"Make Mark Happy" projects at Meta + All the Web3 news you missed this week

NY Times this week reports Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Struggles. Interviews with current and former Meta employees paint a rough picture of the company’s metaverse ambitions. Horizon Worlds is reportedly “buggy and unpopular,” certain executives feel that they’re overreaching financially, and a May poll found that just 58 percent of staffers felt they understood their employer’s metaverse strategy, which is said to change frequently. “Inside Meta, two employees said, some workers now jokingly refer to key metaverse projects as M.M.H., an acronym for ‘make Mark happy,’” reports the Times.

But all of this turmoil is set for a dramatic change with the announcement that “Legs are coming to the Metaverse!” As the company explains, “legs are hard!” - surely this was the key factor holding back Meta’s metaverse! And now on to the rest of the Web3 news you missed this week.

Here’s the Web3 news from the past week

NFTs

CNN accused of rug pull as it abandons its NFT project (The Verge)

CNN has shuttered “Vault by CNN,” an NFT marketplace where it sold tokenized versions of major moments in news history. The news organization said in a statement that Vault by CNN, launched in June 2021, was only ever intended as a 6-week experiment, but that community engagement kept it running well past that deadline. Its community isn’t too pleased now: CNN is planning to distribute 20% of each NFT’s original mint price to owners, some of whom are calling the move a rug pull.

Metaverse

$1.2 Billion Metaverse Horrified By Report It Only Had 38 Active Users (The Byte)

Decentraland, the metaverse with a market cap of $1.2 billion, logged a mere 38 active users in a 24 hour period, according to DappRadar data. Decentraland says that this figure only includes users who interact with its contracts and that the total user average is more like 8,000 per day. But, writes Victor Tangermann, “even 8,000 users on a given day is dismal for something that's supposed to be the future of online communities.”

It’s painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing (TechCrunch)

How thirsty was Mark Zuckerberg’s presentation at Meta’s annual VR developer conference? “Zuck’s overscripted and overproduced dev event keynote today was easily the hardest sell for not just a product or a platform, but the premise upon which it’s based, I can ever recall seeing in a decade in tech,” writes Darrell Etherington. Meta’s hard sell includes an attempt to lure people into the metaverse by partnering with one of its old competitors, Microsoft.

DeFi

$100M drained from Solana DeFi platform Mango Markets, token plunges 52% (Cointelegraph)

Another week, another exploit. The DeFi exchange Mango Markets lost more than $100 million after an attacker manipulated the value of their MNGO collateral and then took out several enormous loans from the platform.

Once-Buzzy DeFi Is Bested by Bonds (Bloomberg)

The reviews are in: “Sterling and plain-vanilla bonds are the hottest ticket in town.” Thanks to interest rate increases, short-term treasury bonds are out-earning DeFi, which has been on the decline for months. “MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that runs the world’s fourth-largest stablecoin DAI, started buying $500 million in US Treasuries and corporate bonds last week, in a bid to diversify its balance sheet,” reports Bloomberg.

Regulatory

SEC Probing Bored Ape Creator Yuga Labs Over Unregistered Offerings (CoinDesk)

The SEC is reportedly looking into the question of whether Yuga Labs’s NFTs essentially operate as stocks — and whether their sale then violates federal disclosure rules. “The key legal question at the center of the probe, according to Bloomberg, is whether NFTs are securities – a question the SEC has reportedly been investigating since March,” writes CoinDesk.

‘Fear’ May Be Keeping Ooki DAO From Mounting Defense Against CFTC (CoinDesk)

Facing a lawsuit from the CFTC, Ooki DAO token holders seem to be hesitant to fund a legal defense — because voting on that matter through their DAO governance system could implicate them. An initial vote received zero responses, while a second one received three “yeses,” reports CoinDesk.

EU Lawmakers Pass Landmark Crypto Assets Regulation Bill (Decrypt)

On Monday, EU lawmakers advanced the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation bill, which asks crypto issuers to publish white papers about their projects, stablecoin companies to meet certain capital requirements, and crypto mining entities to disclose their energy usage. The EU also passed a bill tackling money laundering that requires crypto transfers to include information about both parties.

In case you missed it - this was the most opened article from last week’s news roundup

The metaverse could be transformative, but it’s a legal and ethical minefield (CNN)

The metaverse stands to amplify the internet’s pre-existing problems, writes Jane Thomason. Some of its most pressing challenges and open questions include intellectual property rights in a decentralized environment, informed consent around data collection, and child protection.

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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)