This is a new weekly format keeping you up to date with all things Tokens, Protocols, Culture, and more.

The third week of January saw a lot of high-profile announcements shaking up the world of Web3. From Brands paving the way towards a non-fungible future to real products and features being shipped by some of Web2s biggest companies, 2022 starts off strong.

The Week started off with a big announcement by no other than the king of real-world collectibles. StockX the sneaker, fashion, and collectibles marketplace that originated in the sneaker hype that started in 2016 just announced that they are working on a marketplace for tokenized assets (NFTs). Tokenizing the real world is a trend that has been building up for a long time. Tokenizing real-world collectibles might be the first step to bridging the real world to the blockchain world and giving NFTs an IoT (Internet of Things) type of utility. StockX has been a master in capitalizing on hype and unlocking liquidity for high-demand assets since culture and commerce first converged in Sneakers and streetwear. It is gonna be interesting to see how tokenized sneakers, clothes, and other real-world collectibles will shake up the non-fungible market.

The second big news of the Week would be the recently announced 69 Billion Dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. The hit Game Maker of titles like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Overwatch has announced that Microsoft is going to acquire them. Microsoft who has been steadily growing its Portfolio of gaming studios, Dev teams, and hardware has announced in a joined press release that they believe in the future of Gaming and digital Worlds, also possibly hinting at the rumors of Blizzard experimenting with in-game Tokens.

While Microsoft’s focus on the future of gaming shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, this still marks the biggest game studio acquisition in the history of video games and further confirms big techs’ focus on building the next generation of digital worlds and brands across platforms. And if the rumors are true, Activision Blizzard might be one of the first household names to enter the crypto gaming space this year.

This has been a long time in the making with the earliest reports about the crypto team at Twitter emerging in the third quarter of 2021. Yet there was still a lot of uncertainty whether the leadership change and the absence of Jack Dorsey (EX CEO and Co-Founder of Twitter) would affect the direction of the endeavor. Yet out of the blue (pun intended), Twitter rolled out the feature on Thursday, January 20th to all Twitter Blue members allowing people to verify their NFT holdings by connecting to the Wallet of their choice. The feature is powered by Openseas API and Twitter announced that the feature is a joined Collaboration between multiple big Crypto Companies (OS, MetaMask, Rainbow to name a few).

This marks the first official Web3 integration on Social Media and Twitter has finally taken action to acknowledge the importance of the Web3 community on their platform. This begs the question of who will follow their lead and whether Discord will come back to act on their Problems.

On January 20th various Newspapers broke the news that Meta (ex: Facebook) is experimenting with integrating NFTs into their services like Instagram. The articles discuss how Meta is experimenting with minting and trading NFTs on their platform which could possibly bring their billions of users into the NFT space. That connection between culture and blockchain could very well be used by the platforms that already have universal access to the global population.

To get you thinking about a way more interesting question when it comes to Meta integrating tokens into their platforms and that is in regards to infrastructure. Mark Zuckerberg has been careful about not repeating the mistakes of the past when it comes to being in control of platforms. So the big question is whether they will build their own blockchain to remain in control of their narrative.

This is a new weekly format keeping you up to date with all things Tokens, Protocols, Culture, and more.

The third week of January saw a lot of high-profile announcements shaking up the world of Web3. From Brands paving the way towards a non-fungible future to real products and features being shipped by some of Web2s biggest companies, 2022 starts off strong.

The Week started off with a big announcement by no other than the king of real-world collectibles. StockX the sneaker, fashion, and collectibles marketplace that originated in the sneaker hype that started in 2016 just announced that they are working on a marketplace for tokenized assets (NFTs). Tokenizing the real world is a trend that has been building up for a long time. Tokenizing real-world collectibles might be the first step to bridging the real world to the blockchain world and giving NFTs an IoT (Internet of Things) type of utility. StockX has been a master in capitalizing on hype and unlocking liquidity for high-demand assets since culture and commerce first converged in Sneakers and streetwear. It is gonna be interesting to see how tokenized sneakers, clothes, and other real-world collectibles will shake up the non-fungible market.

The second big news of the Week would be the recently announced 69 Billion Dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. The hit Game Maker of titles like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Overwatch has announced that Microsoft is going to acquire them. Microsoft who has been steadily growing its Portfolio of gaming studios, Dev teams, and hardware has announced in a joined press release that they believe in the future of Gaming and digital Worlds, also possibly hinting at the rumors of Blizzard experimenting with in-game Tokens.

While Microsoft’s focus on the future of gaming shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, this still marks the biggest game studio acquisition in the history of video games and further confirms big techs’ focus on building the next generation of digital worlds and brands across platforms. And if the rumors are true, Activision Blizzard might be one of the first household names to enter the crypto gaming space this year.

This has been a long time in the making with the earliest reports about the crypto team at Twitter emerging in the third quarter of 2021. Yet there was still a lot of uncertainty whether the leadership change and the absence of Jack Dorsey (EX CEO and Co-Founder of Twitter) would affect the direction of the endeavor. Yet out of the blue (pun intended), Twitter rolled out the feature on Thursday, January 20th to all Twitter Blue members allowing people to verify their NFT holdings by connecting to the Wallet of their choice. The feature is powered by Openseas API and Twitter announced that the feature is a joined Collaboration between multiple big Crypto Companies (OS, MetaMask, Rainbow to name a few).

This marks the first official Web3 integration on Social Media and Twitter has finally taken action to acknowledge the importance of the Web3 community on their platform. This begs the question of who will follow their lead and whether Discord will come back to act on their Problems.

On January 20th various Newspapers broke the news that Meta (ex: Facebook) is experimenting with integrating NFTs into their services like Instagram. The articles discuss how Meta is experimenting with minting and trading NFTs on their platform which could possibly bring their billions of users into the NFT space. That connection between culture and blockchain could very well be used by the platforms that already have universal access to the global population.

To get you thinking about a way more interesting question when it comes to Meta integrating tokens into their platforms and that is in regards to infrastructure. Mark Zuckerberg has been careful about not repeating the mistakes of the past when it comes to being in control of platforms. So the big question is whether they will build their own blockchain to remain in control of their narrative.