This Week in Web3: Friday, January 7, 2022
OpenSea’s new funding, Samsung’s opens a Metaverse in Decentraland, Wtf is Web3, co-ownership as a web3 social primitive, fractionalizing Banksy with NFTs and a profile on Wordpress's Matt Mullenweg.
Happiest of Fridays to you!
What started out as an exercise in organizing the firehose of information that I was incapable of staying on top of each week, has quickly become an essential resource for many of you. Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Look out for updates and improvements in the coming weeks and please keep your suggestions coming!
For now, enjoy and feel free to share with others!
Toby
News we’re following
Announcing OpenSea’s New Funding
In 2021, we saw the world awaken to the idea that NFTs represent the basic building blocks for brand new peer-to-peer economies. They give users greater freedom and ownership over digital goods, and allow developers to build powerful, interoperable applications that provide real economic value and utility to users. OpenSea’s vision is to become the core destination for these new open digital economies to thrive, building the world’s friendliest and most trusted NFT marketplace with the best selection.
To accelerate this vision, OpenSea has raised $300 million in Series C funding at a $13.3 billion post money valuation.
Samsung is opening a metaverse version of its flagship NYC store in Decentraland
Samsung is opening its first store in the metaverse with Samsung 837X, an immersive world modeled after its flagship New York City store, Samsung 837, starting Thursday.
The tech giant has partnered with Decentraland, an ethereum-based virtual world platform. The opening includes Samsung's first-ever metaverse-mixed-reality dance party hosted by DJ Gamma Vibes live from the physical Samsung location.
To participate, customers will first need to enter Decentraland through a desktop browser before they can buy and sell exclusive digital assets, like land and wearables.
Report: VCs Invested $33B in Crypto and Blockchain Startups in 2021
New data from Galaxy Digital shows VCs invested over $10.5 billion in Q4 2021, the most of any quarter last year and more than all of 2020 combined
In 2021, venture capitalists invested over $33 billion into crypto and blockchain startups, according to a report by Galaxy Digital. While this may seem like a big chunk of capital, it accounts for 5% of the money invested by VC firms across all sectors globally.
About $22 billion, or 67%, went into rounds with deals over $100 million. Companies that focus on digital asset trading or building in Web3 raised the most capital overall, the report found.
Things we’re reading
Web3 has been a very fashionable term this year, mostly for the alt-finance cartoon characters and tech world’s ultrasophisticated twitter-thread authors.
It was one of the two cheat code phrases that you could use in 2021 to bypass the critical thinking of LPs when raising your first ever fund, with the other being “metaverse”. Congrats, you now have one billion dollars to deploy because you learned the trendy words and you went to a good school, glhf.
“A pessimistic future web might be littered with tokenised microtransactions seeking rent on all possible user actions, needing users to own native tokens to properly operate their toaster.”
“The social problems with the world, and with web2, I think are valid and worth solving and there’s a lot of exciting stuff to consider in the promises of web3. I think open, transparent, and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power.”
Co-ownership as a web3 social primitive
“A fundamental premise of web3 is ownership. But ownership isn’t just a technical or financial shift, it’s a shift in how we connect with one another.
To fully leverage the power of a democratically owned web3, we need to understand what ownership means for us as humans. And more importantly ‒ we need to expand beyond our current views of ownership to redefine and reshape how we choose to collectively own the next generation of technologies.
The Web3 Renaissance: A Golden Age for Content
“The internet was supposed to usher in a Golden Age of media—a world of infinite abundance where anyone can create whatever they want, and everyone can find whatever they’re interested in. But while Gates’ prediction that there was money to be made online through content has proven true, much of that money has bypassed the creators that produce the content, landing instead in the pockets of the platforms that aggregate it.”
Tech questions for 2022 by Benedict Evans
Sometimes the centre of gravity in tech is very clear, but as we enter 2022 there are lots of areas where trillion dollar questions are wide open. These are the questions I wonder about today, from crypto to cars to fast fashion - there are others.
Of course, for some crypto people crypto is the only question and the only answer, but as we enter 2022 there are lots of areas where trillion dollar questions are wide open. These are the questions I wonder about at the moment - there are others.
Things we’re listening to
The hype around crypto-native communities such as Loot and Nouns DAO have taken over all our Twitter feeds. But how do these communities arise and gather momentum?
Our guest this week, Patrick Rivera, gives us an inside look into the social and financial motivations driving some of crypto’s most prominent communities. Being a part of these communities is so compelling because according to Patrick, they are “a combination of a social hangout spot, an intellectual challenge, and a way to make money.
Particle: Fractionalizing Banksy with NFTs
Kevin is joined by the founders of the Particle Collection, a new way to own, collect, and experience fine art masterpieces through NFTs. Here, they discuss how Particle aims to acquire and tokenize the world’s greatest masterpieces via a particalization process that divides ownership of each work into 10,000 unique NFTs. Its first piece: Banksy’s 2005 “Love is in the Air.”
Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin on the inevitability of Ethereum
In this episode, one of crypto's most influential leaders joins Cobie & Ledger to discuss the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Joseph Lubin co-founded Ethereum and then created ConsenSys, one of the largest and most prominent crypto product companies around.
Project’s we’re following
ULAND is the first of its kind Crypto project where NFT virtual land is mapped to real countries, states and cities COMBINED with its own $$ULAND currency to create an insulated, organic and secure economy where Ulanders (that's YOU) can trade and earn.
Decentraland, Luxury Marketplace UNXD to Host Metaverse Fashion Week
“Decentraland and UNXD are calling on fashionistas to have their virtual collections ready to show in the metaverse.
Luxury marketplace UNXD, which is built on the Polygon network, and Decentraland, a virtual reality platform built on the Ethereum blockchain, plan to offer a metaverse fashion week with catwalk shows, pop-up shops and afterparties in March.”
The Reactions protocol can be used via the app. It's a space where you can love, hate, cry, or laugh over NFTs and monetize your engagement along the way.
Want a more technical explanation?
Reactions are tokens on the blockchain. Whenever you use one to react to an NFT, you add value to the NFT. When it gets sold, you earn a percentage of the profits. Tokenizing reactions creates an open and decentralized way for users to curate their preferred NFTs and content while getting rewarded for their attention and social capital. It’s a system that benefits both the creators and the community. It’s a no-brainer.
Social media we’re following
Profiles on people we follow
Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet?
He's turning Automattic into a different kind of tech giant. But can he take on the trillion-dollar walled gardens and give the internet back to the people?
“Eighteen years after he first started working on WordPress, Automattic is more powerful than ever. It’s a $7.5 billion company, one of the biggest private companies in the industry. And yet its founding idea — that software should be available to everyone and editable by anyone, that communities can build great things together, that walled gardens always eventually fall — seems more tenuous than ever. “
Kevin O’Leary: NFTs Are Going To Be Bigger Than Bitcoin
“In recent years, Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary has transitioned from a crypto skeptic to an enthusiast, investor and evangelist. He holds multiple positions in the industry and has also become a paid spokesperson and endorser for crypto exchange FTX. In this interview, we discuss how his background as a venture capitalist and software investor informs his financial decisions, ways that the regulatory landscape has evolved over the years and where crypto fits into a diversified portfolio. He also has some very interesting thoughts related to NFTs how investors should weight bitcoin v. ether.”