This Week in Web3: Friday, January 28th, 2022
Microsoft’s Metaverse vision, Soulbound by Ethereum’s co-founder, an interview with Discord's founder and CEO, arguments against crypto, the launch of Coinbase’s NFT marketplace and more!
Hi friends,
The winds are shifting, but as someone very wise said to me this week, don’t follow the currency, look at the underlying technology, where the VC money and talent are heading, and most importantly, don’t eat yellow snow.
Enjoy this week’s digest.
TL;DR
Fast Company: Microsoft’s metaverse vision is becoming clear—and makes sense
Cointelegraph: Ethereum failing to target core Web3 issues, says Near co-founder
Boston Consulting Group to Open up Their Next Office in the Metaverse
Soulbound, by Vitaly Dmitriyevich "Vitalik" Buterin, co-founder of Etherium
Vogue Business: How Discord became the “Soho House of Web 3.0”
Bankless: What's the best argument against crypto?
Nft Now Podcast: Coinbase NFT’s Product VP on Taking NFTs Mainstream
Founders Journal Podcast: Building the Third Place Discord’s Jason Citron
Bankless Podcast: NFT Marketplace Wars | Panel
What is Money Podcast: Sovereignty in the 21st Century | The Balaji Series | Episode 1/7
LeBron James and Crypto.com Team up to Bring Web3 to Kids
POAP - The bookmarks of your life
CityDAO
News we’re following
Cointelegraph: Ethereum failing to target core Web3 issues, says Near co-founder
Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin lays out his vision for Web3 and explains why Ethereum may not play a prominent role in its foundation.
Fast Company: Microsoft’s metaverse vision is becoming clear—and makes sense
The company is a major force in gaming, even without Activision. It also rules productivity. That could be a potent combination in the metaverse.
With the announcement of its $69 billion deal to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard, Microsoft suddenly has a lot to say about the metaverse. And investors seem to be taking it seriously.
“This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console, and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse,” the company said in the deal announcement on January 18.
Boston Consulting Group to Open up Their Next Office in the Metaverse
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) BCG GAMMA will add another office to their 34 locations worldwide. This one is very special: It won’t be in another country, but in The Sandbox Metaverse with a full-fledged BCG GAMMA headquarter – here, they will organize public conferences, internal gatherings, and recruiting events. Their first big conference will be held in the hotel of Exclusible the developer of the district they have chosen to install their office.
“At BCG GAMMA, we want to practice what we preach: always be at the forefront of technology, while giving our global family more and more opportunities to connect, despite the global pandemic.” – Sylvain Duranton, Head of BCG GAMMA
“Sandbox is the most promising metaverse right now, and we bet it will further develop in the future. Not only because we believe in the blockchain based and decentralized metaverse, but also because we believe this project has the right team and the right mindset” - Joel Hazan, Head of Purpose + Culture for BCG GAMMA
Things we’re reading
Soulbound, by Vitaly Dmitriyevich "Vitalik" Buterin, co-founder of Etherium
What if NFTs could be soulbound?
NFTs in their current form have many of the same properties as rare and epic items in a massively multiplayer online game. They have social signaling value: people who have them can show them off, and there's more and more tools precisely to help users do that. Very recently, Twitter started rolling out an integration that allows users to show off their NFTs on their picture profile.
But what exactly are these NFTs signaling? Certainly, one part of the answer is some kind of skill in acquiring NFTs and knowing which NFTs to acquire. But because NFTs are tradeable items, another big part of the answer inevitably becomes that NFTs are about signaling wealth.
Vogue Business: How Discord became the “Soho House of Web 3.0”
The invite-only social media platform has become a way to create hype and find audiences for NFT projects. It’s the latest gateway for brands including Adidas and Gucci to enter the metaverse.
Bankless: What's the best argument against crypto?
We’ve heard a lot of flimsy arguments against crypto. Like the biggest threat to crypto…is crypto? But we want to hear about the best one you’ve heard.
Things we’re listening to
Nft Now Podcast: Coinbase NFT’s Product VP on Taking NFTs Mainstream
Prior to fulfilling the position of Coinbase’s VP of Products, Sanchan Saxena had already established a proven track record of spearheading products at fortune 500 companies like GM, AirBnB, Instagram, and more. In helping Coinbase join the world of NFTs, Saxena has become an expert on NFT and Web3 consumer culture, and is poised to help lead the charge towards mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.
Founders Journal Podcast: Building the Third Place Discord’s Jason Citron
Jason is the founder and CEO of Discord, a communications network with over 100 million monthly users and communities for every topic you could imagine. We cover the evolving business model for video games, Discord's early distribution methods, and Discord's hiring philosophy.
Listen
Bankless Podcast: NFT Marketplace Wars | Panel
With OpenSea hinting at a potential IPO in the future and LooksRare swooping in with a vampire sneak attack, it's clear that the war for top NFT Marketplace is starting to heat up. Who will come out on top?
Here to discuss this 4D chess match are some of the space's most influential thought leaders and returning guests: Eric Conner, Co-founder @ethhub_io, DC Investor, advisor and investor, Zeneca_33, investor and content creator, & Carly Reilly, host of Overpriced JPEGs.
What is Money Podcast: Sovereignty in the 21st Century | The Balaji Series | Episode 1/7
Balaji Srinivasan joins me for a multi-episode series exploring sovereignty in The Digital Age, geopolitical game theory, the future of statism, and how Bitcoin/crypto fits into the picture.
Project’s we’re following
LeBron James and Crypto.com Team up to Bring Web3 to Kids
The NBA superstar and crypto.com will bring Web3 to students and families of Akron, Ohio, where LeBron James was born.
POAP - The bookmarks of your life
POAPs are digital mementos, minted in celebration of life's remarkable moments.
Each POAP is a gift from an issuer to collectors, in celebration of a special shared memory. By minting these memories to the blockchain, collectors build a rich tapestry of tokenized experiences which unlock a world of possibilities.
CityDAO
CityDAO is the most radical of the experiments: Unlike Miami and Reno, which are existing cities with existing infrastructure to be upgraded and people to be convinced, CityDAO a DAO with legal status under the Wyoming DAO law (see their docs here) trying to create entirely new cities from scratch.