📝 Web3 Field Notes #8

Institutional adoption; EigenLayer; Nassim Taleb weights in on Bitcoin; Bitcoin without block rewards; AWS and Avalanche; Vitalik's vision for crypto; VC funding in 2022; new start-ups & more.

Marc Baumann

Jan 13, 2023

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

📚 Readings:

NYDIG Research: A last, but high quality outlook for 2023. Link
Fidelity: Institutional investor digital asset study. Nearly six in ten institutional investors (58%) invested in digital assets globally. 81% of institutional investors believe digital assets should be part of a portfolio. Gradually, then suddenly. Link
EigenLayer: a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security. Users that stake ETH can opt-in to EigenLayer smart contracts to restake their ETH and extend cryptoeconomic security to additional applications on the network. Important. Link Bankless Interview
Nassim Taleb on Bitcoin. Old argument: Can transaction fees compensate for the ever diminishing block reward? Understanding the critics helps you understand Bitcoin better. Link
A scientific perspective on the instability of Bitcoin without the block reward. Hint: Without block rewards, Bitcoin falters in security and performance. Link
Wouldn’t You Go to Prison to Help End This War? Why Edward Snowden’s 2nd NFT is important. Link

🚨 What caught my eyes:

SEC sues Genesis and Gemini for breaking securities rules. This is big. It's the first time the SEC sues major crypto players. Genesis and Gemini are both behemoths in the space. Link
AWS partners with Avalanche. That’s the high-calibre projects that could build up the next wave of adoption. Link
Venom Foundation, a layer-1 blockchain licensed and regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market, and investment manager Iceberg Capital launch a $1 billion venture fund to invest in Web3. Link
Vitalik Butterin’s vision for crypto: 1. Scaling 2. Privacy 3. UX. A must read. Link
Bloomberg: Crypto start-up funding falls to lowest level in almost two years. BUT: Total financing in 2022 was $37.7 billion, up 19% from 2021. Bloomberg Messari
The crypto market has built up near-record weighting in stablecoins (around 18%, or “dry powder”. Ready to be deployed? Link
Lens, the Web3 social protocol, launches token gated publications to allow creators to offer followers access to exclusive content. Link
For every single price range, Uniswap v3 has deeper liquidity in ETH/USD than popular centralized exchanges. Link
Coinbase lays off staff by another 20%, after it cut around 1,100 employees in June, also about a fifth of its work force at the time. Since early 2022, the crypto industry has approximately laid off 11’000 employees, or 10%, since early 2022. It’s officially winter. Link
Apple plans to unveil its “Reality Pro” headset this spring, before WWDC. I think AR will ultimately merge with AI and decentralized computing (Web3). Link
Microsoft in talks to acquire a 49% stake worth $10 billion in ChatGPT owner OpenAI. Link

🚀 Interesting Web3 start-ups:

Papr: NFT lending powered by Uniswap V3.
Orbis: A new social graph for Web3.
Aleo: Build private Web3 application built on zk-proofs.
Foundation Worlds: A Web3-native curation tool for digital art.

💡Word on the street:

Blame games. The Bitcoiners blame the Altcoiners. Vitalik now starts talking about “Ethereum” and not “crypto”. Web3 folks insist Web3 is separate from “crypto”.

Let’s stop.

We’re all in this together. Now is the time to build and fighting for more freedom, transparency, decentralization, and privacy in an increasingly digital world.

And it needs all of us.

That’s all for now, folks.
Back to building an learning! 🚀

– Marc

Bonus 💎 : Here’s a list of all the major brands that entered web3.

Artwork: Morning at Blueridge NFT.