🎮According to GEEIQ’s latest report, by the end of Q2 2024, there were over 700 brands in virtual worlds with over 1,200 activations across Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, and other platforms. This is a 58% increase from the same period last year. Brands have flocked to build immersive, gamified experiences, from Gucci to Forever21, luxury to high street, clothing to makeup. To reach the demographic that gaming captures, they will spend between $50 and $250,000 for a limited experience and up to $1.5 million for a more immersive world experience or deeper collaboration. There have been 347 new brand activationsin the first half of 2024 alone, with 45%in Roblox and 33%on Fortnite.
📈Research has shown that fashion and gaming are growing closer together. Anzu found that when researching US gamers, 76% followed fashion brands and influencers, and 66% were consumers of luxury branded products (Anzu, 2022). The idea that people who play games are not target consumers for high-end fashion is proving to be outdated.
👾This summer I attended SEG3, a global meeting place for the sports, entertainment and gaming industries in London to get a feel for how far this data was manifesting itself in the conversations and the priorities of real marketers. On-site were a host of gaming developers, such as Sawhorse, Dubit, and Karta, who took to the stage alongside e-sports companies like Fnatic and brands like Hugo Boss to discuss current trends and insights.
🔶One topic that became clear during this two-day event was that, despite a deepening crossover between these two industries, we may be just on the cusp of what could be possible when they converge further. Gen A is the first digitally native and largest generation in history, and despite a cost of living crisis their discretionary spending is up for grabs for brands that show up where those consumers already are. EMarketer predicts that by 2025, there will be 2 billion Alphas, representing 25% of the global population. There are also now 3.2 billion gamers worldwide, representing 36% of the population. The Venn diagram between those two cohorts has a lot of crossover, but it’s important to note that there are at least a billion older consumers who gaming crossovers can also reach.
THE DIGITAL FASHION SEASON BEGIN | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Metaverse Fashion Magazine
Tomorrow, on the 7th of September, the Digital Fashion Week New York will begin, running from 12:00 to 21:00 GMT. The event will take place both in real life (IRL) and online (URL), starting with a Digital Fashion Exhibition at the Canvas 3.0 Gallery in the Westfield World Trade Center.
The exhibition will highlight the work of members from the Digital Fashion Designers Council, including Monet, Loreine, and the digital design platform The F*word.
Networking opportunities will be integrated through a series of panel discussions, which will be kicked off by David Cash, a member of the Digital Fashion Designers Council and founder of CashLabs, alongside Megan Kaspar, founder of RedDAO.
Notable speakers include Chris Carlson from SYKY, Krishnan Sangameswaran from The F*word, and Leslie Holden from The Digital Fashion Group.
The Metaverse for Digital Fashion Week 2024 New York has been created by PixelCanvas, a Los Angeles-based immersive experience company known for producing phygital events in LA.
The event will conclude with an IRL runway show, scheduled to start at 7 PM.
Compared to the Digital Fashion Week 2023 event in February, which was covered by the Metaverse Fashion Magazine, the number of days and participants has been significantly reduced.
As of now, there is no information about this year's Paris Digital Fashion Week, which took place on February 29th last year and has not yet been announced for this year. Additionally, the Digital Fashion Week website currently lists only two cities as event hosts.
Tickets for both events are available for purchase on Luma and the Digital Fashion Week website: https://lu.ma/DFWNY.
You can find a more detailed program of the upcoming event right below:
- Doors open 12p: Digital Fashion Exhibition
-12.30 David Cash in conversation with Megan Kaspar
1p Maintaining Exclusivity While Driving Growth Moderator: André Taylor: Taylor Insight Maria McClay Investor, ex Google Andrew Antar: Tune.FM Chris Carlson SYKY Raina Marie: Pace Gallery
-2p Disrupting Fast Fashion and Saving the World Moderator: Chris Pfaff: Tech/Media LLC Ben Erwin: The Polys Krishnan Sangameswaran: TheF*Word Miguel Huidor Nicestuff Clothing Tatiana Alexa Sangrove
-3p Transforming the retail landscape Leslie Holden The Digital Fashion Group Max Rivera Snap Jana DelaMarter Meta Courtney Agnes (Director of Business Development) CLO
-4p Workshops Robots in Design: Creating digital assistants for your brand - Angelescu Studio Ask CLO — CLO genius bar
- Exhibition The Digital Fashion Designer's Council exhibition Monet — Create 3d Assets With Your Phone Loreine — Chipped Fashion A Revolution in Fashion — The F*Word
-Through a portal into the Metaverse courtesy of PixelCanvas, XcyteDigital and Translucia. The event is live-streamed into the Metaverse and the Metaverse is live-streamed into the event
-6p Animation screening
- 7p Runway show
GENERATIVE AI IS ACCELERATING THE SPREAD OF FAKE NEWS AND MALICIOUS APPS | [SINGULARITY]
♦️ The fraud analytics team at DoubleVerify—a company that provides tools and research to advertisers, marketplaces, and publishers to help them detect fraud and safeguard their brands—is today releasing research describing how generative AI tools are being used at scale to create fraudulent app reviews faster and easier than ever before. The researchers tell Eye on AI they found tens of thousands of AI-generated fake reviews propping up thousands of malicious apps across major app stores including the iOS store, Google Play store, and app stores on connected TVs.
♣️ Fraudulent reviews are a long-standing issue online, especially on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. Earlier this month, the FTC finalized rules banning fake reviews and related deceptive practices, such as buying reviews, misrepresenting authentic reviews on a company’s own website, and buying fake social media followers or engagement
🤖The finalized rules also explicitly ban reviews that are AI-generated, which have been increasingly flooding sites like Amazon, TripAdvisor, and wherever reviews are found since generative AI tools became readily available, according to DoubleVerify. In their new findings, the company’s fraud researchers describe how generative AI is causing the already prevalent problem to explode in app stores specifically. In 2024, the company identified more than three times the number of apps with AI-generated fake reviews compared to the same period in 2023. Some of the reviews contain obvious phrases that point to them being AI-generated (“I am a language model”), but others come across as authentic and would be difficult for users to detect, according to Saporta. Only by analyzing reviews on a massive scale was her team able to spot other subtleties that point to AI generation, such as phrases being repeated over and over again.
⚡️ The malicious apps being legitimized by AI reviews typically download malware onto users’ devices to harvest data or request intrusive permissions, such as allowing the app to run in the background undetected.
PORTERIUM MARKETPLACE MERGES FASHION AND TECHNOLOGY | [FASHION SYSTEM]
🦄 Porterium is a pioneering online fashion marketplace, with headquarters in Monaco and London, that seamlessly connects fashion and technology. Focused on empowering international independent designers, Porterium offers a platform to showcase their distinct creations while blending traditional retail with immersive digital experiences in the metaverse.
👚 Utilizing a drop-shipping model, the platform reduces entry barriers, enabling designers to succeed without significant upfront investment. This innovative approach allows Porterium to spotlight exceptional talent, elevate the consumer shopping experience, and champion creativity, individuality, and diversity in the fashion industry. As a leader in this dynamic space, Porterium is reshaping the future of fashion commerce.
👔 Independent fashion designers often face significant barriers when trying to break into the mainstream market. The traditional retail landscape is dominated by established brands, leaving limited opportunities for smaller, talented creators to gain visibility and reach a wider audience. As a result, many independent designers struggle to build sustainable businesses, limiting their potential for growth.
🗣 "Our goal is to break down the barriers for indie fashion brands, empowering them to grow and succeed on an international stage." says Lilia Rogova Tippets.
💥 Porterium’s mission is to empower independent fashion designers by offering a platform that seamlessly integrates both physical and digital experiences. Our aim is to celebrate individuality, inspire creativity, and provide emerging talent with the space they need to thrive. Porterium is dedicated to building a vibrant global community in the fashion industry, connecting designers with conscious consumers and promoting sustainable, forward-thinking fashion practices.
CALIFORNIA WANTS FASHION BRANDS TO PAY FOR WASTE | [FASHION SYSTEM]
♻ Late last month, state legislators passed a bill that would make fashion brands responsible for keeping old clothes out of landfill by establishing and funding a programme for collection and recycling. The proposal now only needs sign off from Governor Gavin Newsom to become law.
🎯 The move is the latest in a wide-ranging regulatory effort to crackdown on the rising flood of unwanted jeans, t-shirts and other old clothes created by fast fashion’s accelerated churn. In 2021, roughly 1.2 million tonnes of textiles were discarded in California. Nearly all of that volume was reusable or recyclable, but only 15 percent ever made it back into the market, according to the office of state Senator Josh Newman, who introduced the California bill. The Responsible Textile Recovery Act aims to change that pattern.
👾 Under the proposed law, brands with global turnover of more than $1 million will need to participate in and help fund a programme to enable the reuse, repair and recycling of clothes and fabric sold in California.
It’s expected to take several years before any state-level textile recycling programme comes into effect. In the meantime, brands will need to form and join a producer responsibility organisation to coordinate and oversee operations by 2026. Once formed, the PRO must have an approved plan for the management of discarded textiles in place by July 2030.
💵 Brands will be on the hook to cover the costs of running the recycling programme, but exactly what those costs will amount to haven’t yet been defined and will only become clearer once the industry’s producer responsibility organisation lays out its plan for the recycling programme.
💥 The American Apparel and Fashion Association, a key industry lobby group, pushed for several changes to the act before it passed. The organisation endorsed the final version, with reservations. Though several of the changes the industry wanted were taken on board, the AAFA said it still had some concerns about the timelines envisaged in the bill, loopholes for third-party sellers on online marketplaces and potential conflicts with regulations in other jurisdictions.
🗣 Rachel Van Metre Kibbe, the CEO of consulting and advocacy firm Circular Services Group and executive director of trade lobby group American Circular Textiles, said the bill is a step in the right direction. But if it is signed into law, much will depend on its implementation and enforcement. Similar efforts focused on other materials have faced major challenges, particularly because state-level approaches resulted in a patchwork of systems that resulted in low recycling rates, she said.
OPENAI HITS 1 MILLION PAID USERS FOR BUSINESS VERSIONS OF CHATGPT | [SINGULARITY]
📊 OpenAI now has more than 1 million paid users for the corporate versions of ChatGPT — a sign of growing demand from businesses for its chatbot despite significant competition.
👾 San Francisco-based OpenAI said Thursday that the figure includes the total number of people signed up to use its ChatGPT Team and Enterprise services, which are aimed at companies, as well as people at universities using its ChatGPT Edu product. The startup previously said in April that it had 600,000 corporate ChatGPT users — not counting Edu, which launched in May.
🤖 OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Enterprise a year ago with extra features and privacy safeguards in a bid to boost revenue and offset the high cost of building AI products. It introduced ChatGPT Team for smaller companies in January. A long list of AI rivals have also rolled out similar services for businesses.
🎓 While OpenAI has seen a significant increase this year in paid corporate users, it’s unclear how many new businesses have signed up. A university, for example, may pay for far more user accounts than a startup. OpenAI declined to say how many paid users its corporate customers have on average.
⚡ Just under half of OpenAI’s corporate users are based in the US, the company said. Outside the US, the company’s chatbot is most popular with business users in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.
THE SANDOX'S LARGEST MAKRET FOR CREATORS IS NOW INDIA: CO-FOUNDER SEBASTIEN BORGET | [METAPHYSICS]
💥 India has become Metaverse platform The Sandbox's largest supplier of content creators as the number of users doubled to 350,000 less than a year after the Web3 project said it planned to make the nation its largest market.
📈 The country now supplies 66,000 creators, who develop games for the immersive environment, compared with 59,989 in the U.S. and 25,335 in Brazil. The plan to focus on India was announced in December, and the platform is now targeting 1 million users in two years, co-founder BORGET Sebastien told CoinDesk in an interview.
📢 "India became the No. 1 overall across all countries ... thanks to all the different boot camps and education programs that we've run on the ground, either directly with BharatBox or with some of our partners, like CoinDCX,"
Sebastien Borget said.
💰 BharatBox was initally capitalized with $1 million. Another $200,000 will be deployed by the fourth quarter, BharatBox CEO Karan Keswani said. While The Sandbox raised $20 million at a $1 billion valuation earlier this year, India didn't need further investment because the venture was designed to be "self sufficient and autonomous," capable of generating its own revenue, Borget said.
👾 The industry has seen a rise in interest since the approvals of spot-crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S., which have driven more institutional money into crypto, but that hasn't translated into more user adoption specifically because it's not retail investors using their savings to put into crypto, he said.
BEHOLD THE SELF-FILLING WALLET BY PHYGITALMINING | [METAPHYSICS]
🔶 As Metaverse Fashion Week approaches, our team is collaborating with industry visionaries to accelerate the digitalization of the fashion industry. PhygitalMining works with traditional brands, seamlessly integrating the Web3 economy into physical items.
🦄 PhygitalMining, a pioneer in embedding NFC chips into physical apparel, has launched its innovative new phygital wallet. The "OG Wallet" is a unique physical product that seamlessly connects users to the digital world.
👜 The "OG Wallet" is a sleek, black vegan leather wallet crafted with precision and style. It is currently available for pre-order through a waitlist on the PhygitalMining website. Purchasing the "OG Wallet" grants you membership in the exclusive PhygitalMining founders community.
🗣 “Pu leather is way better compared to animal leather just with regards to the ethical aspect alone. It is also more sustainable that for instance cows leather although still a lot of chemicals are used during the manufacturing process of leather” says Denis Chistyakov, CEO and Founder of PhygitalMining.
💵 The most active airdrop participants have a chance to receive the wallet for free. After that, the wallet is priced in Dutch auction starting at 300$ going to $100 and is available in a limited edition of 1,000 items.
Each physical wallet is linked to a unique NFT, which serves as its digital twin. This NFT not only acts as a certificate of authenticity but also grants exclusive access to digital experiences and secures ownership on the blockchain, enhancing the wallet's value in the virtual space.
Each wallet is loaded with 105 FIJI tokens, distributed linearly over a year, with approximately 8 tokens claimable per month per wallet. In total, the entire collection generates 10,500 tokens annually, distributed equally across all wallets.
The Metaverse Fashion Council has joined forces with PhygitalMining and its designers to create a new fashion community based on the principles of digital ownership, decentralization, and phygital aesthetics.
AI COULD ACTUALLY CHANGE THE GAME INDUSTRY | [SINGULARITY]
⚡ Companies around the world are still figuring out how to integrate artificial intelligence into their business models. For some industries, such as music and comics, the AI boom already poses a threat to business, thanks to copyright infringement issues. But there is one sector where the benefits from the AI boom appear straightforward: gaming.
⚙ AI has played a role in the gaming industry long before the frenzy of recent years. In early 2020, Sony’s technology had already been used to create an AI agent that could beat the best drivers in the world at the PlayStation game Gran Turismo.
💰 But the AI being added today to the latest games will have a much more direct impact on the bottom lines of gaming companies, slashing the fat budgets that have historically been required for the development of every new game. Gamers want high-quality, hyper-realistic visuals and immersive gaming experiences. That requires extensive time and resources, and multimillion-dollar budgets for game developers and creators.
💥 China’s $40bn gaming sector is having a good year so far. Tencent continues to reap a windfall from its Dungeon & Fighter Mobile game which has held its position as China’s top-grossing game. Hong Kong-listed shares in Tencent are up more than a quarter this year, easily outpacing the benchmark Hang Seng index. An AI fuelled boost will be welcome news for investors and games alike.
XSOLLA'S CEO SPENDS LIKE A BILLIONAIRE ON A BACK OF COMPANY CASH | [FINANCE]
🎮 Aleksandr Shurick Agapitov spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure his company’s name – Xsolla – is everywhere at major events in the video games industry, including at August’s Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany.
👾 You’ll find Xsolla’s branding splashed on pricey booths that feature baristas serving foamy lattes and at Go-Karting tournaments in Las Vegas. Xsolla has invested up to $275,000 per event in an effort to ensure it will remain the top payments facilitator in the $188 billion gaming industry. Millions of gamers have sent them their allowances, using Xsolla to make purchases in games like Roblox or Epic Games’ Fortnite.
💵 Agapitov founded Xsolla and is the chief executive officer and sole owner. Promotional materials for his book describe him as a “visionary billionaire,” someone who has succeeded in a competitive industry despite relatively humble beginnings in the former Soviet Union. Legal and financial documents reviewed by Bloomberg and interviews with former employees suggest Agapitov leans heavily on corporate revenues to support his new, flashier lifestyle.
👨⚖️ Nonetheless, at least six former executives have sued Agapitov or Xsolla since 2019. Two of the suits described concerns over the company’s financial practices or Agapitov’s use of company money, with one asserting he has used Xsolla like his personal piggy bank.
🗣“Xsolla, a privately owned company, manages its financial affairs responsibly and in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations,” Xsolla president David Stelzer told Bloomberg. “Shurick is sole owner of the business, and all financial arrangements related to the company are vetted through highly reputable third-party legal, financial and tax experts and a robust internal team of lawyers and financial advisors,” Stelzer said. Stelzer disputes the accuracy of the financial documents obtained by Bloomberg and the numbers referenced in them.
💸 Xsolla, which is relied on by several publicly-traded gaming companies, has previously explored the possibility of an initial public offering: Documents prepared by two investment banks in 2021 suggested the company could seek a valuation of as much as $3 billion. Stelzer said there are no current plans to IPO.
💰 The company made about $67 million in revenue in 2020, according to an excerpt of a deposition by a former chief financial officer given in a case against Xsolla and reviewed by Bloomberg. Xsolla earned close to $100 million in revenue in 2021, Bloomberg has previously reported, and Agapitov says his PayPal-for-gamers now generates about double that.
⚖ The SEC’s Wells notice against OpenSea showed once again how regulators are overreaching in interpreting the law, says Edward Lee, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, and the author of Creators Take Control.
👨⚖️ In their 2024 book Over Ruled, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze document the dramatic expansion of federal laws. This expansion stems not just from enactments by Congress and decisions of courts, but also from the numerous federal agencies through their arsenal of rules and regulations, informal public guidance and enforcement actions. Federal statutes used to fit in one volume, but now surpass 54 volumes and 60,000 pages. Federal agency rules ran 16 pages in 1936, but now surpass 200 volumes and 188,000 pages. No one knows for sure how many agency regulations have criminal penalties, but one estimate is that the total surpasses 300,000. And, more worrisome, federal agencies sometimes “don’t just write and enforce legally binding rules,” but also “act as prosecutor and judge, too.”
👾 This proliferation of laws and regulations may reflect the complexities of modern society. But, as the book details, it has led to tragic consequences with federal laws being over-enforced against individuals, even in ways beyond the law’s intended scope. Especially when laws are over-enforced based on tenuous if not incorrect interpretations, the rule of law is undermined.
💥 But, in 2023, when the NFT market was in a downturn, the SEC added another risk to the ones artists faced: possible SEC prosecution. The SEC announced the settlements of enforcement actions against two NFT projects, which were developing a cartoon cat series and avatar-based game, respectively. The SEC alleged the NFTs were investment contracts and unregistered securities. Although the settlements do not establish legal precedents and the entities admitted no wrongdoing, the SEC required the two projects to destroy their NFTs. Neither project survived. Other businesses, such as GameStop, killed their NFT projects due to “regulatory uncertainty.”
💢 NFT artists and businesses were upset. On social media, some even discussed going to jail. While that fear may be unfounded, the panic is not. The SEC’s strategy of bringing selective enforcement actions against NFT projects and businesses, without promulgating any rules or public guidance related to NFTs, threatens the entire NFT market. The uncertainty will chill artists from creating NFTs and kill business ventures involving NFTs.
📈 Polygon’s native cryptocurrency has executed a key technical upgrade to enhance its utility and usher in Polygon 2.0. Polygon's MATIC token was upgraded to its new Polygon Ecosystem Token (POL) token on a 1:1 basis, becoming the network’s native gas and staking token as of Sept. 4, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
🗣 The upgrade will better enable the community to participate in the network’s growth, according to Marc Boiron, the CEO of Polygon Labs. Boiron told Cointelegraph in an exclusive: “Now that there are 2% emissions being introduced through this upgrade, it’s going to give an opportunity for the community to participate […] Technically even though the full migration hasn’t happened, [season 1 of the community grants program] created some emissions that the community’s been able to use.”
💥 Polygon’s token is the world’s 21st largest cryptocurrency with a $3.7 billion market capitalization. The upgrade follows a year of in-depth community discussions and consensus and is part of Boiron’s wider plans for Polygon 2.0.
💭 he second-biggest reason for the technical upgrade was to make POL a hyperproductive token, according to Boiron. The Polygon Labs CEO explained: “POL goes one step further, and as it gets kind of embedded in the different things in the Polygon Network, it becomes hyperproductive in the sense that it can actually earn fees from multiple different sources.”
💎 The new POL token will also be embedded in Polygon’s AggLayer — short for aggregation layer — which is similar to a cross-chain interoperability protocol aiming to connect siloed blockchains.
The technical migration is a crucial part of the vision of Polygon 2.0 — the Polygon CDK and AggLayer’s final evolution — which aims to provide “infinite scalability” to unify all blockchains, including layer-1s like Ethereum and Bitcoin.