Blur (🤝) / Announces Season Two Airdrop — Following the Season One airdrop of 360M BLUR tokens to the Blur community, the NFT marketplace announced it will be dropping another 300M+ BLUR tokens to users during Season Two. During this phase, tokens will be distributed to users that show loyalty to the platform by listing exclusively on Blur — more
OpenSea / Updated Royalty Policy — Three days after the Blur (🤝) Season One airdrop, NFT marketplace OpenSea announced it will “temporarily” eliminate its 2.5% fees on NFT sales and only enforce a 0.5% mandatory creator royalty. OpenSea tweeted, “There’s been a massive shift in the NFT ecosystem … and that shift has accelerated dramatically despite our best efforts.” — more
Audius (🤝) / TikTok Integration — Audius, a web3 music streaming platform, is adding support for TikTok. The integration will allow TikTok’s 1B+ users to create an Audius account by linking their TikTok profile. Users can then feature Audius songs in their TikTok videos, as well as carry over their TikTok verification status to Audius — more
Coinbase / New Layer 2: Base — Coinbase announced a new Ethereum Layer 2 called Base that aims to “offer a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps.” The network is built using Optimism's OP Stack — an open-source developer toolkit that Coinbase will contribute to as a core developer. Base will offer access to Ethereum, Optimism, Solana, BTC, and others — more
Spotify / Token-Enabled Playlists — Spotify launched a new pilot called “token-enabled playlists” that allows NFT holders to connect their wallets and access curated playlists. Initial partner communities include Kingship, Fluf, Moonbirds, and Overlord. The three-month pilot is currently only available for Android users in select countries — more
Microsoft / Ankr Partnership — Microsoft has partnered with web3 infrastructure provider Ankr to offer an enterprise node deployment service. Microsoft said the partnership “will enable developers and organizations to access blockchain data in a reliable and secure way as they explore how web3 can address real-world business challenges” — more
Solana / Physical Store Closures — Solana Spaces, a series of retail stores built to educate users about Solana and sell blockchain-branded merch, will close their doors in New York City and Miami at the end of the month. The experiment lasted six months, attracted ~60k visitors, and resulted in ~6k onboarding tutorials — more
Polygon Labs / Cuts Workforce — Polygon Labs laid off about 20% of its workforce this week. As part of an effort to consolidate multiple business units, the job cuts affected employees in the U.S., Canada, and India — more
DraftKings / PGA Tour NFTs on Polygon — DraftKings will launch the Reignmakers NFT fantasy golf game in partnership with the PGA Tour in March. Digital cards based on PGA Tour golfers will be minted and sold via Polygon, with players earning points based on the real-world performance of players — more
Hong Kong / Lifting Retail Crypto Trading Ban — Recent changes in regulation may lift the ban on retail crypto trading in Hong Kong. Regulators stated they are looking “to strike a better balance between investor protection and market development.” Last week, the city's central bank issued the world's first tokenized green bond, raising around $100 million to invest in clean energy technology and related projects — more
Dapper Labs / Layoffs — Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, UFC Strike, and the Flow blockchain, laid off 20% of its full-time staff in an effort to restructure the organization. This round of layoffs comes four months after Dapper cut 22% of its staff in November — more
Three Arrows Capital / NFT Collection Liquidated — Three Arrows Capital, a crypto hedge fund that imploded last year and now owes creditors $3.5B, will soon list its NFT collection for sale. The collection includes a dozen CryptoPunks, 30 of Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenzas, and 17 of Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers (one of which was bought for $5.6M at the time) — more
Messari / Job Cuts — Messari, a leading provider of crypto market intelligence products, has cut 15% of its staff in a restructuring effort. Messari CEO Ryan Selkis said, “This was a difficult, but long-term focused realignment that will help us better serve our customer’s data needs in the rapidly evolving economic and tech climate.” — more
Curio / $2.9M Raised — Curio, a startup aimed at building the next generation of crypto games powered by composable user-generated content, raises round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from TCG Crypto, Formless Capital, Smrti Lab, Robot Ventures, and others — more
Den / $2.8M Raised — Den, a streamlined multi-sig solution for on-chain teams, raises round from Gnosis, Seed Club Ventures (🤝), Volt Capital, Reverie, Lemniscap, Global Coin Research, Balaji Srinivasan, and many others — more
Kairo AI / $5.3M Raised — Kairo, an AI-powered search engine for crypto, raises seed round led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Jane Street, Mirana Ventures, Folius Ventures, Alpha Lab Capital, and others — more
TipLink / $6M Raised — TipLink, a Solana-based lightweight wallet designed to make transferring digital assets as easy as sending a link, raises round co-led by Multicoin and Sequoia, with participation from Circle Ventures, Solana Ventures, Paxos, Asymmetric, Big Brain Ventures, and others — more
Towns / $25.5M Raised — Towns, a web3 platform building ownable town squares for online communities, raises Series A led by a16z, with participation from Benchmark and Framework Ventures — more
Phi / $2M Raised — Phi, a social gaming and onboarding platform focused on on-chain activities, raises seed round led by Chapter One and Delphi Digital, followed by Polygon Ventures. Angels in the round included Stani Kulechov, Anthony Sassano, Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, Kartik Talwar, and others — more
Polyhedra Network / $10M Raised — Polyhedra, a startup offering innovative ZK-proof infrastructure, raises round co-led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands and Dao5 — more
Gateway / $4.6M Raised — Gateway, an infrastructure project building decentralized remote procedure call solutions, raises round led by Lemniscap, with participation from CMT Digital, the LAO DAO, Very Early Ventures, Fantom Foundation, and Unstoppable Domain Ventures — more
Renegade / $3.4M Raised — Renegade, a startup aimed at building a dark-pool for traders powered by multi-party computation and ZK-proofs, raises seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and former AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant, with participation from Balaji Srinivasan, Lily Liu, Tarun Chitra, and others — more
Cysic / $6M Raised — Cysic, a startup that aims to provide hardware acceleration solutions for ZK-proof protocols, raises seed round led by Polychain, with participation from Hashkey, SNZ Holding, ABCDE, and others — more
Chaos Labs / $20M Raised — Chaos Labs, a project aimed at automating on-chain risk optimization, raises round from Galaxy, Uniswap, Coinbase, Hashkey, Opensea, PayPal Ventures, Lightspeed, alongside angels Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant — more
Intu / $2M — Intu, a decentralized account management protocol focused on human-proofing web3, raises pre-seed round led by CoinFund, with participation from Metaweb Ventures, Fantom Foundation, Kitefin, Orrick, and others — more
Blockchains and The Next Generation of Fandom / Amanda Young — “Over the coming years, I believe more and more creators will leverage blockchain-based technology to capture a larger share of the value they generate. In this article, I explore why the creator internet is set for disruption and how Web3 will unlock the next generation of fandom.” — more
What Crypto Founders Can Learn from Blur’s (🤝) Token Airdrop / Variant — “Studying Blur reveals a more sophisticated token distribution design that offered phased rewards to sequence network growth. This analysis will comprise two parts: this first post will unpack Blur’s approach to tokens, and offer recommendations to founders seeking to leverage tokens to grow networks. A future blog post will share data analysis and quantify the impact of the airdrop on the marketplace and usage.” — more
Get In Loser, We’re Unbundling Again / Gaby Goldberg — “In retrospect, it never quite made sense why these NFT projects would spend huge amounts of upfront time and capital to build a beautiful mint site for primary sales, and then immediately let go of their customers by allowing them to move to third-party marketplaces (like OpenSea) for secondaries. With better tooling, these projects & companies now have a greater ability to own the vertical business — and as marketplace fees continue to trend towards zero, the moat becomes verticalized, too: brand, community, experience, and trust are all currency.” — more
The 20 Most Expensive NFT Sales of All Time / Langston Thomas — “We’ve come a long way since the world’s first NFT was minted in 2014. Since then, projects like CryptoKitties, Rare Pepes, and CryptoPunks have revolutionized the industry — both creatively and financially. NFT sales have skyrocketed in response, and many of the most famous and well-known NFTs have brought in millions of dollars. To record the most notable milestones, we’ve compiled a list of the most expensive NFT art pieces ever sold.” — more
What Happens Now That the [Latest] Crypto Bull Market Is Over? / Evanston Capital — “This past year’s events will likely have a lasting impact. However, we think in the long run we may look back at 2022 as a necessary cleansing of speculative excesses that allowed the industry to recalibrate itself toward the companies and protocols harnessing the real disruptive potential of blockchain technology. Now that this bubble has burst, how will the industry move forward? In this piece, we share our thoughts on the larger trends we expect to see.” — more
Love in the Time of Replika / Packy McCormick — “My quick and dirty explanation for why AI is good for crypto is that crypto benefits from more things becoming digital. Crypto gives physical properties to digital things, plus some internet superpowers. And AI’s success will mean that more of our lives become digital. But it’s not just digital things. Over the past couple of weeks, the world has watched in horror and amusement as GPT-X developed a personality. We’re talking about digital beings.” — more
The State of Digital Fashion (pt.2) / Dani Loftus — “Over the past 3 years, Digital Fashion has evolved. Starting as an unknown, unwanted, subsection of an archaic space; cobbled together from nerds, idealists and futurists, Digital Fashion has become a rapidly expanding industry that presents a compelling trajectory for fashion’s wider future. Part 1 of this piece focused on how Digital Fashion’s three categories (IRL, ORL and URL) have evolved since they began. This sequel analyses the wider factors influencing Digital Fashion’s growth, and where they’ll lead us over the next 2 years.” — more
Ecosapiens / Genesis NFT Collection — Ecosapiens, the world’s first carbon-backed NFT, launched its Genesis collection — a limited drop of 350 pieces for greenlisted community members. Following the free mint, Ecosapiens can be upgraded over the coming weeks to sequester more carbon, evolve, and exhibit new traits. By the final upgrade stage, an Ecosapien will offset a total of 28 tons of carbon, equivalent to two years of the average American's carbon footprint — more
Art Blocks (🤝) / New Secondary Marketplace Features — Art Blocks announced new secondary marketplace features including native listings/delisting with creator royalties baked in. The in-app listings on Art Blocks “will live alongside those aggregated from OpenSea, LooksRare, X2Y2, Sansa, Zora, Foundation, CoinbaseNFT, Rarible, Sudoswap, and Reservoir, with Blur also coming soon.” By using Reservoir, all aggregated listings that do not already include creator royalties will be royalty-normalized to properly include them — more
Delegate Cash (🤝) / Manifold — Delegate Cash, a protocol acting as crypto power-of-attorney that enables users to link cold wallets to hot wallets, partners with NFT launchpad Manifold. This allows collectors to securely mint from hot wallets on token-gated claims while their valuable assets stay safe in a vault. Delegate Cash currently protects $500M+ of assets — more
PROOF (🤝) / Artist Profiles — PROOF launches its newest product: Artist Profiles. Visitors to the site can now browse all the artists in the PROOF ecosystem, learn about an artist’s background, and explore all of their artwork in one place. Each artist in the PROOF ecosystem now, and in the future, will have a dedicated Artist Profile — more
Pudgy Penguins / Retail Monster Partnership — Pudgy Penguins announced a partnership with Retail Monster — an agency with a network that spans major retailers and represents brands like Disney, Dreamworks, and Hasbro. This partnership aims to put the upcoming Pudgy Toyline on the shelves of major retailers and leverage IP to enable licensing opportunities with name brands — more
Uniswap / NFT Purchases with any Asset — Uniswap’s NFT marketplace now allows traders to purchase NFTs using any token on the Ethereum blockchain. “Uniswap’s Universal Router contract “finds the most cost-efficient route” to complete a swap from any Ethereum-based token into the required token for the NFT sales (in most cases, Ethereum)” — more
Coinbase x Zora / “Base, Introduced” Free NFT — Coinbase dropped a commemorative NFT on Zora that celebrates the initial launch of Base — a new Ethereum Layer 2 built using Optimism's OP Stack. At the time of writing, more than 108,000 “Based, Introduced” NFTs have been minted on Zora. The mint remains open until Sunday — more
Andreas Rau / Bright Moments (🤝): Klangteppich — “Klangteppich is a multisensory experience that invites the viewer to touch, see and listen. 100 jacquard-woven pieces accompanied by live-generated visuals and music. 'Klangteppich' is an invitation to slow down & feel a sense of home in our fast-paced, mobile world. It creates a calming virtual enclosure & physical base to rest. Each pixel is mapped to a thread in the fabric & hand-woven on a computer controlled jacquard loom.” Premiering IRL at Bright Moments Berlin, March 17th — more
KOI / Mirage Gallery: Beyond the Lens, Sinema — “The world is filled with beauty, but not all of it is visible to the naked eye. The hidden details of our universe are often missed in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Beyond the Lens explores the secret wonders of the world, utilizing the power of technology to uncover new possibilities and reveal realities beyond what meets the eye.” 150 pieces, 0.12 ETH, Feb. 27th, presale 9:30am PT, public 10:30am PT — more
Eric De Giuli / Art Blocks (🤝): Calian — “Calian is an infinitely zoomable and scrollable exploration of lifelike behaviour. It exhibits ambiguous natural-digital forms in a dynamic rendering. Species grow and compete; they get carried by the elements; they face boom, bust, and echo.” Releasing Mar 1, 2023, 256 pieces in the collection, dutch auction — more
Amanda Young / Blockchains and The Next Generation of Fandom ⚡
Pacman / Anonymous No More: Meet Blur’s (🤝) Pacman 🐐
Blur (🤝) / Blur Bids Reach ATH at $132M+
Delphi Digital / Blur (🤝) Surpasses OpenSea with 53% Market Share
Cirrus / Deep Liquidity on BAYC NFTs with Blur (🤝) Bids
Dov / Who is Snowfro?!
the402 (🤝) / New Launch: Stream Metrics 🔥
foobar / Coinbase x Base x Decentralized Future
9dcc / World Connect 01 Leaderboard + POAPs
Async Art (🤝) / The Forever Supper RSVP 👀
Sam Sends / Glass Protocol (🤝) Letter to the Community
Pranav / LinksDAO Purchases Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland
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