Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the most interesting news in the world of NFTs, culture, and the metaverse. Email marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
NFTs got some good news this week: After months of uncertainty and skittishness, the overall market jumped 137% quarter-over-quarter to an eye-popping $4.7 billion. Also, individual sales rose 8.56%, according to a report by DappRadar.
This fresh sense of excitement in the NFT space was exemplified by Tyler Hobbs’ QQL: Analogs exhibition (open until April 22), which I attended last week at Pace Gallery’s location on west 25th Street in New York City. The exhibition, which was a part of Pace Verso, the gallery's Web3 hub, showed a bunch of Hobbs’ work in the form of physical paintings, some created by the Brooklyn-based team at Artmatr.
The buzz at the event showed just how important the sense of community is among many of those in the NFT space—and how physical forms highlighting NFTs can drum up interest among non-crypto crowds.
I spoke to one local artist who had no idea what NFTs were—"just a contract to me,” she said—but who added that she was intrigued by one of Hobbs’ paintings and wanted to learn more about it.
In my mind, NFT creative art for the sake of art is having a resurgence, even as creator fees decline and Blur has overtaken OpenSea in trading volume recently (OpenSea still has more users).
Hobbs tends to agree with my view, I think. Although he’s been offline for the past four months and couldn’t comment directly on current market dynamics, he said he was happy to return to his painting roots for the exhibition and for people to experience it in a different way.
"People know me for my purely digital generative work—really well at this point—but I still have a really strong attachment to painting," he told me, "and I still find there’s something really special about work like this and the way that you get to interact with it in person at scale and to take in all the details."
That’s it for this week, but if you're in New York next week, happy NFT.NYC! Maybe I'll see you there.
In other news
The Drone Racing League will soon become the first sports property to stream its entire season in the metaverse. Following the 2022-23 DRL Algorand World Championship Race Finals on April 8, the league said it will host a two-day “metaverse marathon” where fans can watch the entire 2022-2023 season of races, where drones loop and dive through real-life courses at 90 mph.
By clicking a link on social media, users also can enter a digital twin of the Drone Racing League Simulator video game’s popular MegaCity map, where they’ll have the chance to meet champion pilots.
DJ and self-labeled “eco-warrior” BLOND:ISH is releasing a biodegradable PHA Vinyl record…that also features an NFT. Made in collaboration with the artist’s nonprofit, Bye Bye Plastics, the record uses naturally occurring bacteria to compose the the 14-track vinyl of her record #PlasticFreeParty. The NFTs will be sold in a 72-hour-long sale—each for 0.04ETH—on sound.xyz, on April 11. Each NFT purchased will be redeemable for a physical copy of the bio vinyl.
Web3 collectible card game Wildcard is hosting its first public mint on April 20, via Magic Eden, for a series of 4,444 NFT “WildPasses” on the Polygon blockchain. The NFTs will give buyers access to holder-only airdrops, priority access to playtesting, and early access to ownership opportunities within the Wildcard Universe. The WildPass also will offer exclusive private developer access, such as holder-only roundtable discussions, roadmap sneak peeks, and more.
