This Week in Web3 | 1.23.23

GM to the 21,069+ degens currently subscribed to This Week in Web3! 

Here's what we'll cover today:

• The DoJ's bearish announcement...which wasn't really much after all

• Electric Capital's 2023 Developer Report

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

• Updates on Quests, platform, and more

Sarah at Layer3

WEB3 DIGEST

Bitzlato Blues

Despite the nice little bull run (or bull trap?) we've been having in the past week or so, crypto wouldn't be crypto if it weren't for a few surprises. 

Last Wednesday, the markets braced itself for another shockwave of an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, which had all but indicated that it would be knocking out a huge player in crypto by conducting a "major international cryptocurrency action." Within minutes, Bitcoin fell by 4.6%, and ETH had dropped around 5%. 

Who could it be? Another FTX? CeFi Lender? Binance? The speculators speculated, and who could blame them? With U.S. regs still increasingly unclear and legislators still debating in this day and age whether crypto passes the Howey Test, this could have been the decision to end it all.

By the middle of the day, the DoJ had announced what the action would be. Federal prosecutors would pursue criminal charges against Bitzlato, a HK-based cryptocurrency exchange founded by Russian national Anatoly Ledgkodymov. Bitzlato had allegedly processed over $700m in illicit funds in the form of transactions related to dark web marketplace Hydra.

Now am I the only one when I ask...what the f*ck is Bitzlato? I mean, uh, are cryptocurrency prosecutors really so blind to the current state of rugs, scams, and ponzis in the space that they're really going after an exchange that hasn't made an official announcement in a year and a half?

Or maybe we're just all so collectively starved for the level of FTX-SBF drama that we're all just desensitized. 

All I can say is: Get your heads together, DoJ. As someone with former job experience in government, crypto is one of the most legislatively interesting parts of tech – as well as one where criminal activity is so obvious. The wash-trading, consumer deception, and NFT rugs are literally all on chain. You have every single opportunity to go after the real dogs! And if ZachXBT can do it, why can't you?

INFORMATION DIET

Sarah's Recommended Reads

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, we're diving into Electric Capital's annual developer report!

Developers continue to be the foundation for many projects in web3 because of crypto's developer-friendly environment. Open-source repositories, friendly forking, and intellectual challenges — what else could you ask for?

Electric has realized this and brings us a data-rich report on the current status of developers in web3. Here are a few nuggets of data that I personally found to be really interesting:

New developer activity has increased MoM and most developers who entered around Dec 2021 have stayed, even during the bear market

The top 10 ecosystems by measure of Monthly Active Developers are the following:

(I myself am surprised that Tezos and Cardano still rank so high amongst these, despite immense hype over L2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism, as well as VC-backed networks like Sui and Aptos. Guess you can't beat the oldies.)

In the last 7 years, crypto has gained over 22,000 monthly active developers! That's a lot of high salaries.

Want to check out the full report, along with all the fun data I've included? Take a look.

Quick Hits

• FTX says $415 million of crypto was hacked – link

• Crypto Firm Genesis Is Preparing to File for Bankruptcy – link

• National Australia Bank to Launch Stablecoin on Ethereum Network, Algorand Blockchain – link

• MetaMask Staking beta now live with Lido and Rocket Pool, ConsenSys says – link

Product Updates from Dariya

Hey everyone!

One of the most consistent points of feedback we’ve received is that the current explore pages on Layer3 are unintuitive. When a new user joins, they’re thrown in without much ramp-up into the world of Layer3 and crypto more broadly. And existing users, when you come back to the platform, there isn’t a high degree of personalization for your experience. That’s been a blind spot for us and with your help we’ve been focused on improving this aspect of our user experience in our last cycle.

Similar to last week, our new teammate Greg focused on turning our bland explore pages into something truly delightful for existing & new users to experience. I can’t wait to show you all this new experience – I’m really excited about it! New users will be able to dip their toes into crypto in a very guided way and existing users will be able to more quickly find the quests and products that matter to them. A big shoutout to our Layer3 community members who suggested this over the past few weeks, thank you for helping us make our product & community better!

And remember, we love meeting our users. Shoot me a DM @dariyaxyz with feedback, to say hi, or to tell me what you’ve been up to!!

— Dariya, Co-Founder and CEO

An update on Quests

A community update on Quests: We heard you when you gave us your detailed feedback on Quests. Many community members felt frustrated that they had to repeat steps to complete certain Quests, and that Quests had arbitrary limits, along with them being released at timezones that were not so favorable to our community members.

So here are a few changes that we're committed to making when it comes to Quests in the future:

• All Quests published by the Layer3 team without featuring exclusive partners will be uncapped

• We'll try our best to bring you new Quests each week, with different actions and more integrated educational content

• We will try to minimize repeat actions across Quests

• You'll be experiencing a wider variety of protocols that help you succeed in web3

Thank you for giving us such great feedback. Remember: You can always open a support ticket in our Discord or provide detailed feedback there. You can also check out our latest batch of Quests starting with this essential one on wallet safety!

As always, thank you for reading!

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

Cheers,

Sarah from Layer3