Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the most interesting news pertaining to NFTs, culture, and virtual worlds. Email marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
Apple may have fallen short of analyst expectations with its earnings on Thursday, but its metaverse ambitions are still flying high. According to a recent report by the Information, the company is working on a way for users to create augmented reality apps for the App Store with the help of Siri.
The company is also developing a way for users to create 3D models from real-life objects, which will be helpful for realistic AR applications. Apple also is rumored to be working on glasses that will have both AR and VR capabilities, but the company is more interested in AR.
Crypto-enabled metaverses like The Sandbox and Decentraland also had some good news this week. The cryptocurrencies associated with both platforms were up 94% and 156%, respectively for January and outpaced both Bitcoin and Ether, which saw double-digit gains this month.
The boost in the two bigger cryptocurrencies…