GM Linkedin! Here's the news we've covered over the last week that was the most popular with The Mindful Degens! Dennis takes Sunday off but we'll be back on Monday to let you know what's happened in web3 over the weekend!

We'll be going live later today on LinkedIn Live to talk about web3 with other web3 builders and how web3 technology is already permeating our culture and society. Here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/events/gmlinkedin-8-saturday-july30-206957165139003416577/comments/

Here’s today’s newsletter on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6959059293757198336?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6959059293757198336%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

Miami is partnering with Salesforce, Time Inc., and Mastercard to bring a 5,000-piece NFT series to life “designed to drive revenue to local businesses and non-profits through exclusive rewards offerings.”

The series will be a collaborative effort between 56 artists exercising their creative diversity. 56 is a significant number as it represents the city's 56-square-mile footprint.

Mastercard will be providing the utility by offering holders perks and access to their “Priceless Miami” branded experiences which “provides unique experiences, from one-of-a-kind events at local Miami restaurants to curated, unforgettable private tours of Miami cultural institutions and other memorable activities.

Salesforce will be handling the minting and management of the NFT collection through their closed beta program, NFT Cloud, which aims at “helping brands deliver connected experiences across the physical and digital worlds.”

The collection will be on Ethereum following the move to #PoS later this fall.

Pharma bro Martin Shkreli, fresh out of prison, has been working non-stop over the last few months on a web3 drug company that seeks to disrupt the silicone valley early-stage drug investment game.

The company, Druglike, dubs itself “a platform for democratizing the access, costs, and rewards of early-stage drug discovery.” At the heart of the technology is what the company refers to as a “proof-of-optimization” consensus mechanism.

The whitepaper itself is incredibly dense, but there is plenty of documentation to sift through if you have the time to do so do with that what you will. I’m sifting through it as I can get to it. Section 5 is where it gets into the specifics of the consensus mechanism itself.

According to the official press release “Druglike is building a decentralized computing network which provides resources for anyone looking to start or contribute to early-stage drug discovery projects. Unlike competitors, Druglike will be web-based and completely free to use.

Druglike will soon release a web-based suite for target identification, drug design, and tools for both constructing and running large-scale virtual screening workflows.”

The Solana Foundation, the non-profit which oversees the Solana blockchain, has opened up an IRL store in New York City. The store appears to serve as a real-world onboarding mechanism crossed with a genius bar - they prefer to call it an embassy. 

Inside the store, visitors will be able to purchase #solana merch, view digital art installations, learn about the blockchain, and even get their hands dirty with staff available to help users set up their wallets, snag their first NFT, and even break down how the chain works. 

Not 100% sure what the end product will be, but Coinbase released a 5-minute trailer on Twitter yesterday which ties together the #BAYC and a series of what I can only assume are NFT project avatars from some of Coinbase’s exclusive NFT projects hosted on their Flagship NFT platform. 

Check out the video for yourself and let me know what you think. I couldn’t watch it all, it was painfully cringing: https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1551975883216388097?s=20&t=IayRXVyNIKsMZqUmKj8shA 

Decentralized music service, Audius, lost more than USD 6M worth of their native AUDIO tokens over the weekend. 

The scam was enabled through a bug in their smart contract’s initialization code which allowed the scammer to delegate staked tokens to their account which they then transferred to eth and cashed out using Tornado Cash, a mixing service that obfuscates crypto transactions. 

The vulnerability itself has been in the core smart contract since it was created in 2020 and dodged 2 different audits by the same number of companies with the most recent being just around 9 months ago in the fall/winter of 2021. 

Audius was quick to hire a veteran white-hat hacker to identify and fix the problem once and for all. 

Ethereum is preparing for “The Merge,” when the network officially moves to Proof of Staking rather than Proof of Work for its consensus mechanism. 

The shadow fork deployed on July 26, 26 hours ahead of schedule, and so far there haven’t been any observable disturbances or anomalies on the test network. This is a crucial step as Ethereum prepares to roll over to Eth 2 later this fall. 

Shadow-forking is a very important part of developing a blockchain network and is very similar to how we currently build other software applications like websites and mobile apps. Just like a website has production servers and development servers, blockchains have main nets and test nets. The main net is where the real transactions take place, test nets are where developers prepare updates and changes to roll out to the main net in a safe environment to reduce downtime and predictable issues. 

Shadow-forks are ways to deploy little bits of code at a time to the test net to make sure everything works as planned. Hard-forks are larger deployments that incorporate all of the previous code from shadow-forks that have yet to break anything. 

If everything stays on track, Ethereum is set to merge on September 19th following one more hard-fork scheduled for August 11. 

The bipartisan bill was officially introduced to the senate yesterday. In it, crypto purchases less than $50 would be excluded from having capital gains taxes collected on them. 

There is some more to the bill as well, but the most important thing is that retail traders will be able to have more freedom and won’t have to worry about paying capital gains taxes for everyday uses.

There are also some limitations to keep people from abusing/gaming the rule, mainly that microtransactions will get grouped. A microtransaction is when you take a transaction and break it down into a group of smaller transactions. This could be done manually or automated through bots leveraging “flash loans.”

This isn’t the only crypto bill being pushed through the senate either, there is a rather progressive bill currently circulating as well that would end the SEC’s crypto oversight and provide a new crypto tax exemption. The bill isn’t expected to pass during this session, but experts expect that it will gain more traction during the next session. 

Artist of the Week: null

Deadass null is one of the chillest and most creative people I have ever had the pleasure to meet virtually. He's hella driven and continues to explore his world, the Phettaverse, one step at a time. He is also a founding member of BurritoDAO, a decentralized community of web3 artists taking their time to learn and create together.

Tip of the day: Build rapport and trust with clients

Build rapport with the client. Build trust and then never lose it. Under promise and overdeliver. Plan and communicate.

—Marc Hammond

Word of the day: Liquidity Pool

A liquidity pool is a digital pile of cryptocurrency locked in a smart contract. This results in creating liquidity for faster transactions.

Quote of the day:

"If you look closely, most overnight successes took a long time."

— Steve Jobs

Thanks for reading this far, or at least skimming! If you could share this real quick that would really help me out!

GM Linkedin! Here's the news we've covered over the last week that was the most popular with The Mindful Degens! Dennis takes Sunday off but we'll be back on Monday to let you know what's happened in web3 over the weekend!

We'll be going live later today on LinkedIn Live to talk about web3 with other web3 builders and how web3 technology is already permeating our culture and society. Here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/events/gmlinkedin-8-saturday-july30-206957165139003416577/comments/

Here’s today’s newsletter on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6959059293757198336?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6959059293757198336%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

Miami is partnering with Salesforce, Time Inc., and Mastercard to bring a 5,000-piece NFT series to life “designed to drive revenue to local businesses and non-profits through exclusive rewards offerings.”

The series will be a collaborative effort between 56 artists exercising their creative diversity. 56 is a significant number as it represents the city's 56-square-mile footprint.

Mastercard will be providing the utility by offering holders perks and access to their “Priceless Miami” branded experiences which “provides unique experiences, from one-of-a-kind events at local Miami restaurants to curated, unforgettable private tours of Miami cultural institutions and other memorable activities.

Salesforce will be handling the minting and management of the NFT collection through their closed beta program, NFT Cloud, which aims at “helping brands deliver connected experiences across the physical and digital worlds.”

The collection will be on Ethereum following the move to #PoS later this fall.

Pharma bro Martin Shkreli, fresh out of prison, has been working non-stop over the last few months on a web3 drug company that seeks to disrupt the silicone valley early-stage drug investment game.

The company, Druglike, dubs itself “a platform for democratizing the access, costs, and rewards of early-stage drug discovery.” At the heart of the technology is what the company refers to as a “proof-of-optimization” consensus mechanism.

The whitepaper itself is incredibly dense, but there is plenty of documentation to sift through if you have the time to do so do with that what you will. I’m sifting through it as I can get to it. Section 5 is where it gets into the specifics of the consensus mechanism itself.

According to the official press release “Druglike is building a decentralized computing network which provides resources for anyone looking to start or contribute to early-stage drug discovery projects. Unlike competitors, Druglike will be web-based and completely free to use.

Druglike will soon release a web-based suite for target identification, drug design, and tools for both constructing and running large-scale virtual screening workflows.”

The Solana Foundation, the non-profit which oversees the Solana blockchain, has opened up an IRL store in New York City. The store appears to serve as a real-world onboarding mechanism crossed with a genius bar - they prefer to call it an embassy. 

Inside the store, visitors will be able to purchase #solana merch, view digital art installations, learn about the blockchain, and even get their hands dirty with staff available to help users set up their wallets, snag their first NFT, and even break down how the chain works. 

Not 100% sure what the end product will be, but Coinbase released a 5-minute trailer on Twitter yesterday which ties together the #BAYC and a series of what I can only assume are NFT project avatars from some of Coinbase’s exclusive NFT projects hosted on their Flagship NFT platform. 

Check out the video for yourself and let me know what you think. I couldn’t watch it all, it was painfully cringing: https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1551975883216388097?s=20&t=IayRXVyNIKsMZqUmKj8shA 

Decentralized music service, Audius, lost more than USD 6M worth of their native AUDIO tokens over the weekend. 

The scam was enabled through a bug in their smart contract’s initialization code which allowed the scammer to delegate staked tokens to their account which they then transferred to eth and cashed out using Tornado Cash, a mixing service that obfuscates crypto transactions. 

The vulnerability itself has been in the core smart contract since it was created in 2020 and dodged 2 different audits by the same number of companies with the most recent being just around 9 months ago in the fall/winter of 2021. 

Audius was quick to hire a veteran white-hat hacker to identify and fix the problem once and for all. 

Ethereum is preparing for “The Merge,” when the network officially moves to Proof of Staking rather than Proof of Work for its consensus mechanism. 

The shadow fork deployed on July 26, 26 hours ahead of schedule, and so far there haven’t been any observable disturbances or anomalies on the test network. This is a crucial step as Ethereum prepares to roll over to Eth 2 later this fall. 

Shadow-forking is a very important part of developing a blockchain network and is very similar to how we currently build other software applications like websites and mobile apps. Just like a website has production servers and development servers, blockchains have main nets and test nets. The main net is where the real transactions take place, test nets are where developers prepare updates and changes to roll out to the main net in a safe environment to reduce downtime and predictable issues. 

Shadow-forks are ways to deploy little bits of code at a time to the test net to make sure everything works as planned. Hard-forks are larger deployments that incorporate all of the previous code from shadow-forks that have yet to break anything. 

If everything stays on track, Ethereum is set to merge on September 19th following one more hard-fork scheduled for August 11. 

The bipartisan bill was officially introduced to the senate yesterday. In it, crypto purchases less than $50 would be excluded from having capital gains taxes collected on them. 

There is some more to the bill as well, but the most important thing is that retail traders will be able to have more freedom and won’t have to worry about paying capital gains taxes for everyday uses.

There are also some limitations to keep people from abusing/gaming the rule, mainly that microtransactions will get grouped. A microtransaction is when you take a transaction and break it down into a group of smaller transactions. This could be done manually or automated through bots leveraging “flash loans.”

This isn’t the only crypto bill being pushed through the senate either, there is a rather progressive bill currently circulating as well that would end the SEC’s crypto oversight and provide a new crypto tax exemption. The bill isn’t expected to pass during this session, but experts expect that it will gain more traction during the next session. 

Artist of the Week: null

Deadass null is one of the chillest and most creative people I have ever had the pleasure to meet virtually. He's hella driven and continues to explore his world, the Phettaverse, one step at a time. He is also a founding member of BurritoDAO, a decentralized community of web3 artists taking their time to learn and create together.

Tip of the day: Build rapport and trust with clients

Build rapport with the client. Build trust and then never lose it. Under promise and overdeliver. Plan and communicate.

—Marc Hammond

Word of the day: Liquidity Pool

A liquidity pool is a digital pile of cryptocurrency locked in a smart contract. This results in creating liquidity for faster transactions.

Quote of the day:

"If you look closely, most overnight successes took a long time."

— Steve Jobs

Thanks for reading this far, or at least skimming! If you could share this real quick that would really help me out!