**Welcome back to episode 279 of The Block Runner Podcast. As always, we have your host William talking with your cohost I-man as we discuss cryptocurrency developments while we make this new technology relatable to you. You can watch the full episode on YouTube AND stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.
Here are some of the topics they discuss today:**
First up, revisit Bitcoin DeFi through the lens of this cycle’s emerging “industry cook”: digital-asset treasury companies.
Next, Do we really need native Bitcoin primitives, or will off-chain/custodial routes—UTXO time-locks and loan products be enough to make BTC productive?
and Finally, we pressure-test trench metas like Pokémon “phygital” and map where the music could stop.
Alright, let’s listen in!
William and Iman gather to discuss the latest updates with MetaZone and Decentraland. This week we go over our discoveries in incentivizing players to participate in competitive gameplay for prizes. We've gone through monetization as part of a gameplay mechanic and now we've held the largest prize for a competition. We'll be testing new ideas to see player interaction. NFT interoperability has been one of the main topics we discuss internally often. We go over what interoperability means, how it could impact gameplay, and the developer cost of doing so. Part of our daily activities is supporting the upcoming Ethermon game in Decentraland. We go over some details of some of the gameplay mechanics and what players will be able to do with their new Ethermon pets. Finally, we also announce the winner to our largest competition so far and the biggest prize so far; a land parcel in Decentraland.
We are proud to announce our collaboration with Ethermon to bring Digital Pets into Decentraland! In this collaboration we help the Ethermon team distribute their digital pet game to various landowners. Each landowner will be able to sell Ethermon as well We started this journey with just a podcast that evolved into a tool for the Decentraland community that allows creators to fund their own development. Each user generated creation is on its way to becoming an NFT and on that path we’ve generated over 2 million mana. That means over 1.4 million mana directly in the hands of the creators. With that level of creative resources we expect to see more development into Decentraland which will bring us closer to a well populated metaverse.
We interview Riorio from DCLPlazas.com, the leading provider of information, news, highlights, and so much more content describing whats going on in the metaverse. Rio is one of the original community members in Decentraland, giving him an extremely valuable perspective on the progression of the platform. The idea of an open decentralized metaverse is what initially attracted him to the space, and ever since then his mission has been to cover this evolution through the media platform he has created. Now dclplazas.com is expanding to cover additional blockchain based virtual worlds such as Somnium Space and Cryptovoxels.
We interview Kay from SugarClub, one of the most popular locations in Decentraland. Kay become one of the most successful creators on the MetaZone platform with over 40,000 in mana sales. We discuss what strategy did he use to achieve those sales numbers in 15 days, and what advice he could give to other creators. In our conversation, we get the origin story for SugarClub and how he sees DCL evolving on a weekly basis. We receive feedback from the creators point of view of how we should improve MetaZone for current and future creators.
We open up today's podcast with a speech from Steve Jobs from 1996 when he returns to Apple. He discusses the core values of Apple as well as the passion they have in the things they build. In our daily interactions we recognize there is a passion within the Decentraland community that fuels the creativity and development. This passion is what has fueled 1 million MANA in revenue through MetaZone all by creators. This is accomplished through only 20 creators where Metas are deployed at over 100 LANDs. The ability to accomplish something like this comes from the fact that Decentraland is an open market where anything can be built and the ones that survive are the ones who find a product market fit. Finally, we believe proof of work NFTs will end up being the most valuable NFTs.