/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down){kind=logo}
March 9, 2024
Issue No. 94
CURATOR:
Welcome to this week's AtherXplorer, covering the latest in gaming, blockchain, and everything in between.
This week’s top picks include:
Featured
Sipher Odyssey’s Open Alpha is NOW LIVE!
We’ve launched Sipher Odyssey’s Open Alpha after nearly 3 years of hard work.
This marks the beginning of a phase that will be critical to refining the game ahead of worldwide release, and you can now download the game from the App Store or Google Play to explore the world and provide feedback to help us reach this ambitious goal.
It also marks the ending of our Closed Alpha, in which we obtained incredible feedback that helped elevate our Open Alpha experience. In gratitude for your support received during our Closed Alpha, we’ve taken a snapshot of your progression and achievements from the Closed Alpha period (for future use 😉)
A big THANK YOU to over 64,000 players who pre-registered, and to many players who dedicated a plethora of hours for testing. Another big THANK YOU to our partners, who were also crucial in supporting this phase and helping us reach wider audiences.
Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic Announces Claude 3 and Claims its Better than GPT-4
AI company Anthropic announced the latest version of its GenAI system Claude, called Claude 3, which it claims outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4 model. Claude 3 comes in three versions with different capabilities and memory sizes. It is Anthropic's first model that can analyze both text and images, allowing it to compare up to 20 images. However, it cannot identify people or perform tasks requiring spatial reasoning or object counting well.
Customers can expect Claude 3 to better follow instructions, provide structured outputs, converse in multiple languages, and refuse answers less frequently compared to prior models. It also has an expanded memory/context window of up to 1 million tokens. Opus and Sonnet versions are now available through Anthropic's platforms and services from Amazon and Google, with Haiku to follow later. Pricing scales based on input/output tokens.
While an improvement, Anthropic acknowledges Claude 3 still faces issues like bias, inability to search the web, and weaker performance in low-resource languages compared to English. Anthropic plans to continue developing Claude 3 with new abilities like advanced tasks automation and interactive coding capabilities.
Zapier Launches ‘Central’, AI Centered Workspace
Zapier, a leading platform for automating workflows across business apps, has launched Zapier Central, an AI workspace that allows customers to build AI agents using natural language. Similar to tools from OpenAI and Hugging Face, users can describe what they want their bot to do without coding.
Zapier Central provides more fields for specifying triggers that initiate behaviors, trigger phrases to deploy the bot, and actions it can perform using connected apps and services from Zapier's platform of over 6,000 integrations. This allows for more customized automated services than direct-to-consumer options. Zapier's co-founder noted that Zaps have run 50 million AI tasks and AI Actions have run 500,000+ actions. He also mentioned that the AI bots can work both offline and online, interacting with live app data or taking action based on user review and commands.
Some early users have posted examples of their created bots. Zapier's co-founder and former AI lead called the launch the start of a "new era of AI Automation," as it gives Zapier's large customer base of over 2.2 million an easy way to benefit from AI without technical skills.
DeepMind Alums Unveil AI Video Generation Tool ‘Harper’
AI-powered video generation is an emerging field following OpenAI's release of the Sora model. Two former DeepMind researchers, Yishu Miao and Ziyu Wang, have publicly launched their video generation tool Haiper with its own underlying AI model. Miao previously worked at TikTok while Wang worked at DeepMind and Google. They started Haiper in 2021 after working on 3D reconstruction using neural networks and finding video generation a more fascinating problem.
Haiper has raised $13.8 million in seed funding led by Octopus Ventures. On its consumer website, users can freely generate two-second HD videos or four-second lower quality videos by prompt. It also offers image animation and style transfer. While aiming to keep core features free to build a community, Haiper has commercial partnerships like with JD.com and considers subscriptions.
Haiper replicated a Sora prompt with quality results. Haiper wants to build a core video generation model for other developers while iterating rapidly based on their feedback, and may open source models down the line. The company currently has around 20 employees and is actively hiring for multiple roles across engineering and marketing.
In Other AI News…
Gaming
Hades Coming To Netflix on iOS
The critically acclaimed roguelite game Hades from developer Supergiant Games is coming to Netflix on iOS devices starting March 19th. While Netflix may seem like an unusual platform for a game already available on consoles and PC, the mobile version will feature 60fps gameplay, redesigned menus and interfaces, fully customizable on-screen controls, cloud saves, achievements, and offline play.
A new trailer shows off the Netflix version. Game Informer gave Hades an 8.5/10 praising its high-octane action and thoughtful take on Greek mythology that transforms old stories into modern relationship commentaries.
The release on Netflix provides an opportunity to replay Hades before the early access launch of the sequel Hades II planned for this year. Hades joins a growing list of other well-received games on Netflix including Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, Katana Zero, Death's Door, and Braid: Anniversary Edition.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Releases Character Creator and Storage Ahead of the Game’s Release
Capcom has released a character creator and storage for Dragon's Dogma 2 ahead of the game's March 22nd release. The creator allows players to design up to five characters and main Pawn avatars, choosing from four starting vocations and over a dozen presets. Any created avatars will carry over into the full game. Dragon's Dogma 2 is the sequel to the 2012 game, with the main story taking over 30 hours to complete but over 100 hours for full exploration.
The character creator is available to download from the game's PS5, Xbox, and Steam pages. It gives players robust customization tools to design their characters. While four basic vocations are available at the start, Dragon's Dogma 2 will feature six advanced vocations that must be unlocked and cannot be assigned to Pawns due to their complexity. Each vocation offers a unique playstyle and abilities.
March 22nd will see three major releases, providing plenty of variety for gamers. Along with Dragon's Dogma 2, PlayStation exclusive Rise of the Ronin and Switch title Princess Peach: Showtime will launch, continuing the strong lineup of 2024 so far including Tekken 8, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
Season 2 of Helldivers 2 Announced for Next Week
Arrowhead Game Studio has announced that Season 2 of Helldivers 2 will launch next week on March 14th with a new "Cutting Edge" Warbond. This Warbond contains high-tech, futuristic armor prototypes, weapons, capes, emotes and more for players to access new loadout potential.
Within the battle pass style "Acquisitions" track are multiple armor sets like the EX-03 with rubber insulation and 400,000-volt wires and the EX-16 with an electric arc magnetic field generator. New weapons include the LAS-16 laser rifle that fires in bursts without reloading and the ARC-12 Blitzer that projects close-range lightning arcs or powerful bolts.
Additionally, players can unlock the SG-8P plasma shotgun, LAS-7 Dagger pistol, and new G-23 Stun grenade. The Warbond provides matching player cards for each cape unlock and three new emotes. It releases on March 14th for the Helldivers 2 Destroyer Acquisition panels.
In Other Gaming News…
Web3, Metaverse, and NFTs
Bitcoin Price Surges to Another All-Time High Above $70,000
Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high above $70,000 on Friday, beating its previous record from earlier in the week. It rose as high as $70,099 according to Coinbase data, up 4% in 24 hours. However, as on Tuesday, it immediately dumped after setting the new peak, falling to $68,172 within minutes. Bitcoin has seen strong gains over the past month, rising over 60% and doubling since last October. This follows a bear market where it fell as low as $16,000 in November after the FTX exchange collapse.
The recent approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in January, which have seen record trading volumes, is a major factor driving the renewed surge. Excitement around next month's Bitcoin halving event, where mining rewards are cut in half, is also contributing. The halving occurs every four years and historically impacts the coin's price.
After breaking its 2021 high on Tuesday, Bitcoin quickly crashed below $61,000 by mid-afternoon before recovering to end the day at $66,000, and has been gradually gaining ground since then in its climb to a new all-time peak.
Ordinals on Fire this Week, Flipping Ethereum NFTs
Bitcoin-based NFT sales surged last week, overtaking Ethereum with $168.5 million in sales compared to Ethereum's $162 million. This was led by a spike in Ordinals collections, with uncategorized Ordinals alone generating over $43 million. NodeMonkes, one of the first and largest Ordinals collections, saw a nearly 170% week-over-week increase to $41 million in sales. Additionally, the Natcats collection made over $10 million. Ordinals launched in January 2023 and allows embedding files like images into satoshis (the smallest Bitcoin unit).
NodeMonkes, created in December, was one of the first 10,000 collection released on Bitcoin and claimed that title.By March 2nd, NodeMonkes' market cap reached over $500 million, making it the third largest PFP-style collection across all blockchains. While the reasons for its recent surge are unclear, it was noted that being the first large collection on Bitcoin, the first blockchain, provides it a compelling narrative for speculative investors.
Shrapnel Tweaks Token Schedule with 75% Less $SHRAP Unlocking in April
Gaming studio Neon Machine announced a revision to the SHRAP token unlock schedule for their blockchain game Shrapnel on Avalanche. Unlocks from community rewards and ecosystem funds will remain as planned, but other unlocks in April will be reduced by 75% due to the new nonlinear schedule. This aligns token distribution with the development timeline as new features enhance utility. The changes impact team, advisor, seed, and strategic holder unlocks.
SHRAP is used for rewards in early access competitions, publishing user-created content and skins, and community voting. It's currently priced around $0.29 with a $127M market cap, up 48% in a month but below its December high. Investors watch unlock schedules as recipients could dump holdings, impacting price.
In Other Web3 & Metaverse News…
SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to our newsletter today and be the first to receive Sipher news, AtherXplorer weekly issues, and new AtherXperiment posts. Sign up now and get ahead of the game!