Ethereum's creator just went '8 Mile' on us

GM, we take the latest Web3 news and translate it into plain old English - so you can stay up to date, without your eyes glazing over.

In today’s edition:

  • Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin goes '8 Mile' and airs his personal contradictions

  • The 'plain white t-shirt' of Web3 community building...let us explain.

  • RESOURCE: What is 'Impermanent Loss' in crypto? Learn in ~8 mins

  • Robinhood's new crypto wallet could onboard ~23 million new users to Web3

Terms used (click for translation):
Web3, NFTs, staking, gas fees.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin goes '8 Mile' and airs his personal contradictions

Have you ever taken an Ambien on a long haul flight and not fallen asleep?

Instead, you end up slumped over a food cart, sharing your personal hypocrisies with an un-assuming flight attendant?

(Susanne, from Qantas - if you're reading this: I'm sorry, that was a lot to take on).

A few nights ago, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin did something similar on Twitter - except he appeared to be sober.

If you click that tweet, you can read the whole thread.

We'll let you go through it yourself - in the meantime, here's what stood out to us the most:

  • Contradiction #3
    He wants Ethereum's security to be rock solid, but many key apps already rely on 'fragile security assumptions'.

  • Contradiction #4
    He loves the decentralization & democracy, but often agrees with the intellectual elites more than 'the people'.

  • Contradiction #7
    He doesn't love the NFT space, but acknowledges it's a big part of the crypto economy.

  • Contradiction #10
    He wants to be 'everyone's friend' but isn't in a position that allows him to be.

This has big 'Eminem at the end of 8 Mile, where he points out his own flaws before anyone else can' vibes.

Honestly, bravo, Vitalik!

It takes guts to reflect on contradictions - and even more to do it publicly.

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The 'plain white t-shirt' of Web3 community building...let us explain

If you've bought a band t-shirt in the past 20 years or so, there's a good chance it was printed on a Gildan T-shirt.

They were/are everywhere - but you might not have noticed.

...because you weren't meant to.

Gildan provided the blank slate; artists put their designs on it.

This is what's known as white labelling - where the core product is the same, but the branding isn't.

Medallion.fm look like they're aiming to do something similar in the Web3 music/community space.

Sounds niche - because it is.

But those on the Web3 Daily team that've come from the music industry seem to be pretty damn excited about the idea...

The concept was only announced yesterday, so the details are still a little vague, but here's our understanding of it:

Medallion aims to help musicians turn their audience into a community.

Audience platforms are built around viewership (think: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok).

Community platforms are built around interaction (think: Discord, Reddit, Facebook groups, Patreon).

These existing community platforms work just fine, but they come with a catch...

Each platform still controls one, or all of the following:

  • Branding (All)

  • Design (All)

  • Algorithms (FB, to an extent Reddit)

  • Monetization (FB, Reddit, Patreon)

Delivering a tool that puts [all of the above] back into the hands of artists, while taking market share away from established tech giants?

That's no small task.

But with ex-Instagram, Songkick, Live Nation and Uniswap alumni on their roster, the Medallion team should be able to pull this off.

(Plus they have a cool $9M in seed funding - not too shabby).

Talented team + healthy financial runway = hope.

God speed, Medallion team. God speed.

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Resource of the day

What is 'Impermanent Loss' in crypto?

Learn in ~8 mins

CHECK IT OUT

​​

Robinhood's new crypto wallet could onboard ~23 million new users to Web3

The popular trading platform, Robinhood, are adding a crypto wallet to their app.

Here's what's exciting / potentially worrying about this new addition...

The exciting bit:

  1. The Robinhood wallet will let users buy crypto, NFTs and earn interest on their holdings through staking - all without any transaction fees (aka gas fees).

    Sounds small, but high transaction fees (sometimes $3K+) are the quickest way to turn new users away from Web3 technology.

  2. Robinhood has been massively successful in making stock investing easy and accessible for new users.

    For many of their 22.8 million users, downloading Robinhood was their first foray into the financial markets.

    By automatically adding a (hopefully) easy to use crypto wallet to every existing account, they'll painlessly onboard millions of users into Web3.

    We love to see it!

What's (potentially) worrying:

The Robinhood crypto wallet is a custodial wallet.

Meaning Robinhood holds the wallet's private keys (i.e. passwords) on behalf of the user.

So if Robinhood wants to stop you from buying or selling a particular coin (like they did Dogecoin, in 2021) - they can.

And if they go bankrupt, or get hacked, there's a good chance your crypto is at risk of disappearing.

You might have heard the term 'not your keys, not your coins' before - it's risk factors like these that popularized it.

Alright, that's it, that's all!

Now you know :)

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Your Daily Dose of Web3

Alright, that’s it for today!
Love to the family,

Chevy & Seb

Web3 Daily

Web3 and crypto news, translated into plain English.

https://web3daily.co/
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