‍Welcome to GM, BFF, a newsletter hitting your inbox every week with key insights from Web3, crypto, our community and beyond. Have ideas of what you want to see in this send next week? Email us at hello@mybff.com 

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Web3 is an opportunity to reset the narrative. As prominent investor, creator economy documentarian and founding BFF Li Jin writes, we’re in a golden age for content, bolstered by the growing acceptance of digital scarcity and creator-owned assets. 

But creator-powered content is certainly not new: For at least a decade, social media platforms have been pollinating an ever-increasing number of influencer and micro-influencer communities, each with its own set of ideas, goals and values. Gone are the days we tune in to one trusted source to learn about the news. We’re in an era of decentralized media, and the stories being told every day are becoming more diverse, layered and nuanced.

While storytelling and news curation at the community level is important, consumer media literacy must keep up with the technological changes. Amid a growing trend of worldwide election-time deep fake allegations, AI-powered TV shows and a fraying trust in influencer misinformation, people must have shared solutions and practices for keeping factual, trusted narratives intact. 

This month, BFF held three Twitter Spaces to discuss different aspects of decentralized storytelling. We touched on:

📺 The importance of blockchain-powered journalism

📣 How social tokens and NFT artwork empower artists to uplift important narratives around the globe

📚 How collaborative NFT folklore satisfies our ancient communal instincts and builds engaged audiences

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On January 18, we hosted former Adobe VP and Content Authenticity Initiative cofounder William Allen, Web3 entrepreneur and on-air personality Shira Lazar (also a founding BFF) and ONE37pm editor Erika Lee in a rich conversation on blockchain and media. 

Our guests shared their thoughts on how blockchain can combat disinformation while empowering vital journalism at the grassroots level. We learned a thing or two, including:

1. Blockchain technology makes it possible to add a layer of verifiable trust to digital content, including photo and video, thereby documenting provenance (the origin) and attribution (who captured it). 
2. The optionality to verify content (even if not everybody uses it 100% of the time) will elevate journalistic standards across the board, predicts Allen. “Being able to verify something is absolutely critical,” he said.
3. We’ve already seen centralized solutions for war crime documentation, but making data tamper-proof and publicly available is the next step. An ongoing ConsenSys partnership with private airstrike alert company Hala demonstrated that evidence of war crimes can be publicly documented on blockchain. An article explains: When a report is submitted, the timestamp and geotag of when and where the threat was detected is hashed to the Ethereum blockchain where it lives forever. On-chain, it can be referenced but not tampered with. If the data is tampered with, the associated hash value will reflect that — ensuring complete transparency.‍
4. Our guests also agreed there may soon be incentives for mainstream media companies to upgrade outdated publishing software and utilize a blockchain-based publishing platform, similar to Mirror, which would let readers collect articles as NFTs. "Mirror is a way for everyone to publish their own thoughts, but it is decentralized. It is on the blockchain," said Lee. Lazar added: “I think this would shift ... financial revenue models for media — as we know they need that — in order to incentivize more people to engage. Maybe there’s some tokenomics involved. Maybe as a reader or the viewer ... I get something back, and also can we track how that's shared and engaged with? It's going to be a mixture of gamification and blockchain."

Want more? Pop in your headphones and listen to all three of this month’s decentralized storytelling conversations.

Catch Up Quick

Amazon to launch NFT enterprise. While no formal plans have been announced, Amazon is exploring NFT business models, including game rewards and at least one artist collab.

Doodles acquires Emmy-nominated animation studio. The colorful Web3 brand purchased Golden Wolf — a studio known for the Adult Swim animated series Rick & Morty and for having worked with Disney, Nike and Facebook among others. 

Call 911, it's an NFT emergency. Porsche almost botched its mint when just 16% of its 7,500 limited-edition 911 sports car NFTs were initially claimed. The collection's floor price recovered after Porsche halted supply at just 2,363 tokens — raising questions about how successful big brands can be in Web3.

Kevin Rose loses $1 million+ in phishing scam. The Moonbirds founder noticed his wallet was drained of valuable NFTs after accidently approving a malicious signature. Sources say scammers snagged at least one Autoglyph, 25 Art Blocks and nine OnChainMonkey items, while the community shared lessons. 

Amid layoffs, several crypto companies make promotions. The crypto industry made some notable executive hires this week. Former WhatsApp exec Jessica Tsai Chin will be The Algorand Foundation's new chief marketing officer. Meanwhile, Gemini plans to lay off 10% of its workforce — and Nifty Gateway founders are parting ways.

Are NFTs refundable? A Twitter user noticed a small checkbox next to the Porsche NFT mint button, giving buyers the option to waive their "right of withdrawal." Then the internet asked — what is a right of withdrawal, and do all NFT drops have them? Learn more.

From Our Founding BFFs 

Collaborative Fund Principal Ola Kulynych spoke to BFF Guest Editor Megan DeMatteo about embracing Web3 as part of a traditional VC portfolio.

BFF Cofounder Jaime Schmidt interviewed with Vayner3 Media President Avery Akkineni in an episode of Generation C by CoinDesk. “We thought, let’s do something that’s more accessible, less-hype driven—slow it down and be intentional about it," said Schmidt. 

Fartech Vice President of Community and Web3 Stephanie Simon received a shout-out in Vogue Business as one of the luxury retail platform’s three new hires. 

‍Tonic, the NFT marketplace cofounded by Minted Founder Mariam Naficy was featured in Yahoo Finance. 

Oh Joy! Founder and Creative Director Joy Cho spoke about her personal experiences as a first-generation Asian-American immigrant in an entrepreneurial family with The New York Times. 

‍Joggy, the new CBD supplement brand by Outdoor Voices Founder Ty Haney, was featured in The Strategist. 

G9 Ventures Founder Amy Griffin spoke to theSkimm about stepping back into the workforce after a break and how founders can prepare for economic uncertainty.

We ♥️ Our Community

We want to extend a massive THANK YOU to the fabulous community members who celebrated with us during our One-Year Birthday Party this week! We are proud to have you in our community. 

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Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to let us know what you think of this newsletter and what you’d like to see from it in the future by emailing hello@mybff.com.

🚨 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.