Welcome to the OpenSea digest. Let’s look back through the biggest NFT and web3 news of the week.

Yuga Labs names James Hall to lead Otherside

Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has put James Hall, its head of engineering, in charge of Otherside, according to an X post by current Yuga Labs CEO Michael Figge, who goes by "figge" online. 

Figge said stepping back from daily oversight of Otherside will let him focus on the Bored Ape Yacht Club and ApeCoin, the ecosystem's cryptocurrency, while Hall takes over community and product decisions for Otherside. 

Hall said in another post that the next big project is the Otherside Economy, a system built around 74 collectible resources spread across 100,000 virtual land plots called Otherdeeds, where players can gather, build and trade with each other inside the world. 

Robinhood chain overtakes Solana on memecoins and RWAs

Tokenized stocks on Robinhood Chain, the network Robinhood launched about a month ago, averaged $29.7 million in daily DEX volume over the past week, more than Solana's two stock-token venues, xStocks ($11.1 million) and Backpack's Sunrise ($13.4 million), combined, according to a Dune dashboard maintained by OKX's Web3 wallet team.

MoonPay announces PayBox

MoonPay, the cryptocurrency payment company, just unveiled PayBox, a digital payment vault that connects to Claude or ChatGPT and lets a person's AI agent carry out transactions like trading tokens, bridging assets or booking travel, according to the company's press release. 

The tool is non-custodial, meaning wallet keys are split using multi-party computation and secured in hardware-isolated enclaves, so no single party, including MoonPay or the AI itself, can access a complete key or move funds alone.

Every transaction still requires a passkey approval from the user, either for each individual action or within limits the user sets in advance, and any approval expires after a single use. 

PayBox supports Solana and EVM-compatible networks including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon and Robinhood Chain, and works through x402, an open standard for AI-initiated payments.

Visa announces broad stablecoin strategy 

Visa is doubling down on stablecoins. According to its Q3 earnings call, the company says it's investing at every level, from the blockchains themselves to digital dollar infrastructure, as reported by Cointelegraph. 

Central to Visa’s stablecoin push is Open USD, a new stablecoin supported through Visa’s membership in the OpenStandard consortium, a group working to bring the coin to global money movement.

Meanwhile, Visa's own stablecoin platform launched, with capabilities rolling out to let partners settle transactions in stablecoins and manage digital wallets, starting with Open USD. It will eventually connect with Pismo, a company Visa owns, to support tokenized deposits, essentially digital versions of money already sitting in bank accounts. 

Executives also framed stablecoins and artificial intelligence as two sides of the same coin, describing stablecoins as reshaping the back end of commerce while AI reshapes the front end that shoppers actually interact with. 

Morgan Stanley launches Ethereum and Solana investment products

Morgan Stanley Investment Management has rolled out two new exchange-traded products built to track the price of ether and SOL, the digital tokens behind the Ethereum and Solana blockchain networks.

These two new products join a similar bitcoin-tracking product Morgan Stanley launched earlier this year, marking the firm's continued expansion into digital asset investing. 

Both new products plan to stake a portion of their holdings, a process that can generate extra returns on certain blockchain networks, and the firm says those returns will go to investors. 

Morgan Stanley frames the move as part of a broader effort to give clients simple access to digital assets alongside more traditional investments. ‍

Ethereum Mainnet turns 11 

Ethereum, the blockchain network, celebrated the 11th anniversary of its mainnet launch on Thursday.

The network's team framed the milestone alongside ongoing development, saying the next phase of upgrades is already underway.

Ethereum's mainnet, which first went live in 2015, underpins a wide range of applications including decentralized finance platforms, tokenized assets and stablecoins. The post did not detail specific upcoming features or a timeline for their release.

Midjourney acquires astrology app Co-Star

Midjourney, the AI lab known for its image and video generation tools, has acquired Co-Star, the social astrology app.

Co-Star, which has about 4.3 million monthly active users, helps people generate astrological birth charts and share them with friends, using a mix of AI and human writers for horoscopes and compatibility readings.

According to TechCrunch, Co-Star's roughly two dozen employees have joined Midjourney as part of the deal, adding to a product lineup that already includes ventures into medical and spa services.

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