This Week in Web3: Friday, Nov 26, 2021
A Utility Framework for NFTs, Decentralized Governance, DAOs as the Communities of the Future, Balaji Srinivasan on Bitcoin, the problem with Constitution DAO, Republic Realm Academy and more.
Good day to you readers!
Here’s this week’s digest of the things we're reading, listening to, and the people and projects we're following in Web3.
Things we’re reading
Value Creation In The Metaverse: A Utility Framework For NFTs by Cathy Hackl
“The focus should be on the potential of a technology that can draw a border around a digital asset, assign ownership, usage permissions, and guidelines for its interaction in the physical and virtual domains. With this basic first principles understanding of NFTs, let’s discuss a tonal center for the process of evaluating its most talked-about component. Utility.”
“Decentralized governance is the field of protocols that coordinate large number of agents into a collective action, implemented with smart contracts on the blockchain. It is also the basis for decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). With DAOs we envision thousands and even millions of people spontaneously cooperating on shared goals, generalizing and unifying the notion of the firm, digital networks and collective intelligence. The DAO vision is becoming soon possible with the maturing of the needed technology, and in particular, the DAO stack and its first interfacing DApp, Alchemy, both of which are live on the mainnet of the Ethereum blockchain.”
DAOs: Communities of the Future
by Lisa Xu VC @FirstMark investing in early stage startups
“Some thoughts on community evolution from Web2 to Web3”
In the context of Web3, communities are decentralized and they have a name: DAOs. DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, and they are communities that are hosted on the blockchain and collectively owned by their members. In the past year, many community DAOs have risen to prominence, ranging from digitally native social clubs to NFT curator groups to professional guilds (for more on DAOs, check out this great beginners’ guide by Linda Xie).”
Things we’re listening to
“The monopoly of truth is upstream of the monopoly of violence.” — Balaji Srinivasan
Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) is an angel investor and entrepreneur. Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he was also the co-founder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), Teleport (acquired by Topia), and Coin Center.
Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker.
0:00 Bestie intro
1:14 Constitution DAO: implications, shortcomings, how to move forward?
29:58 Rittenhouse trial media coverage
50:52 Ken Griffin plays heel (again), private sector efficiency vs. government inefficiency
1:07:08 Pete Davidson's pull, Sacks' taste in music, wrap
Pulp Fiction NFTs, Netflix’s Numbers Revealed, and Peloton Peddles New Stock
“Kara is back with Scott to discuss Peloton's new stock offering, the Miramax versus Tarantino battle over Pulp Fiction NFTs, and alarming updates in Activision's sexual misconduct allegations. Plus, Netflix reveals its most popular content and an iconic arena gets a crypto name change. Plus, Scott gives us a prediction on the Metaverse.”
Project’s we’re following
Genesis is an independent, global community of people working together to build and promote Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). It is the first of a growing number of DAOs built on the DAO stack.
Some sample/experimental work from both the Nouns Stories team as well as some community members’ derivatives. This is for illustrative purposes only, none of these works are to be considered confirmed directions for any particular short film project. Consider them an amuse-bouche. Image credits (starting top left): Pixel, @Medeebzzz, @brnr & @StudioDAO, Pixel, @goldypix, @xaix2k & kazestudios, @baggins_fomo, Pixel.
NFT music rights startup Royal banks $55M investment led by a16z Crypto
“Less than three months after announcing a $16 million seed round led by Founders Fund and Paradigm, NFT music rights startup Royal has raised another major round of funding, banking a $55 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto investment arm.”
People we’re following
There’s a solid idea in here:
“We own a fair number of NFTs that I have collected since 2017 when I was buying Rare Pepes and CryptoKitties. We have accumulated a nice collection of Top Shots and a bunch of other NFTs as well.
But I don’t want to sell our NFTs. We also don’t like to sell the art we have collected over the years. We also don’t like to sell the crypto assets we hold.
But I am very interested in swapping NFTs for other ones.”
How we are educating ourselves
Republic Realm Academy is a series of online courses about the metaverse and NFTs. Courses will be taught by multidisciplinary educators hailing from some of the most prestigious universities in the world alongside top industry professionals in web 3.0 technologies. After completing the coursework, students will earn a certificate in Metaverse Technologies and become a permanent part of the Republic Realm Academy alumni network.