First episode of 2026 and we’re setting the frame for what matters this year: AI is hitting escape velocity, “creation” is getting commoditized, and that changes everything from business models to the metaverse thesis.
We talk through the cultural shift (the 2025 existential turn), why low-sentiment periods are when you should be paying the most attention, and how social media incentives reward overreaction. Then we zoom out to the macro: metals ripping, Bitcoin lag dynamics, and what a “real” 2026 setup could look like.
On the crypto side, we dig into the creator coin debate and why the fan-to-investor switch breaks expectations, using the Nick Shirley Zora post as a live case study. Finally, we share our north star: a world where CoinGecko has an “NAT” tab, non-arbitrary tokens become a real market category, and miners distributing NAT becomes the moment the market can’t ignore.
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.
We have returning faces as well as new ones on this week's roundtable discussions. New at the roundtable is OpenNFT and HPrivakos. We gather to debrief on this week's events in Decentraland and first up is the Business Conference hosted by DCLcore by Matty from DCLBlogger.com. There were 4 total presenters including MetaZone to discuss their buisness as it related to Decentraland. We pose the question on what kind of audience is Decentraland really focused on when it comes to building out the metaverse. We also recognize the thought process someone goes through when experiencing Decentraland for the first time as well as CryptoVoxels. Finally, with the help of HPrivakos, we get a peek behind the curtain as to why and how Decentraland works as a decentralized platform.
Decentraland Roundtable 6 is back with a larger group for a larger discussion. We get into it with some of the biggest contributors in Decentraland to discuss the idea of an open market for wearables. Does restricting the supply early on make sense to minimize the explosion of wearables? Will an open market render the existing supply valueless? We all agree that we have to limit nefarious content from showing up in the world so we discuss a few methods on how to do that. The real question is if you can limit one piece of content you could limit any piece of content. What's the most agreeable method to reasonably censor negative content? We then pick apart how decentralized is Decentraland when it comes to DMCA take downs and other possibilities of outside censorship. Finally, we discuss the flexible capabilities of being in the metaverse including a better way to experience a conference!
In Roundtable 5 we go in depth comparing Decentraland with Second Life. We go into how and why Second Life came into a billion dollar in volume. What's missing in Decentraland to make a multi billion dollar market place as well. We also discuss how to properly hold a metaverse conference where the experience in the metaverse wouldn't be possible in real life. We also discuss audio and video capabilities support in Decentraland. Finally, the never ending wearables debate continues.