Solana opens physical store in New York City
Solana opens physical store in New York City
Hi fam,
This newsletter is a bit earlier and a bit shorter than you're used to because of a lack of earth-shattering news and my swamped schedule for the weekend. I still found the time to serve you with the most significant news headlines of the past week - see below!
On a more personal note; earlier this week, the Unemployables NFT project organized the "Unemployables Holder's Grant" (valued one eth) to stimulate their community to get involved with web3 - besides just flipping JPGS.
Long story short: their community voted and rewarded me with the win because they loved the newsletter and my upcoming 0xcareers job board that much. I feel super humble about this, especially because it was a token-gated voting process. Thank you to everyone who voted and showed love. I appreciate it!
— 🩸💀 AMERICAN RADASS
SOLANA OPENS STORE IN NYC
Blockchain network Solana has opened its first physical store Solana Spaces in New York City, where it will sell cryptocurrency-related products.
The store is located at The Shops, an upscale mall at Hudson Yard, Manhattan, and opened to the public on July 28.
The store features an NFT gallery with the Degenerate Apes Academy Collection hanging on the walls. It contains an interactive installation showing all transactions and processes on the Solana blockchain as they happen in real-time.
SKY MAVIS MOVED FUNDS BEFORE DISCLOSING HACK
Trung Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Sky Mavis: the studio behind the Axie Infinity blockchain game, moved about $3 million in crypto tokens before the company disclosed details of a $540 million.
According to Bloomberg, Nguyen moved the funds as part of effort to salvage the company’s funds in the wake of the attack. These fund transfers were made before Axie went public with the information about the hack.
📰 OTHER NEWS FROM THE PAST WEEK
Cool Cats has launched a new chapter in their Cool Pets game, called Boss Fights.
An Open Metaverse Alliance has formed including Dapper Labs, Decentraland, The Sandbox, and The Otherside.
Opensea released a new update that allows multiple creators to receive earnings from a single OpenSea listing.
Venture capital firm Adreessen Horowitz (a16z) said it’s leading a whopping $50 million seed round for Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT project, VeeFriends — marking a bright spot in a challenging funding landscape for digital asset-focused startups.
Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin shared the team’s next milestones after the Merge during the fifth edition of the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris.
Web3 domain name provider, Unstoppable Domain has reached a $1 billion valuation after it closed a $65 million series A funding round led by Pantera Capital.
Meta reported a second-quarter loss of $2.8 billion in its Reality Labs division on Wednesday, adding to a $2.9 billion loss in this year’s first quarter.
✨ NEW IN THE SPACE
Warner Records & Bose have released their own NFT project called Stickmen Toys, which was a free mint.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced that the city is going to partner with Time, Mastercard, and Salesforce to roll out a new NFT initiative in order to offer 5,000 NFTs designed by 56 local artists to represent the 56-square-mile area of the city.
PolkaFantasy, the world’s first Japanese ACG-dedicated blockchain ecosystem, announced the launch of their rebranded NFT marketplace, aimée, on a quest to bring people from all over the world together for their love of NFTs on August 4th and 7th.
💀 HOW TO RECOGNIZE A RUG PULL
Bloomberg’s subsidiary in Hong Kong accused Changpeng Zhao, the Chief Executive Officer of Binance, of running a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. In turn, the exec filed a lawsuit against the media.
Yuga Labs – the company that created Bored Ape Yacht Club – faces a possible class action lawsuit. A group of individual investors claimed that the firm inappropriately advertised its tokens and thus deceived people into buying them.
According to the New York Times, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is investigating cryptocurrency exchange Kraken for allegedly violating economic sanctions against Iran.
Coinbase is under SEC investigation over unregistered security cryptocurrency listings.
📖 LEARN HOW TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
This week's learnings are brought to you by NFTLlama, the founder of LlamaLabs. His Twitter thread gives insights to new founders about the biggest struggles they come across.
🤓 DISCLAIMER: NFA & DYOR
This newsletter is a curated overview of the most exciting things I’ve read the past week, the projects I’ve researched, and the NFTs I’ll be trying to buy.
This means I’m - per definition - biased, so don’t consider this as financial advice and keep doing your own research if you see something you like.