#176 - Magic Eden makes big moves into BTC and gaming

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the newsletter that just keeps hitting you with the biggest stories in web3.

Today,

1. Magic Eden 🪄 opens Bitcoin marketplace and web3 game hub

2. Bing's comeback 🔎 the story so far

3. The Glimmering 🐲 a web3 DnD project

Plus, all the web3 headlines, memes, and Tweets of the day.

Top 24hr collections 📈

via OpenSea

1. Pudgy Penguins - 497 sales earning 2,372 ETH (169%)

2. Azuki - 152 sales earning 2,036 ETH (15%)

3. Doodles - 480 sales earning 1,784 ETH (357%)

4. MAYC - 88 sales earning 1,129 ETH (39%)

5. BAYC - 19 sales earning 1,103 ETH (22%)

Magic Eden moves into Bitcoin and gaming

Marketplace Magic Eden has always branded itself as a pioneer.

It began as a home for Solana-based NFTs and was one of the first platforms to experiment with royalty-optional sales.

Now, Magic Eden is innovating again – by becoming the only major marketplace to support Bitcoin Ordinals.

What's the big deal?

Ordinal inscriptions (The BTC equivalent of NFTs) continue to grow in popularity

But options for buying and selling Ordinals have so far been limited to startup platforms or OTC deals, with no fully mainstream option.

Now, collectors can trade Ordinals on an established, well-known marketplace – so expect sales to go ⬆️.

What's on the marketplace?

Around 70 Ordinals collections currently appear on Magic Eden, including notable early collections Taproot Wizards and Inscribed Pepes.

When the marketplace is fully rolled out, all Bitcoin inscriptions will be available.

The UX gets a thumbs-up from this guy. 👆

The marketplace comes after DeGods, one of the main collections on Solana and Magic Eden, dropped a set of previously burned NFTs as BTC Ordinals.

• For more info, follow the dedicated Magic Eden BTC Twitter.

• Also check out: gamma.io - another recently launched BTC NFT marketplace

And... Magic Eden is also expanding into web3 gaming

They've been busy in paradise. Now, you can also use Magic Eden as a hub for finding the best new web3 games:

The Magic Eden Game hub supports Polygon, Solana, and Ethereum-based games, and will showcase some of the projects from Magic Eden-funded gaming studios.

Around 70 games currently appear on the hub, including:

• Aurory

• Photo Finish Horse Racing

• The Remnants

It's more than just a list of games, too. There are demos, stats, NFT galleries, and leaderboards to help gamers find the right titles for them.

Notable Tweets ✅

On the web3 wire

A hacker might have just earned 2.8 million $ARB in today's airdrop 🪂 1,660 airdrop-eligible wallets have been connected to a single address.

Annual White House economic report is predictably damning of crypto 📑The overview calls digital assets "highly volatile and subject to fraud."

Coinbase expands features for Brazilian users 🇧🇷The exchange is now available in Brazilian Portuguese and supports easy account top-ups with Brazilian Reals.

What's going on over at Bing?

You've probably seen the news: Microsoft's Bing is staging a comeback.

Google thought it had won the Search wars. The browser battlefields have lain quiet for a decade. Ask Jeeves was last seen working at a Wendy's drive-thru.

Then came the Large-Language-Model chatbots. And a new, post-search future suddenly revealed itself to us – with Bing positioned at its forefront.

So what has Microsoft actually changed with Bing? Here's the story so far.

First, Microsoft acquired a larger share of OpenAI

They were already big investors – but at the end of January, MSFT became OpenAI's largest shareholder.

The deal was more than financial, with OpenAI sharing their research and Microsoft providing use of its Azure cloud computing systems.

Then, they integrated a Chat-GPT variant into Bing

In February, Microsoft previewed an early version of what chat-enhanced Search will look like – by plugging a GPT-powered chatbot into Bing's search bar.

Early users of the new AI were surprised by Bing's often emotional, personal responses, suggesting Microsoft still has some fine-tuning to do.

But the bot's slightly surreal answers actually helped with Bing's news coverage – they even scored an NYT front page.

Bing's AI calls itself Sydney (an internal code name for the project that the bot decided to adopt) and can reorganize search results into a casual response, complete with cited sources.

Since the new-look search became available to the public, Bing did something that nobody would have predicted a few months ago:

It outperformed Google on a KPI!

Ok... so maybe more of a PI than a KPI, but Bing page visits rose 15.8% over the past month or so, compared to a 1% decline for Google.

Now, Bing is getting more new AI features

Microsoft's latest Bing update will include AI image creation. Image Creator uses DALL-E, OpenAI’s offering on the image generation front.

The company is also releasing two more Search view formats:

• Visual Stories. An "engaging way to search and interact with content, offering images and short videos"

• Knowledge Cards. An "AI-powered infographic-inspired experience that provides fun facts and key information at a glance"

Next in Microsoft's battleplan: cross-product AI

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that "every product of Microsoft will have some AI capabilities" in the future.

My guess is that Microsoft is moving towards a unified AI-powered interface.

Imagine your desktop as an intelligent assistant – you talk to your device, and it performs tasks, opens apps, and finds the information you need.

Naturally, Google is also evolving to include an LLM in its search UI.

Their chatbot search tool is called Bard, and it released to tepid reviews a couple of days ago.

Decentra Daily's featured game: The Glimmering

Wanna learn to play 5e DnD, plus be part of the next kick-ass blue chip project? ⚔️

GRIPNR is the web3 company behind Tabletop RPG, The Glimmering. On March 30th, they’re doing something we’ve never seen done before – launching a Genesis NFT Collection and game platform on the same day.

Holders of GRIPNR's Genesis Collection Heroes will receive:

• A lifetime subscription to the On-chain Play Platform

• Early access to all future games built on the GRIPNR protocol

• Access to all of GRIPNR’s published materials (deep delves, heroes guide, game modules, etc.)

• Added value and rarity to NFTs through gameplay

PLUS preferred access to mint The Glimmering Mutant Apes, an exclusive collection in partnership with J1mmy.eth, launching this summer.

It’s time to BE LEGENDARY. 🦾 Load up on MATIC, head to the GRIPNR Discord, and get on their allow list before March 30th.

Meme of the day

Have a great day! 👋

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