More drama in the crypto markets + All the Web3 news you missed this week

Drama in the crypto market rages on. FTX has bailed out lending platform BlockFi with a $250 million revolving credit facility, after reportedly liquidating BlockFi competitor Celsius after it ran out of funds. Another crypto lending platform, Babel Finance, announced that it has suspended withdrawals and redemptions as it faces “unusual liquidity pressures.” Meanwhile, the crypto platform Voyager Digital saw its shares drop more than 60% after disclosing its $720 million exposure to Three Arrows Capital (3AC) — and the possibility that it will issue a “notice of default” to 3AC. For a scathing rundown of how 3AC and BlockFi “tried to do an Uber past the rules and got squashed like a bug,” here’s a Medium post from “Michel de Cryptadamus.”

This linkedin post by Adam Draper may indicate where we’re at on the investor pullback.

And now onto the other Web3 news you may have missed this week

Here’s the Web3 news from the past week

General

Crypto’s Rout Doesn’t Mean It’s Going Away (Bloomberg)

The current crypto crash has inspired a “furious holy war over the legitimacy of web3,” as skeptics find an outlet for their moral outrage and longstanding frustration with crypto leaders. That doesn’t mean crypto has failed, though. “In tech, these stories rarely end; there are always new chapters,” writes Brad Stone. “Web3’s true believers just have a lot of work to do to prove their critics wrong.”

Billionaire Henry Cheng Ventures Into Web3 With Investment Tokens For London Real Estate (Forbes)

Henry Cheng’s Knight Dragon property development group has plans to issue 100,000 security tokens linked to an 80% share of gross profits from a 191-unit apartment building in London. The KDB4 tokens — so named for the complex, Knight Dragon’s Building 4 — are worth an estimated $172 million. A drop date hasn’t yet been announced.

Box CEO Aaron Levie on where web3 doesn’t make sense (TechCrunch)

Aaron Levie appeared on TechCrunch’s crypto podcast to discuss Web3, about which he has been more vocally critical than other tech execs. While Levie finds the space “compelling” from a philosophical standpoint, he doesn’t foresee DAOs replacing traditional corporate structures and believes crypto enthusiasts may be “over-estimating the consumer demand for ‘ownership.’”

DAOs

VC3 DAO Comes Out of Stealth (Yahoo Finance)

This week marked the public-facing launch of VC3, a DAO that invests in Web3 startups and comprises more than 150 venture capital professionals. Members are given a certain amount of $VC3 tokens when they join the DAO and can earn more through participation in activities like governance, dealflow, and due diligence. VC3 launched privately in December 2021 and has completed three deals so far.

Metaverse

Microsoft, Meta, and others are founding a metaverse open standards group (The Verge)

A cohort of tech companies have formed the Metaverse Standards Forum, which is designed to develop common standards across metaverse projects (including “consistent terminology”) and will hold inaugural meetings this year. Among the parties not currently involved in the forum are Apple, Niantic, and Roblox.

DeFi

Gaming Out DeFi’s Regulated Future (CoinDesk)

“It’s rare that new technologies get held to the same business models and constraints as legacy incumbents,” writes Paul Brody. When it comes to DeFi regulation, startup players will likely enjoy a lower barrier to entry, lower costs, and more opportunity to take risk than traditional financial players.

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

Jack Dorsey: Fuck It, We're Doing Web5 (Vice)

TBD, a business within Block (formerly Square), is building what Jack Dorsey calls “Web5.” Compared to Web3, which Dorsey believes is controlled by VCs and other institutions, Web5 is a vision for a truly decentralized internet — with no tokens for investors to snap up.

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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)