Recruitment agency Marc Ellis becomes the United Arab Emirates’ first recruitment and training company to enter the metaverse.
The agency aims to establish itself on the metaverse to hire talent for public and private companies, the company said in a statement on Monday.

There are currently more than 400 million active metaverse global users, giving us a huge potential of candidate pool that isn’t easily accessible using traditional methods,” Marc Ellis Director Aws Ismail said.

The firm, which operates in the UAE and wider Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) region, aims to access the metaverse’s wide talent pool and support the hiring needs of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy to create more jobs in the country.
This is in line with the Dubai Metaverse Strategy which was launched by Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed in July. The strategy aims to contribute $4 billion to Dubai’s economy within five years and to support 40,000 virtual jobs, striving to position the emirate as one of the world’s top 10 players in the metaverse economy.
According to Marc Ellis, recruiters will have greater access to candidates as the company anticipates more users will continue to shift themselves into the digital space where they can apply for jobs in a safer and more interactive way due to the security and privacy offered by blockchain processes and immersive technologies that can be used to complement their interactions on the metaverse.

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Inspired by Swedish pop group ABBA's concert with digital avatars, metaverse-born singer, dancer and influencer Polar hopes to go from the metaverse to the real world with a debut performance, according to the digital team behind her.
The creation of media company TheSoul Publishing, Polar currently exists only in virtual world environments and on social media.
Her career took off in 2021 when she performed her debut single "Close To You" in the video game "Avakin Life," and she has 1.6 million followers on TikTok and a YouTube channel with more than 500,000 subscribers.
Fans were able to interact with her again last month at the game's annual Solar Sounds Festival, which Victor Potrel, TheSoul Publishing's vice president of platform partnerships, said attracted more than 4 million visitors last year.
"I want to perform a live show in a real venue in front of my real-world fans. It may not be as far away as people think," Polar said in answer to a question submitted by Reuters.
Potrel said that, while the focus was on the huge audience in the metaverse, her team was considering options for possible real events too.
"ABBA is doing a series of concerts where they are a hologram on stage, and we think that that's a type possible – to also bring Polar to the real world in this way," he said.

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Leading metaverse builder community SandStorm has released its highly anticipated “proposal and bid” platform.
This metaverse construction market pairs brands with builders from top virtual worlds including Decentraland and The Sandbox, allowing brands to deploy assets and experiences on demand.
Its decentralized approach aggregates the best builders to provide unparalleled quality and cost savings to brands pioneering the metaverse. 

Leading metaverse builder community SandStorm has released its highly anticipated “proposal and bid” platform.
This metaverse construction market pairs brands with builders from top virtual worlds including Decentraland and The Sandbox, allowing brands to deploy assets and experiences on demand.
Its decentralized approach aggregates the best builders to provide unparalleled quality and cost savings to brands pioneering the metaverse.

“Physical location for work has become much less important for many of us over the last two years. At SandStorm, we believe the future of work will be primarily driven by an individual’s skills and their ability to work on a team within the metaverse. As we move into a more digital society, asset creation skills for multiple virtual worlds showcased on a SandStorm profile will level the playing field for finding work.”
SandStorm CEO Steve McGarry said

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OutSad has launched a unique collection of NFTs designed to help metaverse explorers express their emotions. Recognizing the constraints on interpreting social cues within virtual environments, OutSad comprises a series of mood-changing characters that can accompany their owner as they roam parallel universes.
The culmination of 700 days of work, OutSad NFTs were created by an artist collective who developed more than 3,000 original painting manuscripts and 4,500 material models. It took hundreds of refactoring to complete 5,000 unique NFT assets. Each of the NFTs exists on the Ethereum blockchain, where they can be used to entice an array of metaverses and virtual worlds. 

The NFT collection was inspired by the static design of current PFP collections and the realization that these fail to reflect the personality of their owner. With most NFTs awarded to their buyer at random following a “reveal,” the owner is destined to end up with a character that bears little resemblance to their own. OutSad NFTs are intended to reflect every subtle emotional shift and mood change, and to adapt as their owners make in-game choices that will shape their destiny.
In addition to serving as PFPs that can be used as badges, avatars, and profile pictures, OutSad NFTs operate as membership badges. These provide various features and benefits, starting with entry to the fledgling OutSad ecosystem. As this grows over time, the community will be able to unlock new worlds and additional features.

More than just an NFT project, OutSad encourages innovation derived from an autonomous space where the community can generate new ideas and harness collective decision-making. OutSad NFTs grant the owner a worldwide license to use, copy and display the purchased art, along with any extensions that they choose to use, which means every holder owns individual commercial rights.
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ATOTONILCO EL ALTO, Jalisco, Mexico, Aug. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PATRÓN® Tequila, the world's number one super-premium tequila*, is entering the metaverse this summer for the first time with "Summer Made Sensational: A PATRÓN Pop-Up Series." The experience will offer tequila enthusiasts a vibrant escape through a unique cocktail-themed journey in Decentraland, a 3D virtual world browser-based platform.

"As a leader in the tequila category, innovation has always been essential to the core of PATRÓN Tequila which is why we are excited to embark on this unique, virtual journey in Decentraland," said Kathy Parker, President & Global Chief Marketing Officer of PATRÓN. "At PATRÓN, we celebrate creative communities like the metaverse that bring people together in a digital world. With this new venture, we hope to spark curiosity, creativity and connection this summer while offering our tequila fans a new way to experience the mastery behind our brand."
This entry into the metaverse is a natural progression for the brand after its initial venture into Web 3.0 through its first-ever NFT, PATRÓN Chairman's Reserve. "Summer Made Sensational: A PATRÓN Pop-Up Series" embraces the ever-growing metaverse with a captivating, virtual reality adventure and bar takeover experience inspired by three refreshingly perfect cocktails from PATRÓN - the PATRÓN Perfect Paloma, PATRÓN Silver & Soda, and PATRÓN Añejo Highball. US residents 21 and older will help bartenders find the essential ingredients needed for making each drink in three cocktail-themed quests, while also having the opportunity to explore limited time pop-ups and unlock exclusive PATRÓN NFT wearables.
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The cadre of high-design firms creating on-demand virtual architecture in the metaverse has grown recently with the announcement of PLP’s upcoming 5,000-piece NFT skyscraper collection, which they debuted earlier last month with help from VerseProp, a virtual property platform.
Ostensibly in keeping with trends indicated by its expanding digital client base, the London-based firm says its collection is meant to “bridge the gap between those interested in both digital and physical real estate.” An opportunity to design your own building alongside a PLP staffer is on offer as well, and they promise each building will have a “valuable commercial utility.” 

Up for grabs are the owning rights to a digital token derived from a concept building design that PLP says will come embedded with exclusive content such as webinar access and even physical artworks. The firm is pitching this as an exploration into not only the digital design of buildings but also the application of alternative sales structures and instruments like smart contracts that are going to become critical to architects and designers as the technology and use of metaverse spaces continue to evolve.
Towards that end, PLP says this new foray into NFTs and the metaverse, which was produced through its research arm PLP Labs, “raises key questions such as: Can design services be tokenized or distributed through smart contracts? To what extent is the metaverse a space for real-world designers?”

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Jadu is announcing that it will launch thousands of avatars built on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as it prepares for the augmented reality metaverse.
At the end of August, the Los Angeles company plans to sell 11,111 avatars, or AVAs, that can be uniquely owned thanks to authentication via the blockchain, said Asad J. Malik, CEO of Jadu, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The NFT le is part of a larger ambition to create a real-world AR gaming experiece and ecosystem with a continuous narrative that keeps players coming back to a place that blends animations and physical reality in a kind of mixed reality storytelling.
Jadu has raised a lot of money to date — $45 million to date, including a $36 million round led by Bain Capital Crypto — and it has also sold a variety of AR items in the past such as virtual hoverboards and jetbacks. Th

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As crypto gains popularity, people are wondering what the future holds for blockchain-based currencies and technologies, especially investors.
During Monaco Crypto Summit, investors and blockchain users alike got a first-hand glimpse at upcoming innovations and trends in crypto and the metaverse.
“The metaverse is not going to replace the real world, but it is going to create a massive additional audience to anything that’s happening in the real world that anyone around the world can participate in,” said Michael Gord (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of GDA Capital. “How amazing would it be for someone from Zimbabwe, someone from Sydney, and someone from Brazil to all be interested in what DigitalBits is doing in Monaco?”
Gord spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at Monaco Crypto Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the future of the metaverse, investing in crypto, metaverse infrastructure and more. (* Disclosure below.)
Follow the moneyWith innovations in Web 3.0 popping up regularly, it’s hard to know what’s important to focus on and what has the most promise. Gord shared what he’s most excited about in the future of crypto. The metaverse is what he’s most excited about.
“It’s the next multi-trillion-dollar market that feels like bitcoin in 2012,” Gord said. “In addition to that, we have the first regenerative finance platform that is presented here, using decentralized finance and blockchain technology to create a model so people can earn income while mining carbon credits.”
Even with exciting innovations on the horizon, the metaverse still leaves questions about security, privacy and possible corruption. What about the possibility of an open metaverse versus a metaverse with closed infrastructure?
“With the blockchain in 2012, private blockchains were all the rage by banking raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build up private blockchain infrastructure,” he said. “Private blockchains are generating multi-billion dollars of revenue annually, but they haven’t accrued multi-trillion dollars like the public blockchain has. I think the same thing will be in the metaverse. There’ll be open and closed infrastructure, and there already is closed.”
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The sporting industry is one of the world’s most valuable products, and so is gaming. Now, what do you get when you take these two and drop them into the metaverse? LootMogul might have the answer.
“We are building out a sports metaverse where we are bringing athletes, whether they’re NBA stars, NFL stars, WNBA, many of those athletes, into the metaverse,” said Raj Rajkotia (pictured), chief executive officer and chief technology officer of LootMogul. “Giving them the ownership of the entire metaverse commerce along with gameplay. We’re building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums and create their own training centers and media hubs.”
Rajkotia spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at Monaco Crypto Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the value of entertainment mediums like sports to the budding metaverse. (* Disclosure below.)
Empowering star athletes to contribute to and engage their communitiesWhile stars in leagues like the NBA and NFL are mostly paid well, it’s been mostly the corporate structures (i.e., the franchises) that have held most of the controlling power to build facilities and fund projects. A sports metaverse like LootMogul will diversify that one-sided paradigm, according to Rajkotia.
“Those kinds of brands are looking at how to give back to the community and engage with it. And Web3, especially with our platform, is giving that power back to the players,” he said.
LootMogul has already partnered with over 171 names from the NBA, NFL and WNBA, some of which include Carlos Boozer, Lisa Leslie and legendary basketball player/coach Michael Cooper.
“For example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but she really wants to empower women leadership and really help women in sports. So those are the angles that really people are excited about,” Rajkotia said.
Sports player careers are notoriously short, so doubling down on a platform like LootMogul and its royalty revenue system will mean players can better capitalize on their fame and brand loyalty long after they hang up their sneakers and cleats.
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Monaco Crypto Summit event:

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Telecom companies have a major role to play in delivering impactful metaverse experiencesThe metaverse is kind of a funny thing. It’s not really real just yet but given what we do know about it–a combination of connectivity, compute, graphics rendering, immersive user interfaces and a handful of attendant technologies–it’s already relatively clear what it will do once everything falls into place. This may sound familiar to those of us who started thinking (and writing) about 5G well before the standard was even set. With that, let’s take a look at some likely metaverse use cases, and use places, courtesy of Peter Linder, Ericsson’s head of 5G marketing in North America. 
As an aside, and to that earlier comment about pretty well knowing what 5G would be before it was actually real, this writer once upon a time hosted a panel including Linder wherein he compared 5G to golf, bowling and making cheese. He also very accurately predicted where we are today in terms of 5G being much more an enterprise than a consumer play and a technology dependent on a mix of spectrum types. Anyway…the metaverse. 
The metaverse at home, at the movies, and at the stadiumIn a recent blog post, Linder laid out 12 metaverse use cases; here we’ll take a look at some of the key points he works through. First, how we will we use the metaverse at home? This one is relatively straightforward–more immersive media experiences like gaming. In this case the how is maybe more interesting than the what. As operators, particularly in the U.S., look to leverage 5G to expand service revenues by providing home internet services via fixed wireless access, the metaverse could emerge as a key driver assuming demand comes around. “The majority of homes will be ‘metaversed’ by means of Wi-Fi, fiber, and 5G fixed wireless access,” he wrote. “Anybody who understands 5G knows that it is a perfect technology to deliver significantly improved latencies and experiences…VR/AR device vendors are already scrambling to make their devices 5G-enabled.”
He also makes another interesting point about the future of home media rooms and, as an extension of that, the way homes are designed. There’s a parallel here around the COVID-driven transition to working from home and remote working–basically if lots of people are working from home, they need office space. As such, home designers and builders will include more working spaces in new homes. The Atlantic covered that in this article, “Welcome to the Post-pandemic Dream Home.” As Linder wrote, “The next wave of immersive entertainment can make architects rethink the future of our media rooms…Our home of the future could thus transform into a great shared metaverse use place that is excellent for family and guests who can now be physically together yet digitally apart in their own worlds with ultra-personalized content.” ''

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