Bessie Liu

Online virtual worlds such as Decentraland, Spatial and Roblox are coming together to host Metaverse Beauty Week next week. Taking place from June 12 to June 17, this inaugural event promises to be a celebration of beauty and creativity in the metaverse.



The team at creative agency CULT will be working in partnership with global beauty brands and connecting them with digital designers to shake up the virtual beauty industry. 



Some of beauty week’s largest sponsors include international brands such as LUSH and Neutrogena.



Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in different games, collect wearables for their avatars and virtually interact with their favorite beauty products.



Although this will be the first ever beauty week held in the metaverse, it will not be the first time the team has worked together to hold a large-scale virtual event.&nbsp;



Back in March, Decentraland held its annual fashion week, Kim Currier, the marketing director at Decentraland told Blockworks.



“We were really excited to have this collaboration between the metaverse, brands and community designers,” Currier said.&nbsp;



Metaverse Fashion Week saw brands such as Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger and Coach in attendance. Smaller community designers also participated, and avatars were able to collect free wearables, watch a fashion show and interact with other community members.



“What was really interesting is the team was able to design a runway that may not have been physically possible in the physical world,” Currier said.&nbsp;



According to Currier, over 9,000 hours were spent at fashion week across all users, and over 600 designs were created for wearables. Over 50% of users who attended were new to the platform, Currier claimed, with an average user returning to the virtual fashion week around four times.



Metaverse Beauty Week will be open to anyone who has access to the webpage. Interested attendees simply create a guest account and do not need to connect their wallet to participate in the event, though it is recommended to collect free items, Currier notes.



“You just log in, you have an avatar that you can create with some basic wearables,” she said.



Each avatar will also be able to showcase their own self expression through “emotes” — actions such as throwing hands into the air and making it rain, Currier explains.&nbsp;



“It’s an amazing opportunity for you to showcase your self expression and your identity,” she said.



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Metaverse Beauty Week is around the corner

Sebastian Sinclair

The Australian Open (AO) has sidestepped the promotion of a previous blockchain metaverse project in favor of this year’s sporting event tied to a non-crypto virtual platform known as Roblox.



Dubbed AO Adventure, the online game allows users to explore the virtual world of the Australian Open Park, modeled after the real-life version in the city of Melbourne.&nbsp;



They’re even throwing in a chance to meet Australian tennis superstar Nick Kyrgios, where users will be greeted by a digital avatar dubbed “humanoid Nick.”&nbsp;



The catch for crypto enthusiasts: Roblox’s platform is notably absent of any blockchain or Web3 connection. Roblox is an online platform allowing users to create their own games for others to participate in.&nbsp;



Last year, the platform <a href="https://devforum.roblox.com/t/notice-review-of-recent-off-platform-behavior/1555041" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">took a stance</a> against <a href="https://playtoearn.net/news/roblox-is-looking-into-nft-and-web3-integrations-after-q3-earnings-miss" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rumors</a> it would issue its own non-fungible token (NFT) built on a blockchain or that it would push for Web3 development. According to its updated <a href="https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/203313410-Roblox-Community-Standards" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">community standards</a>, developers who are not part of a Roblox partnership program are barred from using off-platform services or products to sell on-platform items for money. That would prevent users from engaging with NFTs that would later be sold in online marketplaces.



&#8220;To be honest, the Australian Open&#8217;s decision to build in Roblox, instead of exclusively in Decentraland, will likely result in a better user experience for their community,&#8221; Simon Kertonegoro, CEO of MyMetaverse told Blockworks. “It&#8217;s just a shame that Roblox has banned the use of NFTs in their platform.”



Decentraland’s platform <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/australian-open-metaverse-art-ball-nfts-ace-first-week-as-tournament-rolls-on">was tapped as last year’s medium of choice</a> for the tournament. Designed by Web3 art studio Run It Wild, the platform clocked a peak of 5,000 unique visitors per day — or so Blockworks was told at the time.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/mana">Decentraland</a> will continue to co-host the virtual event alongside the more heavily promoted Roblox platform and will run from Jan. 16 through to Jan. 29, local time.



The push for Roblox ahead of other metaverses built around blockchain tech, as seen with the implementation of humanoid Nick, is a conscious decision for a “multiverse play,” a Run It Wild spokesperson told Blockworks.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Serving up fresh ArtBalls</h3>



Last year’s Australian Open also featured 6776 collectible NFT “ArtBalls” linked to winning or live shots of a particular match and uploaded to the blockchain. At the time, the balls clocked roughly $3.9 million in trading volume over a bi-weekly period.



Glancing across the sales page at NFT marketplace OpenSea, data show the floor price for last year’s art balls has fallen to around 0.09 ETH ($127). That’s considerably less than the floor price — seen Jan. 13, 2022 — of around 0.3 ETH or $997 at the time.



The hope is that this year’s event can capture some of the fervor surrounding last year’s trading activity with a launch of a further 2454, newly minted, NFT ArtBalls.



But in comparison to last year’s climate, interest in crypto, blockchain and Web3 has dropped considerably, motivating the event’s organizers to hunt for alternatives.



Roblox, which houses some <a href="https://backlinko.com/roblox-users" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">43 million daily</a> active users, has been eyed as the better fit for this year&#8217;s Open due to its ability to attract younger users to the sport. The AO game on Roblox has been live for roughly 9 hours, at the time of writing, with around <a href="https://www.roblox.com/games/11268121492/AO-Adventure" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2,500 daily unique visitors</a>.



“With more than 80% of users on the platform aged 25-and-under, it’s also a great platform for us to connect with younger fans,” Ridley Plummer, senior manager of Metaverse, NFT&#8217;s, Web3 and Cryptocurrency at Tennis Australia said in a statement.



Game on.



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Australian Open 2023 Takes Swing at Roblox Metaverse

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_634e8fd01d8e0" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Crypto is in the middle of technological disruption, Walmart’s CTO said</li>
 <li>Walmart previously filed trademark and patent applications to monetize the metaverse</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The chief technology officer of the world’s largest retailer thinks crypto lies abreast three areas of technological disruption: product discovery, payment and delivery.



In comments to the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on Oct. 17, Walmart CTO Suresh Kumar said that Walmart is keenly aware of the technological trends in the retail sector, and the potential ways in which Web3 may impact how customers shop in the future.&nbsp;



“I have talked before about the way in which customers are getting inspired and discovering products — that is changing — and part of that is going to happen in the Metaverse,” Kumar said.



The retail giant is also planning to adapt to customer demands for new payment rails, Kumar said. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I think a lot of the disruption is going to start happening in terms of different payment methods, different payment options…crypto is going to continue to play a very important role in that,” Kumar said.</blockquote>



“Crypto will become an important part of how customers transact. We want to make sure that we make it as friction free for customers to be able to transact, and to be able to buy, and how they are able to derive value out of it,” he said.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Walmart Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar talks tech, shopping experiences, and crypto" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/svC7RV_ESJs?start=648&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Other Walmart connections to crypto</h3>



Walmart previously added members to its board of directors who also have crypto industry links. 



The company’s lead independent director, Tom Horton, who also serves on the board of Blockchain.com, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/walmart-board-director-cryptos-potential-goes-beyond-financial-services/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told Blockworks in February</a>, “I see blockchain technologies as another great enabler, much like the internet was in its early days.”



Sarah Friar joined Walmart’s board <a href="https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2018/02/08/walmart-board-of-directors-adds-square-inc-cfo-sarah-friar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in February 2018</a> and earlier this year <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-latest-in-crypto-hiring-ex-finra-ny-fed-bank-leaders-switch-sectors/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">became a board member</a> of industry powerhouse ConsenSys, where she advises the company on Web3 business models. She is also a former chief financial officer of Square, prior to <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/tag/square/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its blockchain-focused rebranding as Block</a>.



Walmart is currently pursuing non-blockchain metaverse-like experiences <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/web3-watch-disney-and-walmart-target-young-audiences-in-the-metaverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">with Roblox</a>. The company <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/walmart-files-7-us-patents-examining-potential-monetization-of-nfts-metaverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filed 7 patents at the end of 2021</a> related to NFTs and the metaverse.



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Walmart CTO Weighs in on the Role of Crypto Disruption

Ornella Hernandez

<div id="highlights-block_6349ab508f2bf" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Decentraland and The Sandbox distinguish raw player numbers and those engaging in on-chain transactions</li>
 <li>“Success is measured by how many people are sharing, engaging, and socializing within the platform,” says Decentraland Foundation’s creative director</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



In a virtual future helmed by the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-investors-guide-to-the-metaverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">metaverse</a>, data — whether on-chain or off-chain — is an incredibly lucrative commodity. But interpreting that data can prove complex.



One recent example came from a recent CoinDesk article that cited figures shared by decentralized finance (DeFi) analytic firm DappRadar. It <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/10/07/its-lonely-in-the-metaverse-decentralands-38-daily-active-users-in-a-13b-ecosystem/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a> that popular metaverse Decentraland had 38 daily active users (DAU) while rival The Sandbox had 522 DAUs on Oct 7.&nbsp;



Yet, they still boast billion-dollar valuations.



CoinDesk’s headline — “It&#8217;s Lonely in the Metaverse: DappRadar Data Suggests Decentraland Has 38 ‘Daily Active’ Users in $1.3B Ecosystem&#8221; — sparked some backlash, especially from the projects directly, which have moved to set the record straight about their user stats.



As a result, the article has been updated multiple times to reflect a more detailed picture of usage within Decentraland and The Sandbox.&nbsp;



DappRadar <a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/dappradar-tracks-unique-active-wallets-but-what-does-that-mean" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">explained</a> why it counted less than 40 active users on Decentraland in a blog post.



DappRadar tracks on-chain transactions via smart contracts, which are mainly submitted by developers of decentralized applications (dapps). It determines the number of transactions from or to a smart contract and the number of unique active wallets (UAW) interacting with a dapp’s smart contracts.



In this case, the number of unique active wallets tied to Decentraland activity was cited as the number of unique active daily users, or rather, ‘payers’ versus ‘players.’&nbsp;



It turns out that users in these metaverse platforms frequently perform activities without explicitly interacting with a blockchain, which converts to a relatively low amount of on-chain activity.



Blockworks connected with the aforementioned parties to understand the differences between Web2 and Web3 analytics.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Decentraland is pushing to recalculate DappRadar figures</h3>



Decentraland Foundation’s Creative Director Sam Hamilton pointed out that the commercial activity of social media users, such as credit card transactions on Instagram, is never considered the primary measure of success for that platform. The metaverse should be no different.



“Success is measured by how many people are sharing, engaging and socializing within the platform,” he said, adding that “people traveling to and from different parcels, creating avatars and world building, and communicating with each other, is what should be the primary metric here, not smart contract transactions.”



Decentraland was quick to tweet its own metrics and claimed that the metaverse platform accounted for 1,074 users interacting with smart contracts in September and a total of 56,697 monthly logged-in users.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Lately, there has been a lot of misinformation on the number of active users of Decentraland. Some websites are tracking only specific smart contract transactions but reporting them as daily active users DAU, which is inaccurate.&mdash; Decentraland (@decentraland) <a href="https://twitter.com/decentraland/status/1578454101817724928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In a blog post, the Decentraland Foundation defined an “active user” as someone who enters Decentraland and moves out of the initial parcel they entered the world into, not just someone who engages in transactions.



Roblox, a metaverse gaming platform not based on a blockchain, <a href="https://s27.q4cdn.com/984876518/files/doc_financials/2022/q2/Q2'22-Supplemental-Materials-FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a> having 52 million daily active users in the second quarter of 2022, but only 11.3 million monthly unique payers.



And Second Life, one of the earliest non-blockchain metaverse platforms started in 2003, has 70 million registered accounts and a daily average of 200,000 users. Around 350,000 new accounts are created each month, <a href="http://gridsurvey.com/economy.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to a recent blog post from Second Life developer Linden Labs.&nbsp;



In Roblox or other free-to-play virtual worlds, most players aren’t necessarily engaging in in-game transactions. Even so, users that don’t buy anything are still considered active users.



Decentraland <a href="https://decentraland.org/blog/announcements/how-many-dau-does-decentraland-have/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">described</a> DappRadar’s tracking tools to be “not complete nor up to date.” DappRadar was only tracking 13 Decentraland contracts, and according to the blog post, it will now track over 3,000 smart contracts.



“The Decentraland team is currently updating their list of smart contracts, and we’re therefore recalculating their metrics,&#8221; DappRadar CEO Skirmantas Januskas told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Januskas added that the company has been providing “accurate” data and insights of on-chain transactions of more than 13,000 dapps for nearly five years. “Everything is transparent on the blockchain. Still, the space is nascent and very fast-moving.&#8221;



According to Decentraland, it appears that DappRadar didn’t account for “one of the most common” forms of user activity — so-called “meta-transactions” — which allow users to purchase a wearable from the Decentraland Marketplace, for example, without paying a transaction fee.



Sam Hamilton, Decentraland Foundation’s creative director, added that Decentraland is not a company, but rather a DAO and an open-source Web3 metaverse platform “that doesn’t view users as a product by which to measure success.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Web3 analytics vs. Web2 data</h3>



Atlas Corporation, an independent Web3 development and analytics provider for metaverse institutions, also felt “an obligation” to “refute” the CoinDesk article by writing its own <a href="https://www.atlascorp.io/post/metaverse-data-don-t-trust-verify" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog post</a>.&nbsp;



As a Decentraland DAO grant recipient that runs its own analytics, Atlas Corp. <a href="https://www.dcl-metrics.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">demonstrated</a> there are roughly 8,000-10,000 daily active users.



Atlas Corp. developer Avi Aisenberg said that “metaverse data doesn’t come in the same shape as Web2 analytics.” Transaction data in Web2 is rarely public, aside from self-reported figures, and almost never accessible to those outside of the centralized organization.



In Web3, where transactions occur on public blockchains, “you have to know where to look,” Aisenberg said. Data is usually aggregated on third-party platforms like DappRadar. If a platform is truly decentralized, then any reported data can be verified.&nbsp;



When it comes to determining active users in gaming metaverses, assessing “foot traffic” is more complex — distinguishing between transactions and active users is key. The number of payers is on-chain public data, whereas stats on active users or players is off-chain internal data.



Users can enter Decentraland or The Sandbox regularly without purchasing NFTs or making a transaction on the blockchain. Activity on-chain is thus not reflective of engagement.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Sandbox</h3>



The same goes for The Sandbox, according to Sebastian Borget, its chief operating officer and co-founder.



“You can spend hundreds of hours actively playing 90+ experiences throughout Alpha Season 3 without ever making a single transaction,” Borget said. “Those users would not be reflected in on-chain transaction metrics, despite clearly qualifying as active users by gaming industry standards.”



The Sandbox provided Blockworks with the most recent metrics from its ongoing Alpha Season 3:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>39,000 daily users</li><li>201,000 monthly users</li><li>4.1 million total wallets</li><li>22,267 land owners</li><li>128 million staked SAND</li><li>1.6 million hours played</li></ul>



Borget also said that retention — how many users who came on day 1 will come back N days later — is also very important. The Sandbox’s retention rate of 40% at day 14 “is above the industry standard compared to mobile games and proves that we are delivering sticky experiences,” he said.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The number of registered wallets is also key to understanding how many players, LAND owners or creators are being onboarded into Web3 and into the community.



He added that on-chain data tells only part of the story and can be easily misinterpreted by those who may not fully grasp the difference between on-chain and off-chain data, in reference to the CoinDesk article.



While CoinDesk claimed “It’s Lonely in the Metaverse,” Borget argued that it’s a growing community of creators, studios and brands.



And metaverse technology, including augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, is still nascent. “It’s unfortunate that the work, passions and contributions of so many were minimized,” Borget said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Because most platforms operate in silos, the true number of metaverse users may never be possible to report. In Decentraland’s case, people can play in it on private servers not listed by the DAO smart contracts, so a rough estimate is the standard for now.



And while the numbers directly relayed by Decentraland and Sandbox are far lower than many other online gaming and metaverse communities — even niche ones — there is still confusion about how to measure the activity of a decentralized application, especially when a sizable chunk of that usage doesn’t take place on the blockchain.



If Web3 truly aspires for decentralized harmony between our real selves and our digital facsimiles, then pushing for a future which processes all virtual activity on-chain could be warranted, or else debate nuances of what constitutes “real user data” in perpetuity.



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