This Week in Web3

Author

Sarah from Layer3
January 30, 2023

After seeing Porsche’s underwhelming web3 release, following other underwhelming releases from similarly huge brands - it begs the question, who is advising them? I’d like to officially put myself out there as a consultant to throw ideas around with. Brands: stop rushing.

— Betty (Deadfellaz Artist and Founder) on Porsche's disastrous NFT mint

GM to the 22,331 degens currently subscribed to This Week in Web3!

Here's what we'll cover today:

  • Porsche enters the NFT world with a big splash, only to be ridiculed by enthusiasts

  • Account abstraction in laymen's terms

  • We're launching on Cosmos! Product updates from our CEO & Co-Founder, Dariya

  • Community Feature: ParaSwap

WEB3 DIGEST

Porsche Ends Up Calling 911 on NFTs

Ah yes. The NFT world — known for being extremely welcoming and patient with new entrants to the market.

Though I have my qualms with how many in the NFT space currently operate (I'm talking about the endless stream of shills, wash trading, rugpulls, and scams), I'm going to have to agree with many of them on their widespread disdain in response to Porsche's NFT collection drop.

With an initial plan of dropping a limited supply of 7,500 NFTs to celebrate their iconic 911 sports car, Porsche launched the collection last week to an extremely underwhelming response. The collection, with its mint price of 0.911ETH, had only reached 1,500 mints before Porsche decided to pull a UNO Reverse Card and cap the supply to "create the best experience for an exclusive community" (Hint: They didn't want the floor price to go down).

In between the launch and Porsche's even more lackluster decision was a barrage of criticism and feedback that, needless to say, were quite warranted. A couple things ring true:

  • Porsche didn't know its target audience and how to reach them

  • They opted for a luxury experience and pricetag without real utility or benefits (Holders would get access to....events? And maybe merch? And a chance to "help design" some cars? Unlikely loooool).

  • Instead of targeting high-value Porsche owners, they targeted a community that's used to being milked for liquidity and engagement by tone-deaf brands

A lesson in failed marketing, sure — but also a very valuable lesson on what appealing to a web3 audience actually looks like. And like Betty implies, Porsche totally could've spent two or three months cultivating an organic community in web3 and developed the utility of their NFT alongside them, instead of selling something with a nearly $1500 price tag for the vague benefits that a high school club could probably also provide.

That, and I am so sick of NFT projects promising "merch," as if that justifies a ridiculously high mint price.

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 looking at the topic of Account Abstraction! I've dabbled in the topic but I haven't been able to do a super deep dive yet...that is, until I found Cami's Substack post on Account Abstraction for Everyone Else.

(Side note: Cami is one of my favorite thinkers because she is so thoughtful about web3 and its current state of total inaccessibility, as well as how that needs to change.)

Let's get into it: What is Account Abstraction?

Generally speaking, it is the ability to program the validity conditions of a transaction. There are currently three distinct conditions that need to be met in order for a transaction to be valid on Ethereum; but what if devs could define a different set of conditions in which transactions are valid?

Cami also mentions that it's helpful to define what isn't Account Abstraction. Although many bring up these features interchangeably, AA is not:

  • paying users’ gas fees

  • native multi-sig

  • web3auth type “social login

Account abstraction is a major topic of discussion these days because of EIP-4337, a proposal by Vitalik on ways to "allow users to use smart contract wallets containing arbitrary verification logic instead of EOAs as their primary account." According to Cami, it's the first account abstraction proposal/standard that brings on Ethereum AA without requiring core protocol changes. I'll let her give more color on this in her Substack post.

But the implications of this proposal are huge, because they allow for major UX improvements and enable new applications to be built. Like I mentioned earlier, Account Abstraction is not UX improvements or new apps in itself (e.g. social recovery or paying for users' gas fees); these are all things that are a result of Account Abstraction, if it actually works.

Quick Hits

  • Coinbase Fined $3.6M by Dutch Regulator for Failure to Register – link

  • 1inch launches proprietary hardware wallet as self-custody trend grows – link

  • Ethereum's Buterin Proposes 'Stealth Addresses' to Enhance Privacy Protections – link

  • Moonbirds creator Kevin Rose hacked, at least $1 million in NFTs stolen – link

Product Updates from Dariya

Hey everyone!

In 2022 we helped over 200K of you do 10M+ things with EVM-based products. Throughout the journey we’ve consistently heard from users and customers that folks want quests on more chains. More chains means supporting more builders which means more things to do on Layer3 – it’s a no brainer. So, I’m excited to finally announce that soon Layer3 will go live with Cosmos support. With Cosmos support, you can expect more multichain quests, exciting partnerships with new products, and overall tons more ways to explore the crypto ecosystem.

In a couple weeks we’ll make a formal public announcement with the first set of Cosmos-based quests on Layer3. These quests will tie nicely into the exciting new UI and UX revamp we’ve been working on – aimed at giving everyone a better, more personalized experience on Layer3. If you work with a community or just love a specific product in the Cosmos ecosystem and want to find out more about powering quests through Layer3, shoot me a DM on Twitter.

Introduce yourself! 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

Community Feature: ParaSwap

We've partnered with ParaSwap to bring you $PSP 2.0 and its new community-centric Social Escrow system.

Discover this novel system via ParaSwap's community-oriented aggregator in our upcoming Quest with ParaSwap! Join our Discord or join the ParaSwap community to stay tuned for when it’ll drop.

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

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