Newsletter: From Individual to Collective Creation
Welcome to issue 126: This week we cover Forefront’s 2022 Tokenized Community Year in Review, Rally Sidechain Shutting Down, Mason Nystrom on Cryptoeconomic Business Models, Derek Edws on Digital Stores of Value Zora's and more...
Welcome to issue 126:
▹ The Open Edition Season
▹ Rally Sidechain Shuts Down
▹ Mason Nystrom on CryptoEconomics Models
▹ Derek Edws on Digital Stores of Value
▹ Zora's Dee Goens on Open Editions
▹ NounsConnect Launch
▹ Mainstream news and more...
--- Let's get into it, plus don't forget to collect this edition.
Week’s Highlight
**Tokenized Communities Year in Review --- From individual to collective creation.Tokenized Communities Year in Review --- From individual to collective creation.
2022 was truly a hell of a year, and 2023 is already off to an even hotter start. We're excited to finally bring you...
Tokenized Communities Year in Review, 2022 Edition (Tweet)
This report, written and curated by the Forefront team, covers the journey the tokenized community ecosystem has taken from 2020 to today, highlighting the remarkable progress we made last year. You can find (and Mint) the full report here.
The report discusses Nouns DAO and the Builder ecosystem, PFP projects becoming DAOs, TC business models, metalabels, ERC20s vs. NFTs, and much more. The report also highlights some of the top essays from the year (including Toby Shorin, Yancey Strickler, and Jacob Horne) and some trends to watch for the rest of 2023.
There are a TON of communities and projects mentioned in this report, and even those are only scratching the surface. Feedback has been awesome, and we're excited to continue to pump out reports like this throughout the year.
Again, if you want to support the report and Forefront's continued work, consider minting here.
2022 was truly a hell of a year, and 2023 is already off to an even hotter start. We're excited to finally bring you...
Tokenized Communities Year in Review, 2022 Edition (Tweet)
This report, written and curated by the Forefront team, covers the journey the tokenized community ecosystem has taken from 2020 to today, highlighting the remarkable progress we made last year. You can find (and Mint) the full report here.
The report discusses Nouns DAO and the Builder ecosystem, PFP projects becoming DAOs, TC business models, metalabels, ERC20s vs. NFTs, and much more. The report also highlights some of the top essays from the year (including Toby Shorin, Yancey Strickler, and Jacob Horne) and some trends to watch for the rest of 2023.
There are a TON of communities and projects mentioned in this report, and even those are only scratching the surface. Feedback has been awesome, and we're excited to continue to pump out reports like this throughout the year.
Again, if you want to support the report and Forefront's continued work, consider minting here.
What's Poppin'
Social Token Platform Rally Shuts Down. Social token platform Rally is shutting down. In an email to users last week, the company noted that its Ethereum sidechain will sunset from January 31st. The site will no longer be supported and users will find the service no longer functions, it added. Additionally, there will be no way to port assets from the sidechain to Ethereum mainnet, essentially rugging all users. It appears that Rally is still exploring whether it can build other products to empower creators, but it isn't yet clear whether it has the resources to do so. In the meantime, members of the ecosystem are mourning the first real "blockchain death" in the social crypto space, a stark reminder that the only way forward is truly decentralized, open technologies.
The Next Frontier in Cryptoeconomic Business Models Mason Nystrom of Variant Fund published this piece on cryptoeconomic business models. He argues that each wave of crypto is dominated by new distribution mechanisms and cryptoeconomic models. Three of the newer emerging models include Contract Secured Revenue, Nounish DAOs, and MEV Orderflow. We're all familiar with Nounish DAOs and the perpetual auction mechanism here at Forefront. Contract Secured Revenue is when a portion of fees from the utilization of a smart contract accrue to an NFT or an address. As MEV unbundles into multiple stakeholders applications that control users -- and therefore transaction flow -- will be able to bundle user transactions and sell them in private memepools to searchers and block builders. These models, among others, are just some of the unique ways that crypto protocols and communities can generate meaningful revenue for their stakeholders.
Zero Knowledge Proofs and DAOs. The ZK world is seeing exciting, fast paced innovations across the stack, but development has also been challenging. Regardless of the challenges in this nascent space, the Aragon team see tons of possibilities for how ZK technology can be applied to DAOs. For example, gasless, private voting in DAOs is the area of ZK that the team is currently exploring with the OVOTE and BatRaVot protocols. Private on-chain assets are another area with potential. Right now, it's hard to keep on-chain assets private without using a mixing service like Tornado Cash or splitting your tokens across multiple wallets. And even then, it's still traceable back to your original wallet. But, ZK opens up the possibility for complete private finance onchain. The possibilities are endless, and we're excited to see the adoption of ZK tech in DAOs moving forward.
The Gamification of Open Editions The open edition token format has resulted in large scale distribution of NFTs with a high density of unique collectors. This format is great for getting NFTs in thousands of wallets, however, large scale distribution comes with pressure from collectors asking "wen utility." The answer could be: burn games. More burns mean a more limited supply of NFTs on the market to collect. This increase in scarcity of NFTs is equal to an increase in scarcity for a collector's opportunity to play the burn game. This is the current method being proposed by Jack Butcher for the "Checks" collection, and many others. We now have the pieces in place to create dynamic and engaging experiences with large onchain audiences. The rules have yet to be set, but that's exactly what makes this game exciting to play. Game types will continue to expand beyond burn to redeem and raffles.
Super Liquid NFTs. This piece is adapted from a Twitter thread by ChrisF at Flamingo. Chris lays out the stages of an NFT project's development, with the end goal of becoming "super liquid NFTs." These projects have not just caught the attention of the NFT community but also traditional art auction houses, collectors, and likely soon more traditional institutions and art museums. Their cultural significance and liquidity have made them impossible to ignore, and they continue to set the standard for NFT success. To a certain degree, super liquid NFTs are the keystone species for the entire NFT ecosystem. They are the foundation upon which entire ecosystems can be built. This is a fascinating exploration of the development of these types of projects and what it means for the ecosystem at large.
Storing Value in Digital Objects. Speaking of valuable NFTs, Derek Edws wrote this piece on storing value in digital objects. He argues that aggregated attention, pointed toward the right opportunity, can translate into value --- whether for brands, companies, or individuals. However, these same attention flywheels can also drive value into single unique objects. However, given the early nature of this technology, there are only two valuable categories of unique digital objects today: 1) Products/Services; and 2) Stores of Value. He breaks down both categories in the article. This is a great exploration of what makes NFTs valuable and how this formula will continue to develop over time.
Latest on Mainstream...
First off, Toyota is hosting a hackathon on multi-chain smart contract network Astar Network, which could potentially yield management tools for Toyota's employees. Developers will build DAO tools that will potentially be used within the Toyota organization. "During the event we aim to develop the first proof-of-concept DAO tool for Toyota's employees," said Sota Watanabe, the founder of Astar Network, in a statement.
Next, Twitter is designing a system to permit payments through the social media platform, and although billionaire owner Elon Musk wants it "first and foremost" to be for fiat currencies, he wants the ability to add cryptocurrencies later. This comes in conjunction with an announcement that Twitter will not be sharing ad revenue with creators, a step forward in competing with YouTube, TikTok, and other video platforms who share revenue to various degrees.
Finally, Crypto hackers had a banner year, stealing a record $3.8B last year, Chainalysis reported. It tops the previous year's record of $3.3B. DeFi represented 82%+ of those losses.
Signal Bites
▹ FF Library - Governance
▹ Read - Proof of Reserves for Policymakers
▹ Opinion - On Fractionalizing NFTs
▹ Deep Dive - The State of Digital Fashion
▹ Listen - Jon Hillis on The Other Side
▹ NFT - Blur <> Opensea
▹ Music NFT - Snoop Dogg OE
▹ Interesting - Nouns DAO V3 Spec
▹ Cool - XO: Party vs Party
▹ Collab - Louis Vuitton <> Yayoi Kusama
▹ Updates - Coinbase (NOT) NFT marketplace
▹ Tooling - NounsConnect
▹ Techy - Consensus Canon
▹ Web2 - Twitter Revenue Shares w/ Creators
◎ 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.
