Q: What is ENS? [35]
Well hello there, friend!
It’s been another epic week for crypto this week.
There have been all-time-highs this week for both the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and most notably there was the tokenization of long-running Ethereum project ENS, which airdropped governance tokens to long-time customers of their service. The token price shot up in value almost 300% in its first week of trading, and for those that had a deep portfolio of domains, this was a very profitable moment for them.
What is ENS? What is an airdrop? How do I claim it?
We’ll cover these topics in today’s deep dive, available for paid subscribers!
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Blockchain Bulletin
Burger King gets into the crypto with a promotion alongside Robinhood.
Fast food joint Burger King is offering Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin rewards to loyalty members who spend more than $5 in a promotion in partnership with Robinhood, reported USA Today.
EA sees NFTs as ‘the future of our industry’.
Electronic Arts is jumping on the NFT bandwagon, reported PC Gamer, which quoted Chief Executive Andrew Wilson who said that blockchain games are “the future of our industry” during the company’s recent earnings call.
NYC mayor Eric Adams says he’ll take his first three paychecks in crypto.
The mayor-elect of New York City recently tweeted that he intends to take his first three paychecks in Bitcoin to show support for the city’s cryptocurrency-centric future, reported CBS News.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Animoca’s The Sandbox gaming platform raises $93M in funding.
The Sandbox, Animoca Brands “metaverse” gaming platform raised $93 million in funding, it will use the new funds to expand products and bring concerts and other events to the platform.
Lightspeed, Solana Ventures, and FTX join forces to launch $100M blockchain gaming fund.
Major investors have joined together to form a $100 million fund to focus on web3 blockchain gaming studios in order to accelerate development.
Tech Briefs
Blockchain and crypto adjacent news from Twitter and Telegram.
Discord is facing a user revolt
…over the possibility that Web3 functionality might be brought into the app, which has resulted in the CEO backing off their tech-progressive position. Judging by chatter today on cryptotwitter, this will ultimately result in Web3 moving on from the platform. Discord may have just consigned itself to oblivion. It's clear that NFTs aren't going anywhere, and almost all major game companies are all adopting them in their roadmaps. Without a doubt, gaming is a huge draw to Discord.
If not in fact, it certainly appears from their backtracking today that Discord is ceding Web3 leadership in response to the user revolt. Web3 communities are actively looking to create a FOSS Web3 alternative to Discord. Gaming companies ultimately will adopt this new standard when it emerges because it fits in their Web3/Metaverse roadmap.
Remember, even though Discord has tons of Nitro revenue, they're still not profitable. Losing their fastest growing market segment will not help this problem. The customer is not always right. Unless Discord finds a way to thread the needle and appease both user segments, this will be the moment in time when the company has peaked.
Metamask Downloads trending near all time highs.
If there was any question as to whether or not Web3 was getting real world adoption, my friend Zoe Dolan notes that the search trends for the most popular Web3 wallet is very clearly at all time highs, and trending hard in a lot of places that aren’t just the US. The heat map is telling.
Bored Ape Yacht Club profile picture project threw an epic party.
Last week was NFT week in NYC, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club threw a party of Gatsby-esque proportions.
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