Source: Bankless
Translation: Jordan, LianGuaiNews
On September 27th, retail giant Walmart officially announced that it will sell the NFT project Pudgy Penguins toy series in 2,000 supermarkets across the United States. Each Pudgy toy can access the digital social platform Pudgy World based on zkSync Era. Just a day earlier, a development roadmap for Microsoft Xbox was leaked on the gaming forum ResetEra, which showed that the tech giant plans to integrate cryptocurrency wallets into Xbox.
Although the current NFT trading market is still relatively sluggish, the crypto community has discovered that NFTs have quietly begun to integrate into the mainstream.
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Walmart launches “Pudgy Penguins” toys: Perfect integration of NFT and real life scenarios
In the collaboration between Walmart and “Pudgy Penguins,” in addition to being cute, the physical Pudgy Toys each have a QR code. After scanning the code, users can unlock and exchange corresponding digital characters in Pudgy World and participate in “multiplayer digital social experiences.”
“Pudgy Penguins” has successfully integrated real-life scenarios with NFTs in collaboration with Walmart, especially for “newbies” who are not familiar with this emerging field. Through the “Pudgy Penguins” toys, they can have their first Web3 experience. On the other hand, each “Pudgy Penguins” toy sold by Walmart is associated with existing NFT IPs, ensuring that the relevant NFT holders can receive licensing fees, achieving a win-win situation.
It is worth noting that the first batch of “Pudgy Penguins” toys listed at Walmart this time also incorporate elements from other NFT series, such as Meebits, DeGods, y00ts, etc. For example, you can pair a DeGods T-shirt with a “Pudgy Penguins” toy, or a hoodie from y00ts, or other wearable devices from Meebits.
Microsoft Xbox may introduce a crypto wallet: Another tech giant enters the scene
On September 26th, a document related to Microsoft was leaked on the gaming forum ResetEra. After being posted by a user named “LightKiosk,” it attracted great attention from the Web3 community because it revealed a key piece of information about Microsoft’s future vision: introducing a cryptocurrency wallet on Xbox.
It is reported that the next-generation game console envisioned by Microsoft is called “Gen 10.” Its plan is not only to create a game console, but to integrate Xbox, gamepad systems, mobile phones, web browsers, and even “cloud consoles” together.
According to Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Microsoft is currently involved in a legal battle with the US Federal Trade Commission regarding the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. As a result, they had to submit documents to the court, which led to the leak of this document introducing Xbox’s plans for 2024 and beyond. However, Phil Spencer did not seem to deny the introduction of a crypto wallet on Xbox, only stating that “while there are many changes planned for Xbox, there are also many exciting things happening now and in the future.”
Therefore, we have reason to believe that Microsoft has plans to further explore blockchain-based payments and NFT games, and at least two points have been indicated:
1. The Xbox team has been trying to integrate Web3 and NFT, or is working towards that direction;
2. The Xbox team still has the possibility of integrating a crypto wallet into the platform, and subsequently introducing cryptocurrencies and NFTs into its ecosystem.
The crypto community even speculates that the integration of a crypto wallet by Xbox could open up new use cases for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, further highlighting the importance of traditional tech giants embracing the emerging Web3 industry.
On-chain RWA culture promotes mainstream adoption of NFTs
In the Web3 industry, “RWA” refers to Real World Assets, which are assets from the real world that are brought onto the blockchain and represented or showcased digitally on-chain. After the DeFi boom, RWA has become the next frontier market in the crypto space, and people’s interest in RWA is growing.
As real-world scenarios find their way onto the blockchain, the trend of RWA becoming the next big thing in the NFT space is becoming more and more apparent. S4mmy.eth, the Chief Analyst of OriginsNFT, pointed out in a social media post that the secondary market sales of skins in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) have reached an astonishing $216 million.
Contrary to the narrative of the mainstream news describing the digital collectibles market as “dead,” CSGO skins are mainly traded on the secondary market of the metaverse DMarket, which is built on the Mythos blockchain. This means that CSGO skins are already being traded on-chain (although players may not be aware of it), and the ownership of CSGO skin assets is recorded on the distributed ledger of Mythos by DMarket. When players redeem their skins, they treat the on-chain tokens as “redemption” receipts. Data from the NFT analytics platform Cryptoslam shows that Mythos is the second-highest blockchain in terms of NFT market transaction volume in the past thirty days, second only to Ethereum. Undoubtedly, this is due to the RWA concept derived from the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. (Further reading: “Dark horse” Mythos Chain: Main transaction volume comes from the acquired DMarket, aiming to create a “Web3 version of Steam”)
The boundary between the physical world and the digital world is becoming increasingly blurred, and platforms like DMarket are bound to play a key role in the future development of NFT digital collectibles, gaming, and other fields…
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