The Week in Web3

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

Robinhood release a crypto wallet

Previously, if you bought crypto on the Robinhood app it was effectively trapped there. You couldn’t transfer it to any other crypto wallet, so all you could do is sell it for fiat currency.

That changes now that Robinhood have released their much anticipated crypto wallet.

Their 2 million waitlisted users can now move their crypto in and out of the app - plus some more features hyped up in this press release, such as:

  • Support for the Bitcoin lightning network

  • Scanning QR codes to send crypto

  • Transaction activity monitoring

This isn’t a fully fledged self-custodial Ethereum wallet like Rainbow though - so stuff like holding NFTs, or participating in DeFi is off limits.

That said, Robinhood had 17.3 million monthly active users as of December 2021 - so enabling those users to interact more directly with cryptocurrency could be transformative for the whole industry.

The biggest Crypto acquisition to date

Crypto payments for your online shopping might be getting lot more common.

That’s because Bolt (a payments company) have acquired Wyre (a crypto payments company) for $1.5 billion.

The WSJ report this is the largest merger in the crypto sector, and the price tag is a mix of cash and stock.

Bolt’s outspoken founder Ryan Breslow said this was always part of the plan - and that when he founded Bolt he “always imagined cryptocurrency at its center”.

Breslow also believes this merger forms the “true beginning of DeComm—decentralized commerce”.

But competition is heating up in the crypto payments space.

We previously wrote about how Stripe, the $100bn payments giant, added crypto support. Not to mention Moonpay - who closed a historic $555m Series A last year to, you guessed it, support crypto payments.

Will we all be paying for our shopping in crypto soon? Let’s see.

What else you should know

  • The UK wants to become a “global hub for cryptoasset technology and investment”

  • Elon won’t be joining the Twitter board, despite his 9.2% stake in the $37 billion company

  • Sky Mavis (makers of Axie Infinity) have raised $150m to reimburse user funds lost in the $625 million Ronin attack

  • Do Kwon and the Luna Foundation Guard keep buying up that Bitcoin

  • The US arm of Binance raises over $200M in first seed round, hitting a $4.5B valuation as it preps for IPO

  • UFC to start paying bonuses to fighters in crypto

  • Tesla, Block and Blockstream team up to mine Bitcoin off solar power plant in Texas

Tweets of the Week 🐦

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

Just sold all my ETH

No wonder talent is leaving in droves 🤦

The UK starts shilling NFTs...

... and national hero Cobie wants to be the royal minter

Bolt founder is bullish on his merger

“Horny for monetization”

Web3 101: Social DAOs 💡

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

The lovely team over at Shift recently shared a guide to Social DAOs - here’s a quick summary, or you can check out the full piece here!

What are Social DAOs?

As @lauren_huttner put it in the guide - “picture Soho House run by its members instead of some ominous CEO” - that about sums it up as far as we’re concerned.

How does it work?

Social DAOs run on tokens and use them as the tickets to join. This means they’re “token gated” - i.e. you have you hold a certain number of tokens to gain access to the DAOs online and IRL events and community.

This also means the community are incentivised to see the organisation succeed.

How do you start one?

The Shift team put together this handy guide:

Step 1: Create a server on Discord

Step 2: Create a social token on Coinvise

Step 3: Restrict the access of your Discord server with the Discord Bot Collab.land

Step 4: Allow members to vote on stuff through Snapshot

That’s it!

For more useful guides - you can subscribe to Shift here

ICYMI

Speaking of Social DAOs, the OG’s - Friends with Benefits ($FWB) have been running some contests on Layer3 - including one where they asked contributors to explain what they actually do: 

So through Layer3 you can contribute to the FWB DAO, earn governance tokens and be on your way to a membership!

Check out their community page on Layer3 here - and keep an eye out for their next wave of contests.

Want to get your hands on some Layer3 merch?

PS 👇

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

Add our **GM bot** to your discord server.

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

Yahya at Layer3