How long will bigger companies commit to Web3 + All the Web3 news you missed this week
GameStop’s NFT experiment is not going well. The initial success of GameStop’s NFT marketplace has lost steam, with volumes falling significantly since its launch last month. Due to GameStop’s 2.25% transaction fee, even sales volumes in the millions of dollars aren’t enough to make the platform a real moneymaker for the company.
Many larger companies have rolled out their Web3 projects with little success. It remains to be seen how long these companies will continue to invest in these projects as they stagnate and the crypto markets go through a resetting period. My prediction is companies that pushed larger projects will fold those initiatives as internal stakeholders no longer have the internal capital to push a web3 initiative, while the companies that pushed smaller projects can absorb failures as early experiments in a promising field. Either way, it will be interesting to see who stays committed through tougher times.
Here’s the Web3 news from the past week
General
Web3 and the transition toward true digital ownership (Venture Beat)
If Web2 enabled companies to sell people’s data as a product — with no ownership rights for users themselves — Web3 proposes a very different power dynamic, one where ownership rests with individuals rather than corporations. One piece of technology that could enable that transition? NFTs, which provide proof of ownership.
5 bizarre Web3 pivots that revealed the inner workings of the crypto hivemind (Mashable)
Mashable took a trip down memory lane, looking back at some of the oddest Web3 moves we’ve seen so far — from Pearson’s blockchain-based plan to track (and profit from) secondary sales of its textbooks to the non-transferable benefits attached to transferable Applebee’s NFTs.
NFTs
Bored Apes Approaching Mass Liquidation On BendDAO, Can This Crash Entire NFT Market? (Bitcoinist)
Bored Apes are at risk of liquidation on BendDAO, a platform that uses NFTs as collateral for Ethereum loans and automatically puts those NFTs up for sale when their floor price drops to a prescribed level. With the price of Bored Apes declining, there’s concern about a potential domino effect: Liquidations could drag down BAYC’s floor price, cause further liquidations, and hurt the collection overall.
How a viral NFT project survived the crypto crash (The Verge)
The Verge’s Casey Newton caught up with Dom Hofmann, whose one-year-old NFT project Loot has managed to weather the crypto downturn. Among Hofman’s learnings from the last year: Initial hype is a lot of noise and distraction, public-domain projects often struggle to come to fruition, and the price of Ethereum is slowing down Web3 projects.
DAOs
The role of DAOs in the NFT space (Venture Beat)
DAOs and NFTs go together like peanut butter and jelly. “Case studies for collaboration between DAOs and NFTs are emerging, and we are beginning to see how DAOs, leveraging a co-op model of organizational structure, are offering new avenues of participation for those people who participate in the creator economy in their own, small way,” writes Ken Timsit of Cronos.
Metaverse
Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the metaverse memes (The Verge)
After posting a screenshot of his avatar in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, Zuck caught flak for the ungainly graphics on display. A few days later, he posted some newer and much more attractive screenshots, noting: “Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon.”
‘Phantom Touch’ and the (Real) Pleasures of Virtual Dating (New York Times)
Madeleine Aggeler reports on the metaverse dating scene, which appeals to users for a variety of reasons, including geographic limitations, real-world social anxiety, and the ability to experiment with one’s sexual or gender identity. Virtual dating has its ups and downs, though: While it can facilitate real-life relationships, the metaverse doesn’t always cut it after meeting up in person.
What Will Happen When We Realize Facebook’s Metaverse Is Just A Huge Ad (Forbes)
“It’s all smoke, mirrors, and prognostication,” writes John Brandon of the current dialogue around the metaverse. His expectation? That virtual worlds will be much less about gaming or connecting with others, and a lot more about selling ads and products.
DeFi
DeFi’s Role in Bringing Real World Assets into the 21st Century (Nasdaq)
The line between DeFi and traditional finance is likely to grow increasingly blurry over time, as blockchain technology gets baked into the broader finance world. “The Fintech revolution focused on the customer-facing technology (the front end), but it is DeFi that will fundamentally restructure the pipes of finance (the back end),” writes Teej Ragsdale.
How DeFi Can Deliver Value for Artists and Musicians (CoinDesk)
Musicians have long been critical of streaming platforms, which offer them a fractional cut of profits from their own music. According to Matt Waters of Unchained Music, Web3 and DeFi stand to change that dynamic by giving artists new tools for royalties and publishing music in a decentralized way.
Gaming
Web3 games incorporate features to drive female participation (Cointelegraph)
Women make up roughly half of all gamers, and Web3 game designers are catering to them accordingly, by boosting aesthetics, focusing on mobile access, building out strong community features, and foregrounding users’ creativity.
Axie Infinity: Pernicious Pyramid Scheme Or Gaming Breakthrough? (Forbes)
In an analysis of Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn model, Forbes offered several takeaways for developers: games should be fun for users (and not just an income stream), hyper-inflation of tokens needs to be curbed, and users should be able to play for free.
In case you missed it - this was the most opened article from last week’s news roundup
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.
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)