The best description of “The Metaverse” that I’ve seen yet: “the Metaverse is not one thing or one piece of technology. It is every technology”

Andrew was an early NFT / crypto adopter, and is now jumping full steam into the metaverse. So it’s no surprise he lives in the future. And this recent essay of his was the best description I’ve yet read about the metaverse, ie, what Facebook spent $10B and renamed its company to achieve.

Link: https://andrewsteinwold.substack.com/p/metaverse-what-it-is-how-it-will

Some excerpts:

In my eyes, the Metaverse is not one thing or one piece of technology. It is every technology – the internet, AR, VR, AI, crypto, NFTs, etc all working together in one seamless system.

I agree that it will encompass many things, there is no clear dividing line (except maybe between “online” and “offline”)

Economic – The financial system of the metaverse will likely be accessible to all, transparent, and operate on blockchain rails. If you want to buy a digital good in the metaverse and have to wait 5 days for the wire to hit the seller’s account in Germany, that is not going to cut it.

Surprise – I agree! Though there will also be centralized options too, but the most innovative – and likely most valuable – components will be blockchain-based, open source, and permissionless.

In the past, we had “internet” companies, but now almost every company is a “tech” company. Similarly, the metaverse is a collection of technologies and capabilities that will soon transform every company into a “metaverse” company. With the world becoming more digital and connected, the impact of the metaverse will be felt by everyone and everything.

Also agree. Just as every company who wanted to stay competitive and relevant had to incorporate “the internet” over the past 20 years, everyone today will – willingly or otherwise – integrate “the metaverse”. And probably “AI.”

5 Minute Crypto – 🤖 GPT-4 rewriting my show notes 🤖

DALL·E 2023-04-25 19.52.23 - cute robot taking notes while listening to a podcast, cartoon anime style
I’ve been recording a daily 5 minute crypto news update for the last few weeks. Today I asked GPT-4 to rewrite the show notes (which you can see here) into a “simple concise article”. Here’s what it gave me – color me impressed!

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Title: Crypto Daily Update: Onchain Billionaires, Ethereum’s Next Upgrade, Dune Dashboards, Market Structure, and Arthur Hayes

On Tuesday, April 25th, Bitcoin is trading at around $27,300, and Ethereum is at $1,800, both experiencing a 1% drop in the last 24 hours.

Blockworks recently published an article discussing “onchain billionaires” who own identifiable crypto wallets with assets worth more than $1 billion. Among them are Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, Ripple’s Jed McCaleb, TRON’s Justin Sun, and the mysterious Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.

Ethereum’s next upgrade, called Cancun-Deneb, was announced by the core developers. The upgrade will consist of two parts: Cancun as the execution layer and Deneb as the consensus layer. The most significant part of the upgrade is EIP 4844, dubbed proto danksharding, which will lower transaction costs for layer 2 solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum.

Dune dashboard data provided by 0xkofi reveals insights into rollup economics. Arbitrum has more than double Optimism’s total transaction fee revenues, with ZKSync coming in third. Arbitrum also posts twice the amount of transaction data and has had nearly seven times more builders deploying smart contracts this month compared to Optimism.

A tweet thread by Zero IKA covers basic market structures, including bullish, bearish, and neutral/ranging. Moving averages can be utilized to understand market shifts, such as 9-day or 200-day moving averages.

Q1 insights from Electric Capital highlight the growth of crypto developers. Notable takeaways include the presence of 7,000 full-time developers, a dip in the number of new developers and repositories, and high growth ecosystems such as Aztec Network, Metamask, and Hyperledger.

GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer criticizes SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a tweet thread, accusing him of incompetence, abuse of power, and contradictory statements that create chaos in the market.

Ethereum is a unique triple-point asset, combining properties of capital assets, transformable assets, and store-of-value assets. This unprecedented combination creates a new investment and ownership paradigm.

Arthur Hayes shares his latest essay, “Exit Liquidity,” discussing the future of trade, the use of multiple currencies, and potential roles of gold and Bitcoin in the global economy.

(written by GPT-4; art by DALL-E)

America is not in decline…?

amurica

The “America is failing” trade seems crowded these days. And this Economist essay reminded me to take a broader and longer-term perspective. (full archive.is version here)

Some highlights:

America remains the world’s richest, most productive and most innovative big economy. By an impressive number of measures, it is leaving its peers ever further in the dust.

America has nearly a third more workers than in 1990, compared with a tenth in western Europe and Japan. And, perhaps surprisingly, more of them have graduate and postgraduate degrees. True, Americans work more hours on average than Europeans and the Japanese. But they are significantly more productive than both.

America was blessed with a younger population and a higher fertility rate than other rich countries. That may not be easily remedied elsewhere, but countries can at least take inspiration from America’s high share of immigrants, who in 2021 made up 17% of its workforce, compared with less than 3% in ageing Japan.

However…

The share of prime-age American men who are not in work has been rising for years and is higher than in Britain, France and Germany. And life expectancy in America lags shamefully behind others in the rich world, mainly on account of too many younger people dying from drug overdoses and gun violence. Tackling such problems should be easier when the economy as a whole is growing. But America’s poisonous politics are no help.

a16z 2023 State of Crypto – a shallow dive + podcast episode

Went through the a16z 2023 State of Crypto and pulled out some interesting slides + my own notes. I also recorded a podcast episode about it (as part of the 5 minute daily update):

Here we gooo:

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.12.18 PM

Web1 was decentralized (email protocol, web protocol) but limited functionality, and no value accrual

Web2 was centralized into Google, Facebook, etc, advanced functionality, but value accrued to big tech

Web3 is decentralized again, community governed, and value accrues to participants

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.14.28 PM

Web2 take rates are something like 30-100%
30% for services like Spotify and Apple App Store
100% for FB, Twitter

Web3 take rates are much lower – or even pay participants (like ETH’s PoS)
OpenSea is 2.5%, Uniswap is 0.30%

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.15.19 PM

With each cycle, the market gets larger
-higher price
-more usage
-more developers
-more projects

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.15.46 PM

ETH is scaling through rollups
In 2022, L2s paid less than 2% of all ETH fees
Now it’s closer to 7%

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.17.41 PM

The big brands are all here – from mass consumer brands like Starbucks and Adidas and Budweiser to luxury brands like Tiffany and LV and Porsche

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.18.08 PM

DAO governance is growing
From barely 50K monthly proposals in 2021 to more than 200K today
2M unique DAO voters

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.19.50 PM

More than 50K monthly crypto developers on Github

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.20.17 PM

Active addresses steadily growing
From less than 5M in 2018, to more than 15M today, across all blockchains

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Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 3.22.40 PM

What A16z expects in the coming years
-Zero knowledge tech will accelerate
-On chain games will grow in popularity
-Light clients will accelerate web3 and mobile
-in the US, bipartisan crypto regulation will pass

5 Minute Crypto – a daily addition to Two Degens podcast

For the last few months, a builder-investor friend and I have been doing the Two Degens podcast where we talk markets, macro, and invite guests (mostly friends thus far, mostly defi).

Recently, I added a new daily format to the feed, an experiment I’ve wanted to do for awhile. It’s a 5-minute daily update with a collection of crypto news items, hot tweets and threads, and recommended reads. I end with one or two brief clips from interesting podcasts.

Since it’s on our main feed, you can check it out here:

https://twodegens.buzzsprout.com/

Embedded below. It’s only been a week, but my plan is to do this daily for the foreseeable future. Except when I’m feeling blah or hungover.