📝 Web3 Field Notes #33 – World Domination: X, Worldcoin & Meta's Metaverse

Hey, it’s Marc. I write about Bitcoin, Web3, and brands. ✌️ Welcome to another issue of my obsessively curated field notes to help you filter out the noise.

⏱️ Reading time: 5 min

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“Internet gave us programmable, digital abundance. Blockchains give us programmable, digital scarcity, mapping better to the real world.” – Naval Ravikant

📚 Key Reads

• The state of Web3 growth tech. By Safary. Link

• Take-aways from EthCC 2023 in Paris. By Bankless. Link

• Governance FAQs. By a16z. Link

• Reddits NFT strategy. By Overpriced JPEGs. (audio) Link

• What do I think about biometric proof of personhood? By Vitalik Buterin. Link

• Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users. By MIT Technology Review. Link

🚨 What Caught My Eyes

✨ Web3 + NFTs

• Digital identity: Worldcoin’s mainnet and token went live. The project’s primary service offering is the World ID, a “digital passport” that enables owners to prove they’re human. 

  • Takeaway: While digital identities, i.e. tying a real person’s identity a token on the blockchain, is one of the challenges believed to be solvable in Web3, Worldcoin has faced a lot of criticism for its project, mainly due to a lack of data privacy and counterfeiting.

• Crypto-enabled super app: Twitter 'X' rebrand spurs hype around potential crypto integration - again. Elon Musk said that the X rebrand isn't “simply a company renaming itself” but a move to remake Twitter into a platform for communications and financial transactions. Link

  • Punchline: The vision of Web3 is that everything that’s created and transacted will live on the blockchain, i.e. an interconnected web of open platforms, digital goods and wallets. Attribution, ownership and transactions could be tracked much more easily – across platforms. If X integrates Web3 tech (e.g. crypto payments, NFTs, etc.) it could indeed turn into a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services – a super-ecosystem – as its CEO envisions.

• Meta’s metaverse: Reality Labs, its metaverse division, posts a $4.3bn net loss in Q4 2022 and a combined net loss of $17.7bn over the previous five quarters. “Our investments in AI continue. We remain fully committed to the Metaverse vision as well. We've been working on both of these two major priorities for many years in parallel now, and in many ways the two areas are overlapping and complementary,” Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call. Link

  • Takeaway: The convergence of core technologies of Web3 (blockchain), the metaverse (AR/VR, virtual worlds, etc.) and advanced computing (AI) is the prominent hypothesis.

🌎 Crypto & Macro

• VC funding: Crunchbase reported that Web3 funding from VC funds has plunged 76% in the second quarter when compared to the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, Polychain Capital, one of the largest and most influential crypto VCs, has raised $200 million for its fourth fund. Link

  • Takeaway: Web3 funding has dropped, but US VC funding across all industries dropped around 70% compared to last year. Web3 isn’t isolated.

• MIT's Climate Portal released their report on Bitcoin Mining. While the report doesn't present any new groundbreaking positive or negative catalysts linked to Bitcoin mining, it advocates for transparency from miners. Link

  • Punchline: The coverage of Bitcoin's environmental benefits (e.g.its contribution to grid stability and resilience) from one of the world's leading academic research institutions cannot be understated. 

• Uniswap, one of the largest DEXs (Decentralized Exchange) announced the launch of UniswapX, which will improve the user experience significantly (more liquidity, better prices, MEV protection & gas-free swapping).

  • Takeaway: This is significant as it’s part of a trend that protocols are maturing to the point of consumer readiness. Soon, infrastructure challenges such as scalability, swapping between chains (and hopefully UX!) etc. will be solved – making crypto ready for mass adoption.

• Major hacks: In H1 2023, there are 395+ major hacks (386 DeFi-related) in Web3 space, leading to ~$479.4m loss. Among these hacks, top 10 account for $378.3m (79%) of total stolen funds. Link

🧠 AI

• Open-source AI: Stability AI has released SDXL 1.0, an open model that is the next major leap in the evolution of text-to-image generation models, rivalling MidJourney. Stability AI has also released FreeWilly1 and FreeWilly2, two open-source Large Language Models, rivalling GPT-4 (OpenAI).

  • Punchline: With Llama (by Meta) and now FreeWilly and SDXL 1.0, the open-source AI community is on a big win streak. 

• In response to growing calls for regulation, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have launched the Frontier Model Forum, an industry body aiming to ensure “the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models”. Link

🚀 Interesting Start-Ups:

• Safary: A community-first company building a marketing attribution platform for web3 teams to analyze their marketing CAC, channel ROI, and customer LTV.

💰 Money Moves:

• Flashbots raises $60m series B funds led by Paradigm.1

• Futureverse, an AI and metaverse technology and content company, raises $54m series A led by 10T Holding.

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

Back to building! 🚀

– Marc

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🎨 Artwork: “Abstract Life”, by ChistaAi