BBC Studios has partnered with Web3 specialist Reality+ to create a metaverse experience in The Sandbox where fans will be able to interact with immersive content from their favourite brands, including Top Gear and Doctor Who, and enjoy a BBC events space.

The joint venture between BBC Studios and Reality+ marks the first time the BBC will have a home in the metaverse, following a handful of brand activation experiments with metaverse platforms. Part virtual real estate, part amusement park, The Sandbox fully embraces the idea of the metaverse as a continuous shared digital space, in which players and brands can build, own, and monetise their experiences on blockchain.

BBC Studios joins over 400 other entertainment brands who have entered The Sandbox to date, including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Gucci Vault, The Walking Dead, and Adidas.

Nicki Sheard, President Brands & Licensing, BBC Studios, said, “I’m delighted that BBC Studios is partnering with Reality+ and The Sandbox on this exciting venture. While the metaverse is still in its infancy, it may shape how we consume and experience entertainment in the future and I’m looking forward to seeing how fans interact with our brands in this space. This project forms part of BBC Studios broader ambitious plans to grow our brands into new categories, with innovative technology and platforms forming an integral part of this.”

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Tony Pearce, Co-Founder, Reality+ said, “We’re excited to have extended our partnership with BBC Studios, not only to help them push the boundaries of what’s possible in the metaverse, but for the opportunity to deliver exciting new experiences for the fans of these world-renowned TV shows. We’ve already achieved so much with digital trading card game Doctor Who: Worlds Apart, and now with a fantastic platform like The Sandbox, there’s much more to come.”

Sebastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder at The Sandbox, added, “We’re proud that BBC Studios chose Reality+, a certified metaverse agency partner working on The Sandbox platform, to enter the metaverse with top global brands like Doctor Who and Top Gear. The BBC has a history of pioneering content that leverages the latest technology and putting it into mainstream households. We think this venture is an important step to bringing British culture and fans into virtual worlds.”

BBC Studios’ metaverse space in The Sandbox will launch later this year and further details will be released in due course.

Reality+ helps worldwide brands transition to Web3 with bespoke product, community and development strategies, backed by an award-winning technology platform. It has previously partnered with BBC Studios to develop the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart digital trading card game.

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The Odsy Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering and developing the Odsy Network ecosystem, today announced it raised $7.5M in seed funding that set the Odsy Network valuation at $250M. The round was led by Blockchange Ventures with participation of VCs, strategic partners and investment DAOs including Rubik Ventures, No Limit Holdings, Node Capital, Insignius Capital, FalconX, SolrDAO, TPC and others.

Over the past decade, the need for interconnected solutions that enable real world use cases, and the lack of an infrastructure for decentralized access control, drove Web3 builders to create centralized solutions and to the increased centralization of Web3. In the past year, following the collapses of centralized Web3 giants such as Celsius and FTX, it has become evident that centralized access control is an existential threat to Web3.

The Odsy Network provides a secure and programmable access control layer for all of Web3 through a new crypto primitive – dWallets (dynamic decentralized wallets). dWallets are programmable and transferable signing mechanisms that live on the decentralized Odsy Network, and that can sign transactions on practically any other blockchain.

“In the future, our money, IDs, assets and so much more will each be represented by valuable tokens on what is almost certain to be many different blockchains”, said Ken Seiff, General Partner Blockchange Ventures. “Just as each internet account requires a log-in, each blockchain requires a different wallet – and the tracking and maintenance of different wallets present a significant challenge and headache for users. This challenge will only grow as the number of blockchain networks multiply, and could continue to be a major obstacle to widespread consumer adoption. Odsy solves this challenge, and in doing so lowers the barrier to entry for mass adoption.”

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Since dWallets are programmable, Web3 builders will be able to use the Odsy Network in order to implement any access control logic in a completely decentralized way. This paves the way for Web3 builders to recreate existing solutions such as exchanges, custodians, bridges etc. in a trustless way, but also to create brand new solutions that were not possible before, like natively multi-chain DAOs or a marketplace where wallets could be traded.

While the Odsy Network is still in development, there are already over 10 projects actively building in the Odsy ecosystem, many of them VC-backed – including dWallet Labs who raised $5M in a round led by Digital Currency Group and Node Capital, and Fun who raised $3.9M in a round led by Tinder Co-Founder Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund.

“The potential of new solutions, ones that demonstrate real world use cases but cannot be built in today’s fragmented crypto ecosystems, is extremely compelling for ambitious Web3 builders. dWallets is an entirely new way to imagine how digital assets should be accessed and policy managed in a multi-chain world, which is especially important as the industry explores the emergence of tokenized assets and their corresponding risk & compliance requirements.” said Sean Lee, Executive Director at Odsy Foundation, and former CEO of Algorand Foundation.

To realize the potential of dWallets on the Odsy Network, significant improvements to the state-of-the-art in modern cryptography primitives such as MPC – Multi Party Computation – have been achieved. While existing threshold signature algorithms are centralized in nature and can only work with a small set of predefined parties, these  achievements by the Odsy project teams pave the way for the Odsy Network to be the first place where users can generate signed transactions to other blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, together with a large-scale permissionless set of validators.

“The technical and scientific challenges we are facing are amongst the most complex in crypto today, and we have one of the best research teams in the world with over 10 world-class experts in modern cryptography. Over the upcoming months we will publish the cryptographic research that makes dWallets and the Odsy Network possible, and also the novel engineering framework of Odsy that will be a key driver in connecting Web3 to the real world.” said Omer Sadika, Co-Founder of Odsy Network, CEO of dWallet Labs.

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To learn more about dWallets and the Odsy Network visit odsy.xyz.

Spielworks, a leading blockchain startup specializing in gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, launches its Web3 gaming accelerator, Wombat X to empower Web3 gaming projects to enhance their gaming experience and grow their audiences with the Wombat ecosystem. Highlighting the list of partners in the accelerator are Cronos, the first EVM-compatible Layer-1 network built on Cosmos SDK supported by Crypto.com and more than 400 developers and partners, and Newcoin, a Web3 infrastructure integrating economic, social, and cultural exchanges into an intuitive flow, solving network fragmentation problems. Web3 games enrolled in Wombat X gain access to grants, education, and the Wombat community of gamers, the biggest Web3 gaming community.

Web3 gaming was still able to raise $4.5 billion in venture capital last year despite harsh market conditions. Still, an overall developer shortage and a flawed UX plague the industry, effectively holding the industry back in its efforts to poach traditional gamers. Furthermore, many critics also point the finger at the lack of sustainable models and solid content-creator strategies as reasons for Web3 not being able to be a reliable gaming ecosystem.

The Wombat X accelerator enables innovative Web3 games to register and to bootstrap Wombat’s audience. With Wombat’s massive audience and Cronos’s established Web3 ecosystem, each game will receive invaluable exposure to its gaming audience for free, coaching and fast-tracking in Cronos’s own grant program. For Newcoin, its Web3 graph infrastructure emphasizing high-end fashion and creators makes it a natural fit for Wombat X’s focus on gaming to enhance the user experience.

The program includes three yearly classes covering the industry’s best practices, with at least five games being accepted per class. Ultimately, Wombat X revolves around providing members with the tools to build a strong foundation, with a focus on furthering growth opportunities through user acquisition and developing superior infrastructures.

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Other participants in the Wombat X accelerator include:

• Avicenne: a Web3 development studio creating digital products in a decentralized space, helping startups build and ship impactful MVPs.
• EOS Network Foundation: a nonprofit supporting the EOS Network, which powers the Web3 economy by providing a robust smart contract functionality that enables developers to build quality dApps.
• Lifty: a Web3 gaming platform providing analytics for numerous blockchain games, empowering users to assess projects before joining.
• Beamable: a Web3 gaming infrastructure platform allowing users to rapidly add social, commerce, content, and LiveOps features through an in-game marketplace.

To apply for Wombat X, applicants must meet these requirements:

• A playable demo release
• Integration with Wombat as preferred login option
• Integration with Cronos or one of Wombat’s supported blockchains (Wax, Polygon, BNB Chain, Ethereum, EOS, and more)
• A share of 0.3 percent of your token supply for Wombat’s audience
• Integration with Wombat’s Tracking software development kit (SDK)

Spielworks has built one of the fastest-growing blockchain gaming ecosystems in the market, featuring over of 3 million signups and 65,000 daily users. The ecosystem incorporates its multi-chain non-custodial Wombat Wallet, crypto rewards platform Womplay featuring 40 AA and AAA supported titles, and Top 20 NFT staking game Wombat Dungeon Master counting 1.5 million staked NFTs.

“Web3 gaming is in a beta stage currently and there is a pressing need to establish best practices around game development to ensure the industry’s long-term sustainability,” says Adrian Krion, Spielworks’ CEO and Co-Foudner. “By working with a wide range of promising Web3 gaming projects and startups, Wombat X aims to facilitate a more mature ecosystem. Our unique program provides a diverse educational curriculum while exposing our participants to Spielworks’ Wombat platform, the biggest Web3 gaming platform. Needless to say, we and all our partners can’t wait to launch.”