This week in the metaverse: Scientists make progress toward creating a ‘bangverse’
Ever wanted to smell the metaverse? A new tool created by researchers can now enable this. Illustration of Fortune
Welcome to This week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounding up the most interesting news in the NFT world, culture and metaverse. Email [email protected] with tips.
Are you curious about what the metaverse smells like? Chinese researchers may have the answer, according to a new journal article Nature communication. The researchers tested a wearable device that attaches to a person’s upper lip and can heat scented wax in seconds to generate smells for people in virtual reality, as reported by The Daily Beast.
They already have 30 different scents including pineapple, rosemary, mint, watermelon, vanilla, coffee, ginger, strawberry and lavender.
In a video example, researchers used the device to simulate smelling flowers.
It is unclear what practical uses the technology might have – especially since adoption of the technology has slowed and the de facto leader in the space, Meta, has changed priorities – but the research gives new meaning to immersion in the world of a VR-based metaverse.
Spotlight on NFTs
Despite the decline in NFT sales last year and the collapse of FTX, the NFT market has continued to grow, according to data from DappRadar.
The number of daily unique active wallets interacting on-chain with dapps has increased by 50% since 2021, and the average in 2022 was 2.37 million daily unique active wallets. NFT marketplaces and dapps have also followed suit, growing by 18% in the past 12 months.
In other news
Elon Musk tweeted a meme that featured the NFT project Milady and it quickly shot up as much as 60%. The NFT project is controversial due to statements made by its founders. Musk previously caused the memecoin Dogecoin to increase in value with their tweets.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 10 May 2023
Turbomemecoin created by digital artist Right humanity almost exclusively with AI chatbot GPT-4, jumped into the top 300 cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko Wednesday before you retire. The cryptocurrency was the 414th largest as of Friday, with a market cap of $50 million. Humanity still owns 10% of the 69 billion tokens.
Courtesy of Rhett Mankind
Binance said it would add support for Ordinalsor Bitcoin NFTs, this week as the new technology has pushed transactions on the network to all-time highs. Binance also said it would allow users to buy the Bitcoin NFTs directly from their Binance accounts. The changes will take effect by the end of May, the company said.
