Amazon / NFT Initiative — According to a report by Blockworks, Amazon is planning to launch an NFT initiative sometime in the spring of 2023. Sources familiar with the matter say there’s a particular focus on blockchain-based gaming and NFT apps, where Amazon customers play crypto games and claim free in-game NFTs — more
Bright Moments (🤝) / Samsung Partnership — Bright Moments has teamed up with SamsungUS to distribute curated generative art collections via the Samsung Art Store. A selection of Bright Moments Collections will be featured under ‘Art’ on all Samsung Frame TV’s — more
Floor (🤝) / WGMI Acquisition — Floor, a startup offering NFT collectors an easy way to track their portfolio via a mobile app, has acquired NFT analytics platform WGMI. Floor offers users a streamlined way to view and track their holdings and the acquisition aims to deliver “richer features for Floor users while bringing WGMI’s analytics features to a potentially broader audience” — more
Doodles / Golden Wolf Acquisition —The NFT collection Doodles is buying the animation studio Golden Wolf in an effort to create tools and techniques for brands, filmmakers, and producers using blockchain and AI tech. The new joint venture will be called Active Ingredient — more
Doodles / Flow Blockchain — Doodles announced they are moving cross-chain and deploying collections on the Flow blockchain. The team stated this transition would allow them to “create a frictionless on-chain app that lets mainstream fans customize their Doodle without limits” — more
Porsche / 911 NFT Collection — Porsche launched its NFT collection called the “911”, which had an original minting price of 0.911 ETH and a supply of 7,500 NFTs. On Jan. 25th, Porsche halted the minting process after fans complained of high minting prices and lack of utility. In response, the supply was reduced to 2,363. The collection floor price is now ~2 ETH, with more than $5.3M in trading volume — more
Robinhood / Web3 Wallet — Robinhood enters the crypto wallet game by launching the Robinhood Wallet — a mobile app that allows users to swap, transfer, and track digital assets. The wallet has been rolled out slowly, with more than 1M waitlisted users onboarding via an access code — more
Binance / Customer Deposits — Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, mistakenly mixed customer funds with company reserves. “Binance is aware of this mistake and is in the process of transferring these assets to dedicated collateral wallets.” Assets held with the exchange “have been and continue to be backed 1:1,” a Binance spokesperson said — more
Ethereum / Shanghai Upgrade — Ethereum developers have started the first round of testing for the Shanghai Upgrade which is expected to go into effect in March. The upgrade will enable staked ETH withdrawals — more
SEC / Mango Markets Exploit — The U.S. SEC charged Avraham Eisenberg with orchestrating an attack on Mango Markets, a Solana-based crypto exchange. The SEC said Eisenberg manipulated the MNGO governance token, allowing him to drain over $115M from the platform — more
DCG’s Luno / Job Cuts — Luno, a crypto exchange owned by Digital Currency Group, announced on Wednesday that it would cut 35% of its total workforce. "2022 has been an incredibly tough year for the broader tech industry and in particular the crypto market," Luno said in a statement — more
StoryCo (🤝) / $6M Raised — StoryCo, a collaborative and open storytelling platform, raises round co-led by Collab+Currency and Patron, with participation from The LAO, Flamingo, Sfermion, Seed Club Ventures, Metaversal, and others — more
Tribes / $3.3M Raised — Tribes, a web3-native messaging and group wallet app, raises pre-seed round led by Kindred Ventures, South Park Commons, and Script Capital — more
Plai Labs / $32M Raised — Plai Labs, a platform aiming to combine web3 and AI to create unique digital social experiences, raises seed funding round led by a16z. The platform founders are former executives of gaming company Jam City and social platform MySpace — more
Architect / $5M Raised — Architect, a platform providing traders with adaptable infrastructure for digital asset markets, raises round from Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, SV Angel, Third Kind VC, and others — more
QuickNode / $60M Raised — QuickNode, a blockchain development platform that aims to make building and scaling web3 applications easy, raises Series B at an $800M valuation. The round was led by led by 10T Holdings, with participation from Tiger Global, Seven Seven Six Ventures and QED Investors, among others — more
Asset Reality / $4.91M Raised — Asset Reality, a London-based startup building a full-service solution for crypto asset recovery, raises seed round led by Framework Ventures, TechStars, SGH Capital and Outrun Ventures' Chris Adelsbach — more
HyperOracle / $3M Raised — HyperOracle, a startup building ZK-powered middleware for fully decentralized infra, raises pre-seed round led by dao5 and Sequoia China Seed Fund, with participation from Foresight Ventures, FutureMoney Group, and others — more
Gateway / $4.2M Raised — Gateway, a web3 credentialing protocol, raises seed round led by Reciprocal Ventures with 6th Man Ventures, Spartan Group, Figment, and others participating. Angel investors included Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal and Messari's Ryan Selkis — more
Neopets / $4M Raised — Neopets, a web3 spin-off of the classic virtual pet game created in 1999, raises round from Polygon Ventures, Blizzard Avalanche Ecosystem Fund, Hashkey, IDG, and its parent company Chinese gaming firm NetDragon Websoft — more
Cypher / $4.3M Raised — Cypher, a multichain web3 wallet provider, announces a round raised in June that was led by Y Combinator and also backed by OrangeDAO, Samsung Next, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan — more
Spatial Labs / $10M Raised — Spatial Labs, a startup building tooling for digital x physical fashion, raises seed round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Marcy Venture Partners, an investment firm co-founded by musician and entrepreneur Jay-Z, and others — more
The Future of Impact-Driven NFTs / Nihar Neelakanti — “In 2021 alone, NFTs generated over $40B in volume. Imagine if a rounding error of just 1% of that volume were directed toward world-positive causes: that would be a whopping $400M allocated to the health of humanity and the planet. At its core, this is the magnitude of the opportunity that Impact NFTs are trying to capture.” — more
StarkNet's (🤝) Edge in Gaming / Eshita Nandini — “Once StarkNet is live and supported by ImmutableX, new and existing games will likely move over to reap from the burgeoning gaming ecosystem. StarkNet has a competitive advantage in gaming thanks to its focus on improving the developer and user experience through advancements in Cairo and account abstractions.” — more
Nike Tackles Phygital Fashion / Ally Zach — “Nike-branded NFT collections dominate the fashion NFT space, owning over 70% of the annual trading volume. Since mid-2021, RTFKT NFT collections have generated over $1.25 billion in trading volume and $178 million in total revenue, with half of the total revenue coming from royalties. In the coming weeks, Nike is set to release .swoosh, a groundbreaking Web3 platform for users to engage with, learn, collect, and even help co-create virtual apparel and shoes.” — more
Regulate Web3 Apps, Not Protocols Part III: The Web3 DAO Dilemma / Miles Jennings x a16z — “In this third part of our series, we describe the Web3 DAO Dilemma in detail and discuss the importance of DAOs in web3. In addition, we demonstrate how policymakers and regulators can design safeguards within the bounds of the framework to address the dilemma, and then provide protocol and decentralized governance design tips to enable compliance with such safeguards, all while protecting the fundamental principles of protocols.” — more
The Year Ahead / Pantera Blockchain Letter — “2022 felt quite similar to the late 2014 era in crypto. Many projects and companies that exemplified the antithesis of crypto’s fundamental principles blew up. People were saying, “crypto is dead,” yet I believe it was one of the best times to get in the space, start building serious things, and a great time to deploy capital into crypto. It really is darkest before dawn.” — more
On Reflexivity & Imitation (Part 3) / Matti — “Questions I pose today are: Is there a path forward for crypto in the environment of evaporating liquidity? How could crypto become the promised land if it is a slave of the old world’s monetary regime? To find the answers I will revisit the past and think about the future through a Girardian lens and explain how the degen culture led to our downfall and how we’re now expelling it from the crypto community.” — more
Does your product need a token? / Jan Baeriswyl — “More recently, the relationship between tokens and products has been at the centre of heated discussions. “Does your product need a token?” is a question that is frequently asked to founders active in Web3. This article aims to answer that question, as well as clarifying how tokens can be leveraged by a Web3 project.” — more
StoryCo (🤝) / The Disco Ball Launch — StoryCo launches The Disco Ball – an immersive and interactive story experience where the community becomes co-creators and co-owners. A free Story Pass NFT can be minted and will act as an entry point into The Disco Ball universe, evolving as it catalogs your journey + participation in the story — more
Bright Moments (🤝) x Art Blocks (🤝) / Official Partnership — Bright Moments and Art Blocks announced a new collaboration that includes a series of NFT releases on Art Blocks, paired with Bright Moment’s iconic, in-person minting experiences. The first collaborative release will be Metropolis by mpkoz — a long-form generative art collection exploring the node-based systems that enable modern society — more
PROOF (🤝) of Conference / Ticket Info — “Set in the creative oasis of Downtown Los Angeles, PROOF welcomes the leading voices and curious minds of the web3 movement to let loose, listen, and learn. A place to experience the power of online communities IRL, alongside the biggest players and personalities driving the next generation of creativity.” Tickets available Jan. 30th at 8am PT, with PROOF Collective holders eligible to claim 1 free ticket and 1 discounted ticket (50% off) — more
Zebedee (🤝) / Fountain Partnership — Zebedee, a Bitcoin-focused in-game payments infrastructure provider, announced a partnership with listen-to-earn podcast app Fountain. “With this partnership, we’re supporting a new type of business model and economic activity, not just for the payments space, but in general,” Zebedee’s CSO Ben Cousens said in a statement — more
Pudgy Penguins / Lil Pudgy’s Go Cross-Chain — Lil Pudgys, a collection of 22,222 NFTs originating from Pudgy Penguins, can now be moved beyond Ethereum to other ecosystems including Arbitrum, Polygon, and BNB Chain. The Pudgy team partnered with omnichain bridging solution LayerZero Labs. Soulbound tokens are available for all transfers to new chains — more
Dookey Dash / Yuga Labs Sewer Passes — Since launching Sewer Passes on January 18th, the Yuga Labs-backed project has seen more than $55M in trading volume and has a floor price ~3 ETH at time of writing, with some Tier 4 passes selling for more than 7 ETH. The Dookey Dash game will be available to play until February 8th — more
Petitsapin / Art Blocks (🤝): Such A Lovely Time — “Using single Cyrillic character typography with an inspiration from Soviet era punch cards, technology and mentality to some extent, Such A Lovely Time is part of an ongoing obsession of creating visual complexity from the most basic shapes while retaining a sense of order in appearance. This sense of structure is something that holds true to most of us individuals, communities, nations.” Minting Jan. 27th, 10:00 am PT — more
qubibi / Verse: wiwizn Part III — “There are a total of 25 works in the wiwizn series. As qubibi says "What I have is basically "negation." It is negation that says "this is not it," and in order to realize that, I need to face negation. To face it, it needs to be externalized. My "ideals" are not very reliable, but my "negations" can be trusted. That's why I create a lot. The images generated based on an algorithm I created 12 years ago, all have the possibility of becoming a "work". I need to exhaust the possibilities of that algorithm, and that's why it's such a big event in my life.” Final auctions are now live — more
Holger Lippman / Art Blocks (🤝): WaVyScApE — “After years of living in cities, on a trip through the alps, I’ve been immersed in a beautiful landscape. I was shocked by this vastness, depth, and rhythmic beauty... soft rolling hills that gently swing into each other, to the depths of overlying rugged ridges, followed by billowing cloud banks, this kind of loving frequency! Was it then when the theme “landscape” became a constant companion of my work? maybe.” Minting Feb. 1st, 10:00 am PT — more
Art Blocks (🤝) / Third Annual AB Weekend
BasedAF (🤝) / Super Massive’s Metaverse Marathon for Charity
BasedAF (🤝) / 9dcc x G Money
poopie / Doodles 2 on Flow
Teng Yan / Weekly Data-driven Insights
Balaji / New On-chain Models for API Design
Sasha Mackinnon / The Dimensionals RPG by Mino Games (🤝)
Kevin Rose / Wallet Compromised 💔
0xdgb x Derek Edwards / Squiggle Love for KRO 🌈
DCinvestor / Wallet Best Practices
foobar / $316M Protected on delegatecash (🤝)
Gallery (🤝) / delegatecash (🤝) Integration
Squads Protocol (🤝) / Latest Product Update 👀
Delphi Digital / NFT Launch Distribution Models
cygaar / Yuga Labs Dookey Dash Exploit
Sqreka.eth / NFT Brand Landscape
darkp0rt / Porsche NFT’s “Right to Withdrawal”
Agent / From Idea to Deployable AI App
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
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