Is Reddit the New Darling of Web3?

GM Bear Builders!

It’s the Weekly Rollup. The newsletter that brings you up to speed on all things web3 so you can spend your weekends touching grass. 🌱

In this week’s edition, we’ve got: 

• A special super-secret Web3 Academy announcement 🤫

• Reddit trojan horsing millions of people into web3 🐎

• 45-pound $300,000 gold-plated Azuki skateboards…jeez that’s a mouthful 🛹

• Apple’s official NFT policy isn’t looking so rosy 🌩️

• Tool of the Month—Hint: Kyle Tut spoke about it on a previous podcast ⚙️

Let’s get crackin’ 🕺

🟣 GROW YOUR WEB3 NETWORK

Web3 Academy Mastermind

Community is the most vital part of building a business—both in web2 and web3. 

In fact, Kyle believes that your community strategy should be finalized before you even have a business plan.

And that’s the reason why—with the help of our community—we’re putting together a free mastermind where everyone can learn about community building (us included!).

Launching on November 8th in our Discord will be an 8-week community-cultivated mastermind where everyone can learn about: 

• The foundations of community

• Why community building should be a priority

• How to architect your Discord or Slack for scalable communication

• The role of memes and social media in building community

• Building and scaling communities

Each mastermind session will start with a presentation followed by a community discussion where we’ll build the playbook on community-building best practices.

Besides learning about community building, this mastermind is an excellent opportunity to network with like-minded web3 explorers who are building in all corners of the internet. 🏗️

It’s safe to say that we’re super excited for this mastermind to launch and we’d love to have you join us. 

Just head to our Web3 Explorers Club Mastermind page and follow the prompts ASAP.

Did we mention it’s free? 🥳

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with some of the brightest minds and thinkers in web3!

Why wait until Elon fixes Twitter's 🤖 problem? Get the jump on web3 social media by checking out Lens!

🟣 WEB3'S TROJAN HORSE

Reddit’s NFT Marketplace Spurs the Creation of Over 2.5 Million Wallets

Reddit recently launched its very own NFT marketplace and it’s sparked the opening of over 2.5 million Reddit Vault Wallets—Reddit’s own non-custodial wallet.

The interesting part is that they didn’t go the typical route of using an existing marketplace or typical web3 minting processes.

Instead, they chose to do everything natively—wallet creation, digital collectible customization, payments, etc. 🤯

On top of this, they didn’t paint this NFT drop as having anything to do with web3. Instead, NFTs = collectible avatars, wallets = vaults, and tokens = coins, all familiar words to Reddit’s predominantly web2 community. 

And it’s clearly working out for them since they surpassed OpenSea’s 2.3m wallets in the blink of an eye. 

But web3 natives also had their time in the sun with instant access to secondary markets, such as OpenSea, and the fact that Reddit’s wallet is non-custodial and interoperable. 

There’s been some talk about traders and flippers making up the vast majority of Reddit wallets, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. 

It’s estimated that just under 4,000 wallets have had subsequent transactions since the mint.

While this number is likely higher now, it’s a signal that many people are unsure of what to do next. In fact, Kyle even saw a tweet from someone asking for their money back since the value of their collectible avatar dropped. 

The question is, what comes next? 

• Do they open up Reddit so people can connect any wallet to the platform?

• Do they allow for NFT features or DAO features in subreddits?

• Do they build on Lens protocol and get a jump on the web3 social graph?

These answers will be answered over time, but what we do know is that Reddit is already building on Arbitrum to launch tokens across their subcommunities. 🪙

But the big lesson to take out of this is that Reddit has literally built an open playbook for web2 companies who want to venture into web3—don’t use crypto language. 

You don’t have to copy their exact terms, though. Figure out what your community will resonate with and run with that.

If your community is predominantly web2 people, use terminology that they’re familiar with to make it accessible. 

Overall, though. This launch by Reddit is huge. Yes, 2.8 million wallets is a nice boost for web3. But Reddit has around 450 million users and you can bet your last dollar they’re planning to onboard them as well. 📈

Nike had the lead with a 40,000 token collection and now Reddit has set the bar at just shy of three million. 

Who’ll be the web2 giant to top them? 🤔 

🟣 POLL OF THE WEEK

In order to properly function, can a community scale to large numbers or does it need to remain small? 🤔

• Yes, it can scale

• No, it should remain small

• I don't know

👉 Let us know by replying to this email!

🟣 IT'S PHYSICAL-BACKED TOKEN TIME

Azuki Auctions PBTs That Can Be Burnt For 24 Karat Gold Skateboards

Azuki auctioned 9 limited-edition PBTs (physical-backed tokens—NFTs that can be redeemed for a physical item). 

These PBTs can be redeemed for 24-karat gold skateboards that weigh roughly 45 lbs so it’d probably be better as art—but someone riding it would make for some good memes. 

The NFTs sold for around $200k - $300k each with Azuki raising a quick $2.5 million for their efforts. 💸

But dropping an NFT collection that’s redeemable for a physical product isn’t the most interesting part—it’s Azuki’s new BEAN Chip technology that enables a new NFT standard, scan-to-own.

This new PBT standard seeks to remedy a problem plaguing the luxury goods industry (clothes, art, jewelry, etc.), NFTs or certificates of authenticity not being passed onto subsequent owners. 🙅‍♀️

Instead of this scenario, whoever owns the physical skateboard only has to scan the chip to receive the ownership-verification NFT in their wallet. 

This begs the question, what happens if someone scans your physical item for fun? What happens then? 

We’re sure the Azuki team has this covered, but if anyone knows the technicalities behind this situation, let’s discuss it over on Discord! 

Above all, Azuki’s new scan-to-own PBTs are paving the way for further innovation into ownership authentication. 

And that’s a pretty big deal since social profiles will soon begin showing which NFTs you hold (well at least the ones you allow people to see). 

But let’s be real, why do people buy luxury goods? Social clout. 🥇

And the way they get that is by showing what they own. This creates countless marketing opportunities for luxury brands who launch PBTs so don’t be surprised when Versace or Louis Vuitton drop their own scan-to-own collections. 

It’s not only about luxury goods, though. Scan-to-own technology opens the possibility for all kinds of community building. 

For example, say Patagonia (a sustainable outdoor clothing and gear brand) launched a clothing collection with a PBT. They could create token-gated communities and content that only Patagonia supporters could access. 

So instead of it being all about flexing, scan-to-own technology can be used to provide access!

🟣 TOOL OF THE MONTH

submarine: Token Gate Your Content Without Breaking a Sweat

For October we had some familiar projects—Orb, Phaver, and submarine—and a new one—Galxe—duke it out for the glory of being Web3 Academy’s Tool of the Month. 

We had Nilesh from Orb and Joonatan from Phaver on the podcast previously to chat about the power of web3 social networking. While Kyle Tut from Pinata (the team behind submarine) chatted with us about NFT metadata problems. 

Make sure to check them out if you haven’t already! Galxe, you’re coming on next. 👀

But, this month’s winner is (drum roll…) submarine.me with 47.5%! So congratulations to the team and thanks to everyone for voting. 

Remember, this is the power of community. If you want your favorite web3 person, tool, DAO, or NFT to win, you gotta get the whole community involved! 

Now here’s a bit about submarine: 

It’s a no-code tool that’s been built by Pinata Cloud and we first heard about it when Kyle Tut came on the podcast.

Submarine allows you to token-gate pretty much any type of content you want based on different parameters—for example: 

• NFT ownership (only people who own a certain NFT can view your content)

• Location-based token gating, i.e., only people in certain locations can view your content (perfect for IRL conferences)

• A certain level of social media engagement, such as retweeting your content

• Payment-based token gating, such as with a debit card or crypto

Here’s how it works:

1. You choose the content you want to tokenize and set the criteria people must meet

2. You upload the content to IPFS—this connects to the blockchain and it allows you to automatically reveal content as soon as the parameters are met

3. You simply share the link with your community and once someone meets the criteria the premium content becomes viewable. 

The content can be any file including a video, an article, or even a ‘gm’ tweet. 🤯

This is a tool that can be used to track and reward your most loyal community members and it’s a brilliant way to build community. 

Plus it can take into account both on-chain and off-chain actions, so it’s perfect for both web2 and web3 communities!

🟣 NUMBERS TO KNOW

74% 

That's the amount of institutional players that plan to buy crypto in the future, according to Fidelity. Source

1,600,000,000 USDC

That's the amount MakerDAO will custody with Coinbase while getting a 1.5% interest rate. Source

1,160 ETH

Is the trading amount that BLUR, a new NFT marketplace, did on Wednesday, closing in on OpenSea. Source

🟣 AROUND WEB3

Web3 Adoption

• UK's new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a firm crypto supporter who previously asked the Royal Mint to make an NFT. Source

• Gavin Wood steps down as Parity CEO (the company behind Polkadot and Kusama) to focus on onboarding users in web3. Source

• A16z launches crypto startup accelerator including a $500k investment fund, mentorship, advice, and network opportunities. Source

• The creators of Teleport App raise $9M to build the decentralized Uber, on Solana. Source

• Kazakhstan looks to build its central bank digital currency on the BNB chain. Source

• The Norwegian tax authority partners with EY to establish an office in Decentraland to educate a younger audience about taxes related to DeFi and NFTs. Source

Web3 Innovation

• Sam Bankman Fried suggests that FTX is working on a stablecoin. Source

• Axelar and Circle team up to provide bridge-free cross-chain swaps. Source

• Ethereum records the first deflationary month in history as circulating supply declines. Source

• LooksRare joins Magic Eden in making creator royalties optional when trading NFTs. Source

• Telegram to launch an in-house web3 marketplace to auction usernames. Source

• Google launches Blockchain Node Engine, a cloud node engine for Ethereum developers. Source

• Twitter to allow users to buy & sell NFTs through tweets! Source

Other Web3 News

• Near Protocol’s USN stablecoin shut down after suffering $40M ‘collateral gap’. Source

• Google's revenue from crypto ads decreases in Q3. Source

• Ozzy Osbourne, Soulja Boy, and Dillon Francis to perform at the Decentraland Music Festival. Source

🟣 FOR THE DOERS

READ

Learn about 5 Exciting Rental NFT Use Cases.

JOIN

Head over to the Web3 Explorers Club to get ready for November's community-cultivated mastermind!

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