📝 Web3 Field Notes #20 – Culture, Baby
📝 Web3 Field Notes #20 – Culture, Baby
Ethereum's Shapella upgrade. Reddit drops new collection. FTX's potential reboot. NYT on Bitcoin & energy. a16z's 2023 State of Crypto report. NFTNow dropped its annual NFT100. New start-ups & more.
Hey, it’s Marc. I write about Bitcoin, Web3, and technology. ✌️
Welcome to another issue of my obsessively curated field notes (💎 at the bottom👇 ).
⏱️ Reading time: 4 min
“We’re seeing this convergence of culture, finance and technology, It’s no longer just a technological paradigm shift. It’s no longer just a new financial system. It’s also a new way in which culture is made, consumed and distributed.”
– Jamie Burke, Founder & CEO Outlier Ventures
📚 Key Reads
Beyond the hype: Is Web3 a socio-cultural system? – Highly relevant analysis. Web3 is not only a technology, but a cultural movement. Future brands will be built around the community and the cult around them, with ownership built in. By Thomas Isaa from Outlier Ventures. Link
a16z State of Crypto Report 2023. A yearly must-read. By a16z. Link
Marketing web3: audience, community, and more. Fantastic podcast with Amanda Cassatt, founder of Serotonin, a leading Web3 marketing agency. Must-listen for all marketers. By a16z. Link
What’s the utility of your token? A very helpful framework. By Jan Baeriswyl from Outlier Ventures. Link
Entertainment is a killer feature for NFTs. By Patrick Rivera. Link
Money crypto vs tech crypto. After FTX, I’ve been thinking about how we could call the “other” parts of crypto that 1) have become independent communities from "investment focused” crypto 2) didn’t care much about FTX except to feel ashamed or/and angry about the greed and ignorance that has smudged the reputation of “crypto” as a whole. By Bill Hughes from ConsenSys.
Gary Gensler on meeting with SBF and his crypto crackdown. Biased perspective but valuable. By Ankush Khardori from NYMag. Link
🚨 What caught my eyes
✨ Web3 + NFTs
Reddit launched the third generation of its collectible avatars, called “the Future Realities Collection” with designs by 100 different artists. Nothing new, except that they’re now limited and need to be purchased. With a market cap of $75m, secondary sales of more than $14m, and 11+m avatars minted, Reddit’s Web3 entrance has been a huge success. Link
NFTNow dropped its annual NFT100, recognizing 100 influential creators and 100 community leaders for achievements over the past year in web3. Link
🌎 Crypto & Macro
Ethereum keeps shipping: The Shanghai (or “Shapella”) upgrade is complete, starting a new era of staking withdrawals.1 After “The Merge” of last autumn, swapping out the original proof-of-work (PoW) consensus layer for the proof-of-stake (PoS) Beacon Chain, this is another historic milestone in Ethereum’s multi-year transition from PoW to PoS consensus. It will enable Ethereum stakers/validators to withdraw deposits from the Beacon Chain. Why is this important? It's de-risking the entire network.
ETH stake rate sits at roughly 15%, well below the average of around 60% of the top 20 PoS networks. The thesis is that until now, stakers only had the choice between riskier “liquid staking” protocols (such as Lido) or SaaS providers, “locking” the staked ETH, making it illiquid. Now, SaaS providers can offer instant withdrawals. Earning risk-free yield at the protocol level and retaining liquidity on staked ETH is now easier than ever. This could produce a new wave of ETH holders willing to stake.
This will likely decrease Lido’s market dominance in liquid staking, which will make Ethereum more decentralized.
FTX has recovered $7.3 billion in assets. FTX's new CEO John Ray is even considerin restarting the exchange. Wow. Another signal among many in recent weeks that the darkest moments of this bear market may lie behind us. Link
NYT published a high-profile story on the energy pollution of Bitcoin miners. Luckily, some people fact-check. Daniel Batten takes the story apart, claiming significantly overstated real percentages of fossil fuel emissions, and incomplete datasets. Link
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🚀 Hot Web3 start-ups:
Co:Create: Enables brands to build gamified, self-owned reward experiences that supercharge their community.
Sound.xyz: Enables music artists to launch music NFTs.
💡Word on the street:
We’re in a weird limbo state right now.
While “tech crypto” continues to ship, Bitcoin’s original narrative as an antithesis of state-backed money is enjoying a revival and BTC and ETH returned to $30k and $2k respectively, the blade of regulators is hanging over crypto’s neck.
NFT.NYC (and its side events) are in full swing (so am I🤩) and while it seems more subdued than in previous years, the Web3 core community remains strong and unimpressed of what’s happening in “money crypto”. It’s culture first. More first-hand impressions soon.
That’s all for now, folks.
Back to building! 🚀
– Marc
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🐦 Top Tweet
“Yuga isn’t releasing millions of pfps
Yuga is releasing characters, lands, equipment, resources, weapons, and relics
This is necessary for a Web3 version of WoW or Fortnite or Ready Player One
No, it has never been done
Yes, Yuga will be the first”
📈 Top charts to share with friends:
🎨 Artwork: “Psychedelic Healing” by Alex Grey
Shapella = Shanghai + Capella, with the new term referring to the implementation of the change that is occurring at both the network's execution and consensus layers.