Hello and welcome back to the Web3 Rewind! Per usual with the industry, lots has happened this past week so without further adieu, let’s dive into this week’s news.

The Latest

The mantra in crypto bear markets is to build. I’ve been thinking about that and hope a lot of devs are working on stuff that’s fun and that I want to use. That’s been sorely lacking on this whole crypto/decentralized journey to date, with a few exceptions, but I’ve struggled with this after stammering through some half-assed answers on a few podcasts I’ve been on recently.

The question was simple – what can you use web3 for today? The first and obvious answer is for financial speculation or investment, but this area has never appealed to me for a few reasons. As a reporter it’s verboten to own assets that you report on, whether it’s Microsoft shares if you cover the company or Bitcoin and Ether is you cover crypto. Then I’ve seen too many blow ups, frauds, hacks and stupidly lax security measures to want to engage with the crypto credit space. It’s still so risky to part with your coins, and that needs to change.

The art market and musicians have moved in now, which is great. We report on the bleeding edge of web3 and music every week here, yet to my eye it still feels like an experiment for musicians who want out of the traditional record company hierarchy. It doesn’t seem ready for fans yet. The blueprints are there, don’t get me wrong, but if you think it’s still early in crypto it’s like music NFTs are still in the womb. (Tangent: I promise to do my very best to ban the phrase “content creator” forevermore on Decential. I hate the term, it’s a theft, and if I’m a content creator you may as well give me some spreadsheets, a pocket protector and a short-sleeve dress shirt.)

Maybe the most immersive experience and fun I’ve had in crypto is in Decentraland. It’s easy to see the future there and it has an air of exploration that reminds me a bit of Minecraft. You never know what you’ll find around the next corner. It’s a fantastic place to view NFTs in the myriad of galleries that have been built. But, yet, it’s still clunky as of my last times visiting. Finding the right server so you can communicate with people you run across is still tricky (at least, for me it is). But I can’t wait for the day I can log in to Decentraland and order a Burger Boy cheeseburger that’s then delivered to my irl front door.

So I hope we get more of this, more whimsy and excitement. Maybe the way to mass adoption lies this way, who knows. But if you have a suggestion for me to have some peer-to-peer fun out there in the web3verse, drop me a line at matt@decential.io and use the subject “editorial.” Cheers, and have a great week ahead. – Matthew Leising, Editor in Chief, Decential Media 

It’s called soccer dept.

Sorare teams up with the Premier League for its NFT fantasy football game

It's no secret that Sorare is growing and is one of the most dynamic projects in the NFT market. The bulk of Sorare’s business is with football clubs (AKA soccer for our Yankee readers) and with “Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A,” Sorare already has an impressive list of partnerships for its trading card and game platform according to TechCrunch.

Sorare’s platform is similar to a fantasy league, where players can swap out team members and compete against each other. Given the general applicability of trading cards to all sports types, Sorare was able to bring the NBA and MLB to their platform. For context, Sorare was valued at $4.3 billion in September of 2021, and raised a $680 million Series B at the time.

Sorare is a great example of digitizing a pastime and hobby that is enjoyed around the world by a wide variety of demographics. With plenty of other professional sports for Sorare to expand to, not to mention other tangential partnerships like sports betting, it’s clear to see Sorare’s opportunity for future growth. — Parker Dresdow, Decential Media

Quick Bits

UK-native stablecoin integrates into 18,000 ATMs nationwide

• In what may be seen as a potential dry run for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) down the line, BitCoinPoint and Poundtoken are collaborating to release GBPT, a pound-backed stablecoin. The plan is for retail consumers to have access “via a network of 18,000 ATMs across the United Kingdom,” per Cointelegraph. This stablecoin will transact on the Lightning network and is reported to be audited by KPMG.

• As we’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, Conservative PM Rish Sunak is a crypto advocate and has been a driving force for a UK CBDC. As a result of Sunak’s initiative along with the support of others, Benoit Marzouk, CEO of BitCoinPoint believes that GBPT is “fully in line with the government’s consideration to integrate stablecoins with the U.K. economy."

  
  

Hermès ‘MetaBirkin’ NFT Lawsuit Begins With Blow For Creator

• Dropping $10,000 is no small price to pay for a purse. But the fact that a digital purse can command the same price as its real-life counterpart is the real point of contention in the lawsuit between Hermès and Mason Rothschild, the issuer of MetaBirkins. Hermès contends that Rothschild is profiting off of their brand without permission.

• When Rothschild first released the collection he believed that he was creating art that was in a similar vein to Andy Warhol, and as a result, had recruited Warhol’s former biographer, Blake Gopnik, to provide testimony that his MetaBirkins were just artistic expression. However, the judge has forbidden this witness testimony. The case will likely set precedent for creators like Rothschild and their ability to mimic real life brands, albeit in a similar fashion to Andy Warhol. (Editor: Did Campbell’s ever sue Warhol?)

  
  

Sandbox’s SAND Surges 90% Since Start of Year Ahead of Token Unlock

• In two weeks’ time, Sandbox’s SAND token will be unlocking around 12 percent of SAND supply, or the rough equivalent of $273 million. Per CoinDesk and Messari, SAND pricing “has increased 90 percent since the start of the year and is now trading at 74 cents.” Notably, however, the token is still 90 percent down from its all-time high of $8 reached in November 2021.”

• For those who have staked ETH or been involved in any other staking program, the theory of an unlock triggering a sharp decline in prices, due to the locked currency being sold, is no doubt familiar. The question here is what this climb in prices means before the unlock. Is it a pump before a post-unlock dump? For now, it is unknown, but as these sorts of unlocking mechanisms are gaining popularity, the community at large will be able to learn more about how to position themselves and reassess their investment strategy.

Car Titles Issued As NFTs In Testing Phase Throughout California

• As governments continue to look for ways to use crypto to augment their services, California in particular is taking a big step towards bringing crypto to the masses. In a partnership with Oxhead Alpha, California’s DMV will look to use the Tezos blockchain to convert car titles to NFTs.

• While the DMV has not yet released this program to the public, the replication of the current database will be enacted over the next several months, with additional implications being other state-based programs and potential wallet integrations.

Latest Podcasts

DeCent People Podcast With Alex Van de Sande

On the latest DeCent People podcast, Rarible co-founder Alex Salnikov talks about his early life in rural Russia, arriving in Moscow and finding his way to web3 and the NFT ecosystem.

You can download and subscribe to the podcast here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music and Audible.

Lights Camera Crypto With Azeem Khan

On the latest episode of Lights Camera Crypto, Web3 Strategist Ben Silverman discusses his background as a filmmaker and consultant and getting his start at Creative Artists Agency. As he picked up on trends within the entertainment industry his understanding of how web3 is poised to change how we interact with film, television and other media.

You can listen and subscribe Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Big Brother and the Hodling Company with Supertight Woody

On the latest episode of Big Brother and the Hodling Company, we sit down with Woody — aka Supertight Woody, fka Woody's Produce — a producer and artist who’s been making music for over 20 years. We talk about his involvement in CC0 – or creative commons – projects like Cryptoads and Nouns DAO that led to the creation of Noun Sounds, a music platform focused on providing free-to-use music for creators that challenges some old music industry paradigms around copyright and intellectual property.

You can listen and subscribe Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

And last but not least

Strike Expands Lightning Network-Powered Remittances to Philippines

Send Globally, a remittance service on the Lightning Network launched by digital payments firm Strike, is being rolled out in the Philippines. CoinDesk notes that the Philippines has a large remittance network with around $12 billion worth of remittances transacted. Send Globally represents Strike doubling down on the broader Bitcoin network, as it has also done work in El Salvador to assist in its broader Bitcoin adoption.

According to CoinDesk, “the Strike app converts dollars into Bitcoin and sends a Lightning payment to a third-party partner in the recipient’s country. (Strike has partnered with Bitcoin payments firm Pouch.ph in the Philippines). The partner converts that Bitcoin into local fiat currency, and forwards the money to the recipient’s bank or mobile money account.” This system lends itself to cross-border transactions and those looking to send money home from abroad. [Editor: Hello Ripple?]

Lastly, CoinDesk points to the growth potential of the Lightning network via 1ML, an analytics site, which shows the Lightning Network to have “16,000 nodes, more than 76,000 channels (connections between Lightning nodes) and a network capacity close to 5,300 BTC”. - PD

Out of the Ether: Special NFT Edition

Have you read the definitive history of Ethereum? No? Well then get your special edition of Out of the Ether while you can. There are only 1,000 that were printed and each copy is an NFT that can be registered on the Lukso blockchain’s Universal Profile protocol.