The Disrupt Weekend

Are DAOs Socialist?

“The Ethereum blockchain and surrounding infrastructure are increasingly seen as public goods.

Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Non-excludable means we cannot exclude others from using the good. Examples include natural resources like the air, but also produced goods and services like public radio or the police. Non-rivalrous means in using them we don’t deplete them for others.

My position is Ethereum has an unconscious political bias I call mutualist minarchism. It is mutualist because the community emphasizes cooperativism and collaboration, but also minarchist as it develops new minimalist forms of governance, in that it creates decentralized analogues to the functions of the traditional state.

In DAOs, however, we can espie a possible political position emerging. In the Ethereum ecosystem, we don’t typically encounter socialists/communists or even the right libertarians populating bitcoin culture. Instead, we encounter venture entrepreneurs with a strong inclination toward a public goods philosophy.

There is an online meme now about whether DAOs are socialists or not, but this probably constrains us a little too much by traditional definitions. Instead, in DAOs public goods are an aperture into an attitude rooted fundamentally in capitalism but not the neoliberal fog of ultra-individualistic capitalism. The sense and feel for entrepreneurship remains, the venture, but there are too many shared problems in our society to discount the centrality of a shared commons. This produces venture commonism: Web 3.0 entrepreneurship with commonist characteristics.

This more sharply encapsulates a political ambition, a vision of ad hoc decentralized groups that spontaneously form to tackle manageable tasks that improve the lot of a shared commons. The answer to what a public goods value might look like is: We want to produce a society respectful of individualism, but contextualizes the individual within a set of shared communal problems.

The Ethereum political project could then be reimagined as the restoration of community through venture commonism. The answer to Ethereum’s political ambiguity is resolved, fittingly, from DAO culture upward.”

What’s After NFTs?

“Here are 4 things that might be the next big thing in crypto.

GameFi. The momentous rise of Axie Infinity has triggered a conversation about the evolution of gaming. The value of digital-asset-powered gaming has been proven, and now it’s just a matter of building games that people want to play. In the legacy gaming world, the most successful games are free-to-play. But in crypto, we can do better—we can make them play-to-earn.

Layer 2 DeFi. Importantly, DeFi apps that want to claim L2 real estate will bolster yields via their own incentive programs.

Web3 Social Media. Now that Layer 2’s are here, we can revisit one of the early promises of Web3: Social Media as Ethereum apps. ‘Community’ is what powers this entire industry, so it’s only logical that a crypto-based social media platform would be hugely successful if it figures out the optimal design. And, like GameFi and yield farming, it’s going to financially reward its contributors and users.

Tokenized Communities. Communities are the new alpha. They are the next investment phenomenons. Tokens allow for communities to grow larger and more engaged. With the power of tokens, you can now gain financial exposure to the value of the community as a whole. Different communities are going to find different ways to increase the capital behind their organization.”

This is the Best Trade in Crypto Right Now | Raoul Pal (Recommended Watch)

Some Filipino Merchants Prefer Payment in Axie’s SLP

“In some countries, the trade volume for SLP is so high that progressive platforms are enabling users to exchange the token for the local currency. And here in the Philippines, a growing number of local merchants have gone a step further, with sellers willing to accept micro-doses of the stuff as payment for goods and services.

In mid-July, Bakebe’s began accepting an Ethereum-based utility token called Smooth Love Potion (SLP) for payments. It’s not the only merchant in on SLP, either. A quick quiz on social media turns up a bunch of advertisements for all sorts of things you can buy in the Philippines with SLP. Those include a pair of new kicks at SneakyX; a car service at Adz Garage, a polishing at Ecowash; insurance renewal at Divinagracia Insurance Agency; a test for COVID-19 at Swab Republic; a dermatitis treatment at The Healthician Clinic; an outfit for your toddler at Little Blossoms; a gift from SOLID TOYS; a laptop upgrade at Meron Ako; a massage chair at ZION; a milk tea at Chi Figata; a plate of dumplings at Mama’s Boys; and a session with online fitness coach, The Architect.

The minting and acquisition of SLP has become an everyday task for a lot of people, so it’s useful to be able to spend it as an everyday currency.
There are more Filipinos with Ronin wallets than there are Filipinos with credit cards.

Living in the Philippines, I’ve seen this tendency to value SLP in relation to real-world items, too. It seems the player community cares less about how much SLP is worth in terms of PHP or USD. A friend of mine, on his first day of playing Axie, excitedly told me he had earned three Chicken Joys in just a few hours.

Unlike a paper banknote, or even a bitcoin, SLP exhibits inherent utility because it can always be used to breed more Axies, making it akin to other goods-as-money payment tools with multiple uses that have been used over time like gold, rice, rum and cigarettes.”

Are NFTs Securities?

“Most NFTs currently circulating are almost certainly not securities. A security is generally defined as a claim on the future proceeds from the work of others, while an NFT is usually the product of work that has already been undertaken.

Which makes it all the more strange that a good number of NFT series or adjacent projects are going out of their way to turn their nice little non-security collectibles into things the SEC would definitely take an interest in.

The most straightforward way that NFTs can become subject to SEC oversight is through fractionalization. At least one marketplace, Fractional.art, is pursuing the idea. We already know that such efforts are within the purview of the SEC. We know because there are already significant companies, particularly Masterworks, which fractionalizes physical art for investors. Masterworks registers its offerings with the SEC.

But there are other NFTs that are moving even more clearly into securities territory, particularly by offering revenue distributions to current holders. Two examples are Buzzed Bears and Lazy Lions, which both attach certain governance rights to ownership. That, according to the projects, can include the right to redistribute the profits from future sales to current holders. Buzzed Bears even has a staking system that lets you “hibernate” your bears to increase returns.”

How to Approach the Generative Art Boom

“With generative art, artists don’t directly create the work. Instead, they customize a computer algorithm that does it for them! While this has historically been a relatively niche sector in the art world, it’s now in the spotlight thanks to Ethereum and NFTs.

Generative art is algorithmic art, a form of computer-generated art whose pieces come via an algorithm that an artist has customized for making unique outputs.

In the context of Ethereum and NFTs, generative art typically involves an artist uploading a custom-tailored artistic algorithm into a smart contract. When a collector calls the mint function on said contract, the underlying algorithm is pinged in a unique way leading to a unique artwork output in the form of an NFT.

Accordingly, automation and disintermediation are salient elements of Ethereum’s generative art scene. To me, the future of art has never been more exciting.

My ‘art’ was about making sure someone could get an interesting and unique piece of work without any human interaction.”

Onyx by J.P. Morgan Launches Blockchain in Space

“J.P. Morgan has tested the world’s first bank-led tokenized value transfer in space, executed via ERC-20 smart contracts on a blockchain network established between satellites orbiting the earth.

As part of our team’s focus on ‘Horizon 3’ projects that identify disruptive areas in which blockchain can create value, we decided there was enough here to begin thinking about what a space payments system would look like over the long term.

The Blockchain Launch team worked with satellite company GomSpace to deploy a Consensys Quorum blockchain onto one of Gomspace’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Crucially, this required utilizing a special installation of Consensys Quorum that was small enough to operate on low-memory devices, first tested on the ground on a Raspberry Pi.

After executing a successful token transfer on the newly established satellite-to-Earth Consensys Quorum network, the next stage focused on executing a more complex transaction type – deploying an ERC-20 contract. Finally – and most importantly – they successfully executed a transaction between two LEO satellites, which validated the approach towards a decentralized network where communication with earth is not necessary.“

Compare Ethereum L2 TVLs with L2Beat:

Inside Alien Worlds, the Biggest Game in the Metaverse

“Alien Worlds is the fastest growing game in blockchain and one of the biggest dapps overall. Launched last year, the free game gives gamers an opportunity to earn the local currency by mining, battling other explorers, going on quests or from receiving rental commission from their land.

Alien Worlds, which lives on the Ethereum, WAX and Binance Smart Chain blockchains, is a metaverse spread over seven planets and at its core is the concept of not one but six competing DAOs. The game uses non-fungible tokens, and inhabitants mine for the game’s cryptocurrency trilium. Both currencies can then be exchanged for fiat.

To McKenna, Alien Worlds is much more than a play-to-earn vehicle. Alien Worlds is converting people to mass adoption of crypto through strategy and governance, she says.

Metaverses are the new social media – where people will come to socialize. We have given them a world, or rather worlds, where people can come together.
People can offer gaming contracts and already have, hosting their own mini competitions. That’s what excites us – the metaverse taking on a life of its own.”

As More Consumers Bank With Crypto, Washington Sounds the Alarm: NY Times

“The U.S. Federal Reserve, along with other government entities and officials, is struggling to deal with the financial disruption brought on by cryptocurrency’s move into banking and other financial services, according to an article in the New York Times.

The article notes that regulators are concerned about the adequacy of the cash reserves and algorithms that back stablecoins. The article states that many traditional financial institutions are nervous about potential disruption at the hands of DeFi but makes no mention that many are themselves starting to provide crypto services.”

NFL Bars Teams From Selling NFTs, Sponsorships to Crypto Trading Firms: Report

“Players’ individual ventures appear to be excluded from the rule. Future hall-of-fame quarterback Tom Brady has an equity stake in FTX, along with ownership of an NFT platform partnered with DraftKings.

The NFL has lagged behind other major leagues in entering the NFT space. The NBA has enjoyed a lucrative partnership with Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot dating back to May 2020, and MLB recently launched its own NFT marketplace with Fanatics-owned Candy Digital in July.”

DeFi Projects Cover, Ruler Are Shutting Down After Development Team Exits

“Decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance provider Cover, together with its smaller lending sibling Ruler, are shutting down after the development team that serviced them both abandoned the projects.

Though the announcement by the community manager known as DeFi Ted didn’t say why the development team had left, the protocols have been plagued with issues, particularly the much larger Cover. Last December, the protocol was victim of a so-called White Hat attack and then in March, Yearn Finance ended its plans to merge with Cover.”

Share this: