Samsung Opens Metaverse Store in Decentraland

Electronics giant Samsung is venturing into the metaverse with the opening of a virtual store in Decentraland.

Named after Samsung's flagship 837 store in New York, the Samsung 837X virtual store will open for business for a limited time from today, per a press release from the company.

Decentraland users will be invited to explore an "experiential playground" and earn NFT rewards by completing quests.

The metaverse experience will consist of three areas, the Connectivity Theater (which showcases news from Samsung's stage at CES 2022), the Sustainability Forest, which comprises a "journey through millions of trees" to mark the company's sustainability initiatives, and the Customization Stage.

The latter will showcase a live in-metaverse dance party hosted by DJ Gamma Vibes from the physical 837 store, with NFT badge holders entered into a raffle to win Samsung-branded swag for their Decentraland avatars.

"The metaverse empowers us to transcend physical and spatial limits to create unique virtual experiences that could not happen otherwise," said Michelle Crossan-Matos, Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Samsung Electronics America, in a statement accompanying the release.

Following its launch in Decentraland, the company plans to take 837X on the virtual road to other metaverse platforms.

Samsung and crypto

Samsung has joined a number of brands in flocking to the metaverse, a persistent virtual world in which users interact as avatars.

Corporations like Pepsi and Budweiser have taken to buying up NFTs, Nike has filed trademark requests for virtual goods, and Adidas has announced a collaboration with metaverse platform The Sandbox.

This corporate metaverse land grab came on the heels of Facebook's late-2021 rebranding as Meta, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing that "we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first."

Samsung has something of a head start on its rivals as far as crypto and blockchain is concerned; its flagship Galaxy smartphones have incorporated a blockchain wallet since 2019, adding support for crypto hardware wallets last year, while just this week, the South Korean electronics giant took to the stage at CES to announce that its 2022 line of smart TVs would include support for NFTs.