This Week in Web3: Friday, March 25th, 2022
Bill Murray is launching NFT collection, BAYC raises $450M, life at a DAO, a playbook for progressive decentralization, Web3 and the creator economy and Tim Ferriss’ interviews Mark Zuckerberg.
Hi Friends!
How was your week? I’m good. Hope you are too?
To centralize or decentralize, that seems to be the emerging question in Web3. The answer of course is, it depends, or perhaps more confusingly, it’s either, or both.
In Packy McCormick’s piece “Flow: The Normie Blockchain”, which I shared in last week’s newsletter, he writes about the Flow blockchain and their attempt to achieve decentralization progressively. Flow is heavily criticized by crypto-purists as being too centralized, but this approach, which takes on The Scalability Trilemma, by adding time as a fourth dimension, makes so much sense to be.
I’ve also included a few other things I’ve been reading/listening to this week on the topic, including a really great conversation between Jess Sloss of Seed Club, probably one of the smartest people in the DAO space, and Mark Redito, a DAO contributor at Songcamp. They get into the decentralization vs. centralization argument and make some really terrific points.
Ok, let’s get into it. Hope you enjoy this week’s digest!
TL;DR
Hollywood Reporter: Bill Murray to Launch NFT Collection Based on His Real-Life Stories
The Verge: Bored Ape Yacht Club creator raises $450 million to build an NFT metaverse
Wire.com: Katie Haun Launches a Crypto Fund—and Makes Her Pitch to Web3 Founders
Vice.com: At SXSW, A Pathetic Tech Future Struggles to Be Born
A16z: Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications
Decentralization and Ecosystems: Web3 as the instinctive pursuit of equilibrium, by Neil Redding
BONUS: Tim Ferriss Podcast: Mark Zuckerberg — Founder and CEO of Meta
News we’re following
Hollywood Report: Bill Murray to Launch NFT Collection Based on His Real-Life Stories
The enigmatic actor is partnering with The Chive to reveal biographical "Bill Murray Stories" for a unique collection of NFTs. But in standard Bill Murray fashion, he’s not going to reveal his past and musings in a conventional way.
The Verge: Bored Ape Yacht Club creator raises $450 million to build an NFT metaverse
Yuga Labs, the owner of three of the biggest NFT brands on the market, has raised $450 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation, the company announced today. The team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club plans to use the money to build a media empire around NFTs, starting with games and its own metaverse project.
Wire.com: Katie Haun Launches a Crypto Fund—and Makes Her Pitch to Web3 Founders
The new fund, Haun Ventures, has everything: NFTs, celebrities, and a former federal prosecutor who wants to take the Web3 world by storm.
Things we’re reading
Time.com: No Bosses: What It’s Like Working at a DAO
In January, many people on Crypto Twitter proclaimed that if 2021 was the year of NFTs, then 2022 would be the year of DAOs. DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, are a new-ish type of organizational structure that have proliferated rapidly in the last couple years as money has poured into the crypto space.
Vice.com: At SXSW, A Pathetic Tech Future Struggles to Be Born
This week, while at SXSW to speak on two panels about crypto-skepticism and algorithmic labor, I was able to check out if crypto, NFTs, web3, and the metaverse really were taking over Austin. What I found was a deeply underwhelming, mundane, and frankly pathetic series of demonstrations and setups that suggest if these digital technologies do take over the world, it’ll be because of how much money their biggest boosters have and how easy it is for that money to generate interest as opposed to anything of true social utility.
A16z: Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications
Crypto founders have a unique challenge in front of them. In addition to building a product that people want, they also need to consider how that product can successfully run in a decentralized manner — that is, as a protocol owned and operated by a community of users.
Decentralization and Ecosystems: Web3 as the instinctive pursuit of equilibrium, by Neil Redding
There is an awakening underway. It’s been underway for quite awhile — and it’s coming into much clearer view now. It’s actually a return, a revitalization of what’s been dormant. Seeing the world through the lens of this awakening is super useful for understanding the tectonic shift of which Web3 and decentralization are visible manifestations.
The Potential of Web3 & The Creator Economy, by Neil Waller
In spite of the overwhelming amount of noise around web3 (noise that’s often filled with endless jargon and many seemingly nonsensical projects with crazy sums of money being made, or lost!) we at Whalar couldn’t be more excited for what we see as the seismic long term potential of web3 for the Creator Economy.
Things we’re listening to
Modern Finance Podcast: Nexo — NFT Lending and High Yield Savings
Kevin is joined by cryptocurrency lending platform Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev to discuss how the company is able to offer its clientele such high-interest rates, the pros and cons of federal regulation over digital assets, the utility of the NEXO token, and how people can earn crypto by lending their NFTs.
DAO Contributor Series Podcast with Mark Redito (Songcamp)
Today we are joined by Mark Redito, a DAO contributor at Songcamp. In this episode, we explore what Mark was up to before getting into web3. This conversation speaks to the social and human aspects of DAOs. Building trust in a community, resolving conflicts in DAOs vs. traditional organizations. And Mark leaves us with some resources that have helped him shape his thinking.
Bankless Podcast: The Internet Reset | Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Ohanian is the Co-Founder of Reddit, as well as the founder of venture capital firm SevenSevenSix. As a builder-turned-technology entrepreneur, Alexis is focused on making the world a better place through novel projects and initiatives like Coinbase, Axie Infinity, Opensea, and Riverside (which we used to record this episode!)
BONUS: Tim Ferriss Podcast: Mark Zuckerberg — Founder and CEO of Meta
“If I’m doing something that feels too well understood for too long, then I feel like I’m just being complacent.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg (FB/IG) is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta, which he originally founded as Facebook in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company.
Project’s we’re following
Flyfish Club (FFC) is the world's first member's only private dining club where membership is purchased on the blockchain as a Non-Fungible-Token (NFT) and owned by the token-holder to gain access to our restaurant and various culinary, cultural, and social experiences.
People we follow on social media