The Week in Web3

Author

Sarah from Layer3
May 23, 2022

"One way is by making it possible to earn ownership through ongoing participation in networks, not just capital investment."

— Li Jin, Investor at Variant Fund, mentions us in a Harvard Business Review article

Happy Monday and a big big GM to all our newsletter readers! We've reached 6,000 subscribers, and we couldn't be happier that you're here.

Here's what we're covering today: there are two exciting product launches in the World of Web3, including Lens Protocol by Aave, and OpenSea's Seaport Protocol. Meanwhile, Layer3 got a shoutout in HBR, and we've also partnered with OpenSea!

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

A roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last week

Aave's Lens Protocol launches on Polygon Mainnet

On May 18, Aave launched Lens Protocol on Polygon, one of the most anticipated products in web3 social.

Lens has offered itself as a web3-native solution to the power of centralized platforms. In other words, Lens Protocol is a "decentralized, open-sourced social graph that leverages NFT technology to empower users to fully own their content, from profile to posts."

So what makes Lens different from something like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? While Web2 social networks concentrate user data in a single centralized database, Lens allows users to actually own their data (their content, profile, and followers) and bring it to any application built on top of the protocol. 

This modularity is exactly what makes Lens a developer-friendly ecosystem rather than just a "zero-sum game" for users' attention.

OpenSea launches Seaport Protocol

Web3 keeps shipping during a bear market, doesn't it? Here's another major product launch by a major web3 company: On May 20, OpenSea announced the launch of Seaport Protocol, a "brand new web3 marketplace protocol for safely and efficiently buying and selling NFTs."

Built from an open-source smart contract, Seaport allows NFT offerers to supply a number of ETH/ERC-20/ERC-721/ERC-1155 items as an "offer," and for recipients to receive a specified number of items as the "consideration" outlined by the offerer.

According to OpenSea, the goal of Seaport is to eliminate redundant, gas-intensive transfers—and it's all open source! Exciting times ahead.

What else you should know

What we've been BUIDLing 🏗️

We’ve been working on an internal “bounty builder” that allows users to build on or off-chain bounties in a custom, modular way.

To test this out, we launched two bounties last week: A bounty for minting Index Coop's $icETH, and a Layer3 XP bounty for making a swap on 1inch Polygon.

We'll be testing more bounties this week on the platform, so make sure you've joined our Discord and are checking our bounty board for updates!

In other exciting news, we've been featured in the Harvard Business Review! Li Jin discusses web3 and the quest for a fairer internet, where she mentions us as a solution to helping people earn ownership without the need for capital investment. That's exactly what we had in mind.

🛣️ Stay up to speed on what we're building: Take a look at our roadmap to see what we've been cooking at Layer3, and a preview of what’s to come.

🚢 And if you want to help decide what we ship next: You can submit a feature request here and vote on your favorites! Some top community requests have already made it onto our roadmap.

Community Spotlight 🔍

A weekly spotlight on some of our favorite DAOs, communities, and L3 community contributors

Featured Community: OpenSea

What: Work closely with the OpenSea team to deliver Dune Analytics dashboards analyzing the top NFT projects and the wallets that interact with them. Define a methodology for filtering out alternative wallets of existing users and analyze key NFT metrics.

📝 Instructions: Participate in this contest if you enjoy exploring NFTs and sharpening your blockchain analytics skills!

4 days left to apply to our second Contributors Bootcamp cohort!

Unlike web2, you won’t find most of web3 talent working at the same 2-3 companies.

That's why we brought them together in our Contributor Bootcamp: an opportunity to work for multiple DAOs while getting paid.

It’s the best beginner-friendly pipeline to work in web3. Just take a look at our first cohort!

We're now accepting applications for our second cohort:

Web3 101: ERC-721💡

Each week we’ll cover an essential web3 concept in simple terms. This week we’re looking at the ERC-721 standard ✨

What is the ERC-721 standard?

The ERC-721 standard is an Ethereum standard that enables Non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Proposed by developers in January 2018, this standard implements an API for tokens within smart contracts to track and transfer NFTs. In simple terms, it's a generalized "template" for developers to follow when they write NFT-related code.

How does ERC-721 work?

Before ERC-721, most tokens on blockchains functioned either as a currency, a store of value, or a kind of stock/equity. ERC-721 enabled people to create tokens that were cryptographically unique, meaning that one type of ERC-721 token cannot replace another (non-fungible).

Where can I learn more about the standard?

Here's the full ERC-721 standard, complete with example code!

Want to get your hands on a Layer3 NFT, mug or even a much coveted hoodie?

PS👇

Join our Discord to stay up-to-date on the latest DAOs and contests!

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