The Week in Web3

Author

Sarah from Layer3
June 06, 2022

sup nerds

— Optimism, right before it launched the first $OP airdrop

GM nerds! Welcome to another week in web3. We’ve got a packed newsletter for you.

This week’s digest covers Optimism’s $OP airdrop, the arrest of OpenSea employee Nate Chastain, and Coinbase rescinding job offers to new grads. In Layer3 news, we dropped some hot new bounties and also created a “Down Bad” crypto hotline!

Text us at +1 (205) 850-0333 to get started. We’re serious.

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

A roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last week

Optimism completes a turbulent first airdrop

The much-hyped Optimism airdrop finally happened on May 31…and it went less than smoothly. But then again, it wouldn’t be crypto if it weren’t chaotic as hell.

Optimism is one of the many Layer2 scaling solutions for Ethereum. In just under 6 months, it has accumulated over 10 million total transactions, announcing “an entire season of airdrops” of its native token, $OP, back in April.

Over 250,000 users were eligible for the first airdrop depending on a strict set of criteria, including being an Optimism user, DAO voter, a multi-sig signer, L2 user, or someone who donated to Gitcoin Grants on L1.

This all sounds great, but the first airdrop last Tuesday didn’t go exactly as planned. Of the 5% of OP’s token allocation that would go to the first airdrop, some went to those who were able to claim (and dump) ahead of the official announcement, and others who were initially eligible for the airdrop were suddenly notified that they wouldn’t be able to claim anymore.

A massive increase in the number of transacting addresses on Optimism also created hefty congestion issues for the network—not the best look for a network attempting to scale Ethereum. Here’s to hoping (and being optimistic) that the next one will be better.

Former OpenSea employee faces up to 40 years in prison

40 years in prison for 19 ETH? Yikes.

Former Head of Product for OpenSea, Nate Chastain, has been indicted and charged by the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) for NFT insider trading. He has been charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the official press release, the former OpenSea employee had used confidential information about what NFTs were going to be featured on OpenSea’s homepage for his personal financial gain, having laundered at least 45 NFTs in 2021 and making 19 ETH in profits. He concealed these purchases and sales with anonymous wallets and accounts.

“In this case, as alleged, Chastain launched an age-old scheme to commit insider trading by using his knowledge of confidential information to purchase dozens of NFTs in advance of them being featured on OpenSea’s homepage…The FBI will continue to aggressively pursue actors who choose to manipulate the market in this way.” — FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Michael J. Driscoll

What else you should know

What we've been BUIDLing 🏗️

You wanted more fun, low-stakes tasks to participate in, and we heard you.

We launched daily bounties last week—users were able to earn platform XP for making a swap, providing liquidity, putting (L,3) in their names, and more!

Want to discover web3 in a fun, novel way? Check them out here. We’ll be posting a new bounty every day:

We also launched a “Down Bad” crypto hotline for all your unanswered questions and late-night thoughts. Text us and you’ll get to chat with either our Co-Founder or with me! And yes, we will actually be answering.

🛣️ 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: Flipside Crypto

🤓 What: Earn a Lil Nouns NFT or $100 USDC for analyzing NFT marketplace activity for Nouns DAO!

📝 Instructions: Using Flipside’s Ethereum_core schema, build data visualizations and queries for trait data on new mints for Lil Nouns. Lil Nouns is a sub-DAO created out of Nouns DAO.

Power User Feature: vedantp(∅) at ZetaChain

This week we’re featuring power user vedantp(∅) at ZetaChain! We got in touch with him and asked him a few questions about his experience with Layer3:

Mind telling us a little bit more about your web3 journey?

I started my crypto journey back in July 2021 and entered web3 properly in November after facing many ups and downs in mainstream crypto and centralized exchanges. As soon as I stepped outside from the mainstream, many doors were opened, and I learnt that there is still a lot of development yet to happen in web3!

How did Layer3 help you get your job at ZetaChain?

After winning a MODA DAO contest on L3, I posted a message on the general channel in which I received a reply from a ZetaChain community manager. I explored the ZetaChain discord and started engaging with the community over there. They were also looking out for ambassadors from different countries, so I applied for the Hindi community and got selected for the role!

What’s your favorite thing about Layer3?

Layer 3 is super easy to use and has amazing features! The community is straight-up energetic and always comes up with new things to keep the community members engaged. New features are frequently added which is super awesome too!

Have you landed a web3 job after using Layer3 as your proof-of-contribution? Tell us more about it by sliding in our Twitter DMs or by messaging meowllark#5896 on Discord.

Web3 101: Gas fees💡

Each week we’ll cover an essential web3 concept in simple terms. This week we’re looking at gas fees ✨

What is gas and why do I have to pay it?

Transaction fees in crypto come in the form of “gas.” On the Ethereum network, every action, such as sending tokens, making a swap, or buying an NFT, requires a network fee to complete. This network fee is also known as “gas.”

How do gas fees work?

Ethereum currently operates via a proof-of-work consensus mechanism where individual crypto miners secure the network. Because this requires a significant amount of computational power, miners receive a transaction fee in return for their efforts. Gas therefore helps to secure the network and validate transactions.

Gas prices change based on supply and demand—the more that users want their transaction mined (or the more that people are trying to take actions with ETH), the higher the gas price will be.

How do I pay gas on Ethereum?

You can check gas prices on Etherscan. Most decentralized apps operating on the Ethereum network will also have gas fee settings where you can adjust how much gas you would like to pay for a transaction.

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

PS👇

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