[Thoughts #150] More Wallets, Communities, and Breadth: Uniswap and Telegram
[Thoughts #150] More Wallets, Communities, and Breadth: Uniswap and Telegram
PLUS: 🏈 A Superbowl ad with a free NFT mint!
I’ve recently been on a wallet and product expansion roll lately:
Unfortunately, there’s more from where that came from. Don’t blame me, I’m not in charge of industry announcements 🤷🏻♂️
Two more companies made notable announcements related to the above topics.
Uniswap
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange. What is an exchange and what makes it decentralized?
Some exchanges that we are more familiar with might be Coinbase, or…FTX. They allow users to buy, sell, or swap different crypto. And these ones are centralized.
How is Uniswap is decentralized? Users don’t need to deposit money into the exchange to use the service. They can connect their wallet, make ‘swaps’ or transactions they want without intermediary parties or time wasted for funds to show up in their account.
This is what Uniswap’s Swap function looks like, pretty simple.
What did Uniswap announce earlier this week?
Going back to the icicle framework, it looks like Uniswap is adding NFTs to their portfolio of services.
The NFT platform and capabilities were accelerated through acquiring Genie, a NFT marketplace aggregator back in June.
Aggregators like Genie helps people who want to buy or list multiple NFTs at once, agonistic of where the NFT are listed. This furthers elements of the decentralized ethos that Uniswap holds.
Some other notes from the announcement:
Uniswap airdropped ~$5 million USDC to Genie users
This was hinted at in the original acquisition announcement back in June, and the moment finally arrived. Each qualifying wallet received 300 USDC ($300 US).
Historically, airdrops were in the currency of the airdropper (less stable) not USDC (more stable). In these scenarios, airdrop beneficiaries swap the token to USDC, ETH or something more stable or useful. And as that action snowballed, the value of the airdropped currency dropped due to selling pressure.
A USDC airdrop negates this negative impact since it’s a stablecoin that is pegged 1:1 to USD.
So let’s say you want to use your airdropped USDC to purchase a ETH NFT. What do you do?
You…oh! Swap your USDC for ETH. And where would you execute that swap? You’re claiming the airdrop on Uniswap. How convenient!
The airdrop doesn’t just promote Uniswap’s new NFT platform, it also promotes and encourages usage for Uniswap’s swap feature 🧠
There are two tiers of benefits
Historical Genie users who receive the USDC airdrop, and also…
Wallets that don’t qualify for the airdrop can still benefit from the product launch through engaging with Uniswap’s new NFT marketplace.
So now you get multiple layers of users who are encouraged to check out Uniswap’s new NFT marketplace:
Existing Uniswap users (Uniswap DeFi ➡️ NFT)
Airdrop claimers (NFT on other platforms ➡️ Uniswap DeFi + NFT)
Gas Rebaters (NFT on other platforms ➡️ Uniswap NFT + DeFi)
Uniswap open-sourced their front-end code
I’m not sure if this directly benefits Uniswap. At minimum, this helps their brand and goodwill with the broader developer and builder ecosystem 👷♂️
If I were to sum Uniswap’s announcement in a TPan meme:
Telegram
Add another player to the community and wallet wars. We now have Telegram (a messaging app widely used by those in Web3 and other folks) joining the party!
Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, announced they were building a set of decentralized tools: Wallets, decentralized exchanges, and more.
The announcement was not a result of the mess FTX made, but seemed like a timely opportunity to vocalize a stronger narrative.
Why do I say this? Prior to all that craziness, Telegram announced features that made their intentions clear
Topics
This puts Telegram on a clearer competitive path with other messaging and community platforms. For Web3 in particular, Discord comes to mind.
Collectible usernames
"Once acquired, a user has full control over their collectible username, able to trade it or retain it for later use.”
So like...NFTs?! Very similar at least.
Telegram is partnering with TON blockchain, an alternative Layer 1 blockchain that Telegram’s username marketplace will be built on top of — Fragment.
It seems that Fragment isn’t available in the US (I can’t even access the about page!). If you want to check it out, you’ll have to VPN in be outside the US. Less competition if you want to claim usernames that you like I guess?
If I were to sum Telegram’s announcement in a TPan meme:
DigiDaigaku’s Super Bowl Ad
NFTs are coming to the Super Bowl featuring a live mint mechanic 👀
DigiDaigaku is a NFT project from Limit Break, a blockchain gaming company that has gained steam over the past few months. Gabriel Leydon and some of the Limit Break team come from Gabe’s previous company, Machine Zone.
For anyone that has or currently works in the gaming (particularly mobile gaming) industry, you’re likely familiar with the name.
TLDR: They know gaming and they know it well. They were early pioneers in mobile performance marketing, most notably with Super Bowl TV ads several years back featuring celebrities like Kate Upton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Super Bowl ads aren’t cheap. They’ve never been cheap. They cost up to $7 million based on the when the ad is airing during the game.
How is Limit Break able to afford this outside of secondary royalties?
Gotcha lol. How will the free mint work?
The nice thing is the Limit Break team has some comps, specifically Coinbase’s QR code sweepstakes ad earlier this year:
So we have:
A company proactively announcing that they will run a Super Bowl ad
A company proactively announcing they will have a free mint
A company proactively announcing how to claim the free mint
A company that has data points around traffic to ensure their website/app doesn’t crash
A (growing) audience that is or will be aware of the above points to acquire something that has some amount of value
Let’s see what else Gabe shares in the weeks and months leading up to the Super Bowl.
See you tomorrow!