4 things you need to know about the metaverse this week

The company behind the "Bored Ape" series of NFTs has raised around $285 million worth of cryptocurrency by selling tokens which represent land in a virtual world it says it is building. The rush to buy the assets crashed the Ethereum cryptocurrency blockchain, according to a report from Bloomberg. Last year, US start-up Yuga Labs created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, blockchain-based tokens representing a set of 10,000 computer-generated cartoon apes.

The Otherside metaverse will be a multi-player gaming environment, according to its website, which says it is currently under development.

Yuga Labs' Otherdeeds sale also drew attention to the risks within the emerging technology behind the metaverse. The sale comes shortly after the Bored Ape Yacht Club official Instagram account was hacked and a phishing link posted, allowing scammers to steal victims' NFTs.

Meta Platforms Inc is set to open its first physical store where shoppers can try out and buy virtual reality headsets and other gadgets as the company plots a course to take its highly touted metaverse mainstream.

The 1,550-square feet Meta Store at the company's Burlingame campus in California opens on 9 May, and will feature demos for its Quest 2 VR headset and video calling device Portal, as well as smart glasses it produces with Ray-Ban, Meta said.

Dubai’s new virtual assets regulator – VARA – is entering the metaverse, reports local English language daily, Gulf News. The report says VARA is the first regulator in the world to enter the virtual space. VARA has launched a MetaHQ in ‘The Sandbox’, a virtual world that will be a framework for the emerging metaverse landscape.

VARA seeks to "ensure that the regulator is accessible to its industry in their environment", it said in a statement. The strategy is to make for "collaborative engagement" between global virtual asset service providers (VASPs), industry leaders and regulatory authorities, the statement added.

Serie A attracts audiences from across the globe, but how fans can view matches is changing, as Italy's top football division enters the metaverse.

League leaders AC Milan's clash with Fiorentina at the San Siro stadium on 1 May was the first football match to be broadcast in the 'Serie A room in The Nemesis metaverse'. "We have chosen to be the first to broadcast a football match in the metaverse because we believe that the frontier of technological innovation is extremely important for a modern league such as Serie A," Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo said.