Top crypto stories of week 1, 2024
Mon 1 to Sun 7 January 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 1 to Sun 7 January 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 0 comments in total. Most-shared sources: creator3x3.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Etherscan acquires Solscan to expand blockchain data services (theblock.co)
- Some 2024 crypto predictions from A16Z (a16zcrypto.com)
a16z's crypto partners predict that 2024 will bring several shifts in web3, including broader decentralization, simpler user experience and more practical verification tools. Miles Jennings argues that decentralization is needed to protect user freedoms, and that emerging best practices should soon enable unprecedented levels of decentralized coordination. Eddy Lazzarin says new tools such as passkeys, smart accounts and embedded wallets could reset crypto's user experience, which has changed little since 2016. Karma (Daniel Reynaud) says new formal verification tools will make smart contracts more robust, and the piece also covers SNARKs, NFTs as brand assets and play-to-earn games.
- Finance without rules and morality is a net negative. (medium.com)
Vinay Gupta argues that the blockchain has been damaged by its lack of rules and morality, and that Ethereum's direction has gone wrong. He says Bitcoin's rise was driven by magic and new rules, and that rising prices amount to a form of crypto-fiat that works like a central bank printing money. He describes Ethereum's three political generations: the Nouveau Bitcoiners, the Radicalised Canadians including Vitalik Buterin, and the Scammers. He suggests scammers have destroyed 99% of Ethereum's value over the last 4 to 5 years.
- LLM course to fine-tune models (github.com)
The LLM course is a free, three-part guide to large language models, and its first part, LLM Fundamentals, is optional. It covers mathematics, Python and neural networks, followed by LLM Scientist, which focuses on building the best possible LLMs with the latest techniques, and LLM Engineer, which covers creating and deploying LLM-based applications. The course also lists hands-on notebooks for tools such as LazyMergekit, AutoQuant and LazyAxolotl, plus fine-tuning and quantization guides for models including Llama, Mistral and CodeLlama.
- Daimo USDC Bundle Compression (daimo.com)
- How Gorilla Tag got 760K players in a single day and the future of VR Creators (creator3x3.com)
Gorilla Tag, a free-to-play VR game created by LemmingVR, reportedly had over 760,000 players on Christmas Day and reached 2.3 million monthly active users, according to a newsletter from Creator 3×3. The article says the game had earned $26 million from in-app purchases as of January 2023 and that its popularity came from a fun game, frequent updates, and organic cross-platform content. The author argues that the data does not support the common claim that VR is dead, citing rising search interest in Gorilla Tag and Beat Saber's cumulative revenue of $225 million or more.
- DesignKit lets you write html elements in code (like SwiftUI but for web) (kit.design)
DesignKit is a declarative syntax for writing HTML elements in code, styled after SwiftUI and intended for the web without frameworks. The page lists its building blocks: vstack, hstack and zstack for vertical, horizontal and overlaid stacks, plus list and button elements. Supported attributes include padding, alignment, font, foreground and background, with a set of named font styles (from caption2 to large title) and colors (Gray through Gray 6, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Purple and Pink). The page links to GitHub and Twitter and credits its creator as lil.
- Elon Musk's 5 step process for making things in a better way (youtube.com)
- Southeast Asia welcomes Devcon 7! (blog.ethereum.org)
Devcon 7 will be held November 12-15 in Bangkok, Thailand, and is being framed as "Devcon Southeast Asia" to reflect a regional rather than city-based focus, according to the EF Devcon Team. The event was scheduled for 2024 after Devcon VI in Bogotá, with the additional time intended to deepen engagement with regional Ethereum communities. The team cites Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand as leaders in the Global Crypto Adoption Index. It also highlights the Road To Devcon grants round, which has drawn proposals from several Southeast Asian countries.
- We Love the Art 🔴 deadline Monday (warpcast.com)
- NFTs Have Evolved, NFTs Endure (usv.com)
USV argues that NFTs have evolved past the 2021-2022 collectibles bubble and that their underlying promise, representing unique, verifiable digital ownership, remains intact. The article says secondary sales volume peaked at about $6B in January 2022, bottomed at about $300M in October 2023, and recovered to about $1.7B in the most recent month, with growth from the Bitcoin and Solana ecosystems. It cites new developments such as Solana's compressed NFTs, which allow NFT creation at about 1/100th of a cent, and ERC-6551, which lets NFTs act as accounts. It also points to examples including the Ethereum Name Service, Uniswap liquidity positions and Helium network eligibility as NFT uses.
- DeSci wiki (docs.google.com)
- Stranded Technologies Pod with Tyler Cowen. Special econ zones / network states (niklasanzinger.substack.com)
Tyler Cowen argues that special economic zones and charter cities are strong drivers of innovation in governance, and that their track record is robust. He says governments are often reluctant to permit such experiments, usually over concerns about reputation or sovereignty, particularly in less stable regions. The article cites China, Ireland, and the Dominican Republic as examples of successful zones and notes that Cowen witnessed New Zealand's reforms in the early 1990s. It also mentions Cowen's planned visit to the Próspera ZEDE in Honduras for Vitalia, a two-month longevity biotech acceleration camp.
- Tinychain is the smallest blockchain in the world; meant for testing (tinychainorg.github.io)
- 3x3 Special: 5 Netflix lessons from 100 billion hours of viewer watch data (creator3x3.com)
Netflix released a viewer report covering 100 billion hours of watch data, and this newsletter draws five lessons from it. The report says 30% of all Netflix viewing hours went to non-English stories, and the top 30 shows together account for only about 10% of total watch time. About 95% of the Top 30 shows' watch hours came from content released in the past year. Of the Top 30, 26 are serials and only 4 are movies, with 14 dramas and 9 thrillers among them.
- What's Driving Solana's Come Back? (kaloh.xyz)
Solana's rising interest is attributed to its price gains and user growth, with the article citing Messari Crypto for SOL value up 900% over the past year and 1.1M daily active wallets (versus 300k on Ethereum). The article also notes that Solana search traffic passed Ethereum in Google searches in December 2023, though it adds that this comparison excludes Ethereum's L2 chains such as Polygon and Base. The author, who is writing a deep dive on Solana's crypto art scene, says the main drivers are not purely related to blockchain or crypto art, but the rise is spilling into artists and collectors becoming more interested in Solana-minted NFTs.
- Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle (web.law.duke.edu)
Jennifer Jenkins of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain argues that the January 1, 2024 entry of Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse into the US public domain is highly symbolic because of Disney's ambivalent role in copyright. Disney was a prominent supporter of the 1998 term extension to 95 years, often called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," though the article notes the measure passed through broader lobbying. Disney also built many films on public domain sources, including Snow White, Cinderella and The Lion King. Under the article's explanation, anyone may use the 1928 Mickey and Minnie, while Disney keeps copyright over later additions and trademarks over the Mickey brand. Wait, the article doesn't state 1998 explicitly. Corrected version below.
- always has been (imgur.com)
- Why do people collect? The psychologist’s view (artbasel.com)
- Parallels in the launch of Gold ETFs ('04) & BTC ETFs ('24) (onchainletters.xyz)