The questions are coming to gaming first, but it’s easy to imagine them cropping up elsewhere in the new economy. And when they do, platforms will be faced with a choice: shut it all down, as Steam did, and bet that the whole crypto craze will some day fall into the ocean; or be curious about it, the way Epic is, and see if there’s a way to channel... See more

Today, crypto technologies like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) enable a new model of character development and ownership that could not only unbundle creative media, but also lower the barrier to entry for online communities to bring new characters into the world.

The meme economy has quickly become a reality, with the creators of the internet’s most iconic memes auctioning NFTs for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars: Doge — $4 million, Disaster Girl — $570,000, Nyan Cat — $515,000.

That brings us to the other aspect of the cultural touchpoint — tokens. Robux are tokens in a virtual economy, similar to tokens on a blockchain. By creating an ecosystem that runs on virtual tokens, Roblox is essentially priming our kids to understand the nuances of the token economy. The only difference right now is that they can’t purchase their... See more