Are Bored Apes about to revolutionize gaming?
GM, we take the most important / interesting Web3 news and translate it into plain old English. Here’s what you can find in today’s edition:
Enter the Bored Apes Yacht Club Metaverse
Wait, what? Web3 adoption 'crucial to China’s future success'
Did Andrew Yang just make political lobbying cool?
Enter the Bored Apes Yacht Club Metaverse
Are the creators of Bored Apes Yacht Club about to launch their own play-to-earn metaverse game?
Like the start of any good story, there're a lot of unanswered questions here, and a decent amount of room for speculation.
So here's what we know for sure, what this might mean, and why this could be a big deal.
What we know for sure:
Yuga Labs (creators / owners of BAYC & CryptoPunks) released a teaser video for their metaverse.
Animoca Brands, creators of play-to-earn metaverse game 'The Sandbox', announced that they've been working on a 'secret project' with Yuga Labs.
ApeCoin was launched through a DAO (see translation), which appears to be officially affiliated with Yuga Labs and BAYC.
Users can buy ApeCoin before the (supposed) game launches via somethingisbrewing.xyz/
What this could mean:
Yuga Labs and Animoca Brands are working on a play-to-earn game together, called 'Otherside', due to be out in April.
The cryptocurrency earned in this new game will be ApeCoin.
Folks who buy ApeCoin before the launch of 'Otherside' will get early access to the game (just a guess, not financial advice).
Why this could be a big deal:
A play-to-earn-crypto game that reaches beyond blockchain natives (one with true mass appeal) is yet to exist.
The first developer to pull this off will change the value exchange in gaming forever.
The same way free wifi became standard in cafes and streaming replaced DVD rentals, once consumers get a taste of playing a game they enjoy and getting paid for it...they'll begin to demand it everywhere.
Whether or not that actually happens with 'Otherside'?
...we'll have to wait till April.
Wait, what? Web3 adoption 'crucial to China’s future success'
Ok, where's Ashton?
Surely we're getting Punk'd.
Yao Qian, the former head of China's digital currency (you know - China, the country obsessed with centralized control), recently stated that Web3 adoption was crucial to China's future success.
It all starts to make a little more sense when you learn that the vision for the countries' Web3 ecosystem is one built on a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), meaning it isn't decentralized and is essentially controlled by the state.
CBDC's solve a lot of problems when it comes to controlling a population's finances and, by proxy, a country's economy. If a central authority owns the network they can do things like:
Block the currency from being used to purchase things they don't approve of.
Lock up a portion or the entirety of an individual's funds with the click of a button.
Track every dollar sent and received across the entire network.
Now, you might be wondering: 'can't this already be done to some degree with our exisiting banking system?'
We hear you! And, yes, it can.
It's just that CBDC's make it a whoooole lot easier.
Did Andrew Yang just make political lobbying cool?
Here at Web3 Daily, we talk a lot about 'Legacy Onboarding' - or better put: 'taking the old stuffy way of doing things and using Web3 technology to do it better'.
And what's more stuffy than political lobbying?
Last week, former democratic presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, announced the launch of two DAOs that aim to change the landscape of social & political lobbying.
The first, Lobby3, will fund lobbying that aims to educate lawmakers on the potential of Web 3 technologies.
The second, GoldenDAO, will invest in civic engagement for Asian American & Pacific Islander creators, builders, entrepreneurs and activists.
'Civic Engagement' feels like a vague term, but Yang elaborates:
"We have various political institutions that are not keeping up with the times. So I’m excited about the potential of a DAO to activate our community in whole new ways."
Which feels like a very polite way of saying, 'If you're going to drag your feet on issues that matter to our community, we're just going take matters into our own hands'.
The key takeaway here: Web3 technologies give individuals the ability to organise easily and independently, around causes that matter to them.
Nice!