Newsletter: Year in Review & 2023 Trends 🌟

Welcome to the last Forefront Newsletter Issue of 2022: Week's Highlight on Year Recap and 2023 trends, Linda Xie & Derek Hsue essay on DAO Governance Experiments, Visa Exploring Auto Payments for Self-Custodial Wallets, Web3 Social Stack by Coinbase Ventures and more...

Welcome to the last Forefront Newsletter Issue of 2022:

▹ Week's Highlight
▹ Crypto Theses for 2023
▹ Experiments in DAO Governance by Linda Xie & Derek Hsue
▹ Visa Exploring Auto Payments
▹ Web3 Social Stack by Coinbase Ventures
▹ Latest on Mainstream
▹ ... more

--- Let's get into it!

Week's Top Signal

It's been an absolute hell of a year, and the Forefront Newsletter has been pumping through it all. We're deeply grateful for everyone who takes the time to read the newsletter each week, and we hope to continue to improve our media suite into the new year.

To wrap up the year, let's check out some of the best "year in review" pieces from the last week. Messari's Crypto Theses for 2023 are here: 168 pages on the top investment themes, people to watch, and trends in policy, CeFi, BTC, ETH, Stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, DeSoc, DePIN, DAOs, and more. The report covers... everything. A whirlwind of what happened this year and where we're headed in the next.

CoinDesk also made their own predictions, including the growth of DeFi and ZK use-cases, tokenization of institutional assets, NFT-driven identity, and more. They also reflect on last year's predictions, of which many turned out to be pretty accurate!

Logos DAO also released their own "Year in DAOs," highlighting everything from events like MCON and ETHGlobal to Nouns DAO and #web3forgood. This piece is great, but is still missing some of the incredible things that happened in the DAO ecosystem this year.

The team at Forefront will also be publishing a "Tokenized Communities Year in Review" in the coming weeks, highlighting the development in tokenized communities in web3 social over the last year.

TAKE NOTE
The ecosystem might have taken a PR hit, but development is happening... fast. The bear market builders are building, and adoption is happening across the stack. We couldn't be more excited for 2023. Happy Holidays from the Forefront team :) until next year...

What's Poppin'

Experiments in DAO governance. Linda Xie and Derek Hsue wrote this piece highlighting some of the most interesting crypto governance experiments today. The first is Optimism's bicameral governance system, which balances power between a "token house" and a "citizen's house." Lido also has a dual governance structure between their native governance token and stETH, a critical asset to the protocol. ENS DAO is using Metropolis Pods to decentralized roles and responsibilities across the organization while maintaining trustless actions onchain. Finally, Nouns is pushing forward governance experiments in capital allocation through tools like Prop House. All in all, the piece is a great exploration of the rich experimentation being conducted throughout the ecosystem and the opportunity that lays ahead of DAOs in 2023.

Out of the Vault and onto the Chain: the Evolving Nature of Provenance. Provenance has become a social experience in the Web3 space, with its newfound visibility not only recording simple transactions, but bestowing lore, necessitating interaction, and impacting long-term value, according to SuperRare editor Oli Scialdone. Oli argues that provenance is no longer only about names scribbled on checks and passed from heirs to auction houses. Now, provenance is about decentralizing the art of tastemaking. It allows everyone to be a curator, even if they're not trying. It's evolved into the antithesis of what it's been for centuries, a sure sign of a new age in art. With the NFT markets finding a healthy volume in the bear market, it is almost inevitable that further evolution of our ideas of provenance will continue.

Visa Exploring Auto Payments for Self-Custodial Wallets. Visa published a blog post saying that users may one day be able to automatically pay their electricity and telephone bills through their self-custodial crypto wallets (hi Superfluid). The company observed that automatic recurring payments would be possible through a new type of self-custodial wallet called "delegable accounts," which is based on Account Abstraction. The team stated that it has already successfully tried its delegable accounts on a private chain from layer 2 scaling solution StarkNet, as the network supports AA, and is exploring opportunities on Ethereum. In general, Account Abstraction will be a massive step forward for consumer adoption, so it's extremely exciting to see major financial players like Visa building and exploring in these areas.

Decentralizing Social Media: A Guide to the Web3 Social Stack. Web3 social is headed into 2023 with major momentum, and Coinbase Ventures is here with a market landscape. Web3 social networks give users ownership and portability over their data, identity, and relationships, while enabling permissionless development. The stack consists of four layers: hosting, social primitives, profile, and applications. By separating the underlying protocols from the apps themselves, we may one day see social networks that accrue wealth and power in new and more distributed ways. The essay puts heavy emphasis on Farcaster, a Twitter-like social app built on top of an open social graph reminiscent of the protocol that powers email (SMTP). Lens, DeSo, and other web3 social players also make appearances in this piece.

Regulating Crypto: How We Move Forward as an Industry from here. Speaking of Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong published a post explaining his proposed approach to crypto regulation in the US. He attempts to outline a realistic blueprint to ensure we have regulatory clarity for centralized actors, and a level playing field across exchanges, while preserving the decentralized crypto innovations that will bring enormous benefits to the world. He emphasizes strict regulation and clarity for centralized actors like Coinbase, FTX, etc., stablecoins, and more, while allowing for continued innovation and deep understanding of decentralized crypto protocols and applications. Right now, he says, there is too much distraction from bad actors causing harm, and we all need to take responsibility for improving this. This is a great piece to share with anyone asking what crypto regulation might look like.

Latest on Mainstream... The week in mainstream crypto news didn't slow down for the holidays! First off, Voyager, whose assets were auctioned off to FTX earlier this year, will sell its assets to Binance.US in a deal valued at about $1 billion following a review.

Next, after finally getting arrested, SBF is on house arrest in his parents home after being let out on bail of $250M secured by their Palo Alto house. Bankman-Fried's release was secured by equity in his parents' Palo Alto, California, home, and a long list of requirements was included for him to remain free while he faces charges. He's not allowed to make financial transactions for more than $1,000, can't open new lines of credit, can't leave the house except to exercise and must go through substance-abuse and mental-health treatment, according to the agreement.

Finally, Yuga Labs brought in a new CEO, after stepping down from his position of COO of Activision Blizzard. While helping to lead Activision Blizzard since early 2020, Alegre had a hand in developing well-known brands like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and Candy Crush. His resume also includes 16 years spent across several leadership roles at Google. "We see Otherside as the intersection of a lot of this stuff and where we see really the next evolution of the space going towards, where gaming is so important," Yuga added.

Enjoyed this issue? Help us spread the word! https://forefront.market

Signal Bites

▹ Recap - 2022's Defining Moments
▹ Read - Onchain-ing Everything with RWAs
▹ Opinion - The Rise and Fall of a DeFi God
▹ Deep Dives - Nansen Annual Report
▹ Interesting - Crypto Startup Ideas
▹ World - Brazil Crypto Bill
▹ Listen - Bob Iger on a16z Podcast
▹ Watch - This is Nouns
▹ Thread - DAO Name Debate
▹ Web2 - LastPass Hack Issues
▹ Techy - Zero Knowledge Proofs and the Metaverse

◎ Check out Signal  for daily top web3 social headlines

Looking for a way to support Forefront? We’re opening up the FF Newsletter to sponsors interested in sharing their company, project, or community with +10,000 of web3’s most curious minds. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, check out our Sponsorship Page.

The information in this newsletter is not intended to constitute legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied upon as such. Any opinions reflected are the opinion of the author(s) of the newsletter only and not necessarily of Forefront. Please DYOR.