Zuckerberg skeptical of skeptics, $1 billion in royalties for NFT creators and real-life metaverse clothing from Forever 21

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t giving up on the metaverse, much to the chagrin of critics. Since the Facebook founder rebranded his company to reflect its metaverse ambitions last year, countless doubters have pressured him to abandon the idea of ​​building the metaverse.

At the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said he is brushing off the haters.

“Skepticism doesn’t bother me too much,” Zuckerberg said during a virtual interview at the conference, according to CoinDesk. “We’ve had doubters all along.”

The company has already spent billions building out its virtual reality division, Reality Labs, but with the economy possibly headed for recession, Zuckerberg said the company needs to operate with “more efficiency and discipline.”

OpenSea also announced this week that creators on its platform earned $1 billion in 2022. That total, based solely on creator royalties from reselling their work, did not include any outside deals the artists may have entered into.

The news lends credence to what artists have been saying all along: Enforcing strong creator royalties, which give artists a percentage of secondary sales, is the best way to support NFT producers.

The controversy over creator fees escalated this year when several marketplaces, including LooksRare and Magic Eden, made them optional. OpenSea itself considered doing the same, but later committed to creator fees.

While there is good metaverse and NFT news to be found despite the market downturn, there are still missteps. Add to that list a failed $400,000 metaverse launch event by the European Commission’s external aid department. Apparently only six people turned up for the event which was meant to promote the European Commission’s Global Gateway Initiative, which by 2027 plans to build $300 billion worth of infrastructure in developing countries.

In other news:

Always 21 made their metaverse outfits available in the physical world this week. A year after the launch of Roblox Shop City, the company is making some of the same outfits available in stores as part of the F21 Metaverse Collection. This collection will feature the Forever Beanie, the brand’s best-selling item Roblox collection. Items in the metaverse fashion line start at $14.99.

Courtesy of Forever 21

Porsche unveiled a new line of NFTs with a white Porsche 911 Carrera at the international art fair Art Basel this week. Buyers can influence the design of their NFTs by choosing from the performance, heritage and lifestyle themes of the Porsche brand to be integrated into the artwork.

Courtesy of Porsche

Game 7, a Web3 gaming DAO backed by the BitDAO and Forte ecosystems, launched a $100 million grant program to accelerate Web3 gaming this week. The program will enable developers to build tools, create educational programs, host events and conduct research to make the Web3 video game industry more diverse and accessible. The grants will be distributed to projects across five categories: technology, events, diversity, education and research. The program is across chains and has support from Polygon, Solana, Immutableand Arbitration ecosystems, with plans to expand.

Open sea integrates BNB Chain on its platform to improve the NFT trading experience and bring in new users. OpenSea integrated BNB chain into its Seaport protocol this week, meaning that BNB Chain NFTs will now be available on OpenSea. The NFT marketplace said in a statement that integrating BNB Chain will allow creators to avoid high gas fees, make signature verification actions easier to see, and eliminate the need for new users to pay any setup fees.

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