Ticketmaster's latest widget gives NFT holders early ticket access
Ticketmaster has launched a new token-gating feature in collaboration with heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold that allows artists to provide NFT holders with select fan rewards, like early ticket access, custom seat selection and custom travel packages
Franklin Templeton aees Web3 driving next wave of tech innovations
In a new report, the asset management giant outlines tech-driven megatrends – decentralization among them – that are shaping society
Gucci and Yuga Labs team up to 'blur boundaries between physical and digital'
Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and Gucci kicked off Metaverse Fashion Week with a partnership announcement
Nasdaq's digital asset strategy revealed
Matthew Savarese explains that Nasdaq hopes to soon offer crypto custody solutions, which is the first of many steps on the exchange operator's roadmap for digital assets
Amazon's NFT plans teased in a receipt mailed Friday afternoon
In an email to CoinDesk's Nikhilesh De, Amazon appeared to confirm that digital tokens, an NFT gallery and resale opportunities are coming to the site
⚖️ Government & Regulation
U.S. CFTC Chief Behnam reinforces view of Ether as commodity
That view differs from the apparent SEC view that ETH may be a security
Crypto’s unfulfilled dreams get a tailwind from U.S. crackdown on Binance, Coinbase
The crypto revolution was supposed to make finance more decentralized, but much of the industry is centralized. Regulatory pressure could change that
Can Hong Kong's big bet on digital assets lure crypto back?
Hong Kong’s plan to regulate crypto exchanges and allow retail investors to trade digital assets is getting feedback from lawyers who worry proposed rules are too stringent
💰 Funding & Exits
Restaking protocol EigenLayer closes $50 million raise
EigenLabs, the team behind restaking protocol EigenLayer, closed its $50 million Series A funding round
Irene Zhao's web3 social platform So-Col unveils $4.5 million in funding
So-Col raised $4.5 million in two rounds. Investors include DWF Labs and Blockchain Capital
Paradigm leads $7M round for Optimism-based startup Conduit
The newly announced startup will help developers launch Optimism-based applications
Orderly Network raises funding at a flat token valuation of $200 million
The Near-based trading infrastructure protocol plans to add perpetual trading and support for other blockchains
Cega fundraising tops $9.3M in total to accelerate DeFi exotic structured products on-chain
Cega is the first protocol to create exotic options structured products on-chain and has been a leading provider of DeFi crypto structured products since its launch in June 2022
Middleware platform Particle Network raises $7 million
Middleware platform Particle Network has raised $7 million from investors including ABCDE, Animoca, Longhash Ventures, GSR Ventures and HashKey
Hadean raises an additional $5M to supercharge the metaverse
Hadean has raised $5 million in funding from new Web3, Gaming and Enterprise global investors to facilitate the rapid build-out of the company’s bleeding-edge metaverse infrastructure solution – a critical component for the creation of immersive vast virtual worlds for training and entertainment and data-driven digital twins for enterprise
Bitget acquires controlling stake in BitKeep with additional investment at $300 million valuation
The crypto exchange is now the controlling stakeholder of the wallet provider
🚀 Project Launches & Updates
ConsenSys launches zkEVM public testnet, renames It ‘Linea’
The release comes in the days after competitors, Polygon and Matter Labs, came out with their own zkEVMs
Tested on Ethereum, StarkWare’s Zero-Knowledge Proofs are now live on Bitcoin
Zero-knowledge proofs developed by Ethereum scaling firm StarkWare are now making a debut on the Bitcoin blockchain
Polygon Labs unveils zkEVM Layer 2 to help scale Ethereum
Polygon Labs released a zero-knowledge-based rollup that is natively compatible with Ethereum apps
DYDX set to launch private testnet of its Cosmos-based blockchain
Decentralized exchange DYDX is moving to its own Cosmos-based blockchain
🔥 Other Bits We're Excited About
Jack Dorsey-backed Spiral plots course for mainstream adoption of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network
LDK, the Lightning Network implementation being developed by the Jack Dorsey-backed Spiral, has got big plans to improve the way payments can be made on Bitcoin
Why Bitcoin is your best bet against inflation
Angel investor Tatiana Koffman discusses decades of Federal Reserve monetary policy, and why billionaire Paul Tudor Jones once predicted that bitcoin would become a workable inflation hedge
Bank consolidation threatens freedom, makes case for Bitcoin
The biggest threat from the banking crisis triggered by this month’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank might not lie in the potential for depositors to lose their savings but in the censorship power that massive banks are now accumulating as customers move their money
Circle Stablecoin USDC to launch on Cosmos
Cosmos will finally have its own native stablecoin, with Circle partnering with crypto startup Noble to deploy USDC directly to the ecosystem