Blur Rugs OpenSea

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GM DOers! 

It’s time for your Weekly Rollup and boy do we have a spicy Saturday of web3 innovation lined up for you. 

We’re breaking down: 

• The chart of the week—a new addition to the Rollup where we break down one important metric. This week it’s Reddit NFT adoption 📈
• Blur’s counterpunch to OpenSea’s royalty enforcement smart contracts 👊
• Coinbase improves wallet safety & others should follow 🔒
• Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer joins a DAO 😮
• Tool of the Month. Hint: They’re a popular tool for token-gating Discord access. 🪙

Let’s dive in.

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👉 Brought to You by Lens: The Future of Social Networking 👀

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We’re looking for another writer to join our ranks and help us create kick-ass content!

So if you’d like to become our newest Web3 Writer and rub shoulders with some of the best in the business, learn more about the role today.

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Reddit Has 2x More NFT Users Than the Entire NFT Market

With the growing interest in on-chain data, every week we’ll be highlighting a significant on-chain chart that we believe you should be aware of. 

This week, we’ll be covering the rapid adoption of Reddit NFTs.

As of January 30, 6.5m wallets have purchased a Reddit NFT. In comparison, 3.4m wallets have purchased an NFT across all EVM-compatible chains. 

On Reddit, the large majority of these wallets are unique users since they have to “qualify” to mint the NFTs. However, we can safely assume that not all EVM wallets are unique users because anyone can create as many wallets as they like. 

The takeaway here is that Reddit likely has more than 2x the number of NFT users than the entire EVM-compatible NFT market. 🤯

So if you want to know why Reddit is winning in web3, go PRO today to unlock the full report and level up your web3 playbook.

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Blur Found a Way to Bypass OpenSea’s Royalty Enforcement Tool

Before we dive into this story, let’s recap where we’ve been so far in the royalty enforcement saga. 

Blur and OpenSea have been in hot competition since Blur launched in November 2021, attracting a large share of the market with its zero-fee trading platform (OpenSea charges 2.5%). Previously, OpenSea was the NFT marketplace, accounting for almost 90% of volume at the start of 2022. 

But over the last 90 days, OpenSea accounted for just 37% of trading volume while Blur accounted for 45%! 😮

To claw back market share from Blur and other optional royalty marketplaces, OpenSea created the Operator Filter Registry to restrict NFT listings on such platforms. 

But here’s the kicker, Blur recently used Seaport, a protocol created by OpenSea themselves, to bypass the registry and allow the trade of restricted collections, such as Yuga’s Sewer Passes. 

While Blur is currently enforcing royalties on previously restricted collections, they’ve shown other marketplaces that there’s still a way to bypass royalties.

On top of this, Blur also has the power to bring back royalty optionality. 😬

Word on the street is that OpenSea’s devs are sweatin’ because it seems that the only solution to this is to shut down Seaport which is next to impossible because it’s one of the most popular protocols in the NFT space. 

Sure, OpenSea could go down the optional royalty road as well (not that we’d want to see that). But the problem is that supporting creators through royalties is part of the company’s ethos so it puts them in a difficult position.

This is a particularly thorny issue for OpenSea as most NFT volume right now comes from traders and what do they want? To pay the lowest fees possible.

In saying that, we think that creators will still generate royalties as more NFT use cases arise outside of trading. 

As we always say, NFTs are just a wrapper and they can be used to token gate access to communities, as an IRL event pass, and more. Through this lens, royalties aren’t a fee but rather a way for people to support the communities they’re part of. 🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏻

On top of this, everyday holders will likely flock to platforms with better UX, such as OpenSea rather than suffering elsewhere to eke out more profit.

Another option could be that collections and projects create their own native marketplaces with features that provide better UX than mass-market platforms and monetize through royalties or transaction fees.

While this takes a lot of resources at the moment, we’ve seen tools, such as Rarible’s no-code marketplace builder recently released which could be a game changer for NFT projects! 💭

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All Eyes Are on Wallet UX

There have been several high-profile web3 builders who’ve experienced phishing hacks lately and many smaller ones as well—even one of our team members was hacked!

We think that the current wallet UX is a huge reason for this. For example, when people sign a transaction in MetaMask (or another wallet) do you think most people actually understand what they’re signing for?

Do they know how to double-check a transaction’s legitimacy? 

Probably not. 🥶

And that’s no fault of their own because it’s extremely difficult to know when a signature will give hackers access to their wallet.

This is also a major reason web3 hasn’t gone mainstream. In web2, we have tons more freedom when it comes to using the internet.

We don’t have to worry about every website we use and although hacks and scams do happen, it’s extremely difficult for them to drain all your assets in one fell swoop.

The good news for web3, though, is that Coinbase and other prominent companies are solving these issues. ✅

Coinbase recently announced a slew of upgrades to its native wallet that we believe should be standard for all web3 wallets.  

Here are two that stood out to us: 

• Transaction previews to improve signing safety. When you interact with web3 now, it’s extremely difficult to verify the legitimacy of a transaction. The only solution we have is for users to use a block explorer to verify that the wallet address on the other end is legit. But with this new upgrade, Coinbase’s wallet explains what you’re signing for (in human-readable words) before you do it.  
• A dApp block list. There’s no arguing that there are many unsafe dApps out there so Coinbase is doing its part to prevent people from using them which is vital to keep newbies safe and in the space long term. But since we’re in web3, there are other ways to access a blocked dApp (if you think it’s safe), such as by using a different wallet, so this is definitely a positive. 

Reddit has taken a similar yet different approach with its vaults since they can’t interact with dApps (although, users can move tokens to other wallets if they want to engage in web3). 

You can liken this to bubble wrapping people as they enter the space so that they have the best chance of making the most of web3. 

This is the perfect route if you’re onboarding newbies into web3 like Reddit. The worst thing that could happen to them is that they onboard all these people who end up getting rekt by scams and hacks because of their inexperience. 

But with this approach, they ensure that they keep their community safe until they’re confident enough to jump into the wild west of web3. 🔒

Starbucks, on the other hand, has completely prevented the transfer of Odyssey Stamps. Although we think they’ll add this functionality in the future, it’s still a smart approach from brands responsible for onboarding millions into the space—at least until the UX and safety improve.

Another recent wallet innovation comes from Immutable, but instead of calling it a wallet, they’re calling it a passport.

We think this name change is a step in the right direction regarding how we think about web3. Previously, it was all about storing crypto, but now we have all kinds of tokens for different use cases.

On top of this, current web3 wallets struggle to provide a decent UX for NFTs. For example, some wallets don’t even show token images let alone videos or play audio. 🤦‍♀️

So we think that, in time, we’ll use several specialized wallets. There could be some that provide excellent UX for NFTs while others are for gaming or music. And that’s where we think Immutable is heading with this move, especially since they’re a gaming-focused ecosystem.

While Immutable has called its new non-custodial wallet a passport, you can think of it as an account or gamer profile. But what’s interesting is that it hosts your in-game items, profile data, and authentication solutions for the different games on its platform. 

The idea is to make the UX as simple as possible with the Immutable Passport allowing people to interact and trade their in-game items right in the passport itself.

This also lowers the barrier to entry for web3 newbies since they don’t have to learn how to use a traditional wallet, such as MetaMask.

We also think that (hopefully) this fixes the complications around signing transactions by making transactions native to the wallet itself (aka account abstraction). 🤞

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Thread of the Week

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Pfizer Joins Web3 by Backing VitaDAO

While big pharma is notorious for activating solely in their best interests and putting profit over compassion, Pfizer is bucking that trend. 

The pharmaceutical company recently joined web3 by investing in VitaDAO, an organization that funds projects related to longevity science. 

Truth be told, decentralized science (DeSci) is a space that doesn’t get a lot of attention—at least not from the current crypto community because most of them are too focused on investment monkeys. 🐒

But Vitalik is a huge believer in this and he’s talked a lot about DeSci and the potential of this new model.

DeSci aims to solve the red tape and centralization involved in the research and production of medicines. For example, in order for scientists to go to market, they have to go through these massive pharmaceutical companies, which are public companies focused on profit and investor return.

This is a total mismatch of incentives because, even if a researcher develops a successful drug, if it’s a niche disease or problem, big pharma companies have no interest because they can’t profit from producing the medicine. 

Instead, these companies will sideline the project in favor of more profitable ventures. Consequently, millions of people worldwide suffer from curable (or at least manageable diseases). 😡

Here’s where VitaDAO comes in. They aim to play a role in decentralizing the ownership of various medicines through crowdfunding.

For example, people with a particular disease may be able to crowdfund the production of medicine themselves since they’d be happy to forgo profit if it meant improving their health.

On top of this, research is heavily gated by publications and research results have to be peer-reviewed (which can also be controlled by big pharma companies). 

DeSci and VitaDAO seek to solve these problems by adding open-source aspects to the research, publication, and funding processes to make it easier for researchers to get their findings out into the world. 

What’s interesting though is that since Pfizer contributed, they received native tokens from VitaDAO (since DAOs are run by tokens). 

But they’re not just holding them either, they’re also participating in governance voting, meaning that they’re invested in the future of DeSci! 🚀

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Guild: A Must-Have for Community Builders

This week’s community vote-off was neck and neck all the way. We saw Kazm, Unlock Protocol, MetaIntro, and Guild duke it out for the top spot, but it was Guild that took the top spot with 35% of the votes. 

So let’s give a big shout-out to Guild’s team and community! 🎉

Now, we’re actually big users of Guild in the Web3 Academy DAO community.

Why? 

Guild allows you to token gate access to Discord or other apps where you want to ensure that your members have a particular NFT in order to participate. 🪙

It also allows you to use tokens to manage access within a community itself, such as gating particular Discord channels within the overall server. So if you wanted to have sub-communities within a community, Guild allows you to do that in very simple ways which is vital as a community becomes larger. 

For example, Guild can help you figure out which people have a particular skill set or what their roles and community access or privileges are. 👀

It’s definitely a tool we’d recommend to any project that includes a premium access element.

But we do have one request for Guild. While one of its greatest features is that you can use it to prove ownership of a particular NFT, it’s only a one-time verification and I can still access my utilities even when I don’t own that same NFT. 

So, for example, I could transfer an NFT to all my friends and we could all have indefinite access to a platform or community. On the other hand, I could have a membership NFT that expires but I still have access to my utility because I already verified my token. 

Now, we know the team is working on it but we just wanted them to know that the feature is in high demand. 😉

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150

That’s how many blockchain-enabled t-shirts Bloomingdale’s and Non-Fungible Clothing dropped at its launch last week. Source

807,260

That’s the #1 Dookey Dash score set by Fortnite pro, Mongraal. Source

$4,100,000

That’s how much VitaDAO raised in its recent token-based funding round. Source

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Other Web3 News

• Calladita, an NFT-funded independent film wins the top prize at Sundance Film Festival. Source
• Aave launches V3, reducing gas fees and improving capital efficiency. Source
• MetaMask launches The Web3 101 Course, its new learning portal. Source
• Amazon is reportedly planning some NFT initiatives in the near future. Source
• California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is putting car titles on-chain with Tezos and Oxhead Alpha. Source
• Binance and Mastercard join forces to launch Bitcoin rewards card in Brazil. Source
• Toyota sponsors web3 hackathon on Astar Network in a bid to develop internal management tools for the car manufacturer. Source
• Sorare, an NFT fantasy sports game, signs a four-year licensing deal with the English Premier League. Source
• House of Nouns makes its NFT governance tools open-source. Source
• Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm partner to develop a mixed-reality platform. Source
• Ebay is working on bringing limited-edition NFTs and athlete merchandise to its marketplace. Source
• Mall of the Emirates introduces two physical NFT shops. Source

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