What bear market?
Dear Bankless nation,
Is it a bear market already? Doesn’t feel like one for the builders.
Lots happening in the third week of May, here’s a recap.
👛 Wallet Week!
The DeFi mullet gives us that squeaky clean FinTech user experience in the front, with the DeFi plumbing in the back.
This week DeFi mullets are in style.
First, the trading brokerage firm Robinhood (which FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried bought a 7.6% stake in this week) announced at Permissionless plans to launch a non-custodial crypto wallet for its crypto customers. That entails users holding their own wallet keys, directly accessing dApps and swapping NFTs. 🤯
👉 More details on our podcast this week with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
The second big wallet announcement this week came from Coinbase, who is releasing a “semi-custodial” wallet where custody of wallet keys are part-owned by user and Coinbase. This means that Coinbase can retrieve keys should users lose access to their own keys.
Finally, Ledger announced a browser extension “Ledger Connect” that allows users to connect their hardware wallets to Web3 directly, putting them in direct competition with Metamask.
Here’s our illustration of the different wallets along a spectrum of decentralization.👇
☢️Terra fallout
Plans to hard fork Terra into a new chain are underway. Voting is ongoing; the hard fork looks set to pass, though it received some pushback from its community based on a preliminary poll.
Elsewhere, the dust from the Terra crash last week is still settling. Do Kwon was formally summoned by South Korean politicians for a parliamentary hearing this week. Elsewhere, the Singapore-based Terraform Labs has also received police reports from local Terra investors who was burnt by the crash.
It’s not clear what governments will do here. It seems clear that Terra ran an unsustainable financial machine that fell under pressure.
But was this a criminal act?
Another reminder to us all that crypto is risky. Investors should know full well what they’re getting into and how to evaluate the risk and quality of the assets they use.
🎵 Chainsmokers go Bankless
The culture train that NFTs are driving through crypto continues to chug on at full speed through the bear market.
Through the NFT platform Royals, The Chainsmokers is enabling 5,000 loyal fans to share the revenues from royalties of their entire upcoming album “So Far So Good”. This marks perhaps the first and biggest mainstream pop act to leverage on music NFTs, after legendary rapper Nas.
Bankless predicted earlier this year that music NFTs were the next big trend, and early signs are proving this true. Check out also William Peaster’s fantastic tutorial on music NFTs.
Big Tech continues to embrace NFTs. Last week, Instagram launched a beta test that allowed select creators to connect digital wallets and feature NFTs on the Feed, Stories or messaging. This week, Spotify rolled out a trial feature that allows artists to display NFTs.
When these features are fully rolled out, that means exposing Web3 culture to everyone on social media platforms. We’re talking the millions who don’t know what NFTs are, who don’t own any crypto and who aren’t reading Bankless.
And all it takes is the glimpse of a Cool Cat or Bored Ape to pique one’s interest and send them spiraling down the Web3 rabbithole.
It’s not an overstatement to say this is huge.
Permissionless was awesome
It was Permissionless week.
Were you there? Here are some highlights:
David and Ryan finally met…
The Merge in August?
Ryan with Chris Dixon on stage:
The first ever Bankless weekly roll-up - live! (Watch it here)
Here’s what Bankless has lined up next week:
- Vitalik and friends drop alpha on Danksharding
- Frogmonkee teaches us how to survive a bear market
- Ben values metagovernance tokens
Have a great weekend.
Build the dip!
- Bankless