Warner Brothers / Lord of the Rings NFTs — Warner Brothers announces release of new “Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” NFT collection, which enables an all-in-one digital experience — a 4k copy of the film, bonus behind the scenes footage, and AR collectible assets — more
Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky / Authenticated Transport Protocol — Bluesky, a decentralized social media platform, revealed new documentation about the Authenticated Transport Protocol, which aims to offer account portability, algorithmic choice, and interoperability — more
IRS / New “Digital Assets” Language — Newly released draft instructions for the 2022 tax year show that the IRS has expanded the language for 1040 filers from “virtual currency” to “digital assets”, which includes an explicit recognition of NFTs — more
Audius (🤝) / SoundStage Acquisition — Audius, a fully decentralized web3 music platform, has acquired SoundStage. The acquisition will allow Audius artists to offer interactive and immersive live music experiences to their fans— more
Major League Baseball / Metaverse Expansion — In addition to previous web3 partnerships with Candy Digitial and Sorare, the MLB is now looking to hire someone to take on gaming, NFTs, and metaverse licensing to expand the league’s digital presence — more
Ethereum / Deflationary Post-Merge Milestone — Since The Merge on September 15th, ETH experienced an inflationary trend (Sept. 15th-Oct. 8th), but has since reversed the trend to become deflationary for the first time since the switch to PoS (more ETH burned verifying transactions than ETH created) — more
Major Food Brands / Metaverse Trademarks — Recognizable food brands Kraft Foods, In-N-Out Burger, and Del Monte Foods join a growing list of major brands that have recently filed trademark applications to expand their digital presence to include NFTs and metaverse assets — more
Shopify x Novel Partnership / Web3 For Merchants — Global e-commerce platform Shopify announced a partnership with no-code web3 commerce platform Novel. The partnership aims to make NFT minting, distribution, and utility features available to merchants — more
NHL’s San Jose Sharks / Attendance-Based NFTs — The San Jose Sharks are working with TicketMaster to issue attendance-based NFTs, powered by the Flow blockchain. Fans can earn, collect, and exchange Sharks NFTs — more
Lemon x TravelX Partnership / Tokenized Travel — Lemon, a Latin American crypto exchange, has integrated with TravelX to allows its users to buy airline tickets that are converted into NFTs upon purchase — more
Stability AI / $101M Raised — Stability AI, the parent company behind innovative open-source AI digital art tooling known as Stable Diffusion, announces seed round co-led by Coatue Management and Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from O’Shaughnessy Ventures — more
Empire DAO (🤝) / $2.8M Raised — Empire DAO, a co-working space and web3 creator hub in NYC, announces seed round with participation from Eberg Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, Big Brain Holding, Collab+Currency, and others — more
Stardust / $30M Raised — Stardust, an API that provides scalable NFT infrastructure for blockchain games, announces Series A round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Acrew Capital, Blockchain Capital, and Distributed Global — more
Mercury (🤝) / $7.5M Raised — Mercury, a platform using NFTs to reimagine the collegiate sports fan experience, announces seed round led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from North Island Ventures, Crosslink Capital, and Brevan Howard Digital — more
Valory / $4M Raised — Valory, an infrastructure platform aiming to plug the blockchain infrastructure gap between dApps and centralized services, announces seed round led by True Ventures, with participation Signature Ventures, Semantic Ventures, and others — more
Tapio / $4M Raised — Tapio, a platform creating an efficient liquidity standard for staking and crowdloan assets on Polkadot, announces round co-led by Polychain Capital, Hypersphere, and Arrington, with participation from Spartan, LongHash, and others — more
Arcade2Earn / $3.2M Raised — Arcade2Earn, a GameFi platform offering play-and-earn metaverse games, announces seed round led by Crypto.com Capital, with participation from Shima, Solana Ventures, KuCoin Labs, and GSR — more
Spindl / $7M Raised — Spindl, a platform offering attribution and growth metrics for web3, announces round co-led by Dragon and Chapter One, with participation from Multicoin, Polygon Ventures, Solana Ventures, and others — more
Lava Labs / $10M Raised — Lava Labs, a London-based blockchain gaming studio behind the game title AFAR, announces Series A round led by Dialectic, with participation from Merit Circle, Dragonfly, DeFiance, Animoca, Dapper, and others — more
Celestia / $55M Raised — Celestia, a modular layer-1 blockchain and data network, announces round co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, with participation from Placeholder, Galaxy, Delphi Digital, Blockchain Capital, and others — more
Letter 31: How We Onboard Billions to Web3 / Zeneca_33 — “How do we go mainstream, how do we onboard the “normies” (not my favourite word, it’s a bit demeaning). How do we get from where we are to where we want to be? There are 3 key areas we need to focus on to reach mass adoption (excluding time). Education + Infrastructure + A Mentality & Perception Shift.” — more
A Map for Rewards and Compensation in DAOs / Gaia Dadabit — “The approach in DAOs right now is defining the territory with the tools. The Coordinape way, the Praise way, the Sourcecred one. Which does not help to communicate the diverse ways unless one is immersed in the ecosystem. We cannot speak, we cannot think, and we cannot set expectations. We need a language; we need a map.”— more
Internet Game (🤝) Brings Game Shows to Life in Web3 / Langston Thomas — “…what if there was a Web3 solution to gameshows? One that allowed participants to sign up and compete from the comfort of their homes? That’s what creators Jordan Lejuwaan and Krish Jagirdar aim to offer, in what they’ve dubbed the “Squid Game of NFTs.” And it’s called Internet Game.” — more
Royalties and the Future of Creator Monetization / Metaplex (🤝) Foundation — “While there is no silver bullet to enforcing the collection of royalties across the entire ecosystem, we remain optimistic that there are several compelling monetization paths forward for both new and existing collections, including new models of royalty collection.” — more
NFT Screens / Fred Wilson — “…when we started designing the new USV offices last year we started thinking about NFT screens. We were inspired by these amazing NFT screens in the Bright Moments (🤝) NFT Gallery in Venice Beach, CA.” — more
The History of Gaming and Its Web3 Future / Sal Qadir x Galaxy Research — “In this report, we will examine 50 years of gaming history with a particular emphasis on past experiments in developing in-game economies. By studying what has been tried before in gaming, we can better predict how web3’s journey into the gaming space may play out over time.” — more
Warner Bros. Chooses The Lord of the Rings for Its First Film NFT Release / Eric James Beyer — “NFTs and Web3, in general, don’t have a rosy reputation amongst the general public. A major film studio releasing one of the most popular and beloved IPs of all time as a multimedia NFT experience could work wonders for onboarding people into the space and destigmatizing blockchain technology overall.” — more
Farcaster: The New Crypto GTM / Jeff Morris Jr. — “Farcaster is the opposite of hype beast crypto culture and rewards thoughtful conversations, with a community that has a shared passion for cryptocurrencies and emerging technologies — and generally being kind to each other.” — more
Azuki + Chiru Labs / Physical Backed Token (PBT) — Azuki introduces new open-source token standard, the Physical Backed Token, that provides a framework for tying a physical item to a digital token on Ethereum — more
Decentral Games (🤝) / Credit Card Purchases — Decentral Games, the leading metaverse poker platform, ships new feature that enables 15-second checkouts on “Tournament Wearables” NFTs via credit card purchase — more
Rarible (🤝) / NFT Aggregator — NFT platform Rarible announces new aggregator that enables collectors to browse listings across marketplaces, while also filtering and discovering collections based on certain traits, price, or chain — more
Blur / NFT Marketplace Launch + Airdrop — Blur, a realtime NFT marketplace and aggregator, goes live and announces the platform will be majority-owned by the community. “Care Package” airdrops are available to claim for those eligible — more
Noox (🤝) x Guild / Achievement-Gating — Noox Badges offer visual representation of users’ on-chain actions. The new Achievement-Gating feature with Guild allows users to create roles and grant access to those who have proven contributions within a certain community — more
NOISE DAO (🤝) / High Frequency: Volume 1 — Noise DAO, a DAO supporting web3 music and technology, announces an extension to its editorial work — High Frequency: Volume 1 — a compilation album project launching early 2023 — more
NFTfi (🤝) x Nibbl (🤝) / Doodles Lending Competition — “To start our promotion, Nibbl will airdrop 0.5 ETH worth of Doodle 4081 fractions to all addresses that have used NFTfi either as a borrower or a lender with Doodle assets in the past.” Snapshot taken Oct. 1st, airdrop Oct. 21st — more
GM NFTS x Rug Radio / Lacoste — Discussion on the history of Lacoste and coverage on their latest PFP drop, with conversation on how web3 has accelerated Lacoste’s brand momentum + community — more
Sofia Crespo / Tribute to Herbert W. Franke: “A Fall of Water, Usually from a Great Height" — “The torrential flow of technological evolution since 1978 has taken on an organic complexity at times, the outputs of the work ‘Kaskade’ when re- interpreted through new algorithms, encoded as latent representations further flow into the realm of life-like, aquatic qualities.” Minting 10/21 — more
Eric de Giuli / Tribute to Herbert W. Franke: “Glass Study” — “I am releasing for the tribute a set of 12 studies that were begun while working on the code for Glass. The latter is an attempt to honestly portray the quantum mechanical nature of our universe.” 12 pieces, Auction live on 10/21 — more
Alex Grasser / Tribute to Herbert W. Franke: “Tangible” — “…“Tangible” pays tribute by producing the curated output of a generative artwork (Elasticity on fx(hash)) as an industrially woven textile artwork, making the entire process and artwork tangible.” — more
Operator / Tribute to Herbert W. Franke: “Line Scanner” — “This special edition speaks to Franke's observation made decades earlier that "...the emergence of computer graphics could lead into other, quite different directions, for instance to unconventional, nondeterministic forms of theater".” — more
SquiggleDAO / Day Zero Squiggle Acquisition
Maria Shen / Next Evolution of NFT Royalties
Aaron Wright / Ethereum is…
6529 / Metaverse <> Internet
beeple / ALPHA
Arad / On the Financialization of Games
Sisyphus / Deflationary ETH
Rusty Bill / NFT Home Ownership
Kerman / On-Chain Identity + Reputation Map
The Metaverse / Reddit NFTs
Chris Cantino / NFTs Everywhere
PROOF (🤝) / Unboxing for Gold Nesters 👀
Dirt.[xyz] (🤝) / Touch Grass
Snowfro / Curated Series 1-8: Complete Set
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
Artwork made possible by @StabilityAI -- engineered w/ love by @RonanBroadhead + @zackrosenblatt2 + @_cutbank
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