GM Layer3 community! It's been another eventful week in web3. Welcome to your Monday's dose of web3 analysis—here's what we'll cover:

• Tiffany & Co's new NFT project, with a steep 30ETH entry price

• Bethany Marz: What we can learn from decentralized community building

• Unstoppable Domains reaches a Unicorn valuation w/ $65m in funding

• We just launched NFT rewards!

Sarah at Layer3

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

An analysis of what you missed in web3 over the past week

Tiffany & Co introduces "NFTiffs" exclusively for CryptoPunks holders

Iconic jeweler Tiffany & Co is entering the NFT space in a splashy way.

Priced at 30ETH, Tiffany's new NFT project will allow CryptoPunks holders to commission bespoke pendant necklaces based on their Punk, with a total capped supply of 250. Punks holders will also receive a minted NFT of the pendant.

This isn't Tiffany's first foray into NFTs. The luxury brand has tinkered with NFTs in the past, including when they pretended to launch a "TiffCoin" for April Fool's Day this year.

It's also not the first luxury brand to venture into crypto, which begs the question: Is crypto just a gold rush for luxury brands looking for high-flying customers, or is it a strategy that they can seriously expand upon to develop a loyal community within web3?

David Klingbeil, a former Layer3 Contributor Bootcamp participant, offers his perspective in this post: Luxury goods and NFT Projects both go after status-seeking consumers, and understand the role of "brand prominence" in marketing. If luxury brands and NFT Projects can leverage customer segmentation within luxury consumers well, they can gain a competitive advantage.

But others may argue that community in web3 wasn't initially formed through means of status-seeking, especially when NFT mints, on average, were priced much lower this time last year. Either way, I'm eager to see if luxury brands can truly learn from web3, and whether web3 has anything to learn from luxury brands.

Sarah's Recommended Reads: Bethany Marz on Decentralized Community Building

This week I'm trying out something different—I'll be summarizing well-written articles by other web3 thinkers that you should know about.

Up today is Bethany Marz' What We Can Learn from Decentralized Community Building, an absolutely killer piece on the spectrum of decentralized communities in web3.

Bethany's article analyzes several well-known Projects in web3, including PartyBid, Creator Cabins, Index Coop, Nouns, and Mirror. 

By categorizing these Projects on a "decentralization scale" and conducting an in-depth exploration of what each Project has done to achieve a decentralized community, she offers fantastic insights for any curious web3 community manager or co-founder looking to implement these newly-formed best practices.

My favorite piece of advice? Build first, strategize second. This seems to be an unofficial and unspoken core tenet of web3; and as Bethany says, there is "an authenticity in doing something “just because” that gives credence to these early cycles." This lesson applies to standout DAOs like SharkDAO, and exciting products like PartyBid—which someone decided to build after seeing a tweet with the idea.

You can read more about her thoughts here!

What else you should know

• Unstoppable Domains reaches unicorn valuation with $65m Series A round

• Muse to release new album as NFTs on Polygon

• AAVE DAO approves creating GHO stablecoin, which will be backed by over-collateralized assets

• Axie Infinity CEO sold $3m worth of crypto before $600m hack was announced

What we've been BUIDLing 🏗️

We launched NFT rewards last week!

This means that anyone can now complete a Bounty to receive NFT rewards on Layer3. It also means you're now able to:

• Receive NFT rewards for completing on-chain and off-chain tasks

• View Bounties where you’ve claimed NFTs on your user profile

• Complete partner Bounties to add unique NFTs to your collection

To celebrate this launch, we created three NFT-rewarding bounties for our community:

• Hold any NFT on Ethereum mainnet and receive our Early Express Series 2 NFT

• Become Level 10 on Layer3 and receive an NFT for sharing your achievements

• Trade wBTC for wETH and receive our exclusive “Knockout” NFT

Why not try them out for yourself?

🛣️ 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.

Web3 101: Minting💡

Each week we’ll cover an essential web3 concept in simple terms. This week we’re looking at Minting (an NFT) ✨

What does it mean to mint an NFT?

Minting an NFT is the act of publishing a unique instance of your ERC-721 token on the blockchain. Typically, this refers to when someone wants to generate a piece of digital art that can be purchased or sold for cryptocurrency.

How does minting work?

When you mint an NFT, you are creating a contract address that then becomes a digital asset that can be transferred, stored, and sold on the blockchain.

How can I mint my own NFT?

Minting an NFT will require gas fees. You can do it easily on platforms like Thirdweb, OpenSea, or Rarible. If you don't want to mint your own NFT, you can also purchase one to add to your collection!

Layer3 also has NFT bounties available for you to explore. Why not check them out?

Thanks for reading!

Join our Discord and follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest Bounties, communities, and more!

That's all for this week! Until next time, frens!

Cheers,

Sarah at Layer3

Let us know how we did👇

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