For those who have been following me for a bit, you know I have consistency issues. To combat that, I had this idea. An attempt to hold me accountable while forcing me to document what I’m following. It’s an effort to better attach my name to the crypto scene and follow Rule #4 from my last article, and hopefully unlock a few connections in the process.
So, for the next four weeks, I’ll be sending a recap of what I’ve been following in web3 news. Let’s go.
@adyingnobody
The account has since been suspended, but the thread caught the eye of pretty much everyone in crypto as it notified the world that…
*wait for it*
…people in web3 do actually have sex. In fact, according to this tweet thread, there are orgies happening in web3 right alongside insider trading and ‘alpha’ drops. The news immediately made me think that either 1) Meta’s Quest has way more advanced capabilities than once thought for certain activities in the metaverse or 2) contrary to popular Twitter belief, the basement dwelling nerds in the space are fornicating like rabbits.
Jokes aside, there was a lot of wild stuff in the thread. The account claimed it had over 100GB of messages that it obtained via an exploit of Telegram. It threatened to unveil information around influencers shady activity, assassination attempts (?), and more.
It also made me think that, in a slightly more important but not quite as newsworthy of a sense, it was a good reminder that everything (except for immutable blockchain ledgers) is susceptible to something like this. It reminded me of a piece from Moxie where he describes the actual relationship between participants and the blockchain. In it he explained that while marketed as completely decentralized and ‘peer-to-peer’, transactions are actually mostly consolidated to centralized providers like Alchemy and Infura. He then references WhatsApp in the article (instead of Telegram) when talking about end to end encryption but I’d imagine in Telegram’s case it’s roughly the same. There are nuances to these things, and they’re worth the extra research. I’m not saying Ethereum isn’t decentralized or that Telegram isn’t a relatively secure option for communicating, just that it isn’t the safest place to share seed phrases and sexual preferences. Pretty naïve of us to assume how something is marketed is truly how it operates, in either case.
The Dark Balloon
Ok, on to fun learning stuff. I recently joined POP from Crypto Packaged Goods, which is a token-gated community that provides education, content and advice across different topics inside and out of web3. I was able to join in on a ‘Genius’ talk with Montana Wong who broke down the basics of reading a smart contract and what the functions that you are calling actually do when you blindly smash ‘sign’ as Metamask pops up on your browser.
Basically, avoid ‘Set Approval for all” at all costs, and head to revoke.cash to keep that hot wallet secure.
He created a special NFT for the call and walked listeners through how to mint directly from the contract while reading what it was actually saying. A pretty cool first for me.
Consensus!
There are so many conferences and meetups in web3. Is everyone on Adderall? How can you all go from event to event and get shit done in between? VeeCon last month. Consensus. NFT.NYC at the end of the month. With airline prices high and crypto so, so low?
Anyhow, in true web3 fashion, the host of the conference, Coindesk, introduced their own native token called $DESK. Why?
Advertising in web3 has been a tough nut to crack so far. The decentralization and anon mantra of the industry presents a reversion from the tracking capabilities that the current digital advertising model is built upon, which have powered Google and Facebook to billion dollar heights.
Coindesk is looking to use the token, and the wallets that hold it, as the next iteration of cookies. This starts to tinker with the promise of open ledgers and how to understand consumer habits. In this case, you know which wallets hold $DESK. You know what other items they hold, too. You can see when and with what sponsor interaction they spent $DESK. You don’t know the person, unless they have an ENS registered and maybe use it as their Twitter profile, but we’re getting there. Fun!
I wasn’t able to go to this, but Sam Ewen from CoinDesk has been graciously flooding my feed (above) and the panels looked awesome. Really cool to see all of the people they were able to get into one space for the week. Maybe next year.
Honorable Mention:
PROOF: The Future of Self Custody with Ian Rogers of Ledger
That was fun. Round #2 will come next Tuesday. If this opened up any thoughts, let me know! Happy to incorporate any feedback or address any questions over the next month while I try this weekly recap process out.