Newsletter: Towards Onchain Proliferation

Welcome to issue 138: This week we cover California Considering Bill for DAOs, 1kx thesis on Crypto-Native NFT IP, @rafathebuilder with The Web3 Creator Playbook, Music AI <> Crypto latest experiments feat Grimes and Reo Cragun, Zora launches Profiles and Mint w/ comments plus latest mainstream news and many more...

Welcome to edition 138:

▹ California Bill for DAOs
▹ 1kx thesis on NFT IP
▹ Rafa w/ "The Web3 Creator Playbook"
▹ 0xJustice on DevOps <> DAOs
▹ Grimes Music AI Experiments
▹ Zora Profiles & Mint w/ Comments
▹ Mainstream latest and more...

--- This edition is brought to you by Purple.

Week’s Highlight

We've got some Forefront updates we're excited to share.

First off, the Forefront Membership is becoming Signal-focused. Signal is our daily curated feed of the highest signal media in DAOs, web3 social, and consumer crypto. Signal is only available to Forefront Members, and we'll be incorporating a new Signal Leaderboard to track community members with the most curated media.

Minting of the current lifetime Forefront Membership will close soon (exact date TBA). Once closed, only seasonal Memberships will be available for new members. All existing members will maintain lifetime status.

Finally, we're exploring new modes of publication through the Forefront DAO. If you're a DAO operator, founder, builder, or web3 creator looking for a place to publish your work, Forefront might be a great fit -- be sure to reach out.

This week, we'll be publishing a package of essays on "tokenized community economic models" that we're super excited about, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

What's Poppin'

Moneyness In The Digital Age. The Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) run brought into question the public-private partnership status of banking, as the government implicitly provided an infinite public backstop for private credit money. The monetary hierarchy has changed dramatically over time, and societal notions of moneyness are constantly evolving. This piece examines how commercial bank money is a promise to pay higher-order money, but commercial bank deposits are just liabilities issued by a commercial bank. Crypto has intrinsic value and is verifiably free of credit risk depending on how it is held, making it an attractive option for many applications in today's interconnected digital world. There is a need for a safe version of digital dollars, and a clear improvement over the current state would be developing a clear and reasonable framework for fiat-backed stablecoins.

Crypto-Native NFT IP: A New Era For Consumer Brands. The 1kx team has a bold thesis: they believe that the next generation of the world's valuable IP will emerge first as crypto-native IP. With NFTs becoming a new medium of representation for IP, teams are able to immediately launch a new piece of IP and immediately focus on building a community, establishing end audience distribution, and shortening the feedback loops of iteration between team and community. If the first releases of the project succeed, generate revenue and show community resonance, we can expect to see projects re-investing resources into other content verticals. You can think of this as minimum viable IP development. Starting small and scaling up over time. This is a really thought-provoking pieces on the future of IP development and how NFTs play a role.

California Bill for DAOs. Last week, Matt Haney, the California Assembly's Democrat member for San Francisco, submitted a bill to create a business category for DAOs. The bill limits DAO members' obligations and liability for matters related to its operations. Administrators and agents could still be held accountable under certain circumstances, such as taking responsibility for an obligation in writing, receiving a benefit from a contract, or executing a contract without the DAO's approval. Interestingly, the bill would also amend California's corporations code to add 'decentralized nonprofit associations' (DNPAs), taking inspiration from the work of Miles Jennings and the a16z legal team. This would be a massive development for the development and legitimacy of DAOs in the US.

Web3 Creator Playbook. Signal resurfaced this incredible playbook from Rafa this week for web3 creators. According to Rafa, creators and content producers are no longer just publishing content to optimize advertisement and sponsorship revenue. Instead, creators are nurturing new communities and coordinating them through blockchain tools. He outlines a step-by-step process to cultivate community and create media around your brand, funding the community, and engaging your community. The playbook finishes with some key tools and examples of how the playbook has been implemented across various communities. This is probably the most in-depth, on-point explanation of the "web3 creator" out there today, and there's no surprise who the author is.

A DevOps Interpretation of DAOs. 0xJustice is back with another banger. DAOs, he says, are a natural extension of the trend towards "Everything-as-Code" (EaC), which treats all aspects of software development, operations, and infrastructure as code. DAOs are "Organizations-as-Code" (OaC), offering repeatable, scalable, derisked, auditable, and version-controlled systems. They are organizations reduced to their most fundamental interface, which allows for programmable stakeholder segmentation, replicable securities and joint-stock corporate governance, and programmable contracts. DAOs offer an alternative framing for organizing startups and enterprises, with advantages such as static analysis, simulation, repeatability, scalability, reduced risk, auditability, dependency management, and versioning. Understanding and highlighting the ties between DevOps and DAOs offers business utility, historical continuity, and roadmap inspiration.

Artists Agreeing To Split Royalties From AI Vocals Trained On Their Voice Using Smart Contracts. From Forefront's Resident Curator, Dwayne: AI Drake songs are racking up millions in views on TikTok and the trend is only accelerating. Drake's label Universal Music Group is taking legal action to take these songs down. Mainstream artist Grimes and leading web3 artist Reo Cragun are going the other direction, agreeing to open their vocals to be trained by AI and split the royalties onchain. This is a pivotal moment for music in culture and how artists react to AI early on will be key to the industry's development.

The Interplay Between AI Abundance + Crypto Scarcity. The article discusses the intersection between generative AI and NFTs, particularly in the context of art. Jesse Walden of Variant Fund describes the significance of AI-generated Nude Portrait #3 by Robbie Barrat, one of the first onchain AI-generated artworks, which represents a watershed moment for both art history and software. Barrat's work is seen as culturally significant and a time capsule of progress in AI over the last half-decade. Walden also discusses a panel discussion hosted by Variant at NFT NYC on the growing intersections in generative AI and crypto, and how it relates to BottoDAO, a decentralized autonomous artist that leverages AI to generate art governed by a DAO. He believes that experiments like Botto are harbingers of more to come in the intersection of AI and NFTs.

Latest on Mainstream...

First off, this week Coinbase filed a narrow action in the U.S. Circuit Court to compel the SEC to respond "yes or no" to a rulemaking petition they filed with them last July asking them to provide regulatory guidance for the crypto industry. The SEC is required by law to respond to petitions "within a reasonable time," but they have not yet responded to Coinbase's petition from last July, which is why they filed our action in court.

This comes on the back of Coinbase's response to the SEC's Wells notice. Coinbase claims that they are the same company that they were when the SEC allowed them to become public two years ago, after detailed discussions with them about the very aspects of their business that are now the subject of the Wells notice.

Next, Argentina is scheduled to receive a $45 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but the assistance comes with a catch that the country must adopt an anti-cryptocurrency position. This requirement underscores the IMF's concerns about the possible adverse impact of cryptocurrency on financial stability and economic recovery efforts.

Finally, Mastercard announced this week the Crypto Credential. Mastercard Crypto Credential will establish a set of common standards and infrastructure that will help attest trusted interactions among consumers and businesses using blockchain networks.

Signal Bites

▹ Read - Digital Art Market
▹ Opinion - Nigeria: Crypto Utopia
▹ Regulation - U.S. Crypto Bill (Soon)
▹ Listen - Arthur Hayes w/ Eigenlayer
▹ Cool - Grimes Music AI
▹ Interesting - Factorio but on-chain
▹ Techy - on ERC-6551
▹ Thread - NFTs Patronage Vs. Investment
▹ Updates - OpenSea "Insider Trader" Trial
▹ Collab - Zora <> Colors
▹ Tooling - Zora Profiles

◎ Check out Signal for daily top web3 social headlines

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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.