GM! It's been another exciting week in web3. Can you guess we're dedicating this issue to? Read on for a curated list of stories on one of the biggest events in crypto history!

• Ethereum completes "The Merge" to proof-of-stake

• Spencer Noon: The Merge, as visualized through data

• Our new customer-facing landing page

• Introducing: Proof of Discovery

Sarah at Layer3

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

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

Ethereum successfully merges to Proof-of-Stake!

Happy Merge!

In one of the most anticipated events of the year and possibly in all of crypto, Ethereum has successfully merged from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This reduces Ethereum's energy consumption by over 99.9%, and the world's total CO2 emissions by around 0.2%.

Fun fact: This also makes Dogecoin the second-largest PoW coin after Bitcoin by market cap. While $ETH has failed to rally post-merge as some have anticipated, it's also carved a more environmentally sustainable path forward for cryptocurrency as a whole, and completed one of the most difficult, long-awaited engineering feats in recent history.

Let's dive into some of the fascinating stats!

• Ethereum will go from using up to 23 million megawatt-hours per year to just 2,600 megawatt-hours per year

• The network's climate pollution will drop from 11 million tons of CO2 emissions to just 870 tons

• An estimated 20 million GPUs were involved with Ethereum PoW mining

• Hard-forked Ethereum "ETHW" surged from $35.4 to $60.68 after the Merge, then fell below $32

Sarah's Recommended Reads: Spencer Noon's Our Network Mega Issue on The Merge

Welcome to Sarah's Recommended Reads! Here, I'll be summarizing well-written articles or threads by web3 thinkers and builders you should know about.

Up today is Spencer Noon's newsletter issue on The Merge, packed with juicy stats and visuals spanning from transaction fees to lending to daily ETH issuance. Spencer is the Co-Founder and GP at Variant Fund, a VC fund that invests heavily in crypto-based companies.

We've picked some of the best analysis to include below:

Insight #1: 172% increase in rewards per validator post-Merge, with about 1.67k ETH being issued each day 📈

Insight #2: 88% reduction in ETH issuance post-Merge, which will make ETH deflationary moving forward 💸

Insight #3: 100% utilization on WETH pools due to a popular trade amongst whales to lend USDC and borrow WETH on Aave, Compound, and Euler 🏦

You can read more in his newsletter here!

What else you should know

• Infura plans to launch a decentralized infrastructure protocol

• Binance mistakenly counts Helium Network's HNT and MOBILE as one token, leading to major losses

• Epic Games lists its first blockchain-based game, Bankos Block Party

• President Biden outlines plans for crypto regulation in Executive Order

What we've been BUIDLing

Are you interested in partnering with Layer3? We just shipped a new landing page exclusively for potential collaborators!

We've also added a couple of case studies in our Gitbook on how Layer3 can help you grow. There, you can read more about some of the campaigns we've run with customers like Slingshot, which resulted in:

• 11,500 new users on Slingshot Optimism (89% of total participants were new users)

• 66% net new user retention on Slingshot Optimism

• 9,100 new users on Slingshot Polygon (70% of total participants were new users)

🛣️ 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.

Introducing: Proof of Discovery

Last week we launched Proof of Discovery: a 4-day digital conference with some of the best and brightest in web3.

Every week, we’ll drop new protocols, companies, or thinkers that you should absolutely know about in crypto. During that week, you’ll be able to engage in these communities through a combination of interactive experiences (Bounties, Quests, Contests) and events.

Last week, we ran our first event with Guild and Little Nouns, introducing the fundamental ideas of web3 membership to our vibrant community in a fun and interactive way! A huge shoutout to the 1,000+ Bounty Hunters participated in our Guild x Layer3 Contest, and the 2,500+ users in our Twitter Spaces last Wednesday!

Join our Discord to stay tuned on weekly announcements and ways to participate!

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👇