Nifty News: Chinese companies to offer World Cup metaverse viewings, X2Y2 backtracks on royalties, and more

Chinese companies are betting on ‘metaverse’ experiences for the FIFA World Cup

China-based tech companies are reportedly working on technology that will give Chinese soccer fans the ability to watch the FIFA World Cup in the Metaverse.

These efforts are part of a five-year plan released by the Chinese government in early November to boost the capabilities and development of the local virtual reality (VR) industry.

Video streaming platform Migu is one of six Chinese companies to have won the rights to broadcast the World Cup and plans to create a “metaverse-like” space accessible via VR headsets for users to watch. a live stream of the game, according to a Nov. 20 report by state media Global Times.

ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, has been awarded the license rights to stream the competition, with ByteDance’s VR headset subsidiary Pico offering World Cup live streams with the ability for users to create and spend time in “digital rooms” to watch the game. together.

The World Cup is apparently being used by China’s fledgling virtual reality industry as a test bed for the technology, as the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and four other agencies have pushed an ambitious industrial plan on November 1st.

The five-year plan from 2022 to 2026 stressed that China wants to strengthen its virtual reality industry and ship more than 25 million units at a cost of $48.56 billion, although the plan does not specify whether its unit target is annual or cumulative over the life of the plan.

The announced plans do not mention whether the Metaverse will use blockchain technology, such as that posed by the Chinese city of Wuhan which was later revised to remove reference to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

X2Y2 waives optional royalties

NFT Marketplace X2Y2 backtracked on its opt-in royalty game, stating in a November 18 Twitter thread that it will once again apply creator royalties to all existing and new collections.

The marketplace was one of the first to introduce optional royalties in August, moving to “flexible royalty” allowing buyers to set how much they want to pay, drawing mixed reactions from the NFT community.

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We used to believe that the best way to deal with royalties was to give both parties, creators and merchants, the right to choose.

That’s what our Flexible Royalty feature is all about. And we still believe it.

— X2Y2 (@the_x2y2) November 18, 2022

X2Y2 said it decided to reinstate the royalty enforcement after taking a page from its peer Opensea, which decided on Nov. 9 to enforce the royalty.

X2Y2 also admitted that many new collections use OpenSea’s royalty enforcement tool which blacklists NFTs sold in markets that do not enforce royalties.

In response, OpenSea said it was “proud to stand” with X2Y2 adding that it had removed the market from its blacklist.

Proud to stand with you, and the many brilliant creators in our community, on this crucial step. @the_x2y2 has been removed from our OperatorFilter and we hope other marketplaces will continue to join us. Forward and upward

—OpenSea (@opensea) November 18, 2022

Givenchy abandons “phygital” NFTs

French luxury fashion brand Givenchy has become the latest company to offer “phygital” NFTs – a physical asset backed by a digital token.

On November 18, the company released a collection of physically supported NFTs as part of a collaboration with streetwear brand Bstroy.

The collaboration between the two brands sees a new limited “capsule collection” of six items that includes a “free NFT twin” of the physical coin.

As you’d expect from a luxury brand, the items don’t come cheap, with the cheapest item being a $595 t-shirt and the most expensive being a $5 wool and leather bomber jacket. $450.

Givenchy’s creative director, Matthew M. Williams, said the Bstroy founders are “longtime friends” who “share [his] vision of fashion” and that Givenchy and Bstroy “focused on creating streetwear with unexpected treatments” that “enter the realm of contemporary art on the street and on the Web3”.

Other “phygital” NFTs recently proposed include the Azuki NFT project, which created a Physical Backed Token (PBT) standard that sold skateboards and was used in streetwear collaborations. The sandals of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs were also auctioned off as “phygital” NFTs.

Johnnie Walker continues to enter Web3

Scotch whiskey maker Johnnie Walker has continued its Web3 campaign by allowing NFT holders to vote on a bottle design for a limited edition of its premium “blue label” range.

The whiskey company has teamed up with BlockBar, an NFT luxury liquor marketplace, and streetwear designer Junghoon Vandy Son, known as VANDYTHEPINK, who will create the bottle design.

Johnnie Walker left the design up to NFT holders, who will vote on the final design or artwork Son does for the bottle.

According to the brand, this is the first time the designers have embarked on a Web3-related project.

Related: Helping Mainstream Artists Enter Web3: The Triumphs and Struggles

Once the physical bottles are produced, they will be held by BlockBar who will only release the physical bottle to an NFT holder once they are ready to trade, “burning” their NFT “bottle”, initially priced at $355, for a replacement of the real thing.

The brand has dabbled in Web3 in the past partnering with Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT project, VeeFriends, in May, offering holders special deals related to NFT spirits. This collaboration was also carried out alongside Vayner3, Vaynerchuk’s Web3 consulting company.

More interesting news

Metaplex is feeling the sting of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX with the NFT protocol laying off “several members” of its team on Nov. 18, citing the “indirect impact” of FTX’s downfall. Its cash flow was not directly affected, but Metaplex CEO Stephen Hess said a “more conservative approach moving forward” was needed for the company.

A partner at the Australian arm of the Big Four accounting firm KPMG, James Mabbott, told Cointelegraph on November 18 that he believed the “explosion” of the Metaverse would be driven by corporations. The company has created a new Metaverse Futures Manager role that seeks to create its own metaverse for the company’s internal business operations and business-to-business services.