All the Web3 news you missed this week
Here’s the Web3 news from the past week
General
3 things that need to happen for Web3 to (really) take off (Venture Beat)
The success of the Web3 space depends on several major changes, writes Emma Cui, CEO and founding partner of LongHash Ventures. Users need to adopt an owner mentality, investors need to shift to a more collaborative outlook, and people starting projects need to move past chasing hype and toward creating long-term value.
Tinder to kill virtual currency, metaverse plans amid Match Group earnings loss; Tinder loses its CEO (TechCrunch)
With Tinder failing to hit its revenue growth targets, parent company Match Group has put the dating app’s forays into the metaverse and virtual currency on ice. Tests of so-called “Tinder Coins” had delivered “mixed results,” according to Match Group CEO Bernard Kim, who noted that leadership intends “to do more thinking about virtual goods to ensure that they can be a real driver for Tinder’s next leg of growth.”
Arca’s David Nage on how regulatory scrutiny is impacting venture investment in web3 (TechCrunch)
Arca principal David Nage went on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast to discuss the state of Web3 venture capital, including the challenges facing those in the space who want to innovate but are hesitant to do so without clear regulatory guidelines. “A lot of these founders understand that a token could provide obvious utility for distributing and decentralizing the authority of the company and could provide a lot of positive economic incentives for those that are participating, but without regulatory clarity they are pushing that off in a warrant for an indefinite period of time,” said Nage.
Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month (TechCrunch)
On Starbucks’s earnings call this week, founder and interim CEO Howard Schultz shared some tidbits about the coffee giant’s moves into the Web3 and NFT space, which will officially be revealed at its Investor Day in September. The stated goal is to “build on the current Starbucks Rewards engagement model,” but as TechCruch’s Sarah Perez notes, Web3 could also help Starbucks cater to one of its most important customer demographics: Gen Z.
NFTs
Tiffany’s Reveals First NFTs—at $51,000 Each (Decrypt)
Tiffany & Co. is dropping its first NFT collection today, with a sale of 250 “NFTiffs” going for 30 ETH a pop. (That’s roughly $51,000 each.) It’s not the first time the 185-year-old jeweler has shown interest in the crypto space, having purchased a $380,000 Okapi NFT designed by artist Tom Sachs and fashioned a CryptoPunk-shaped rose gold pendant for executive Alexandre Arnault.
Metaverse
What Are the Seven Layers of the Metaverse? (XR Today)
There are many different definitions of the metaverse at this point. Here’s one to consider, from author Jon Radoff: The metaverse contains “seven fundamental layers that reflect several stages of the metaverse economy and collectively provide a systematic method for outlining its architecture.” XR Today explains Radoff’s idea in full, from the initial “experience layer” through the seventh “infrastructure layer.”
Vitalik Buterin dumps cold water on Mark Zuckerberg's Web3 metaverse dreams (Fortune)
“The ‘metaverse’ is going to happen but I don't think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere,” wrote Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in a July 30 Twitter post. According to Buterin, the issue is that it’s simply too early to know what people want — meaning “anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”
DeFi
Waves Community Backs Plan to Reimburse $500M of Lost DeFi Funds (Decrypt)
When the Waves stablecoin USDN depegged in April, users of the Waves-powered lending platform Vires.Finance collectively lost $500 million in funds. The Waves community has now passed a vote to launch a “DeFi Revival Plan” to reimburse those losses.
Why DeFi Giants Aave, Curve May Want Their Own Stablecoins (Nasdaq)
Two new stablecoins may be on the way from Aave, whose community members have voted in favor of developing one, and Curve, whose founder has gestured at a similar project. “It seems like pure business sense for Aave or Curve to get into the stablecoin game,” writes Daniel Kuhn of CoinDesk. “Neither of the protocols’ tokens has been built yet, but both will likely drive revenues for and attract users to the platform.”
Gaming
Axie Infinity CEO Moved Crypto Tokens Before the Company Revealed Hack (Bloomberg)
Sky Mavis, the maker of Axie Infinity, confirmed that in the hours following Axie Infinity's $600 million hack this spring — before the company announced it and froze users’ assets — a wallet belonging to CEO Trung Nguyen moved $3 million in Axie Infinity tokens over to another crypto exchange. In a Twitter thread, Nguyen denied accusations of insider trading, writing that “the Founding Team chose to transfer it from my wallet to ensure that short-sellers, who track official Axie wallets, would not be able to front-run the news.”
Off topic stories I found interesting
Rent This Space: The Business Model of Space as a Service (Via Satellite)
“Space as a service” is on the rise, from organizations offering satellite infrastructure to companies selling full mission packages. Spire, one player in this emerging market, believes that the market for space services is $39 billion, with lots of room to grow.
In case you missed it - this was the most opened article from last week’s news roundup
Reporting on Play-to-Earn Gaming (Vice)
Vice went behind-the-scenes on its own reporting on Axie Infinity and play-to-earn gaming, talking to journalists about what it was like telling this story. “It keys into all these larger conversations about what the metaverse is, what cryptocurrency and the crypto marketplace looks like and what it does, especially for people who are economically vulnerable, and maybe even what the future of work looks like,” said Vice News host Krishna Andavolu.
About Me
Hi, I’m Andrew Chang - I created the Web3 Roundup to share what I’m learning in this space. I’ve spent my career at the forefront of the technology industry in areas such as crypto/blockchain (Former COO @ Paxos, co-founding partner of Liberty City Ventures), video and adtech. I learn by meeting with founders, investors and other thought leaders and approach Web3 with the same enthusiasm – and skepticism – I had about crypto/blockchain technologies 10 years ago.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter (@DigitalDrex)