Moonbirds x PROOF (🤝) / Moonbirds DAO — The establishment of the Moonbirds DAO aims to strengthen the flock and empower creatives within the ecosystem to launch wild new experiments, NFT collections, stories, and collaborative content — more
From Gucci to Walmart / Applications for NFT-related Trademarks — A growing number of prominent brands across a wide range of industries are expanding their portfolio of trademarks to include NFTs, metaverse assets, and infrastructure related to virtual goods — more
Hugo Boss / Partnership with Imaginary Ones — In efforts to refresh its brand, the youth focused arm of fashion house Hugo Boss announces partnership with NFT community Imaginary Ones, aiming to deliver a “360-degree metaverse experience” — more
Three Arrows Capital / Starry Night NFT Liquidations — Teneo, the primary liquidator of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, has taken possession of 3AC’s NFT collection. 3AC spent ~$35M on NFTs in 2021, though the current portfolio is pegged at ~$860k by Nansen — more
OpenSea / Warner Music Group — Partnership between OpenSea and U.S. based record label Warner Music Group aims to increase engagement and build community between artists and fans by leveraging NFTs — more
Top Brands / Web3 Toys + NFTs for Kids — Recognizable children’s brands like Mattel and Nickelodeon are making their way into web3 via NFTs, alongside projects like Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends, which recently expanded into Macy’s and Toys ‘R’ Us — more
McDonald’s / Accepting BTC + USDT in Swiss Town — With recent developments, the citizens citizens of Lugano, Switzerland can not only pay their taxes in crypto, but are also able to make BTC and USDT payments at their local McDonald’s — more
Flamengo / MoonPay Partnership — One of the biggest sports clubs in Brazil has entered into a multi-year partnership with web3 infrastructure provider, MoonPay, to help boost fan engagement through NFTs, merchandise, and ticketing offers — more
Stems DAO (🤝) / $4M Raised — Collaborative web3 music platform, Stems DAO, announces funding round led by Ideo CoLab, with participation from Collab+Currency, Village Global, Polygon Studios, NoiseDAO, Jump, and others — more
Coolkicks / $6M Raised — Sneaker retail chain, Coolkicks, announces recent raise to build out a new platform called MynaSwap (built on Avalanche), which will enable trading of sneakers, cards, and watches. Blizzard and Spartan Capital participated in the round alongside NFL stars Odell Beckham Jr. and Kyler Murray — more
Horizon Blockchain Games / $40M Raised — Web3 gaming studio, Horizon, announces Series A funding led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital, with participation from Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive Software — more
Thirdwave / $7M Raised — Thirdwave, a blockchain discovery engine for teams building blockchain games, announces seed round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Animoca, Play Ventures, Shima Capital, and others — more
Golden / $40M Raised — Golden, a company building a decentralized knowledge graph for web3, raises Series B round led by a16z, with participation from Protocol Labs, Raj Gokal, OpenSea Ventures, and others — more
Exponential / $14M Raised — Exponential is an investment platform enabling users access to DeFi yield opportunities raises round led by Paradigm, with participation from FTX Ventures, Solana Ventures, Polygon, Haun Ventures, and Circle Ventures — more
Blackbird / $11M Raised — Blackbird, a web3 enabled hospitality platform, raises seed round co-led by Union Square Ventures, Shine Capital, and Multicoin. Founder Ben Leventhal previously co-founded Eater and Resy — more
OneKey / $20M Raised — OneKey, a manufacturer of crypto hardware wallets, raises Series A round co-led by Dragonfly and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Framework, and others — more
Juno / $18M Raised — Aiming to provide crypto-friendly checking accounts, Juno announces funding round led by ParaFi Capital, with participation from Hashed, Jump, Unocorrelated, Greycroft, 6th Man Ventures, and others — more
AQUA / $10M Raised — AQUA, a web3 community platform catering to gamers, launches marketplace for trading in-game assets and announces backing from Steve Cohen’s investment firm DIGITAL — more
Generative AI: A Creative New World / Sonya Huang + Pat Grady + GPT-3 — “Up until recently, machines had no chance of competing with humans at creative work—they were relegated to analysis and rote cognitive labor. But machines are just starting to get good at creating sensical and beautiful things. This new category is called “Generative AI”…” — more
How Media Franchises & Brands Monetize Culture / Mason Nystrom — “NFTs have the benefit of blending financial incentives with culture – developing a potential flywheel by which communities and projects can help each other bootstrap media that eventually becomes culturally significant.” — more
The Appchain Universe: The Risks and Opportunities / Mohamed Fouda — “The appchain thesis is gaining traction but is developing into a direction that is different from what was originally envisioned. The implementations of appchains on Cosmos, Polkadot, Avalanche, and Ethereum are converging to a shared security approach with minor differences.” — more
The Inevitability of UNIchain: A case study for an appchain-centric future / Dan Elitzer — “If Uniswap were to migrate the majority of its activity to its own chain where UNI holders were the validators, it would immediately open up powerful options for both lowering trade costs and capturing value.” — more
Application-Specific Blockchains: Past, Present, and Future / Dmitriy Berenzon — “Despite the existing issues with AppChains, developer demand points to their continued growth. As demonstrated by Apple, vertical integration often leads to better UX; similarly, blockchain developers will look to deliver fully-optimized web3 applications, which AppChains enable.” — more
DAO Governance: Challenges, Ideas and Tools / Jan Ole Ernst & Simon Sällström — “Humans are herd animals, there is nothing more human than being part of an organization or collective and many visionaries in the cryptocurrency space have sought out to “solve” one of the wicked problems of humanity: governance.” — more
Cryptoeconomics as a Limitation on Governance / Nathan Schneider — “..distributed ledgers have meanwhile amassed significant value outside the control of corporations or governments, making the question of how to govern them urgent and yet beyond the reach of prevailing regimes.” — more
Art Blocks (🤝) / Next Version, AB 2.0 — Art Blocks delivers a refreshed website, two new product collections called Presents (projects that are recognized by the internal Art Blocks team) and Explorations (a place for wild ideas and commissioned experiments), + a new gas efficient smart contract (~65% improvement) — more
Manifold / Marketplace for Creators — Manifold introduces a zero fee marketplace enabling creators to list and sell their work, which includes Manifold “Share” — a reward system designed for curators (those who help creators find their next collector) to earn a 6.9% fee — more
Coinbase / COIN Documentary — New documentary directed by Greg Kohs covers Coinbase’s journey from startup to public company, dropping 10/7 on Amazon Prime + YouTube — more
Quantum Art (🤝) / Quantum Studio Launch — With the newly announced Quantum Studio platform, artists can now easily create NFTs and manage their profile page, while customizing their NFT drop model, payment splits, and royalty structure — more
StemsDAO (🤝) / First Mint — Collaborative web3 music platform, StemsDAO, is launched its platform and first mint on 10/6, which included 7 stem NFTs on Polygon for 100 MATIC each — more
StarkWare (🤝) / Announcing Starkscan — StarkWare, providing scaling solutions for Ethereum with STARKs, has built a new high-powered block explorer called Starkscan — more
Probably Nothing x Warner Records / NFT Launch on OpenSea — The partnership announcement reveals a new web3 record label called Probably A Label, which aims to redefine music IP ownership structures by leveraging web3 tech. Minting began 10/6 — more
Nicolas Sassoon / CONTINUUM — “In CONTINUUM, the interrelated concepts of space & time are interpreted visually through minimal geometry: an hourglass & a sphere.” Friday Oct. 7 noon EDT, 0.05 ETH — more
The Fire Within / Yi-Wen Li — “This project is a study of ink, everything is generated in code without using any texture. It is an attempt to capture the ink bleeding effect and the look of the traditional Chinese paintings that have texts on top with modern approaches.” Dropping on fxhash Oct. 10th at 8:00am PST — more
Amazônia / Sebastião Salgado — “Curated over the course of 5 months, photographs in the Amazônia edition of 5,000 span more than a decade of Salgado’s visits through the Amazon… 10 categories coupled with numerous traits representing the location, region, and villages Sebastião Salgado immortalized through these journeys.” Minting Oct. 12th — more
Lineage / Tim Maxwell x Twistie — “…a collaboration that attempts to bridge the gap between traditional and generative art. 256 outputs are generated using 100% JavaScript + p5js, written by Twistie, in the distinctive style of Tim Maxwell. ” — more
DC Investor / Two Words: Chromie Squiggle
Snowfro / Squiggle Royalties to Charity in Oct.
WarDaddyCapital / Breakdown on Digital Fashion
Teng / Exploring Physical x Digital
Admit One / 1 yr Anniversary Podcast
Blockworks / Japan’s Metaverse Move
Benjamin James / Sound .xyz (🤝) x Billboard
Kevin Beauregard / Atmos (🤝): Exordium 👀
Brian Armstrong / The Psychology of Resilience
Yan Meng / ERC-1155 vs. ERC-3525
Zoomer / Three Arrows Cap, Starry Night NFT Liquidation
Seed Club / @derekedws x Superpowers
Tribute Brand (🤝) / 👀 👀
Probably A Label / First Holder Drop
NEON DAO / Terraforms by Mathcastles
MoonOverlord / Solana NFTs
Quasars / Quantum Art (🤝) x Quasars Challenge
dotta / Forgotten Rune Wizard’s Cult: Trick or Treat
Jon Stokes / Stable Diffusion x AI Content Generation Tooling
Justin Trimble / AI Art 👀 🤖 🌊
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
Art + design by @KarlyBierma
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