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January 8, 2026

Summary

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.

64

Summary

We gather for another roundtable number four. The usual suspects return as we debrief from our previous discussion of the LAO. A way to govern the DAO funds in Decentraland is one of the more polarizing discussions to have. Sustainability seems to be the most intuitive way to govern the funds but a for profit DAO does come with consequences. In another discussion point, how do you determine the best metaverse? Who becomes liable when a deployment is considered detrimental to society? Who has the responsibility to throttle content? Finally, we discuss what Decentraland should be prioritizing in the short term.

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63

Summary

We just recently discovered the LAO in our quest to govern DAO funds currently in Decentraland. In today's discussion with bring in Pri Desai from Openlaw.io to speak with us about their upcoming launch of the LAO which is a member directed venture capital crowd fund for accredited investors. In this fund anyone can propose their project and allow 100 members of the LAO to vote to fund your project. We open the discussion with the relationship between OpenLaw and the LAO and the inspiration for the LAO. Our discussion includes how a blockchain community can improve with a for profit venture backing it. One of our main attractions to the LAO is that it provides a mechanism for sustainable growth of a pool of funds.

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62

Summary

In the 3rd installment of the Decentraland Roundtable, we bring new faces into the discussion inlcuding Baus from Decentral Games and Daniel from PolygonalMind. In today's roundtable our topic around the social features of Decentraland are being improved and how this will help retain new players. We brainstorm ways to improve that retention and what the collective community can do to help. Another important topic is whether or not to make wearable creation a free market minting process or one where you apply for a whitelist. Many other metaverses allow for a seamless onboarding process whereas Decentraland requires you to have a metamask. Is eliminating the wallet requirement good enough to bring in more people? With new voices in today's discussion, the DAO still has many ways it could be implemented. We discuss a few ways we can align the growth of Decentraland with the voters that influence the direction of the metaverse.

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61

Summary

In the second installment of the roundtable series the collective group discusses the latest developments within Decentraland. The group discusses the most efficient way of bringing the masses into Decentraland. One path is to focus on developers to create new experiences. Decentraland being the platform can facilitate unique experiences if the focus is to onboard developers. We bring up the LAO and maybe have the DAO focused on replenishing their reserves will align the incentives for all parties involved. With the Foundation forming, we're getting a more transparent look as to what the team is building and better communication with the community. At the end, we take a look at the proposal for creating wearables and authorizing collections.

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60

Summary

With the ongoing pandemic, Decentraland and Binance join forces to fight COVID-19. At CryptoValley you can donate $10 worth of ETH and get an NFT wearable mask for your avatar. This is just an example of the crypto community coming together in the metaverse to help improve the situation for the real heroes on the front lines, the healthcare industry. In another update in Decentraland, the ability to stream audio has now become a meta called Cyber Jukebox. The Event Calendar has also been updated which will be used as data to feed into the upcoming changes to the world map. Decentraland has also being transparent with their DAO efforts via their new forum. Finally we break down the LAO and how this relates to how Decentraland's DAO could run if the community decides to do it.

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