#35 About Writing NFTs & why big tech giants are losing talent to blockchain companies.
Disclaimer: Everything we write in "The Crypto Insider Report" is an x-ray of the industry as we see it, through the lens of publicly available information. We are not financial advisors.
Sequoia’s Advice: Adapt to Endure
Sequoia is a 50 years old VC company, so they’ve been around and seen some things. They candidly advised portfolio companies when times were tough in the past, and some of it got on the Web as well, such as an email from 2000 and a deck from 2008. Well, it’s 2022, times are tough again and, sure enough, a new deck came out.
Titled “Adapting to Endure”, the presentation accompanied by notes covers several topics, from outlining the macro context we are living, to getting into concrete advice on what perspective to have and even actions to take. The 50-odd slides are 100% worth reading, but I’ll briefly share here what caught my eye.
Capital used to be free, now it’s expensive. The macro situation changed the focus from high growth to sustainable cash flow;
Equity prices are significantly down. 61% of all software, internet and fintech companies are trading below pre-pandemic 2020 prices. A third are even trading below COVID lows;
Sequoia thinks the recovery will be long - plan for long[er] runway
Companies that execute well in this period will come out on top vs competition;
Be prepared, don’t sugar coat reality - prepare yourself, your team and your company;
Finally, I will leave with my favorite slide from the deck.
Mihnea
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TradFi institutions continue their inroads into DeFi
On May 31st, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced Project Guardian, a framework that seeks to explore the potential benefits of leveraging asset tokenization on public blockchains.
A token is a representation of a particular asset or utility. In blockchain parlance, tokenization is the process of converting something of value into a digital token that can be used on a blockchain application.
The first pilot program under Project Guardian will explore potential DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets.
Who are the sponsors of the program - led by DBS Bank (leading financial services group in Asia with a presence in 18 markets), JPMorgan and Marketnode (a digital asset joint venture between Singapore Exchange and Temasek, a leading global investment company).
Underlying / addressable market - wholesale funding markets: comprises loans from banks to businesses (e.g., loans for construction or purchasing new facilities, corporate expansion, etc.).
How it might work: similar to Aave’s permissioned pools.
Assets involved: tokenized bonds acting as collateral, tokenized deposits / cash.
DeFi facilitators: permissioned liquidity pools (whitelisted / accepted participants only).
A situation where a bank might have on its balance sheet $1m of LFG tokenized bonds and it would need to borrow money temporarily. It would deposit $1m of bonds as collateral that would be locked in a smart contract and be able to borrow as much as $800k (assuming LTV=80%). The bank would have to pay interest on the borrowed amount. It will draw the amount from a liquidity pool where multiple depositors with excessive cash seeking a yield on them have made their tokenized funds available. They will receive the interest amount-ish. The interest rate will be calculated algorithmically based on supply and demand. Loan duration, bond risk rating, collateral type, and others would probably influence the interest rate and the LTV.
There will probably be other pilots as well while some of them will advance and shape up some thought processes and (maybe) regulations. MAS has set up a framework and four objectives for this campaign, while inviting interested parties to contact the relevant authorities. Nonetheless, this is one in a string of recent announcements that includes JPMorgan’s initiatives in the digital space.
Razvan
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NFTs Categories++: Writing NFTs
About a week ago, Mirror.xyz twitted about the Writing NFTs, and stories already started to pop out. Endi covered this full subject in our last Pro Romanian Newsletter.
To be honest, I don't know why this didn't catch up sooner, because is a blessing in disguise for all the good content writers that now can really monetize their skills, and what they write will stay there in the blockchain … for eveeeerrr. A blessing or a curse, it depends: but what we know is that someone can be held accountable for their written words.
For example, our friend MTK from the StakebrogDAO community wrote his first article on mirror.xyz, an article that he's giving for free to the first 999 people who claim it. Because, you know, if something new, MTK is there for sure, a true believer in web3, DAOs and we are lucky to call him a friend.
If you are curious enough or are already writing and what to see how to put your work as a Writing NFT, all you have to do is go to your Mirror.xyz Dashbord, and connect your Metamask Wallet (it will switch automatically to the Optimism chain) and then just press the Create Your First Entry button. Good luck!
Remember, you don't need to have a website, to create a sophisticated account, just go on mirror.xyz, connect your wallet and that's it. It knows what to do from there.
You can also see the Leaderboard from the current NFTs sells
No.1 is, actually, the collection Mirror launched with the article talking about Writing NFTs. 420 pieces (Elon Musk must be proud :D) that sold at 0.01ETH in 90 min, only to reach 0.2 ETH in the first two days, now around 0.1 ETH. And our Daonaut Matei, together with Mihnea, whose articles you read every week in this newsletter, minted one. GG!
This opens up a brand new world for content creators and I am truly happy about this. My dad has been writing poems since he was 17 and he kept on doing it for more than 40 years. Not many, but well-chosen ones. I was thinking for the past 2 years about how can I make sure that his artwork never disappears because now those poems only exist in a few exemplars as a gift he received a while back. With writing NFTs, maybe this is the way to go, who knows.
I'm telling you this to understand that not all the time is about money and profits, sometimes is about preserving what we love and what defines us. And blockchain is bringing this, no matter if is a bull or bear market.
Good times to be a part of!
Go write your legacy and NFTize it.
Cosmin
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Why big tech giants are losing talent to blockchain companies
Web 3 companies continue to convince senior executives worldwide to join them, similar to the migration seen in the early 2000s when Big Tech companies lured top talent away from Wall Street.
A few examples include:
Google’s former vice president, Surojit Chatterjee, now Coinbase’s chief product officer.
Amazon’s Pravjit Tiwana left his position as general manager of AWS Edge Services to become the chief technology officer at Gemini.
Lyft’s former chief financial officer, Brian Roberts, joined non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea
the former head of gaming at YouTube now leads Polygon Studios as its CEO.
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, who has now stepped down from his position as the company’s CEO to focus on his crypto-oriented payments company, Block (formerly known as Square).
But senior executives are not the only ones migrating to the Web3 space. Studies show that Generation Z and Millennials (18-40 years old) represent 94% of the web3 demographic. Their migration is not surprising given the results of a recent Gen Z and Millennials survey conducted by Deloitte which shows that in order to attract and retain talent, business leaders need to prioritize work/life balance, learning and development, having a clear purpose and giving employees the opportunity to create real change.
These results make me even more confident that Web 3 is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our generation. It is not only the financial attractiveness of the industry that is luring talent away from the tech giants, but the opportunity to work on the forefront of bleeding-edge innovation and a paradigm shift.
Even though recruitment has slowed down compared to six months ago the market downturn has not yet deterred venture capitalists from investing in the space. Andreessen Horowitz last week went ahead with the previously planned launch of its $4.5 billion mega fund, targeting Web3 startups from decentralized finance (DeFi) and social media to gaming and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), among others. Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of cryptocurrency exchange company Binance, also announced its plans to allocate $500 million to blockchain projects in incubation, early-stage and late-stage growth startups.
Evelyne
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For more educational crypto content, check out the links below:
The Stakeborg DAO Talks on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrFZZifNn4Nx4nSQL3WS52ALPXgrTSVG
Discord channel: https://discord.com/channels/901898461568442458/903006233584341052
StakeborgDAO Quarterly Reports: https://docs.stakeborgdao.com/reports/dao-quarterly-reports
Stakeborg Academy: https://academy.stakeborg.com/
Consistent Congrats Evelyne & Team ! Burst the limits and build advertising for the good times !
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