A Race to Onboard Creativity

The physical landscape, a protocol fee incentive experiment where collectors race to bring mints unchain, social security for web3 work, and more...

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Forefront
October 16, 2023

Happy Monday!

Welcome to edition 162nd edition of the Forefront Newsletter. 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.

This week we’re covering:

Let’s get into it…

Week’s Highlight

In "The Phygital Stack," Aleksija Vujicic envisions a blended physical and digital (phygital) realm, transforming the fashion and commerce landscapes. Through phygital commerce protocols, real-world bridges like NFC chips, evolving consumer interfaces, and the re-imagination of marketplaces and brand strategies, Vujicic illustrates a new tech stack's potential that facilitates seamless phygital experiences, thus transforming consumer interactions and commerce operations​.

This piece sketches how these interconnected elements could redefine consumer engagements and operational dynamics in commerce, underpinning a phygital ecosystem that seamlessly melds our tangible and digital interactions.

  • Digital Twins: Purchase a chic bag online, and upon arrival, a quick tap with your phone via an NFC chip mints a digital twin of it as an NFT in your Digital Fashion Closet (DFC).Your DFC becomes a social realm where friends and followers view and interact with your fashion items.

  • Brand Interactions: Attend a brand event and scan your bag to earn a POAP, a digital badge, enhancing your bag’s digital narrative. Brands reward your interactions with discounts, enriching your consumer-brand relationship.

  • Resale Value: The digital journey your bag undertakes from brand events to a Drake concert enhances its resale value.Every digital interaction adds a layer of narrative, making your bag more than just an accessory.

  • Regulatory Shifts:The EU’s Digital Product Passport initiative emphasizes the importance of tracing the origins of consumer goods, opening doors for phygital tech to provide proof of provenance.

  • Counterfeit Mitigation: The challenge of counterfeits in resale markets is addressed through digital twins, ensuring authenticity.

  • Brand-Virtual World Partnerships: Brands are forging partnerships with virtual worlds, launching phygital item releases. Luxury brands like Ralph Lauren are already stepping into this realm, hinting at a future where digital representations of physical purchases become mainstream.

Take Note: As Aleksija Vujicic unveils, the phygital frontier is not a distant future but an evolving reality. It's a blend of technology, regulatory adaptability, and innovative brand interactions leading us towards a more engaging and personalized consumer experience. Our wardrobe is not just a physical collection but a digital narrative, each item with its story, each interaction a digital endorsement. Embracing this phygital realm opens doors to a new era of commerce, making every purchase an entrance to a myriad of digital adventures​

What’s Poppin’

Zora recently enabled free content creation on its platform via independently owned smart contracts, employing a lazy-minting model where the first minter pays the gas fee but earns protocol rewards perpetually. Following this, Forefront dropped MintFirst, a protocol fee incentive experiment where collectors race to bring new lazy mints on-chain, potentially earning rewards. This tandem development aims to financially motivate early adopters, thereby boosting onboarding of creators to Ethereum and fostering a new collector class

Farcaster has launched a permissionless onboarding feature, taking a significant step towards decentralization in social networking. This feature allows anyone with an internet connection and some ether to join the network without requiring approval from an external authority. The platform is built on the Optimism-based decentralized protocol which recently migrated to the OP Mainnet Layer 2 network to facilitate universal user access through permissionless sign-ups, a move aimed at eliminating the dependency on corporate APIs. This transition to a permissionless model is in line with Farcaster's goal of giving ownership of relationships between consumers and creators directly to the consumers themselves. Moreover, Farcaster's client, Warpcast, aids in onboarding users who do not hold ether, further easing the onboarding process.

The team at Syndicate has been working over the past year to create infrastructure facilitating the development of web3 products alongside notable startups and Fortune 100 companies. With its new Transaction Cloud, APIs, and modular smart contracts, Syndicate aims to enhance both developer and user experiences, simplifying the creation and expansion of web3-based products for mainstream use. They believe web3 will redefine online interactions and are ready to collaborate with more entities to advance web3 maturity and adoption, promoting a community-driven, user-centric internet.

Other Internet published a paper that explores the creation of solidarity primitives for enhancing social security in web3, based on discussions from a forum in July 2023. It suggests a modular framework to address security concerns of DAO contributors in three areas: psychosocial, financial, and regulatory. It also mentions various on-chain and off-chain solutions for each area and discusses the challenges in implementing these solutions.

Culture Beat

  • BAPE x Tmagotchi Collab. Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape (BAPE) is collaborating with the classic virtual pet brand, Tamagotchi, to release co-branded Tamagotchi devices and BAPE apparel featuring designs from both brands. Available from October 14, the limited edition Tamagotchi units, adorned with BAPE’s iconic ape imagery and camouflage pattern, will be priced at $59. BAPE has also teased an upcoming collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, showcasing its continued interest in both nostalgic and emerging tech.

  • Wen “Rari”. Ferrari now accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as payment in the U.S. through a partnership with BitPay. This move aims to attract younger customers, especially those invested in cryptocurrencies. Ferrari joins other car brands like Lamborghini, Nissan, and BMW in accepting crypto. While Tesla once accepted Bitcoin, it stopped due to environmental concerns. Currently, Ferrari's 812GTS model costs about 15 Bitcoins.

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Inbox Signal TL;DR

The 13th edition of Inbox Signal just went out to Forefront Members this weekend. Here's a taste of the stories:

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.

Fun with Fundraising

  • Untangled Finance – A marketplace for tokenized real-world assets (RWA), has launched on the Celo network, backed by a $13.5 million investment led by Fasanara Capital.

  • Republik – Singapore-based Republik offers a Web3 platform for creators, raising US$6 million in seed funding for global expansion and platform enhancement.

  • Game of Silks secured $5 million in funding, bolstering its position as a leading blockchain platform that blends real-world horse racing with fantasy sports.

Take Check