Avatars are influencers now: RTFKT and Daz3D are designing people--and wardrobes--for the metaverse.

• Author: Alsever, Jennifer

TOUTED AS A SERIES of connected digital worlds in which we will shop, play, work, and socialize, the forthcoming metaverse will be a place where we express ourselves via digital avatars. Already, people are buying and selling digital art, music, and fashion in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop.

Now, 3D digital startup Daz 3D (sister company to NFT and avatar company Tafi) and Nike-owned RTKFT (best known for its funky, hot NFT sneakers) are teaming up to put Utah on the map in this burgeoning digital world. The collaboration will allow anyone to build and dress 3D digital avatars that can be used in social media, video games, and NFTs. The idea? Build an ecosystem of avatars that people will rely on when they visit different virtual worlds in the future.

Here's how it works: RTFKT created CloneX, a series of anime-inspired 3D humanoids--which look more like Pixar cartoons--that owners can dress, design, and use to represent themselves while inside the online gaming platform Roblox, as well as in social media posts and virtual reality chats.

CloneX is the first in a broad ecosystem of avatars that the company will offer. The initial drop included 20,000 avatar NFTs for sale. At least 10,000 of them were made available first to people who have previously purchased RTFKT's NFTs, and then a second batch of 10,000 of them were made available to the public in November for 3 ETH each on the Ethereum blockchain in a Dutch auction.

Despite a controversial launch in which RTFKT got hacked, the company sold $95 million in less than five hours.

While it may seem obscure to the general public, artists and designers in the NFT space eagerly anticipated CloneX--making it perhaps one of the hottest NFTs to date. RTFKT collaborated with famed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who has worked with Kanye West, Louis Vuitton, and others. Users can export the CloneX avatars to gaming engines, animations, social media posts, and even AR filters in video conferencing-such as Google Meets--for interactive experiences.

A unique feature about this particular NFT is that anything a user's avatar wears--sunglasses, jackets, shoes, clothing, or hats, for instance--can be purchased as a one-of-a-kind physical version to be worn in the real world, too. A user could, for example, wear the same jacket in real life that their avatar wears to a digital concert in the metaverse.

Another unusual detail of this project is that...