Forefront: 2023 in Review... and what's next?

Recaps, Reviews, and Re-imagination

Author

Forefront
January 02, 2024

Happy Monday!

Welcome to the 173rd edition of the Forefront Newsletter, now more dynamic than ever. If you’re new here, we give you a weekly roundup of the best news and insights at the intersection of crypto, culture, and community.

If you have any new insights, interesting stories, or experiences that you think would enrich our newsletter, please don't hesitate to share them with us. You can send your contributions or ideas via email to [email protected].

This week we’re covering:

Let’s get into it…

Week’s Highlight

2023 was a year of experimentation for Forefront:

  • Spotlight: our community-curated marketplace.

  • Capsules: hand-curated packages of NFTs around specific themes.

  • The Drop Space: a home for interactive media – essays can be minted line-by-line and added to an onchain, collective conversation.

  • Onchain Signal: our daily curated news feed.

  • DAO Reports: written reports and essays on DAOs, Nouns, tokenized communities, etc.

  • …and more

In 2024, the Forefront team is taking the learnings from these experiments to build truly useful, fun, and unique media experiences for our community. There are lots of protocols out there and lots of ways to mint – but what is it all for? What are the use-cases that the onchain media market is ready for today?

That’s what we’re exploring, and we can’t wait to show you what we have in store.

2024 will be the best year yet – count on it.

What’s Poppin’

This essay by Jesse Walden discusses the evolution of the crypto industry over a decade, focusing on the contrast between speculative investments and decentralized applications. Jesse argues that despite disappointment in the lack of innovation beyond crypto as an investment, this area has a strong market fit and is likely to grow. The essay views crypto as a democratization of investing, accessible to everyone, not just those with capital. He also covers the cultural aspects influencing modern retail investing, such as social media and the David vs. Goliath mentality. The essay concludes with Variant's vision of a more equitable internet through crypto, emphasizing the cultural shift towards users thinking like investors and owning what they believe in.

Graeme explores the recent shift in the crypto ecosystem from traditional tokens to onchain points, highlighting their potential in consumer applications. He discusses how scalable blockchains pave the way for points as a new primitive, distinct from financially-driven tokens. This differentiation allows for more innovative, user-engaging applications in consumer crypto, beyond financial transactions. Graeme's work at Stack involves creating a platform to manage and scale these point systems, offering new possibilities for consumer app developers.

The essay discusses how the success of blockchains depends not only on technical aspects, but significantly on their degree of institutionalization. Factors such as first-mover advantage, internalized narratives, professionalization, network effects, consumer habits, brand recognition, de facto standardization, and adoption by external institutions play crucial roles. These elements contribute to a network's embeddedness in social and economic systems, which can override technical shortcomings. The essay highlights that good technology is necessary, but not always sufficient for success in the blockchain industry.

More companies and protocols are adopting protocol rewards for users and developers to earn after Zora’s recent success. On Mirror’s side, rewards are split between creators, referrers, and first minters. For Sound, they’re split between artist and curator. Of course, a portion of the fee also goes back to the protocol. This model seems to have become the standard in a very short period of time across the creator crypto landscape.

Coordinape launched CoLinks: “The SocialFi Platform for the future of work.” The team describes the product as “if friend.tech and LinkedIn had a baby.” CoLinks reimagines professional networks: find your partners, gather where you find warmth, connect with real humans more directly to up-level your career, and share in the value you create. Bring your web2 rep onto web3 rails. The experiment has already seen some solid, invite-only activity.

Solana Pill

Solana DEX volume 100x.

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Inbox Signal TL;DR

Forefront Members get full access to Signal – our daily curated feed on consumer and creator crypto – every day. You can become a Forefront Member by minting a 2023 Annual Pass here.