This Week in Web3 ❄️ | 12.12.22

GM! It's been another festive week(s) in web3. It's been a while since we last sent out the newsletter, but we're back for good. Welcome to your Monday digest from Layer3. Here's what we'll cover:

• SBF revealed to have given a $16m+ loan to CEO of The Block

• On China and web3 adoption: Alibaba Cloud enters the market

• Product updates from our CEO & Co-Founder, Dariya

• Our Winter Extravaganza Holiday Event is live! Join in the festivities

Sarah at Layer3

An analysis of what you missed in web3 over the past week

It's almost as if the story couldn't get any worse. And then it does.

In the implosion following SBF and recent events related to FTX, it was revealed last week in an Axios exclusive that SBF had secretly funded independent crypto news website The Block, and had funneled over $16 million in "loans" to its former CEO, Michael McCaffery.

In addition to the fact that McCaffery was The Block's sole board member, sources also noted that some of SBF's loans went to fund an apartment in the Bahamas for McCaffery. 

According to Axios, "LLCs controlled by McCaffrey received a total of three loans from Alameda, some of which may be convertible into equity in the company by the LLCs." The news led to McCaffery's resignation as CEO and an outcry amongst employees amongst Twitter — many of whom had no idea that this was all happening while they were reporting for the publication.

All in all: Two bad outcomes for the industry. One in the loss of what was once a pretty credible news source for crypto, and two, a further shakeup of what little trust we had between the space and public perception. Building more credible crypto reporting isn't going to be easy after this. We got a lot of work to do, folks.

Welcome to Sarah's Recommended Reads! Here, I'll be summarizing well-written articles or threads by web3 thinkers and builders that you should know about. This week will work a little bit differently - instead, we'll dive into an issue that has so far been relatively unexplored when it comes to the topic of web3 global adoption.

This week, we're talking China and crypto, and more specifically, the entrance of a new player in the market: Alibaba Cloud.

Alibaba is the brainchild of Ma Yun, and is arguably the Chinese retail and tech giant that absolutely dominates in e-commerce, retail commerce, and payments. Two weeks ago, Alibaba Cloud — aka Alibaba's solution to AWS — just announced its biggest web3 partnership yet, with Avalanche. 

But wait! Didn't China ban crypto? Isn't mining illegal there? Yes...theoretically speaking. But China has always been open to the idea of CBDCs, and I would argue that it's still one of the strongest markets for crypto, with over $220bn in total transaction volume between July 2021 and July 2022. 

So with one of China's largest retail commerce empires entering web3, we may see a whole new host of web3 primitives that cater to Chinese consumer habits, such as how they tend to pay, spend, and gamble on integrated superapps like Alibaba's Taobao. Winnie sums it up nicely in this thread:

It's still early days, and Alibaba Cloud is only offering Avalanche Nodes-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions for now. But given that Alibaba Cloud only made up 10% of Alibaba's total revenue in 2020, web3 may be their biggest bet yet.

• Reddit Users Have Minted More Than 5 Million NFT Avatars on Polygon

• Crypto firm BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

• Binance moves $2 billion of bitcoin as part of reserves audit

• BitBoy Crypto Knocks on SBF’s Door

An update from our Co-Founder: Achievements are live

Hey there,

In case you haven’t seen it, we launched our revamped achievements system last week. When we spoke to you about your web3 progression through Layer3, one thing become clear: you want to celebrate more of the milestones you’ve hit along your journey. So we set out to design a system that made your progression more engaging.

Our previous system didn’t do that effectively, so we worked with an incredibly talented designer to bring these achievements to life. We’ll be rolling out more achievements regularly and we’ll definitely have some incredibly unique ones in there. This one of my favorite things we’ve built, so I hope you find it just as awesome!

And remember, we love meeting our users. Shoot me a DM @dariyaxyz!

— Dariya, Co-Founder and CEO

Our Holiday Event has started out with a bang!

Just like a real Advent Calendar, we're bringing you a web3 Quest Calendar where you can participate and unlock mystery prizes every. Single. Day.

At 9AM UTC every day, we'll release a Daily Advent Quest that you can complete for mystery prizes. These prizes range from IRL rewards (e.g. Ledgers, Amazon Gift Cards), to partner rewards, or web3/crypto rewards (e.g. NFTs).

Your completion of the Quest will serve as an automatic raffle entry to win these prizes. More eligibility requirements here.

Get started and join the festivities:

Join our Discord and follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest Quests, communities, and more! Until next week, frens.

Cheers,

Sarah at Layer3