A viable alternative to OpenSea, a PFP collection with somewhat unique marketing intrigue, a rant on how capitalism is ruining web3, and a healthy dose of self promo. So, business as usual. At least we don’t mention BAYC. Wait. Fuck. We’ll stop talking. Here’s everything important on the Internet.
Chad & El Prof
Markets
BITCOIN ETHEREUM CARDANO SOLANA DOGECOIN SHIBA INU TEZOS(Price changes reflect past 7 days as of 1.11.22 @ 4:20 PM EST.)
- Markets hit a liquidation record as institutional investors remain weary of interest and risks. Meanwhile, evangelists say, ‘The force is strong with this outflow, but it is not a bear market yet.’
- In other news, atheists don’t fear God, God-fearing Christians still do.
Always a smaller fish.
He goes on to tweet, ‘If @BoredApeYC created their own marketplace tailored for their own community, it would most likely become the de-facto place to buy and sell Apes. The future of marketplaces is that creators will most likely own the end-to-end experience for their NFTs.’ So, basically, rather than the web2 approach of finding exposure through an Amazon or Etsy, the future of metaverse commerce will be curated directly to consumers and creator-controlled from end to end.
This line of reasoning makes sense coming from an influencer most famous for owning a Crypto Punk — the highest selling NFT collection of all time took a similar approach when they launched in 2017. But it also aligns with our assessment of the limitations of OpenSea. Although OS serves an important role as one of the only existing discovery platforms for NFTs, it brings with it all the frustrations of centralization that web3 technology is supposed to neutralize. Plus, the nature of blockchain smart contracts actually does open the door for creators to sell their own work competitively and securely. Think Frank Ocean finessing Universal, but as a PNG.
Of course, the web2 norms emerged for a reason. Centralization is more user-friendly and wider discoverability often trumps the benefits of finer tuned targeting. That’s why our solution is a centralized discovery platform integrating marketplaces across all chains, along with a custodial wallet with a clean interface to make metaverse transactions manageable and accessible for users at any level of experience.
Then again, our beta version is currently populated solely with self-promotion, so we may be better at proving out @richerd’s hypothesis than our own. But if you’re about to launch a blockchain brand or even just a collection of PFPs, remember that the most successful fish are sometimes the smallest and deepest in the sea.
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Speak your mind. Own your self. Be a snob.™
Bippity boppity buy.
In honor of Sunday evening’s h0r_oscopes column, I’m dedicating today’s Stud Finder to a collection that’s been haunting me for months. Crypto Coven is, as these things tend to be, a DAO and NFT collection of ~10k profile picture JPGs. But with a floor of .34eth, it is among the more affordable PFPs, and, much like our own sn0bs, has a healthy sense of self mythologizing, having launched, naturally, on All Hallows’ Eve.
The mission of this collective is to recruit and bring a more diverse perspective into web3, which is emerging as a true priority of this new frontier, as we’ve previously covered with the web3 baddies. The Crypto Covens team is focused on building a narrative-driven metaverse, which I assume means merchandising and some sort of RPG. Is it the most original approach? Try, ‘the only.’ Nevertheless, seeing such an inclusive team succeed in a big way (the collection has already sold out and traded over 800eth on OpenSea) is spellbinding.
While we’re on the topic of discovery, I didn’t find this project through my usual channels (OS Rankings or Activity) but rather because so many women thought leaders whose hot takes I follow on Twitter have already adopted these PFPs. Having proved out their marketing model irl, hopefully makes up for my violation of the first rule of the Crypto Coven: focus on “the lore, not the floor”. Admittedly, I did agree to pay no attention to the crypto cash grab behind the curtain — but only while poking around the Discord channel, not in the comfort of my own armchair snobbery.
Anyway, my intentions are pure. The ceiling is a whopping 100,000eth, and I only mentioned the low floor because this feels like one of those slow burning effigies that, in a year’s time, will be white hot and uncursed. But don’t take my word for it. Remember, I’m not legally liable for investment advice — just unsolicited opinions.
The death of the humble flex.
This past week, one of our readers and Member #1 of our official Discord, daria-is-the-name, shared an essay from the Not Boring newsletter by Packy McCormick. In the piece, Packy — an a16z advisor, the crypto-thirsty investment firm made famous by artificially inflating Clubhouse’s market cap — discusses his excitement over some super-secret web3 projects that are too confidential to name drop, but just know he totally could if he wanted to.
I believe the spirit of web3 is collaborative intelligence, and the tendency to continue to operate from a VC and web2 capital exploit perspective in “stealth mode” feels profoundly out of place in this emerging web3 narrative. DAOs exist as transparent communities to build and distribute capital, yet the ones operating behind closed doors are the ones that Packy appears to be the most excited about. He casts the stealth mode projects as remixes of the best elements of past DAO experiments in enabling capital formation for problem solving. Of course, hearing a venture capitalist champion the decentralization of capital feels a little like watching a king cheer on a peasant revolution. But that might just be me.
His bullishness seems to revolve around the disruptive element that capital formation in areas outside of VC’s purview of acceptable risk provides. What confuses me is that the whole raison d’etre of venture capital is not to take predictable bets on scalable technology ventures but to throw cash at well-articulated pipe dreams.
To be fair, VC is fundamentally inaccessible to the non-Chads of the world. And I obviously do see the disruptive appeal of PFPs, with the chops to build a DAO and convince degens to take bets on them in a very similar manner to web2’s VCs. The implications of decentralized capital are profound, especially in a country with a monopoly on enterprise like the United States’, which should be more concerned than anyone by this new opportunity to pursue the American Dream abroad, where the cost of living isn’t inflated out the ass. But I’m left asking why we continue to reinvent the wheel — opaque humble flexes and big money validation — rather than embracing the transparency that makes web3 attractive in the first place?
To daria-is-the-name: thank you genuinely for sharing this piece. We are always on the lookout for new excuse to share our shitty opinions. For your contribution to today’s newsletter, we will be dropping you a sn0b of your choosing! DM us on Discord to claim your free NFT.
(Jesus Christ. Live long enough and you really do become the degen.)
SLOPPY SECONDS
- Our favorite tweet of the year
- A cool graphic design interview that puts the ‘icon’ in ‘iconography’
- A primer on generational colors because we too are feeling purply
