GM. Here's your roundup of Web3 news, tweets and vibes from the last 7 days. Avoid FOMI (fear of missing info) with Layer3 🤝

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

A roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last week

The largest crypto hack yet

Axie Infinity is the top ‘play to earn’ game, where players fight cartoon pets called “Axies” to earn crypto.

Last week, Sky Mavis (the blockchain gaming company that runs Axie) announced that their “Ronin” Network had been compromised and $625M was stolen.

That makes it the largest hack in crypto history.

What’s more, nobody even noticed for six days (?!) - which actually ended up inadvertently thwarting the hackers’ attempt to double-down by shorting Axie 💀

When Axie did notice, naturally the Ronin price tanked c20% when the news was announced.

Withdrawing all that stolen ETH isn’t exactly going to be easy though. A bunch of it has already been sent to various exchanges (Binance and FTX) - but Axie say they’re working with law enforcement, and there’s little chance the thieves will be able to withdraw any of it without giving up their identity.

The EU Parliament dials-up crypto surveillance

A new regulation was just voted on in Europe, which some are calling an anti-privacy and anti-innovation ruling, and even a threat to the entire web3 ecosystem.

In short, the “Transfer of Funds Regulation” (designed to prevent money laundering), which initially applied to traditional payments systems, is now being expanded to crypto assets. The problem is that it’s treating crypto differently to fiat currency - and could in effect create a “digital registry of identified wallet addresses enabling these agencies to monitor EU citizens’ [crypto] transactions in real time”.

This thread by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sums up the concerns:

This means that companies such as Coinbase would have to collect and report data on EVERY crypto transaction to the authorities. What’s more, initially this was supposed to only be for amounts over $1k, but now it’s for all transfers.

Here’s what the CEO of Ledger had to say:

“The EU has chosen fear over freedom. EU representatives are missing that this digital shift has the potential to create thousands of jobs and a vibrant industry on European soil.”

What else you should know

Elizabeth Warren calls for U.S. to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC) saying “it’s time to move in that direction”.

Visa launches an NFT creator program, and says they represent a new form of e-commerce.

Helium, the decentralised wireless network provider, raises $200M at a $1.2B valuation - changes name to Nova Labs.

The Devs behind the popular meme-coin Shiba Inu have announced a VR Metaverse project, with 100k land plots priced in ETH.

In the third multi-million dollar crypto attack in recent days, DeFi lender Inverse Finance is exploited for $15.6M.

Pudgy Penguins NFT Collection sold to Netz Capital for $2.5m.

Tweets of the Week 🐦

We spend time on CT, so you don’t have to. Some of our favourite recent tweets: 

Coinbase CEO reacts to the EU’s new crypto-KYC plans

Do Kwon wants to tie Luna’s success to Bitcoin

Dune founders raise a $69,420,000 Series B at a unicorn valuation

Solana is coming to OpenSea

Bloomberg analyst says demand for ETH is increasing

WYD??

Web3 101: GameFi💡

Each week we’ll cover an essential web3 concept in simple terms - this week we’re looking at GameFi ✨

What is it?

GameFi is a combo of the words game and finance. It typically refers to “play-to-earn” blockchain games where there are economic incentives offered to players.

Typically, players earn cryptocurrency and NFT rewards by completing tacks, battling other players and progressing through different game levels.

How does it work?

Each GameFi project will have a different model and game economy - but there’s usually some combo of in-game assets including currencies, virtual land, weapons, avatars and costumes.

And unlike traditional games where these assets only have value within that game ecosystem (think Fortnite skins etc.) - most GameFi assets are NFTs running on a blockchain meaning they can be traded on NFT marketplaces.

Play-to-Earn

This revolutionary gaming model flips the “pay-to-play” model on its head - and gives players full control over their in game assets, as well as opportunities to make money. Axie Infinity is one of the most popular play to earn games - although the recent hack of their Ronin network highlights both the risks and relative immaturity of this space for the mainstream market.

ICYMI

The lovely folks over at Shift featured us in their latest piece! 

Noah from Shift sat down with Dariya (our co-founder and CEO) to talk about the future of work in web3. 

You can check it out here. 

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That's all for today! Thoughts on today's email?

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Yahya at Layer3