📝 Field Notes #51: NFTs in Your Closet

NFTs enter 1,149 ZARA stores. Louis Vuitton drops phygital. Brazil's biggest Web3 loyalty program. Bored Apes hits Roblox. Crypto funding on six-month high. Amazon launches ChatGPT competitor & more.

Hey, it’s Marc. Welcome to my weekly, obsessively curated field notes on crypto & Web3 to help you filter out the noise. ✌️ Follow me on LinkedIn.

⏱️ Reading time: 4 min

With hundreds of Web3 wallets available, how does a brand select the right one?

Brands can choose from hundreds of Web3 wallet solutions. How do they pick the right one? Magic stands out as a market leader with over 25 million wallets created for brands like Macy’s, Mattel or 7-Eleven. They have prepared a free, in-depth buyer’s guide with a complete evaluation checklist. Highly recommended for anyone building in Web3.

Be inspired✨

“I want to build a legacy brand, the likes of a Hello Kitty, a Star Wars and a Pokemon.” — Luca Netz, CEO Pudgy Penguins

📚 Top 4 Reads

  • How I evaluate "crypto" consumer businesses. By Gaby Goldberg. Link

  • Go-to-Market in Web3: New Mindsets, Tactics, Metrics. By a16z. Link

  • Turn Your Customers into Your Community. By HBR. Link

  • My techno-optimism. By Vitalik Buterin. Link

🚨 Top Stories That Caught My Eye

✨ Web3 + NFTs

  • ZARA teamed up with Okay Bears, a top NFT collections on the Solana blockchain, to create four shirts with two different NFT motives (bears).

  • The shirts will be available in 1,149 stores across 74 countries.

  • NFT holders will receive 50% of the licensing fee and 50% of the royalties from the pieces sold.

Mainstream culture. 

  • “Blue chip” NFT collections aim to become stand-alone mainstream brands by licensing their IP. This year, we’ve seen similar moves with Doodles x Crocs, Pudgy Penguins x Walmart x Retail Monster this year.

  • Earlier this year, Nike launched a sneaker-design challenge and transformed the winners' ideas into virtual products, for which the winners received royalties.

Community-led brands. NFTs empower consumers to “own” a part of a brand digitally. They become IP holders and evangelists. NFTs become digital, cultural artefacts. These brands will be built by and owned by the community. Branding shifts from linear, top-down to circular, bottom-up. 

Zooming out: This launch is a big deal. It’s showing us what's possible with Web3 and IP licensing. In the future, clothing pieces will be linked to NFTs and royalty fees will be paid on-chain.

MINTangible is my partner for protecting IP rights for NFTs. Grab their free NFT IP cheat sheet here.

  • Louis Vuitton has dropped another “phygital”, called “VIA Tile Trunk”.

  • Extremely limited (200 pieces) and priced at 6,000 EUR, it's available exclusively to LV’s group of Treasure Trunk NFT holders.

  • The physical trunk will be available in February 2024.

LV’s Web3 journey. Louis Vuitton began its Web3 journey with the $39,000 limited sale of the VIA Treasure Trunks in June this year. Holders of these "soulbound" NFTs, which are non-resellable (similar to Nike’s .SWOOSH IDs), gain access to exclusive digital creations, such as the VIA Tile Trunk.

Phygitals. Phygitals are booming. They enable brands to create blockchain-secured limited editions, authenticate products, engage in post-purchase marketing (like owning a physical item to access a digital experience), and gather more data. Learn more here.

Zooming out: As phygitals become more popular, protocols like Boson facilitate on-chain trading without intermediaries.1 This is Web3 commerce.2 Once on-chain, the possibilities are endless.

More from Web3:

  • Moonbeam, a Polkadot parachain, partners with Grupo RÃO to launch Brazil’s largest Web3 loyalty program. Link

  • Bored Apes hits Roblox. Link

🌎 Crypto & Macro

Funding’s Comeback💸

  • Crypto venture funding surged 96% month-over-month and hits a six-month high.

  • The biggest raises came from Blockchain.com (110$m series E) and Wormhole ($225m), a Web3 messaging platform.

Image

Punchline: While this could indicate a trend reversal, November likely benefited from the two positive outliers mentioned above.

More from crypto:

  • Bitcoin is one of this year’s best-performing assets. Link

  • MicroStrategy has bought $600m of BTC in November, increasing holdings by 10% to $6bn. Link

🧠AI

  • Amazon launches a workplace-focused AI assistant. Link

  • The US, the UK, and more than a dozen other countries release joint guidelines for AI. Link

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💰 Money Moves

  • Wormhole: The Web3 messaging protocol raised $225m.

  • Matr1x: The NFT gaming company based in Singapore, has raised $10m in an extended series A.

  • Gomdori: The Asian Web3-enabled e-commerce player raised $12.5m in a series B.

That’s all for now, folks. Thank you for being part of the journey. Talk soon,

– Marc

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Artwork: Refik Anadol, Quantum Memories

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