[Thoughts #85] WW3, Boring Security, Scavenger Hunts Pt. 2, Tessera, Dapper and College Sports
Bringing you a platter off NFT goodness
I spent the past two days writing about Sudoswap, so what’s our punishment reward? A tasting platter of thoughts about a variety of topics for today’s piece!
WW3 Update
For those have recently subscribed to this newsletter (looking at your my 13th and 14th subscribers), I recently announced that I am building the Seal Team Six of Web3 writers.
What have we accomplished in the past few weeks?
Graduated from our Group DM (v0.1) to a Discord Server (v0.2)! We’re adding some final touches to the server.
Once the server is in tip top shape, we’ll be inviting the next wave of writers to the server. For those on the waitlist, thank you for your patience! There are some talented folks that will be joining our ranks soon 💪
Continued holding our weekly Twitter Spaces, we just had our 4th yesterday!
Kicked off ideation for collective projects. Writers have an unfair advantage versus other disciplines: We write 😏
Tweeted some memes related to writing in Web3
An Elon Musk endorsement? I’ll take it!
So what can you do to help as we continue our slow and steady growth towards world writing domination?
Join our weekly Twitter spaces Wednesdays 9am PT/12pm ET. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer or not, all are welcome 🤗
Share WW3 to Web3 writers you know. We need more female members!
Check out the work from our founding members
Boring Security
I won a raffle the other day for a class called Boring Security. I know…winning a raffle for a class is probably one of the least exciting things you could win. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
Few notes:
It’s awesome that there is an effort like this to educate the broader Web3 community about securing your assets.
The contributors to Boring Security are BAYC holders, which is pretty cool (some of them are Yuga employees too). But more notable than that, these are qualified and knowledgable experts in this the domain of Web3 security. @Feld4014 has been in crypto for ~10 years (he’s seen some stuff) and @crypto_kfx has been in the security space for ~10 years. They were both instructors for this course.
This was a live cohort class that lasted almost 2 hours. As boring as the boring security class may have been for some, this is a huge effort and I applaud the team for sharing their time and knowledge with those in the class (I believe there were ~15-20 of us).
As the Twitter profile description states, Boring Security is funded by the ApecoinDAO. This was AIP-9, the 9th proposal for the community of $APE holders.
Great to see that this initiative had overwhelming support from the $APE holder community. Education and security is important!
Also, the request for budget was quite reasonable. This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. This effort is genuinely intended to help the broader community.
The class itself was great for those that had at least a foundational level understanding of NFTs and wallets. For myself, I was familiar with a large majority of the content, but hearing it from those that have been around the block a couple times was helpful instead of just reading about it.
As an example of some of the class content: A particularly helpful visual related to wallet management.
There was even an AMA session afterwards!
Lastly, there was a 10 question quiz.
For everyone that got a 9 or 10, they were eligible to receive a NFT as an incentive.
For those that got a score of 8 or less, the team offered a free one-on-one 15-minute session to help answer any additional questions or concerns.
That’s friggin’ awesome.
All in all, big shoutout to the Boring Security team to educating us all, class by class. We need more folks like you!
For anyone interested, check out their Discord here. They hold free classes multiple times a month and if you have a community with 25+ that would attend a course, you can directly reach out to the team!
Scavenger Hunts Pt. 2
I wrote about the WonderPals scavenger hunt earlier this week and it just so happens that another scavenger hunt kicked off today. In the form of a multi-project effort:
I’m currently a holder of two of the 4 participating communities, which is how I caught wind of this. That rat looks a little familiar, huh…
Here’s how it works.
And here’s where participants begin:
Ok, I guess this scavenger hunt is a little harder than taking pics of bicycles and rocks lol.
It’s great to see this effort for multiple reasons:
Web3 and NFTs is not about any single community. It’s about the sum of the communities and together, much can be accomplished (at least philosophically haha).
This is a creative way to increase engagement intra-community and inter-community. 1 + 1 = 3.
I’ve written about the potential demise of the cute meta early on, and I still stand by my thesis. Cute meta projects need to stick together in the war on attention. No individual cute project can beat the Bored Apes from an attention and die-hard fan level.
If they don’t collaborate together in meaningful ways, Disney and Sanrio will come and suck the rest of the air out of the room.
I think this is a likely scenario with a couple leading cute meta projects surviving and the rest getting scooped up by larger IP holders like the above companies. The IP and existing communities are great, they just don’t have the strategic and executional chops. Still rooting for these projects to figure it out though! I’m an e-mail or DM away…😉
Regardless, this is a great initiative to see I hope to see more inter-community efforts, especially in this type of market.
Tessera
I came across this tweet thread from @andy8052 yesterday:
What is Fractional Tessera?
NFTs are dumb. This is even dumber TPan. Is it? It already exists in other forms outside of NFTs.
Although I was trying to make a point that fractional investing for alternative assets is happening outside of NFTs, both Rally and Otis are doing it for NFTs too lol 🤦
Anyway, that’s not why I brought Tessera up. I was reading through the thread when I got to the list of investors. Of course there were some big names like Paradigm, but also a bunch of angels (individual investors).
First of all, this is a big list being publicly shared. Typically, when you read these announcements on Techcrunch, they only share biggest names that invested (OMG KIM KARDASHIAN INVESTED).
Second, it’s sorta cool that there’s no one way to announce your fundraise anymore. It really depends on where your audience is, and Tessera’s is primarily on Twitter. I’m sure they did the standard PR thing too.
Thirdly, these are some way bigger names than you think even if you have no idea who the hell they are.
And they’re big in two ways which aren’t mutually exclusive:
The size of their audience
The skills, expertise, and network
Here’s a sample of who participated in the round.
DCinvestor, an OG in the space. Oh…and 210k followers. NBD.
Less than 10k followers on Twitter?
Ah…they have a Telegram group with over 55k subscribers.
KBM, a very popular shitposter, but even better equity and crypto trader.
And the founder of Vine?!
I could go on, but I think we get the point.
Investors in Web3 are a different breed. Of course, there’ll be the a16z’s and Paradigm’s, which are essential and exciting for the Web3 funding ecosystem. But angels and the resources/knowledge they can provide look different. Very different. And if successful enough, they’ll start creating (and already are) funds that will begin to rival the established VCs of today.
The biggest brains in the next generation won’t be wearing a suit and tie. They’re probably wearing a hoodie…A hoodie they haven’t washed for a couple of weeks.
PS: I just signed up for Tessera’s newsletter and this is how the CEO signed the e-mail
If someone comes at you with a great pitch and they have a weird username like poopypants471981, don’t immediately write them off. You never know…
Dapper + College Sports NFTs
ARE YOU DONE YET? Getting full from that sample platter, eh? 😏
A couple days ago someone in one my alpha groups shared CougsRise. No, this is not a Tinder for older women to hit on younger men.
It’s BYU’s (a college) version of NBA Topshot.
As someone that went to a college that has a big sports culture (USC, they disappoint every year lol)..this is gonna be HUGE.
Before I get into why, this part is a big deal as well.
The $ (not sure what %) will support the student-athletes thanks to changes in NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness).
TLDR for NIL: Student-athletes couldn’t make money while playing collegiate sports before. Now they can.
So, why is this CougsRise thing a big deal?
Buying NBA Topshot moments is one thing. But buying moments of your classmates, friends, alma mater, or if you’re a parent, your children is a whole different situation. On top of that, you’re supporting the school and the student-athletes. Just like how you might support your favorite musician or artist. Or ya know…TPan.
Can you imagine the future of donating to your alma mater? ‘Get an exclusive NFT’ lol. Sounds funny now, but wait around and see what happens…
They’re coming out the gate with exclusive experiences for holders, especially since this business model has been proven thanks to Dapper and NBA Topshot.
Here’s a sample of the rewards:
If you’re a sports fan, these are pretty good perks…and you’re supporting the student-athletes. I can’t emphasize that part enough.
It’s like buying Girl Scout cookies.
Wait, I can support a great organization AND feel good about eating a shit ton of cookies late at night? Great, I’ll take the whole table please.
This is going to be a sneaky way to onboard millions to NFTs without anyone knowing it. Lead with the fandom.
Back to the children point real quick. If you think this is just for the most popular sports (football and basketball), you’re wrong. Do not underestimate the power of a parent’s love for their children and their financial willingness to invest in them.
I’m convinced this will come to your local alma mater in the next couple of years.
Last but definitely not least, Dapper has announced that NFL All Day is available to the public! The hype video features Patrick Mahomes, the face of the next generation of football.
Just in time for the upcoming NFL season 👏
PS: Did you hear how Mahomie described All Day?
“Buy, sell, and earn. Officially licensed NFL digital collectibles.”
No mention of ‘NFT’.
I had a breakup of sorts with Dapper a few months ago, but I believed and still believe they will be a force to reckon with. Their strategy is unparalleled for the mass market.
I don’t think I’ll have be able to invest more time into figuring out everything going on with Dapper, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they have in store with the NFL and NBA next season.
Are you full now? I’m actually starving. Now that I’m done writing, it’s time to eat lunch!
See you tomorrow!