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On July 30, 2015, Ethereum — the world’s first general-purpose blockchain — was born. Yesterday marked the platform's eighth anniversary. In 2019, industry leaders successfully predicted Ethereum would complete The Merge by now (it has). And since their predictions, Ethereum’s active developer community has grown from 800 people to almost 4,000.
My, Ethereum, how you’ve grown! We can’t help but feel a little proud. But more interestingly, the concept of tokenization seems to have quietly gone mainstream since Ethereum’s fourth birthday in 2019. A look at the above predictions article feels like a nostalgic flip through an old scrapbook. The competitors mentioned, dApp platforms Tron and EOS, haven’t exactly hit mainstream vernacular. In addition, the data website referenced, Dapp.com, seems now to be defunct.
But you know what has happened? Reddit users have quietly minted over 18 million NFTs, priming its active social network for new kinds of user engagement. Well-known fast-food chain McDonald's is now selling McNuggets in the metaverse. And we can’t forget about National Slurpee Day, when fans of the iconic colorful beverage minted digital Slurpee collectibles on Polygon.
While the Web3 community has been nurturing young Ethereum — passionately asking "wen NFTs?" throughout the past eight years — it seems the concept of digital ownership has quietly seeped into mainstream culture, altering how we interact with brands and content online.
So let's toast to Ethereum's eighth anniversary and raise a glass to the evolving landscape of Web3 — where the possibilities are limited only by our imagination.
Congress implores Apple to make room for NFTs in the App Store. U.S. Representatives Gus Bilirakis and Jan Schakowsky wrote a joint bipartisan letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, raising questions about the potential impact of Apple's guidelines on the progress of innovative technologies such as blockchain and NFTs.
Worldcoin orbs are here. The controversial AI crypto company founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania debuted a free public airdrop of $10 million worth of $WLD, the project's native token. Worldcoin is working to distinguish human identity from AIs via an iris-scanning machine — aka, an orb — but the company is already being probed by French regulators for questionable privacy practices.
SBF leaks Caroline’s diaries. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the disgraced FTX CEO, of leaking ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison's private diary to the New York Times.
Melania Trump's Apollo 11 NFT may violate NASA policies. The former First Lady's recent Apollo 11-themed NFT collection raised questions about the commercial use of NASA's imagery from the historic moon landing mission. NASA’s images are generally not copyrighted and often available to the public for educational purposes, but the agency never signed off on letting celebs sell them as digital collectibles.
‘Razzlekhan’ agrees to forfeit their share of 120,000 BTC. Alleged money launderers Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein have entered into a plea deal in connection to the Bitfinex hack laundering case, involving billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency.
New token standard alert. Have you heard about the ERC-6551, a new Ethereum token standard designed to make NFTs act as wallets? Dubbed the "Backpack Wallet," this new development could potentially improve the user experience for several use cases, from NFTs to gaming, to DAOs and beyond.
OpenAI shutters its AI content detector. Citing a low accuracy rate, the San Francisco-based AI research lab announced its AI tool designed to help educators detect AI writing will no longer be available.
Our Place Founder Shiza Shahid spoke to Forbes about the way we cook.
Vayner3 President Avery Akkineni spoke to L'Oreal BOLD Ventures Partner Rachel Weiss about brand growth and the consumer mindset on her podcast, Gen C.
Bobbie Co-founder and CEO Laura Modi spoke to CNBC Make It about risking it all for a baby formula company that did $84 million in revenue last year.
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Megan DeMatteo is BFF's Editorial Partner.
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🚨 This newsletter and all the information in it does not constitute financial advice. If you don’t want to invest money or time in Web3, you don’t have to. As always: Do your own research.
