I’m joining Milk Road as Head of Growth!

Milk Road originally started as a newsletter in 2021, quickly becoming one of the largest newsletters covering crypto headlines while infusing a humorous tone that made complicated concepts more approachable. I first subscribed to Milk Road back in May 2022, a month after I started writing.

The casual humor stuck out to me as I thought I was the only newsletter in town with the flair for infusing memes into its writing. The feeling was mutual, as I was invited to write a few guest posts, maybe an early sign of things to come?

Since then, Milk Road has grown beyond just a newsletter and evolved into a media platform focused on investing, starting with crypto. The team has launched a podcast featuring the biggest names in the space as guests, and expanded its newsletter portfolio to Macro and Degen verticals (and more soon! 😉).

After multiple discussions with Milk Road on potentially joining the team, I wrote a self-imposed 23 page doc breaking down what growth could look like. The first section was ‘Why Milk Road?’, a question I wanted to be able to answer for myself considering all the possible alternatives. And the answer was broken down into 3 buckets. In its original form:

Mission alignment: Although I don’t know what the explicit mission of Milk Road, it likely consists of elements around providing insights and information to its audience in engaging ways. That’s why I created Web3 with TPan in April 2022, a personal blog at the intersection of growth and culture in this industry.

Product: In its simplest form, Milk Road is a newsletter. However, it is in its fledgling stages of becoming a media brand and platform branching out into multiple categories, a growing and engaged community, and a multi-faceted media company with a presence on every major distribution channel and social network.

Opportunity: Milk Road is in a position to make an opportunistic hire for someone to lead Growth. Through our conversations so far, I realized I am uniquely suited for this role as someone who has extensive web2 growth experience, is a high-conviction participant in crypto/web3/blockchain tech, and is a Milk Road reader since May 2022.

To the average growth or marketing professional, Milk Road wouldn’t be a top choice. It probably wouldn’t even be on the target list for most. And that’s not a knock on them or Milk Road, it’s just different type of opportunity. Yet for me, it seemed like it was meant to be.

The mission alignment piece stuck out to me the most as I believe one of the best ways to onboard new users is through education, something both this newsletter and Milk Road do, and I’ve grown an increasing passion for. Or as I like to say in a different way, onboarding through 1000 ramps, the inverse of a death by 1000 cuts.

Milk Road is one ramp of many, and I want to this ramp much wider.

What does that mean for Web3 with TPan?

Well, one thing’s for sure…

I won’t be going anywhere (yay!), but the reality is I won’t be able to continue the regular cadence I’m proud of.

In my 300th piece I illustrated how this newsletter has evolved in terms of growth and ouput, and earlier this year I made the decision to reduce the cadence to once per week for sustainability reasons.

The silver lining in transitioning to occasional longform writing is that I’ll know when a topic deserves to be opined upon, with the same signals that got me through the previous 385 pieces. Frantic idea jotting, following developments feverishly, and shower thoughts that seemingly pop out of nowhere. So the expectation for myself in this new chapter is that every future post is still worth reading, maybe even more than before.

And outside of Milk Road work, where will all these thoughts live? Where they should have always lived alongside Substack, on X of course! I’ve had this weird aversion to posting more on X all these years, and I hope the void of not writing consistently here will be filled by sharing more short-form thoughts there, with some of them becoming seeds worthy of becoming a long-form piece. I also plan to be more active on LinkedIn again, but that content will naturally be more refined and polished for the audiences that live there (aka probably not you hehe).

To all of you: Thank you for reading for all these years! What started out as a brain dump of thoughts shared to an audience of crickets chirping turned into something that I kept up for much longer than I would have imagined.

And to my premium subs, thank you x100000! You gave me the signal that my content was worth more than just a read and kept me going. Billing is paused indefinitely as of now.

If you want to chat about Milk Road or anything else, you know where to reach me.

See you next week soon! 🫡

Although I’m on X for an unhealthy amount of time every day, I don’t use other social media apps often. However, I still use Instagram 1-2x per week to keep in touch with friends by sharing memes and of course, to watch the latest Reel from the Pudgy Penguins account.

While reading through the comments of a recent post, I realized the brand’s GIF strategy has not only paid off, but it has broadened and deepened the fan base in a unique way.

Pudgy Penguins has nailed couples content with Pax and Polly starring in various scenarios that many couples can relate to (my wife and I can certainly relate to this one lol), and the community does as well. We see 4 types of replies, and this applies to most if not all of their posts:

1. General commentary about the situation

2. Tagging a significant other in a “hey that’s us LOL” way. There were so many of these that I didn’t even need to cherry pick them

3. Pudgy Penguin superfans who know the characters (Pax is blue, Polly is pink) and specifically comment about them. Some of them are impressively specific like realarmani911’s comment on Polly’s sweater and greg.kovach.9’s comment on seeing Pax’s tuft moving for the first time

4. And last but IMO most notably, Pudgy fans responding with Pudgy GIFs. Nearly all of them are GIFs that are directly relevant to the topic of the post

The power of these Pudgy GIFs (which have been viewed 149B+ times to date) is their dynamism. In the case of Instagram for someone who has never seen Pudgy Penguins content before, their experience may be something like this:

• Algorithm shows Pudgy content based on interests and post engagement

• “Ooooh cute penguins!” Follows the account

• Starts viewing and engaging with more Pudgy Penguins content, and starts looking into the comments

• Sees Pudgy GIFs “Ooooh cute GIFs”

• Continues to engage and see more and more GIFs

• “Wow there are a lot of GIFs! Let me see what Pudgy GIFs there are…”

• Realizes there are over 53k GIFs for virtually any situation

• Starts using Pudgy Penguin GIFs across multiple social and texting apps

GIFs are great because they are agnostic. They can be used on any major app with social features, for nearly any situation, and are enjoyed by people across all degrees of awareness and fandom.

In this sense, Pudgy Penguins’ (not so) secret superpower has been its GIFs, amplifying every other piece of content they create and publish, something few character IP brands have been able to do so quickly.

Have you used a Pudgy Penguins GIF before? Use one now when you share or subscribe!

American Express has NFTs?!

Just when we thought all the brand NFTs are dead, a major credit card company launches a new feature incorporating NFTs.

Multiple brands have attempted to make NFTs work with limited success, most notably Starbucks. And now we’re seeing American Express launch Amex Passport, featuring NFTs on Base (Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain).

How does it work?

• US cardholders can earn travel stamps for each country they visit and use their Amex card in

• Each stamp is a NFT digital collectible minted on Base

• The Passport feature is viewable within the Amex mobile app

• Amex is adding stamps from up to two years ago to populate cardholders’ passports

• Cardholders won’t directly interact with blockchain and stamps aren’t tradable

I’m not an Amex cardholder, so I haven’t been able to check the feature out. But this is notable for a few reasons beyond YAY BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION!

Rollout

Despite being a new feature, the Amex Passport rolled out to all US cardholders on the mobile app. No separate app, no web-only, no phased rollout. Because this new feature is simple and straightforward, it’s going to a large userbase presumably to deepen engagement and retention.

Interactivity

The overarching concept is simple and they already have multiple pieces that show where they’re going with this, with or without blockchain. Amex Passport has journal-lite prompts and geo suggestions, ideally leading to more card transactions.

Visual-forward

Credit card portals aren’t exactly pretty. They’re filled with numbers, balances, and generally clunky UI/UX. The Amex Passport bucks this trend, creating something visually pleasing while activating the collector mindset with stamps.

Assuming this is successful, however the Passport’s KPIs are defined, what are the logical next steps? IMO, a redesign and reframing of what credit card offer portals could look like through badges and achievements. This wouldn’t be surprising as many premium credit card programs have shifted their focus towards experiences (travel, exclusive access, memberships).

Offers can turn from a purely financially incentivized transaction into a digital collectible. Sounds like something from a TPan fever dream, I get it. Let’s look at what the offers portal looks like today from Chase though.

Yay, cash back offers galore! It’s hard to imagine what badges would look like for all of these brands, fortunately not my problem to solve. That said, there’s a few brands that stick out to me where some creative work could be done:

• Crunchyroll - Redeem offer and earn a limited-edition badge from a popular anime

• Paramount+ - Redeem offer and earn a special badge from a newly released show

• Google Play - Redeem offer and earn a badge from your favorite mobile game you select

For subscription products like Crunchyroll and Paramount+, users can earn new badges (or NFTs 😏) for every month they’re subscribed.

Obviously I’m thinking years into the future, but this may be the brand NFT play that maximizes the opportunity while minimizing risk and costs. Instead of the brand managing a whole collection or program, a common platform facilitates their distribution in a low-touch way.

One can dream right? 😂

See you next week!

I’m back from my trip, hope you didn’t miss me too much! 😘 It feels like I’ve missed a lot, and at the same time being away has helped me reset my filter for what’s interesting while the vibes are up.

One development that has piqued my interest over the past few weeks has been TokenWorks’ NFTStrategy product, which has led to this chart and hubbub among certain circles.

Looks like a chart that screams crime or ponzi, but upon further inspection, is the result of the elusive flywheel every token wants. I own some of this token, partially because it’s genuinely interesting and as always, it helps me understand what’s going on.

In order to understand NFTStrategy, we have to understand the team behind it first, TokenWorks.

TokenWorks and Uniswap v4 Hooks

TokenWorks is the brainchild of the developer Adam Lizek aka Rhynotic on X. It’s part game studio and part research lab, launching projects that expand upon the definition of what ‘onchain fun’ looks like. Another way of thinking about it is they’re an onchain version of MSCHF with tokens as their medium of choice.

The first TokenWorks experiment I came across was the memecoin Circle on the art-focused blockchain, Shape which launched a year ago.

The concept was simple: As the market cap rises, the circle grows. As the market cap drops, the circle shrinks.

And over the past 12 months, Rhynotic and team launched more token-based experiments.

Many of these experiments (which are worth digging into if you’re looking for inspiration, especially since he provides retros on each of them) utilized Uniswap’s v4 Hooks. Without getting into too much technical detail, v4 Hooks allow creators to create customizable parameters when swapping tokens (dynamic fees, fee routing, rewards).

A Tradfi example of what a Hook can do is sorta like bank roundup programs to help consumers save. For example, Bank of America has a Keep the Change Savings Program for debit card purchases. Purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference is transferred to the consumer’s savings account, creating a simple way to save.

You’ll understand why the v4 Hook is important for NFTStrategy in a bit 😉

PunkStrategy and NFTStrategy

On September 6th, the TokenWorks team introduced PunkStrategy. How does it work?

• PunkStrategy is a protocol that incorporates a mechanism (called the YoYo) that buys and sells CryptoPunks (yes, NFTs are still a thing and CryptoPunks are still worth a lot, like $200k+ lot) and a token, PUNKSTR

• There is a 10% buy and sell tax on the PUNKSTR token (80% of the tax goes towards the protocol, 10% goes towards the team, 10% goes to TokenWorks supporters)

• Once the protocol accumulates enough fees through the trading volume, it purchases the cheapest CryptoPunk and relists it for 2x the purchase price (has since been revised down to 1.2x based on community feedback)

• When the listed CryptoPunk is sold, 100% of the proceeds are used to purchase PNKSTR and burned, reducing the total supply of PNKSTR token

Sounds stupid, right?

2 days later, PunkStrategy acquired its first Punk, acquired its second 5 days after that, and now holds 19 with 2 of them already sold.

After the early kinks were ironed out and there was more inbound interest, TokenWorks announced NFTStrategy:

• Any ERC721 NFT collection can have a NFTStrategy token deployed to it

• The same 10% buy and sell tax applies, and fees are used to purchase the associated token’s NFT collection and are relisted at 1.2x purchase price

• When the listed NFT is sold, the ETH proceeds are used to buy and burn the associated NFTStrategy token

• The 10% token fee has a similar 80/20 breakdown. Of the 20%, half of it (1%) goes to the collection owner as a royalty, and 1% will be used to buy and burn PNKSTR

• To disincentivize snipers at launch, buy fees will start at 95% and decrease by 1% each minute until the standard 10% fee is reached 85 minutes later. This mechanic is courtesy of v4 Hooks and makes things more fair during the early stages (unlike 99.9% of memecoins)

• NFTStrategy will have 3 launch phases

  • Wave 1: Curated collections including Bored Apes, Pudgy Penguins, Dickbutts, Moonbirds, Meebits, Squiggles, CrypToadz

  • Wave 2: Any owner of an NFT collection

  • Wave 3: Anyone can create one for a fee

And now we can better understand the ‘Strategy’ in NFTStrategy. It’s a nod to MicroStrategy (now rebranded as Strategy) and their claim to fame of buying more, and more, and more, and….more…Bitcoin. Shoutout to you Mr. Saylor 🙇‍♂️

However, the strategy with these Strategy tokens isn’t to hold onto the acquired NFTs forever. Rather buy and sell in perpetuity, fueled by token swap volume.

Are you more confused after reading this so far? If so, share or subscribe!

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Observations, questions, and interesting takes so far

As with anything new, these tokens should be approached cautiously, and plenty of early token holders are shouting from the rooftops of their feed proclaiming these Strategy tokens as the best thing since sliced bread so they can eventually dump them. That said, NFTs (which are still near and dear to my irrational heart) haven’t really had any interesting developments in a while despite having more soul than memecoins. Now we have something interesting that has a lot of people raising their eyebrows.

Besides price go up, what is interesting about NFTStrategy?

NFTStrategy has credibility

Due to the Rhynotic and TokenWorks’ track record, NFTStrategy tokens have gained credibility relatively quickly.

Gondi, a NFT liquidity marketplace (eg: you can borrow and lend against valuable NFTs) lists the NFTs for sale from NFTStrategy collections. This is notable because in its current form, these automatically listed NFTs can only be bought on their respective NFTStrategy site, not on popular marketplace platforms like OpenSea. Could these marketplaces eventually integrate these listings? The chances of this are rising as some of them are holding and listing 100+ NFTs for some collections at this point.

For example ToadzStrategy is the second largest CrypToadz holder, with 154 Toadz and counting.

Although OpenSea hasn’t integrated NFTStrategy listings (yet?), they’ve purchased tokens from each of the respective Strategies and added them to their rewards pool ahead of their TGE.

Teams are approaching NFTStrategy creatively

So what about the 1% of swap fees that go to the collection owner? Amazing deal for little to no effort, right?! Many of the teams are actually using those fees to conduct buys of their own, adding more fuel to the fire:

• Meebits: “MeebCo has publicly committed to use its share to keep accumulating Meebits for our corporate treasury.”

• CryptoDickButts: Used proceeds to buy multiple NFTs listed by their respective Strategy wallet. And if you haven’t heard of DickButts before, now you have and one of these cute genitilia-inspired things is worth ~$6900 (fitting valuation 😂)

• Squiggles: “All fees earned by SquiggleDAO will be reinvested to buy Squiggles listed by SQUIGSTR”

What about the NFTStrategy tokens that will be launching soon? Although this is hypothetical, there’s a possibility that token holders will get some form of recognition and eventual perks (besides potential financial gain), like with Good Vibes Club, one of the more successful NFT projects of 2025.

This whole thing is less than a month old, so it’ll be interesting to see how collections and their teams approach this.

Does this make sense for every collection?

Based on the growing attention NFTStrategy has received, it feels like every collection should be queueing up for a launch and incorporating it into their plans. But not everyone is ready to embrace it.

This morning OSF shared his thoughts about a Strategy token for the Rektguy collection:

And as a former trader he makes a great point: Liquidity matters. For collections that already have or are planning to have a token, a Strategy token may be a short-term shiny object that is ultimately a distraction for the larger vision and goal. On the other hand, other teams may find a way to incorporate it elegantly.

Despite OSF’s valid take, he’s probably delaying the inevitable as anyone will eventually be able to create a Strategy token, whether a team wants it or not. That said, a team’s endorsement, blessing, or direct management will increase its chances of success.

Why haven’t related versions of this caught on?

Various elements of NFTStrategy and related concepts aren’t new. Fractional (shut down in 2023) was a platform that allowed fractional NFT ownership, but never really took off. ERC404 is token standard introduced last year that allowed ERC721 tokens (NFTs, non-fungible) convert into ERC20 tokens (fungible ones we swap and trade) but didn’t take off either.

So why is NFTStrategy taking off? Maybe it’s the timing of the launch when the market is ripe for something else to get excited about. Maybe it’s the way TokenWorks has implemented this YoYo mechanic between fungible ERC20s with non-fungible ERC721s from a reputable team. Maybe there’s just enough speculation involved to get people excited.

It’s probably a combination of these factors and more, and Monty has a good take on the ‘it’ factor that I couldn’t put my finger on:

NFTStrategy is more than a protocol, token, or mechanism. It’s a game. And with any game, there’s round the clock commentary (eg: the second punk sale from PunkStrategy was an arbitrage play. The Punk buyer was a token seller, v smart), each Strategy has its own unique strategy, and gives an opportunity for people who want indirect ownership to an asset in a dynamic, interactive way that fractional ownership never did.

If this concept is too abstract to understand, think about sports. There’s the main game, the match itself. Within those games lie the subgames:

• Sports betting which can be broken down further into subgames: prediction markets, sports bets, parlays, prop bets, etc.

• Fantasy sports

• Rivalries between specific teams

As much as this is about financial speculation, there is an entertainment angle that exists that didn’t before because this is all so new, and this shouldn’t be discounted.

And that’s what seems to be happening with these Strategies, with many mechanics yet to be uncovered. A simple example of this is what if a core NFT community, let’s say Moonbirds, airdrops a portion of their upcoming BIRB token (which was just announced today) to BIRBSTR holders? These types of interactions have been explored yet, and one eventually will.

So what’s next for this potential meta for NFTs? It’s unclear, but it seems like it’s still in the early innings and people will build on top of it. If anything, we’re seeing a new flavor of effective incentive alignment that may eventually be applied elsewhere.

See you next week!

Creating a new role in the era of attention, mindshare, and storytelling

To put it lightly, getting a sliver of attention in today’s world is hard. Like really hard. Announcing a new round of funding? Several other companies are sharing similar news as you on the same day, all overshadowed by the 689th DAT (digital asset treasury) company announcement. Releasing details of your upcoming airdrop and TGE? Cool, there’s countless other campaigns happening simultaneously with juicier incentives.

Unless you have an announcement that’s a special snowflake gaining virality, are a company with a massive following, or have a PR budget that gets media outlets to report on it, it’s hard to generate sustainable attention targeted towards the right audience.

Oh ya of course, how could I forget? You can also employ KOLs (key opinion leaders) to canvas the feed as well, but measurement is tricky, aligned incentives are temporary, and they’re pricey. The space’s favorite sleuth, ZachXBT, recently shared a industry influencer price sheet making us wonder 1) who the hell are these accounts? and 2) people are actually paying those prices?!

This isn’t to say that the above approaches don’t work. They’re valid and even preferred for the right company with the right approach. There are also companies that have founders or team members who are great content creators and have built followings that make them influencers in their own right.

There are also teams that don’t focus on building a social presence at all and are wildly successful. For example, the Bridge founders were acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion with barely any media presence.

But is there another way to have continued relevance on the timeline to support growth?

Enter the in-house influencer.

WTF is an in-house influencer

Fortunately the ‘in-house influencer’ role isn’t a popularized role title. Partly because those responsibilities can be shared within a team (or delegated to a ghostwriter), and also because that title simply isn’t very appealing.

However, there are individuals at companies where a key pillar of their responsibilities is around influencer types of efforts to help grow the business.

IcoBeast x Proof of Play

IcoBeast rose through the KOL (I can actually call him that because he actually has insightful opinions) ranks sharing takes on popular topics, interesting products and opportunities, and shitposts.

In late July, IcoBeast shared that he joined the Proof of Play team as Mindshare Lead (a title that’s as close to in-house influencer as it gets) to help spread the company’s story and vision more effectively.

What’s notable about IcoBeast before and after joining Proof of Play is that his posting cadence, topics covered, and style haven’t changed. He still has sponsored posts, shares referral links, and shitposts. That approach allows the posts that are about his employer to be woven in seamlessly. Legacy followers continue to engage and consume his content because he hasn’t sold out and still posts about things they initially followed him for. New followers see Proof of Play content as one topic out of many that he regularly covers.

Are in-house influencers gonna be a thing? Share or subscribe to make your opinion influential 😉

Breadguy x MegaETH

Breadguy is another example, joining the Layer 2 MegaETH team in November 2024. He initially reached out to the team looking for ways to contribute more deeply to the ecosystem and despite an initial rejection, found a way to work together several months later.

Breadguy helps to amplify, clarify, and visualize MegaETH’s efforts. A great example of this is MegaETH’s announcement introducing MegaUSD (USDm), the native stablecoin on the MegaETH blockchain. Breadguy explained it in simpler terms for dumb dumbs like me with one of his elegant visuals that he’s become known for.

Similar to IcoBeast, Breadguy still maintains autonomy around his content and is even a co-host on the Modern Market show.

John Wang x Kalshi

As prediction markets have become another undisputed web3 use case with product-market fit, the top voices in that space have found homes as well. Recently, John Wang joined Kalshi as the Head of Crypto role.

Unlike the previous two examples, John has focused on prediction market related content almost exclusively, but in a way that is still value-add through articles, charts, and insights.

Should everyone consider an in-house influencer?

This type of role is in its early stages. Each org calls it something different, the roles and responsibilities aren’t clearly defined, and it isn’t necessary if there are founders or team members who already take on this role informally and do it well.

IcoBeast provides a simple example of the type of company that should consider this type of individual and role.

Additionally, all these individuals have a depth of professional experience beyond being just content creators. IcoBeast has a legal background and law degree, Breadguy has deep blockchain knowledge, and John has a product background.

When you compare this emergent type of role with the stereotypical KOL influencer:

These individuals weren’t just hired because they create good content. They have deep knowledge and expertise, they know how to engage in online arguments discourse, have other core skillsets from previous professional roles they’ve held, and have built rich networks of contacts.

Time will tell if this is a flash in the pan or a trend.

See you in two weeks!

The Demo Day featured the 10 companies that went through their 2-month accelerator program. Without further ado, here they are in the order they presented:

Trepa

Note: I am an angel investor

What is it?

‘Precision’ prediction markets. Stake your prediction for clout and cash.

Why is it interesting?

Prediction markets in their dominant form focus on being right, not on accuracy. For example, Polymarket has a prediction market on whether Taylor Swift will announce that she is pregnant in 2025.

If you buy ‘Yes’ and the Queen of Pop announces she’s pregnant at any point this year, the market resolves to 100% yes. What if you could trade a specific date she announces it? 🤔

Or instead of placing a wager on who will win the 2028 US Election, you can predict what the winning margin will be by?

Trepa is building a prediction market platform focused on not just if you’re right, but how right you are. These types of markets are more suited towards forecasts vs. yes/no binary outcomes.

TAPEDRIVE

What is it?

A native decentralized data storage layer on Solana. They shared their Demo Day deck here.

Why is it interesting?

Solana is known for and prioritizes speed and cost in its network, with the tradeoff of costly and inefficient data storage. As a result, builders rely on expensive storage solutions, complex processes, and offchain alternatives to support their products.

TAPEDRIVE is working to solve this by optimizing, prioritizing, and incentivizing the most useful segments of data vs. replicating everything.

Crypto Fantasy League

What is it?

Fantasy sports for tokens

Why is it interesting?

Trading tokens can be complex, intimidating, or even outright boring if you’re just holding it. Crypto Fantasy League (CFL for short) gamifies and applies a fantasy sports angle to it. Matches can be head-to-head or tournament style which last anywhere from 1 minute to 1 day.

Tempo

What is it?

No-code, customizable trading bots

Why is it interesting?

With the theme of trading being complex, Tempo is making it easier through automation instead of reskinning it. Users can create their own bot with different strategies and parameters that can integrate with other platforms.

Decal

What is it?

Payments and loyalty platform for onchain commerce

Why is it interesting?

I’ve been excited about the future of loyalty for some time and how blockchain can help loyalty programs evolve and be more effective (RIP NFTs for loyalty though lol). As businesses warm up to stablecoins as a form of payment, they logically expand into loyalty and rewards programs.

There’s limited public info on Decal at the moment, but let’s just say many of the themes I shared in this piece about stablecoins improving incentive structures for consumers will come to fruition 😉

Are these startups interesting? Yes they are, so share and subscribe!

TypeX Keyboard

What is it?

The world’s first crypto keyboard

Why is it interesting?

Keyboards have evolved over the years by providing functionality beyond just messages and emojis.

What if you add another layer for crypto functionality? TypeX is a wallet-embedded keyboard app that supercharges your phone’s keyboard with one-tap wallet functionality. For example, if you’re in a messaging app you can directly send them a token through the keyboard instead of swapping between apps and copy pasting addresses.

Phantom’s CEO shared a sneak peek of what this looks like with their wallet integration. The app also incentivizes usage by rewarding tradeable keycard NFTs that can be added to the keyboard.

CargoBill

What is it?

Logistics payments using stablecoins

Why is it interesting?

International logistics payments (think freight forwarding, shipping, etc.) are slow, expensive, and inefficient. CargoBill helps make the end-to-end process easier while providing additional yield opportunities.

LocalPay

What is it?

Stablecoin payment app for tourists and nomads in SE Asia

Why is it interesting?

LocalPay is a non-custodial wallet that focuses on payments for users who don’t want to exchange their money for local currency. The app launched in Vietnam and can be used to pay any vendor through QR code.

MetEngine

What is it?

Liquidity Pool platform that simplifies the process of providing liquidity

Why is it interesting?

When it comes to trading tokens, the trading itself often takes the spotlight. The other side of the coin is providing liquidity for the token to be traded in the first place, a much more daunting process for the uninitiated.

MetEngine provides advanced tooling to make LP discovery, management, and optimization easier and more profitable.

Slant

What is it?

An AI-powered data scientist providing onchain analytics and insights

Why is it interesting?

Solana data is complex and heavy (2+ trillion rows of data!). Meanwhile, all types of companies building on Solana need business intelligence, but don’t have the resources for it. Slant is the AI-powered partner to help fill this gap.

Themes

From a lay perspective, Solana is viewed as the memecoin blockchain that has minted overnight millionaires and been the home of some of the most controversial scams. The reality is that there’s a lot more to it than that, and a few themes from this accelerator cohort stuck out to me.

Stablecoins (Trepa, Decal, Cargobill, LocalPay)

Several of the featured startups are focusing on stablecoin integration and we see them used for staking wagers, loyalty, and payments.

Building around trading (CFL, Tempo, MetEngine)

Trading crypto is deeply established, but building the picks and shovels and gamifying it? Not as much.

Reducing friction (all of them)

All of these startups reduce friction in some way. From making data on Solana more accessible to sending a token from your phone’s keyboard, the goal is to make things easier for existing and new users.

Best wishes to all of these teams, and see you next week!

It was only about a year ago when Polymarket was off to the races, with market volume peaking thanks to the 2024 US presidential election. Fast forward a year later, volume has dropped but held impressively as other categories have expanded to fill the void.

The prediction market platform has added new features to complement the topical expansion. Recently the platform introduced a breaking news tab, highlighting markets that have moved the most in the last 24 hours.

Polymarket also has a dashboards section focusing on different categories or subcategories of prediction markets, such as elections, macro, sports, fed rates, and Trump.

The breaking news tab is interesting as it subconsciously pushes the positioning that it is the future of news in 3 different ways:

1. Markets that moved the most: Front and center are the prediction markets that have moved the most in the past 24 hours, suggesting there have been updates and news related to those topics

2. Email newsletter: A CTA and form fill for Polymarket’s newsletter highlighting the largest market moves

3. Polymarket’s X account: Posts from Polymarket’s X account sharing breaking news and new prediction markets

On top of this, Polymarket also announced the acquisition of QCEX, allowing it to re-enter the US.

Prediction markets are expanding to adjacent audiences

Polymarket isn’t the only prediction market gaining ground. Robinhood launched a prediction markets hub earlier this year and just announced new pro and college football markets, powered by Kalshi. Just in time for the upcoming season! 🏈

Polymarket is gearing up to do the same as well.

Meanwhile, CME announced a partnership with FanDuel to bring an event contracts platform (aka prediction markets), allowing FanDuel users who are accustomed to betting on sports to hold positions on benchmarks “such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, prices of oil and gas, gold, cryptocurrencies, and key economic indicators such as GDP and CPI”.

Are prediction markets here to stay? If so, share or subscribe!

Where are prediction markets headed?

Prediction markets have reached a degree of credibility and relevancy in an undeniable way. Where are they headed next and what are some themes that will emerge as they continue to partner and integrate their way into mass market expansion?

From a mainstream POV… (if you want a more crypto-native lens of where prediction markets are headed, FOMO Hour had John Wang on as a guest with lots of great nuggets)

The order of operations for news is shifting

Generally speaking, the order of operations with news has been:

News story breaks ➡️ Market/audience reaction

In a world rife with information asymmetry and now prediction markets, it is now shifting and becoming more complex, turning into some version of:

Prediction market moves ➡️ Market/audience reaction ➡️ news story breaks ➡️ market/audience reaction

An example of this Polymarket’s ‘Who will perform at Super Bowl halftime show?’, with the odds of Taylor Swift getting the job surging as high as 82% on August 16th.

Most online news outlets didn’t catch onto these rumors until days later

Prediction market movements already are and will have a larger role in informing news stories and what is newsworthy, even if the subject in question isn’t officially confirmed.

Prediction markets will appear alongside the news

If prediction markets are the future of news, they’ll become integrated into news platforms themselves. An example of this is Decrypt’s integration of Myriad Markets (both are owned by the same parent company, DASTAN).

For example, in an article about XRP, we see a prediction market about XRP’s price on the lefthand panel.

It’s not surprising to see this on a crypto news site (especially one that has a prediction markets product), so the bigger question is which major news outlet will add prediction markets…and when? (the answer is yes 😉)

News outlets will partner to create branded prediction markets

If we start seeing more news outlets put prediction markets next to news stories, it will likely only be a matter of time before we see white-labeled and branded prediction markets pop up.

This will serve two primary purposes:

• Incremental revenue stream - News outlet earns revenue (split with prediction market partner) on volume traded

• Marketing tactic - News outlet can have branded prediction markets hosted on the partner’s site/app, aka: “brought to you by ______”

If you’re thinking this is such BS I get it, but it’s already happening. X announced that Polymarket would be their official prediction market partner:

As part of the agreement, Polymarket and 𝕏 are launching an integrated product to deliver data-driven insights and recommendations to Polymarket. Polymarket predictions will be combined with 𝕏 data to provide live insights, incorporating real-time annotations explaining market moves directly from Grok and relevant 𝕏 posts. The product, launching today, will be the first of a suite of integrations and unique experiences that Polymarket and 𝕏 will jointly develop via the partnership.

So….prediction markets in the X app? 🤷‍♂️

And if you’re still skeptical, we can look to another industry that’s a couple steps ahead: sports betting.

ESPN BET launched in 2023 through a partnership and rebrand of PENN Entertainment’s sportsbook, and now ESPN BET is sprinkled into ESPN content in a variety of ways.

So if sports betting has laid out the playbook, is it that farfetched to see CNN Predict for news, CNBC Signals for finance, or BuzzFeed Pulse for pop culture to be a thing in the next few years?

There’s only one way to settle this. With a prediction market lol 🫩

See you next week!

If you were to ask the average person what they think of when they think of ‘crypto’, they’d probably say Bitcoin. And for ‘web3’, probably NFTs. But what if the first thing they thought of was something friendlier, cuter, and cuddlier?

That’s what Pudgy Penguins is trying to do, with the goal of becoming the ‘face of crypto’. It might not make sense to natives or people who care about the tech. However, for onboarding new consumers, it’s certainly more digestible than reading a whitepaper or looking at a number go up and down.

The multi-year evolution of Pudgy Penguins from NFT collection to company with $40-$50M in annual revenue (projecting $100M+ in 2026) is a case study for every IP and consumer brand out there, even outside of crypto and web3. Here are 4 themes that have bolstered the continued proliferation of Pudgy Penguins across the industry and beyond in the past couple of months.

1. The industry PFP’s the penguin

In mid-July, brands across the industry started to change their PFP to a Pudgy Penguin version. I don’t know who kickstarted the trend, but it seems Coinbase was one of the more notable brands that did this in the early days of the movement.

And we all know brands love to dogpile on trends that get engagement. Over the next few days, dozens of companies started to rock a Pudgified PFP while still sporting the core parts of their brand identity. They even got Popeye the Sailorman, wtf?!

Was this some coordinated campaign? Did the Pudgy team pay each company to rock it for a specified period of time? Nope, it was all organic.

What’s notable about this PFP takeover was that each of these Pudgified PFPs was custom to the company and the Pudgy team helped create it for them. Many of the accessories for each PFP are inspired by the original collection’s traits, and we also see versions that adopt the brand’s mascot if there is one.

Here we can see the two approaches with the custom PFPs. Metamask’s custom PFP uses the Pudgy NFT traits stylized with their brand. Meanwhile, Whale Insider’s PFP with a custom onesie trait based on their Whale logo and character.

The multiple approaches and variety of traits to choose from help make each custom PFP feel…custom. Some of this process can be automated, but the details are what really make them shine.

The Pudgy PFP fervor has subsided for the most part, but several companies have kept it on, especially if their product is based on Pudgy IP. This move was mutually beneficial for Pudgy Penguins and the participating companies, with the biggest winners being the people in charge of social media for these accounts. One pudgified PFP post and your weekly/monthly targets are hit 🎯

Some brands that stopped reppin’ their penguin on X made sure that they persisted on other social platforms, turning the PFP into an evergreen asset.

This type of mindshare and trust can’t be bought, only earned. The key here is that the Pudgy team manifested that trust into a PFP movement thanks to quick responses and creative personalized touches.

2. Custom announcement graphics

Another theme I caught onto only recently is the team’s PENGU custom listing announcement images:

• Tokero - Romanian exchange

• Rain - Middle Eastern exchange

• Coinsquare - Canadian exchange

• Bitbuy - Canadian exchange

• Hyperliquid - popular onchain exchange

• Webull - global exchange

• eToro - global exchange

• Gemini - global exchange

• Coindisco - exchange aggregator and on/offramp

• Young Platform - Italian exchange

• Arkham - analytics platform and exchange

• Ripio - LATAM exchange

• PENGU listed on 130+ exchanges

It doesn’t matter if the exchange is big or small, or where they’re based. They get the same treatment with an announcement and custom graphic.

Along with the custom PFPs, this exchange announcement effort amplifies an intangible aspect of business: goodwill. The Pudgy team could have used a less intensive and generic design template and instead went the extra mile to make each announcement personalized (and cute).

Both of these efforts lead to longer term advantages:

• Pudgy team now has the social lead contacts of many of the industry players

• Partnership conversations will start off warm by default (“they did that custom PFP last year, loved that!”)

• Exchange editorial decision makers will look more fondly upon PENGU and may prioritize them

The team doesn’t need to do this, but if I wanted to earn extra credit with all these partners and take it one step further, I’d create physical framed prints of the custom PFPs and exchange announcements and mail them to each company’s HQ, with a handwritten note signed by Luca (CEO) and several other members of the team. This would create a secondary wave of content coming from the partner and its team members while creating even more goodwill towards Pudgy Penguins.

Now that’s a surprise and delight moment I have a sneaking feeling that no one has done yet.

Although Pudgy’s approach is hard to replicate, we can all take notes on how they go the extra mile to make their partners feel special and spin that in our own respective ways.

Are Pudgy Penguins cute? If so, share or subscribe!

3. Showing vs. Telling

As a general principle, everyone knows that showing > telling, and Pudgy Penguins has taken this to heart in a few ways.

World of Pengu

The team recently introduced The World of Pengu, a page that highlights stats, social accounts, partnerships, community efforts, history, and news.

This serves as a great resource hub for both newbies and veteran community members alike. For example, I initially thought Purgy Pengoon, a rougher around the edges account with hilarious twerk-themed (SFW I promise lol) posts was created by some random person/team. In reality, the account was created and managed by them and has its own dedicated fanbase of 1.2M+ followers across its social accounts.

These types of landing pages that highlight stats and info are always helpful for the community to share, reference, and post about for different audiences with different goals. Other teams that do a good job of this in their own way:

• Pump.fun’s PUMP token buyback dashboard

• Tether’s USDT Insights

• Helium’s Helium World

Pudgy Penguins GIF views

Luca also recently shared an internal chart showing the daily average GIF views approaching 1B per day 🤯

This stat is notable because it shows the rate of growth, is measured on a daily average basis, and highlights big numbers. 1 BILLION daily GIF views a DAY hits kinda different…

To illustrate this in a different way:

Conference swag

Pudgy Penguins has an unfair advantage when it comes to conference swag since they can always give away their toys. However, they don’t settle for just the tried and true.

During San Diego Comic Con, the Pudgy booth gave away 10k oversized bags which also served as a promotion for the upcoming Pudgy Party mobile game.

At first glance the bag seems impractical, but we’re talking about an event that is all about swag, collectibles, and IP. This bag can hold all that on top of being a bag for all the other bags collected throughout the conference floor.

4. Geographic expansion

Although crypto is a digital-first industry based on shared universal principles, there are cultural differences and physical limitations across geographies.

Global crypto exchanges are no stranger to this, as they have regional and/or country-specific hubs due to regulatory and operational reasons, reminding me of my Uber days where there are boots on the ground teams in every country and city they operate in.

But when it comes to NFT communities, that geo expansion looks different and is more a liability than necessity until it’s painfully obvious that it’s needed.

Last week Pudgy Penguins announced Igloo APAC, the first regional arm of the Igloo parent company, focusing on growing the brand in a localized way.

What I imagine helped the team make this decision beyond the data was that numerous country-specific communities have popped up, many for multiple years, and supported by one person leading the charge (back at Uber we called launchers).

Meanwhile, these communities are doing their own activations such as a takeover of a skyscraper in Malaysia or running digital billboards in Gangnam, a popular district in Seoul, Korea.

Just like a popular website or service that needs to support multiple languages or carry different products, popular brands need to do the same and Pudgy Penguins has reached the point where an investment in localization is justified.

So with all these recent developments, is Pudgy Penguins the face of crypto? It’s hard to say that they’re THE face, but their silhouette is starting to be chipped away at if there was a Mt. Rushmore of consumer crypto.

See you next week!

In the last week, I’ve come across several good reads that have expanded the way I think about consumer behavior and the next chapter of building at the intersection of crypto/web3. With more accommodating regulation, chances are we’ll see these themes accelerate what this space will look like in the coming months and years.

Pop Mart, Not Poker: Gambling For Women

Despite the clickbait headline, John Wang published an article about the rise of ‘softcore gambling’, female engagement in the space, and how the opportunity for it is much larger than the classic definition of gambling lets on.

When we think of gambling, it usually involves massive payouts, large multipliers, and a ‘make it all back in one trade’ type of mentality. However, John makes the case that with mainstream adoption and younger generational preferences of social shopping, blind boxes, and proven gamification loops and features, gambling has expanded without us even properly acknowledging it.

Although I’ve seen all of these tactics before, I haven’t thought about how there are gender-leaning preferences for them, especially as a male.

John calls out the primary reasons for the success of this approach:

No total loss. Whether it’s a vinyl bunny or a $2 lipstick, you always get something. That safety net invites play.

Ritual over high-risk. Open the box, tap the wheel, post the haul—tiny ceremonies that punctuate a day. A Pop Mart fan might whisper “Please let it be the sleepy bear…” as they unbox under lo-fi music on TikTok. Compare that to GTO expected value calculations and hero calls in poker. The former is self-soothing. The latter is zero-sum conquest.

Aesthetic over Conquest: The reward isn’t resale value—it’s how the object fits a vibe, shelf, or mood-board. Pop Mart fans don’t flex prices; they curate scenes with mischievous Labubus beside Sanrio plushes. While male collectors often chase singular power pulls (“I got pocket rockets!”), female collectors tend to seek cohesive sets that reflect personal taste (“I finally got the pink bunny to complete my zodiac series!”).

Shared delight, not PvP: Memecoin traders flex 1000% PNL cards. Pokémon unboxers flex $400 pull. Pop Mart unboxers show duplicates on TikTok and ask, “Does anyone want this pink bunny?”. One is one-upmanship. The other is sharing and relatability.

Saving money over making money: Shein shoppers spin wheels for 20% off and invite their friends to unlock coupons. The thrill is in the dopamine of unlocking a deal, not beating the market.

Although the size of each transaction is small, the high retention rates, high margins, and larger addressable audience make this approach successful. Arguably more successful than the original version of gambling.

I would take John’s points one step further and argue that softcore gambling is expanding to kids. Every few months, my wife and I like to go to our local Dave & Buster’s to play some video games and earn tickets (and never spend them lol). It’s part restaurant, part arcade, part bar, aka the perfect place to have a kid’s birthday party while the parents secretly sneak a few drinks in.

We went again last weekend, mainly because I wanted to see if the Pudgy Penguins Polar Challenge arcade game was installed at this location (unfortunately it wasn’t 😭). Consistently going to Dave & Buster’s over the past few years has been an interesting and unintentional case study on where arcades are headed.

The games have gotten flashier, partnered with other IP (eg: Minecraft, Hot Wheels, Marvel, NBA and many other licensed games), and more chance-based games (some with skill involved, some pure chance-based).

In the past few trips, I’ve noticed there were a lot more coin pusher games. Users pay credits to drop coins onto a moving platform, with the goal of pushing other coins and prizes over the edge to earn tickets.

Maybe these games are meant for the bored adults who don’t have the hand-eye coordination to play your standard racing or fighting arcade games, but more of these have popped up. Many of these coin pusher games have mini-games to keep players playing longer, with extra bonuses for collecting all the characters, bonus wheels that reward big ticket bonuses, and special items. Sounds like a variant of softcore gambling, no?

The other notable anecdote was while we were doing our last lap around the arcade, we overheard a 10-year old girl excitedly screaming to her friend ‘LET’S GO GAMBLING!!!’ in front of this Big Bass Wheel machine.

In the moment we laughed at the scene, as people who enjoy the occasional Las Vegas trip. However, these observations lead to the reality of softcore gambling which is showing up everywhere.

Is it bad? In a vacuum, yes (IMO more important to teach principles around it vs. flat out saying gambling is bad). Taking a step back though, this is where entertainment and entertainment x ___________ [insert industry/activity/theme here] and the concept of engagement are headed. On the other hand, you can argue this is just the next step in gamification, not specifically gambling since there are intermediary steps involved with these Dave and Buster’s examples ($ —> Credits —> games —> tickets —> prizes). To counter that point, I still think about the announcement that Dave & Buster’s made last year, allowing betting on arcade games.

More gamification, more skin in the game, and more wagering (from points/credit to money). And it will look different and be molded to each demographic, generation, and environment.

Do you think gambling is becoming more prevalent? Flip a coin: Heads, share this. Tails, subscribe!

Building for crypto-native vs. building for crypto-adjacent

Richard Chen of Varrock VC shared his thoughts on what the next cohort of builders will look like and who they’re be building for: Crypto-native vs. Crypto-adjacent. TLDR:

• Crypto-native businesses are focused on building for power users and retaining them. This is difficult because power users tend to be mercenary and focused on incentives, leading to poaching/vampire attack risk

• Crypto-native businesses are also oftentimes open-source, leading to even less of a moat

• For crypto-adjacent companies, crypto is a feature, not the product

• The founder archetype for successful crypto-adjacent projects will be very different from that of crypto-native projects. More polished and commercially-minded vs. understanding crypto-native degens and focusing on a cult of personality.

Richard makes great points and observations that led to his conclusions in the article and it makes sense. There will always be great crypto-native businesses and products, but the reality is the world is much bigger than this corner of the Internet. And those people don’t have nor want to understand the intricacies of the blockchain, what a Layer 2 is, or what ‘NFT’ stands for.

They just want products that help them make money, save money, save time, be entertained, connect with others, or be entertained. And if the crypto is a feature that helps them do that, great!

The Evolution Of Speculation

0xKyle of Defiance Capital published a piece around the future of Internet Capital Markets (ICM), a term popularized earlier this year. This time, we’re seeing the term used with less of the memecoin or startupcoin frenzy and baggage of the past.

0xKyle walks us through the evolution of ICM and where he thinks we’re headed with it.

The most notable point he makes is that in this new era of ICM,

THERE IS A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY. FOR INVESTORS. TO BE OPERATING PARTNERS. ALONGSIDE TEAMS.

Within the context of the article, I believe he’s referring to VC’s, not your average retail investor (speaking of ‘investors’, I can feel the ick of all those LinkedIn profiles with ‘crypto investor’, ‘NFT investor and advisor’ creeping up as prices go up).

But if we look through the lens of ‘retail’, has applied for some time and applies even more today. Rephrasing 0xKyle’s point more colloquially, there’s a massive opportunity for community members to be operating partners alongside teams.

NFTs

One of the best examples of this is through NFT communities.

Bored Apes led the way several years ago, with entrepreneurial holders creating businesses and leveraging their PFP as an asset. Pudgy Penguins continues to provide licensing opportunities to their community members through the Overpass platform.

And a common path to working at one of these NFT collection turned companies is starting off as a community member.

Memecoins

With almost all memecoins today, the creator (or ‘dev’) of the token sells early on, running off with a small gain to prepare for their next hundred memecoin launches.

If the meme is good enough, the existing holders conduct a community takeover, or CTO of the memecoin to grow the holder base, coordinate marketing efforts, and ultimately increase the market cap.

In these scenarios, these ‘investors’ have the opportunity to be operating partners in their own right, proliferating the meme and corresponding token.

Ecosystems

The strongest ecosystems have enabled this type of relationship as well, turning their users or ‘investors’ into diehard community members and eventually builders, a type of operating partner, in the ecosystem.

A great example of this is Hyperliquid, an onchain trading platform that has seen insane growth over 2 years and expanded beyond trading through the HyperEVM layer.

A disproportionate number of these builders started out as users, traders, and airdrop recipients, and graduated to becoming operating partners in their own right.

Or rather:

User ➡️ ‘Investor’ (via airdrop or buying the token) ➡️ ‘Operating partner’ (aka builder)

Bringing these articles together

Each of these articles focuses on vastly different topics, but there is one prevailing meta-theme: change

• Pop Mart, Not Poker: Gambling For Women - Change in how gambling can be perceived and how it differs between genders/preferences

• Building for crypto-native vs. building for crypto-adjacent - The profile for the ideal crypto builder is changing as the opportunities for integration and addressable audience grow

• The Evolution Of Speculation - The change and evolution in how participants can be involved and to what degree

And whoever makes the most of these changes, wins 🏆

See you next week!

Today the SEC announced Project Crypto, an effort to support crypto innovation in the US. Although the signs were there (eg: ETP in-kind redemptions, dropping lawsuits and investigations against Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Immutable, Yuga, Kraken, Gemini, Consensys, OpenSea, Uniswap and countless others), this is a move that not just reverses the damage done over the past several years, but productively sets the stage for the next chapter of building in crypto in the US.

NGL, I sorta did a mental version of this when I read Chairman Paul Atkins’ speech, because I am still under the PTSD of the SEC being against the industry I’ve been a part of for the past few years.

Haseeb and Amal from Dragonfly shared helpful TLDR’s, and I’ll go into a bit more detail on some of the points and potential implications.

Categorizing crypto assets

I have directed the Commission staff to work to develop clear guidelines that market participants can use to determine whether a crypto asset is a security or subject to an investment contract. Our goal is to help market participants to slot crypto assets into categories, such as digital collectibles, digital commodities, or stablecoins, and assess the economic realities of a transaction. This approach can allow market participants to determine, based upon clear guidelines, whether any outstanding promises or commitments of the issuer cause the crypto asset to be subject to an investment contract.

This statement is notable for a couple reasons:

• The SEC recognizes that the crypto ecosystem is rich and enables the creation of many different types of assets. When the average person hears the word ‘crypto’, they think Bitcoin or their favorite memecoin. In reality, there is a lot more than that and not every asset should be treated in the same way.

• Specifically with NFTs (“digital collectibles”), the SEC of old charged Stoner Cats for the unregistered offering of NFTs in September 2023, which I wrote about.

The SEC recognizes that the actions it made in the past don’t make sense in today’s world and will be creating (as opposed to regulation by enforcement) reasonable guidelines that give builders and creators the space to do what they do best.

I mean, imagine if your Labubu collection had to be registered with the SEC 💀

We need rules and guidelines that aren’t one-size-fits-all, and the nuances of each type of asset need to be recognized.

Including Americans in token rewards

I have asked staff to propose purpose-fit disclosures, exemptions, and safe harbors, including for so-called “initial coin offerings,” “airdrops,” and network rewards. Regarding these sorts of transactions, our goal should be that issuers no longer exclude Americans from their distributions to avoid legal complexity and lawsuits, but instead choose to include Americans to enjoy legal certainty and an accommodating regulatory environment.

If you’re based in the US (and a handful of other jurisdictions) and have been an active participant in different projects, platforms, and protocols, you’ve likely come across a page like this when trying to claim an airdrop:

Do these folks have something against the US or something? Nope, they’re just wary of legal/regulatory backlash of giving people based in certain countries magic Internet money. Project Crypto will aim to remove these limitations and stop ‘protecting’ US-based users.

The obvious beneficiaries will be US residents, and the close number two are the projects and builders themselves.

Less legal overhead, less emotional toll, and most importantly less friction. Users won’t have to jump through the hoops of turning on their VPN or other shenanigans to claim their airdrop (eg: this viral post on how to claim the EIGEN airdrop for restricted users). Meanwhile, teams can get better signal around the event they’ve been working on for months and focus on more important things.

Innovation exemptions

Under my vision for an innovation exemption, innovators and visionaries will be able to immediately enter the market with new technologies and business models but will not be required to comply with incompatible or burdensome prescriptive regulatory requirements that hinder productive economic activity. Instead, they will be able to comply with certain principles-based conditions designed to achieve the core policy aims of the federal securities laws. These conditions may include, for example, a commitment to make periodic reports to the Commission, incorporate whitelisting or “verified pool” functionality, and restrict tokenized securities that do not adhere to a token standard that incorporates compliance features, such as ERC3643.

This segment is cool because it references ERC-3643, an open-source token standard for RWA (real-world asset) tokenization. The SEC recognizes that the industry has worked on frameworks that can complement the guidelines they’ll put into place.

Instead of the wait-and-see approach of the past, builders can continue to push the boundaries of what can be done onchain. We’re not thinking ‘outside of the box’ anymore. We’re building on the edges of that box and pushing those edges further out.

Why does this matter?

Obviously, this matters for industry legal folks, but this is important for all types of operators and roles to follow these developments closely as well.

The lines in the sand of what’s strictly not allowed vs. what’s fair game is still blurry, but they’re shifting in favor of creativity. Many of the mechanics I’ve covered in the past will be seen less as a risky move and instead as a strategy or tactic that can be optimized and expanded upon. Great ideas that were rejected by legal can now be revisited with more confidence.

Bravo to the turnaround from the SEC! I’m looking forward to the next chapter of what will be possible and allowed in the US and globally.

Do you think innovation is good? If so, share or subscribe!

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NBA Top Shot and Courtyard expand

A couple of stories caught my eye with different companies operating in a similar space: trading cards.

First, Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot NFTs are now available for purchase through physical vending machines in Japan. People can now buy Top Shot moments with fiat, with gamified features coming in the future such as stamp passports, instant buyback options, and P2P trading.

Second, Courtyard announced a $30M Series A fundraise, led by Forerunner Ventures. The company that digitized, vaulted, and onchainified physical trading cards has come a long way since I covered them nearly 2 years ago and now has $50 million in sales per month 👀

Since launch, Courtyard has minted 2.6M+ NFTs (or cards/assets) and has 32k holders, becoming another underappreciated case study of success in the space.

There’s a couple themes from these developments that continue to make the case for NFTs and tokenization of assets (not just the typical RWAs from tradfi) interesting.

Bringing digital distribution to physical spaces

Dapper’s NBA Top Shot expansion to physical vending machines is interesting because NFTs generally live in digital spaces: social media pfps, online marketplaces, and the blockchain.

We’re now seeing another experiment around the distribution of these digital collectibles in physical spaces, specifically vending machines. Japan may not have the largest NBA fandom, but they are familiar with digital goods and are the OG’s of gacha.

What’s interesting is these vending machines aren’t just selling NFTs or other digital products. They gamify the collection in various ways, with one of the original proposed concepts being if you held specific NFTs, the machine would distribute physical products to the holder. In the example, it’s a keychain.

If successful, some version of these scenarios would be the next step(s) of NBA Top Shot’s rollout to gamify the vending machine experience:

• Complete the 2025-2026 NBA season passport and receive a special Top Shot moment

• Complete the 2025-2026 NBA season passport and receive physical merch signed by a NBA player

• Receive special vending machine-exclusive Top Shot moments

• Apply a randomized bonus NFT or physical collectible reward. This could even be a mini-game, creating a more engaging experience.

• Placing these vending machines in a NBA arena or event and incorporating the above mechanics and incentives catered towards that team and its fans

Additionally, Dapper has rights to another very high-profile IP: Disney Pinnacle. Although it’s in an earlier stage, the vending machine for digital collectibles makes a lot of sense here as well, especially in Disney Stores and theme parks.

Putting common concepts at the forefront

As crypto and web3 applications become mainstream, we continue to work on making sure the consumer apps and products are approachable and easily understood. The language and concepts we use have improved, and the distribution step (via minting and transferring) is the next area of opportunity.

Courtyard has leaned into this heavily, naturally because they have focused on physical products and collectibles everyone is aware of (vs creating something completely new), and distributed them through digital vending machines.

The team launched them in March 2024 and moved away from the more operationally intensive drop model, contributing to their growth.

On top of that, it was interesting to read the Fortune article detailing Courtyard’s Series A fundraise because there was only one mention of the term ‘NFT’ and no other industry terms.

Short-term vs. long-term views

I still remember the 💡 moment that got me into NFTs when I was introduced to NBA Top Shot. I envisioned a scenario where a flashy play from an NBA game turned into a NFT and was sent to every fan in attendance, all in real-time. 4+ years later, I’m not sure if we’re any closer to that hypothetical becoming a reality (IMO it’s more due to legal reasons than anything else).

We tend to overestimate the short term and what new tech can do, and I’m a prime example of this with my first touchpoint for blockchain tech via digital trading cards. But over time, we underestimate the longterm and we’re seeing that vision playing out, with help from concepts that we already know and love.

See you next week!

As crypto prices continue to grind up (hoping we all can go home to our relatives this holiday season and not be made fun of for once, jk) another theme has emerged: things are coming onchain! Yes, this is obvious and has been happening for a looooooooong time, but more as experiments.

As more practical use cases are being discovered and repackaged for broader adoption, our jpegs, art, fiat currencies, financial assets, and content are all gaining legitimacy as they enter through the mainstream gates.

One of the engines of tokenized…everything are launchpads, and there have been a series of recent events and announcements that help to accelerate the proliferation of bringing everything onchain.

And inspired by Everything is an ad network by Eric Seufert from the performance marketing world, I believe everything is a launchpad for tokenization, specifically every platform with distribution muscle.

Outside of crypto/web3

Finance

As a very late adopter to Robinhood (BOOOOOOOMEEEERRRRR), I came across a notification that caught my eye a couple days ago. Robinhood users could sign up for access to Figma’s IPO!

Instead of buying shares of a newly listed company in the open market, users have a chance to buy shares at the listed IPO price.

App Stores

Most, if not all the apps we download come from launchpads that are positioned as ‘stores’. Developers promote, launch, and distribute their apps through these.

Ticketing and ecomm

Ticketmaster has grown from a ticket marketplace and added launchpad-like features including presales for specific audiences, promoting the right events to the right people based on their location and interests.

Ecomm apps like Nike’s SNKRS are a launchpad for exclusive releases and collabs, complemented by in-feed content.

In crypto/web3

We’re seeing the same trend happen, and unsurprisingly at a faster pace as the industry borrows the same ideas that have worked and expands on them through tokenization.

Jpegs/art

NFT marketplaces have expanded their capabilities to become launchpads, becoming partners that help facilitate more of the consumer and community lifecycle strategy.

For most projects and creators, this is an appealing option as they don’t have to create their own website, get distribution support, and have a more seamless transition from the mint to trade phases of their respective projects.

Financial (equities and more) and fiat assets (stablecoins)

Onchain financial asset enthusiasts have been banging this drum for years, and we’re seeing the fruit start to bear.

xStocks recently launched, bringing 50+ stocks onchain and across multiple crypto exchanges.

The same day xStocks made their announcement, Robinhood also announced the launch US stock and ETF tokens and a slew of other product announcements.

On the fiat asset side, stablecoin supply continues to rise, approaching $250B in circulation 🤯. In this case, blockchains are the launchpads for fiat currencies, primarily the US Dollar for now.

Content

We’re seeing another evolution of SocialFi with tokenized content from social feeds. With the new Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet), social posts can be tokenized at the discretion of the author and traded.

In a similar vein, Zora has tokenized posts and taken it a step further with tokenized profiles termed as ‘creator coins’.

Blockchains

And last but not least, we have blockchains themselves. The OG launchpad for the onchain ecosystem and economy, the App Store of App Stores, the foundation for creators and innovators to build their houses upon.

Marketplaces vs. distribution networks vs. launchpads

What’s interesting with all the examples of the above is that you can make a simple and convincing argument that the above aren’t launchpads. They’re marketplaces (OpenSea, Magic Eden, Robinhood, Ticketmaster, SNKRS, App Stores) or distribution/social networks (xStocks, Base, stablecoins, Zora, blockchains) with launchpad features or capabilities.

The reality is we’re seeing the line blurring between all 3. Marketplaces are inherently distribution networks and launchpads. Distribution networks are inherently launchpads and marketplaces. Launchpads are inherently marketplaces and distribution networks. Maybe they’re just fancy buzzwords for the same thing through a specific lens, or maybe one needs to be built out first before the other legs of the stool can be extended.

The 3 are overlapping more, and blockchains and their use cases accelerate that.

Of course, this is just a concept that I’ve come up with while observing the recent announcements/launches and extracting the theme of launchpads becoming a thing (even if they don’t explicitly say so).

What is important and hopefully helpful for builders, operators, participants, and even casual observers is:

• How is my/this product/platform a marketplace?

• How is my/this product/platform a distribution network?

• How is my/this product/platform a launchpad?

• How is my/this product’s/platform’s potential maximized through each of these lenses?

• How does blockchain and/or tokens accelerate one or all of these legs?

And on the note of launchpads specifically, they’re evolving as well. Traditionally, launchpads are seen more as a 0 to 1 platform, like getting a boost at the starting line of a Mario Kart race if you time your buttons correctly. Or realistically, something like Kickstarter. Instead, I think launchpads are becoming the mushrooms of Mario Kart, accelerants to platforms and ecosystems that already have a foothold in their respective space (unless they start as a launchpad of course), helping participants go from 10 to 100 and beyond.

With that said, long live launchpads and the acceleration of them via blockchain. Because after all, everything is a launchpad 😉

Have you used a launchpad before? You have because everything is a launchpad, so launch your finger to the share or subscribe button!

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(Good) NFTs are back?!

As the price of ETH has gone back up to more respectable levels in the past weeks, we’ve seen NFTs catch a bid as well, with the most notable move being ~$13.5 million of CryptoPunks swept in the course of 5 hours last weekend. This caused a positive trickle-down effect for all NFT collections that still had active teams and/or communities.

So what’s next for NFTs? Wait…ARE BRANDS GONNA GET BACK IN?! If it’s anything like this, I’m out ✌️

Maybe it’s early signs, or maybe these are one-offs, but I have noticed a couple of interesting signals with (good) NFTs, ones that are more timeless or have not only survived, but thrived since the last peak.

GameSquare acquires Cowboy Ape CryptoPunk

Today Gamesquare, a gaming media network and now ETH treasury company, acquired a Cowboy Ape CryptoPunk for $5.15M of the company’s stock, and is currently rocking it as their PFP.

This might sound reckless to some, however it seems that this is part of their treasury strategy, increasing their ETH treasury up to $250M and a $10M allocation to a ‘new NFT yield strategy’.

Well they’re certainly coming out swinging with this new NFT strategy!

Tom Lee rocks a Pudgy

Tom Lee, respected TradFi investor and Chairman of Bitmine, another ETH treasury company that currently holds 566k ETH ($2.1B, SHEESH), changed his PFP to a custom Pudgy last week.

Changing the PFP was certainly cause for celebration, but what I find more interesting is that Tom hasn’t changed it back (yet?).

And even more interesting is that since the PFP change, he’s been reposting Pudgy Penguins content constantly, which makes you 🤔

Maybe it’s just the social media intern who loves Pudgies and Tom is cool with it, or maybe it’s an engagement play which is more likely though my gut feels this is still off.

A few days after Tom’s PFP switch, the Bitmine account also changed their PFP and also has constantly reposted Pudgy content, I mean wow.

I’m not gonna jinx it and obviously I’m biased as a Pudgy holder but it feels like something is afoot. Bitmine currently holds $2.1B in ETH and will continue to accumulate (their goal is 5% of supply)…and maybe they want to expand into ETH culture itself via…oh ya I said I’m not gonna jinx it.

That said, this does coincide with proclamations like this one from Garga (Yuga/BAYC co-founder and CEO):

So maybe NFTs are back, not with our WAGMI brand frens of yesteryear. Instead, with the suits who understand business and have an eye for onchain culture.

See you next week!

When we think about wallets, both in the traditional and digital sense, we still think of them as a tool that holds financial assets. For the physical wallet, they hold cash or credit cards. For the digital wallet, they hold digital cash, cards, alternative assets (eg: crypto), and goods like NFTs or tickets.

However we’re seeing these wallets grow up before our eyes, from a simple app that stores assets to a massive hub for interactions, both financial and non-financial.

Phantom

The wallet app with 15M MAUs and a $3B valuation as of January 2025 has expanded significantly since its early days as browser extension wallet for Solana users. Two updates have stuck out to me:

Usernames

The wallet introduced usernames last September, making the long alphanumeric strings that are wallet addresses less confusing. Users can also follow each other, opening the door for future interactions that go beyond sending and receiving tokens.

Perps

Phantom announced a partnership with Hyperliquid, allowing users to trade 100+ tokens on up to 40x leverage (eg: If Bitcoin goes up/down 1% your position goes up/down 40%. Exciting and veryyy dangerous for the inexperienced).

Hyperliquid is a fairly confusing platform for the unintiated. Phantom perps makes Hyperliquid accessible and friendly to the masses, for better and worse, and will be rolling out in the coming weeks.

Coinbase Wallet

Coinbase has been cooking with the Coinbase wallet app as well, rebuilding the app and prioritizing social features and mini apps.

The team has been slowly leaking sneak peeks of the new app:

Interacting with AI agents and apps

Users will be able to interact with agents, make trades, and use mini apps through chat.

“Mint, tip, vote. All from the feed.”

With the focus on mini-apps, users will be able to do everything onchain in one place, making onboarding and distribution easier than what it looks like today.

Coinbase Wallet TBA

Lastly, it seems like Coinbase Wallet will be going through a rebrand, likely coinciding with Base’s A New Day One event on July 16. This times well with Base’s previous Onchain Summer events in 2023 and 2024, so we’ll see if they make it 3 in a row or if they go in a different direction.

Rumble x Moonpay

Today Rumble (video platform) announced that they are partnering with Moonpay to create the Rumble Wallet, with Moonpay facilitating the transactions.

Furthermore, Rumble received a $775M strategic investment from Tether last December, so we know which stablecoin will be the preferred (maybe even the only) one for the Rumble Wallet.

As with all corporate announcements, details are vague, but it seems one of the focuses on the wallet will be to enhance creator monetization, and I’ve already laid out how streamers/creators can benefit and how stablecoins can benefit consumers.

Another example unique to Rumble could be content creators could get exclusive discounts on approved content creation hardware and software when paying with Tether’s USDT in the Rumble Wallet.

Vendors get increased sales, Rumble gets increased adoption of their Wallet and splits the affiliate fee they’d typically receive to subsidize the discount, the USDT yield could be split between Moonpay/Rumble/Creator (don’t ask me about the details lol), and Tether gets increased adoption of their stablecoin.

Putting the Super in superapp

Over the past decade, we’ve seen a number of companies evolve into the superapp behemoths they are today. In the US, there are several examples:

The future section is blank because I’m not gonna speculate, jk I will. My gut tells me financial services (in addition to AI) is the next frontier and with stablecoins and friendlier regulation, this will be fast-tracked. Oh wait, it’s basically confirmed!

On the other hand, we’re seeing wallets come from the other side starting from finance and make their first expansionary effort: social and content (don’t forget ads either!).

Assuming that goes well, we’ll see wallets go from hubs of financial and social interactions to becoming hubs for interactions in general 🤝

Do you have a wallet? If so, share or subscribe!

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Shareholder ➡️ Tokenholder perks

Last week I watched the F1 movie at a movie theater for the first time in years. While reserving seats at my local AMC theater, I stumbled upon an interesting page: AMC’s Investor Connect program.

Apparently AMC stockholders receive ‘investor exclusive’ perks such as priority lane access, 50% off tickets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, double point Tuesdays which are redeemable for $5 reward vouchers, and more.

This is the first time I’ve come across this type of program, where a publicly traded consumer-facing company offered perks for their stockholders. This also helps considering a decent amount of retail investors probably hold the stock due to the memestock mania of 2021.

If AMC has a program like this, there’s gotta be more right? And sure enough, there are:

• Carnival Cruises offers on-board credit to shareholders since 2000! Competing cruise companies like Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line do the same, the perks of competition 😉

• Hotel companies like Accor and IHG offer special perks and shareholder booking portals

• Vital Farms, an egg distributor, gives shareholders a coupon for a free 18-pack of eggs every quarter. Pretty cool to have a stock that literally feeds you 🍳

Why bring this up? First of all, this is interesting and TPan likes interesting. Secondly, this is related to a larger theme in web3 and crypto that has been parroted for years.

For tokens: How does the token accrue value back to the user?

For NFTs: What’s the utility?

With the latter, we’ve seen early versions of what that could look like with token-gated access for exclusive merch, airdrop magnets, and allowlists.

For the former, it’s historically been price go up and more recently we’re seeing token buybacks, burns, and fee revenue splits, also resulting in some version of price go up. Price go up is by far the most important, but how else can a token differentiate itself, just as some of these stocks have?

As more tokens associated with physical products and companies launch (or these companies with already launched tokens grow), I suspect we’ll see more token holder perks pop up. A few examples of how these tokenholder perks could be complimentary to a business:

• Prioritized access to new features or beta versions

• Upgraded subscription tiers or increased credit balances

• Holder bonuses, eg: PENGU token or Pudgy Penguin NFT holders could receive in-game bonuses when playing Pudgy Party (releasing on mobile late August!) on a regularly occurring basis.

As investing has become DTC and democratized, both traditional equities and novel tokens will look to provide more benefits to those who are financially aligned. And sometimes, all they want is to feel appreciated with a couple of perks 😊

See you next week!

Anime.com launches in Beta

Although I’m not a huge anime fan (I did grow up on Naruto and Bleach, and have watched Attack on Titan, all very good!), it’s hard to ignore the massive global fan base and cultural movement:

• Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service and Sony subsidiary, has 17 million paid subscribers as of May

• There are an estimated 1 billion anime fans globally outside of Japan and China

• The anime industry grew to $23 billion in 2023 and more than half of that revenue is from outside Japan

As web3’s premier NFT collection, Azuki has focused on this industry and announced that it acquired the anime.com domain last September.

This week they opened up the Beta version of the website, showing how they plan to grow awareness of Azuki, integrate their ANIME token, and provide value to anime fans and broader industry.

Newsfeed and Discover

The feed brings a sense of familiarity that we’re used to with other social platforms, with the ability to follow specific shows, characters, and actors. Content can be filtered by topic, summarized by AI, and sourced from X.

The Discover section reminds me of IMDB, providing details on anime shows and movies including character, content, and cast details.

As with all platforms with a feed, this is a step towards becoming a social platform. For now, users can only like and share content and comments are coming soon.

Depending on where the Azuki team plans to take anime.com, I can easily see profiles becoming discoverable with tastemakers sharing their preferences. Select content can be promoted, especially to users who like particular types of shows or characters. I expect a mobile app will be released in the future as well.

Tier List creator

The feature that caught my eye was tier lists, a viral content template that incites debate and engagement. Because the tier list creator is specific to anime.com (as opposed to the whitelabeled tiermaker), options are pre-populated and categorized by characters and shows/movies. No need to upload your own images, and the database is always up-to-date.

Tier lists are shareable on other platforms and also show up on the website too. Creativity is the only limitation for this feature and it’s only a matter of time until a tier list goes viral and brings a spike in traffic.

Profiles, stickers, shop, events, watch

The profile section provides another good idea of Azuki’s vision for anime.com.

Character profile

Users can customize their own profile through an avatar, which opens the door for a lot of features as the userbase grows:

• There can be milestone-based traits that are unlocked (eg: follow a specific character, engage with X posts, create X tier lists, etc.)

• Limited-edition traits in partnership with specific shows, characters, and studios

• Traits bought in the shop

• Integrating Azuki NFT collection traits. If you connect your wallet that hold an Azuki, you automatically get those traits which are scarce by default

• A marketplace or trading post for traits, possibly onchain?

There is also a leveling system which could eventually unlock access, perks, and more.

Shop + Stickers

Speaking of purchasable traits, it’s already happening! There is a Fractured Reflections (named after Episode 2 of the Azuki anime series) mystery can, resembling the gacha mechanic.

Stickers can only be purchased with ANIME token, with card purchases available in the future. The shop is also embedded as content block in the show’s about page, showing how this can be replicated across other shows and expanded to physical merch.

Events

There is also an events section highlighting various industry and fan events, starting with Los Angeles’ Anime Expo happening this weekend (there were 407k attendees last year 🤯)

Watch

This section is focused on Azuki’s Enter the Garden anime, and I can easily see this become a content hub featuring other shows and exclusive content. For now, the page directs curious people to Enter The Garden’s show page.

Although there are plenty of alternative content or streaming platforms, the watch section can become a hub for behind the scenes content, exclusive AMA’s, or other activations gated by a user’s level, what they’re following, and their engagement.

Drawing attention by lifting the industry

Azuki is one of the few NFT projects that has grown into a full-blown company and the evolution in their approach over the past year, particularly with anime.com has been interesting to observe, especially as the most casual of casual fans.

Unlike pretty much any other industry, anime is interesting in the sense that it’s still overwhelmingly produced in Japan and exported to the rest of the world. That contrasts with the globalized society that we now live in, but gives anime the authenticity, cultural richness, and community that is lacking everywhere else. This richness has led to a diverse fanbase spanning across the globe cracking the billions.

For all the pros, this has led to a gap that Azuki is looking to fill through anime.com: connecting the dots of modern fandom’s multi-dimensionality.

location tba, one of the Azuki co-founders, describes the vision and purpose (emphasis is mine):

From talking to people within the industry to speaking with many hardcore fans over the past few months, what became clear to us is that there is a massive gap between the anime industry and global fans. What started as Japanese media and a niche subculture for the rest of the world, has become a global medium loved by many. Global anime fans want to consume all sorts of content related to anime outside of the literal animated content itself, but have a difficult time finding it. There is a gap between the industry and its global fans. By the time a global fan consumes content related to anime, it has likely gone through layers of aggregators and this is very lossy. This actively throttles fandom and the industry’s TAM. When you read about what goes into the craft and see the BTS artwork/animation, your fandom deepens. When you can better discover merch and events accessible to you, you participate and spend money. While we all know anime is huge and growing, I believe it’s not growing as much as it could be. Our goal is to provide fans with value that they love using every day. While there are a ton of improvements and optimization work to be done, this release is our first step in plugging the gap that exists between the industry and its fans. It is the culmination of the team’s hard work over the past two months, and I’m proud of the effort, thoughtfulness, and craft that has gone into it. Hope yall enjoy using it as much as we have these past few weeks. This isn’t even close to Anime[dot]com’s final form

And if anime.com lives up to its potential, that attention, engagement, and monetization can be thoughtfully directed to Azuki as well.

Have you watched anime before? If so, share or subscribe!

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Pudgy Penguins' newsjacking strategy

Pudgy Penguins has been on a tear, partnering with NASCAR, collaborating with PEZ, filing an ETF, publishing a children’s book, and ringing the NASDAQ stock exchange opening bell, approaching 1B daily GIF views by EOY, and more.

One of my favorite marketing tactics from the team is how their social team leverages newsjacking on X to create additional awareness.

Newsjacking is a marketing tactic that leverages news to promote a brand or product, with the most common form of this coming from meme accounts.

Pudgy’s newsjacking strategy has been by replying to or creating memes related to geopolitical headlines with financial implications with cute penguins and meme templates.

US Tariffs Heard Island

When the US announced tariffs on other countries, Heard and McDonald Islands stuck out like a sore thumb because there is no human population and are inhabited by penguins.

The Pudgy social team made the most of this by perpetuating the meme that they were involved in the trade war with the US, even creating some viral memes of their own.

Jerome Powell and rate cuts

Jerome Powell of the Federal Reserve has everyone playing the game of will he/won’t he when it comes to rate cuts, and Pudgy isn’t shy about inserting itself in the conversation.

More trade war shenanigans

I’m sure there are plenty I missed, but I found this one particularly amusing

Elon x Trump feud

After successfully negotiating trade deals, Pudgy is now helping the most powerful man in the world make amends with the richest man in the world.

Ringing the NASDAQ bell with VanEck

Pudgy’s newsjacking efforts isn’t just limited to social media. They’re doing it IRL with institutions like the asset manager VanEck, ringing the NASDAQ opening bell.

In all these examples, Pudgy Penguins is comedic relief for topics and situations that are serious or have significant implications. This cute penguin is posting memes is sorta like if a young kid at a family dinner blurts out a swear word. It’s cute, generally harmless, and if the timing is good, hilarious.

Easy to copy, difficult to master.

See you next week!

In crypto, there is the concept of a 4-year cycle, where the boom and bust phases, and corresponding prices, are attributed to the halving of Bitcoin supply emission rates.

As crypto and Bitcoin reached mainstream acceptance, a new buzzword concept came along: the ‘supercycle’. With institutions, countries, and companies warming up to the idea that Bitcoin could be a store of value and currency, Bitcoin would break the standard 4-year cycle and grow into something else.

In parallel, crypto and web3 advertising will see its own supercycle of sorts. More specifically, we’ll see more industry-native brands advertise on traditional channels and partner with traditional brands and we’ll see industry-native products become advertising channels, eventually attracting traditional brands.

There’s nothing new about the former, but it feels like sponsorships years ago which were seen as a joke are becoming common. Remember when Staples Center (home of the Los Angeles Lakers, LA Kings, and other events) was renamed to Crypto.com Arena in 2021?

The name change was the butt of jokes and memes for weeks and it felt weird to say “Crypto.com Arena” since it was called Staples Center for 20+ years.

These naming rights, sponsorships, and ads going through web2 channels will continue to proliferate. What were a few that recently caught my eye?

Web3 advertising in web2

Ledger x San Antonio Spurs

Earlier this week the San Antonio Spurs announced that their new jersey sponsor would be Ledger, the hardware wallet company.

These deals are valued at tens of millions per year based on a variety of factors (team record, market they play in, sponsorship terms), and Ledger is showing that they’ve joined an exclusive group of companies that have the budget for these major sponsorships.

Another incentive for this deal to happen is the fact that Ledger is a French company, and the star player on the Spurs is the French phenom Victor Wembanyama 🇫🇷

Coinbase x US Army

Coinbase has moved on from the more typical sponsorships (the NBA, Golden State Warriors, LA Clippers, Borussia Dortmund, Canadian Football League and branched out to the…US Army for their 250th anniversary celebration a couple weeks ago.

A sensitive decision to make, but I’m assuming market research indicated this was a good idea.

Pudgy Penguins x NASCAR

Earlier this month Pudgy Penguins announced that they will be “partnering with NASCAR to bring Pengu to NASCAR fans worldwide”.

The details for this partnership are sparse, so it’s hard to say how much of a sponsorship this is versus a broader co-marketing opportunity across audiences. That said, if penguins were driving in NASCAR I’d be glued to my screen whenever the races happen hehe 🏁

Web3 advertising in web3

And that leads to the ‘super’ portion of the advertising supercycle:

• The crypto/web3 audience is growing even if it feels like it isn’t

• More ad inventory is coming online

• Wallets are data and targeting goldmines

Regarding the last point, Spindl (attribution, analytics, ads platform acquired by Coinbase) recently shared a case study on a wallet-connected ad campaign with Morpho (onchain lending platform) on Coinbase Wallet.

The results?

• 6x CTR vs. other channels

• One Spindl ad network publisher was a top three channel in driving onchain volume

• Another ad network publisher drove a 10% conversion rate from wallet connect to deposit (50% wallet connect, 20% onchain deposit), which is reallllyyyyy high

More sophisticated KPIs, targeting strategies, and data best practices from channels outside of web3 are starting to come in. Well, they have been for some time, but it’s fair to say that it’s becoming widely accepted now.

Web2 advertising in web3

I guess this part is the actual ‘super’ portion of the advertising supercycle.

We’ve seen a wave of crypto companies make big splashy ads and sponsorships on traditional media and channels, web3 companies get smarter with performance marketing through onchain channels, but what about traditional web2 companies targeting us?

This is of course much different than the Pudgy x NASCAR partnership, or when brands experimented with NFTs.

IMO these advertising budgets will arrive because of the valuable transaction data that wallets have leading to successful marketing campaigns, as we’ve seen with the Morpho campaign on Coinbase Wallet, run through Spindl.

We’re already seeing ads in our non-crypto digital wallets. This week Apple got some flak for pushing an ad for the F1 movie and Fandango in the Apple Wallet app.

On a personal note, this is sorta cool because I’m a F1 fan and already reserved tickets to watch the movie this weekend, and I haven’t gone to a movie theater in a over a year, so that says a lot!

Anyway, if we’re seeing these offers ads in the Apple Wallet, you’re gonna see ads in your crypto wallets. And if they aren’t straight up ads, they’ll be offers like above.

Naturally, this leads to other important topics especially relevant in the onchain world, such as privacy and user’s owning (and having the right to sell and earn from) their data. This tension will grow as more ad inventory comes online that becomes more intrusive or too on point. Fortunately, this space is world class at incentive building, and ideally this turns into a win-win-win situation (advertiser, publisher/wallet, user).

The cycle of crypto companies advertising on traditional channels has happened, is happening again, and will continue to happen. However, in the coming months and years we’ll see traditional companies and brands start advertising on our homecourt (and hopefully we get a cut if we want!).

Would you prefer to get paid for receiving ads if you had to? If so, share or subscribe!

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Tether's distribution and adoption strategy

Earlier this week I listened to the Bankless podcast episode featuring Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin. Despite USDT being the dominant stablecoin used globally, I’m not familiar with it so this episode was particularly insightful. Some episode highlights from my perspective:

• Tether made $13.7 billion in profits in 2024 and is on pace for an even bigger 2025 🤯

• They hold >$125 billion in US treasuries and are the 5th largest buyer of US treasuries

• 450 million users and gains 30 million new wallets per quarter

• Diversifying their balance sheet and investments with 100k Bitcoin, aiming to the be largest Bitcoin miner by EOY

• Have a large investment portfolio to expand their global reach

These figures are massive, but the most interesting part of the episode for me was the last point. When you have half a billion wallets/users how do you keep growing? How do you retain users and dominance of your stablecoin with growing competition?

For Tether it’s a few things.

Creating use cases for consumers

Tether built 500 kiosks with solar panels and rechargeable batteries in Africa, allowing residents without electricity keep their devices powered. Subscriptions are priced at 3 USDT per month and there are already 500,000 users (which I assume means subscribers) making 10 million battery swaps.

By the end of 2026, the initiative plans to expand to 10,000 kiosks and 100,000 by 2030.

This is notable because this initiative involves:

• User acquisition: Subscribers have to pay in USDT

• Retention and engagement: Monthly subscription

Creating use cases for institutions

Tether has also been purchasing land and agricultural companies. The land and companies are investments that can appreciate in value, but the larger motivation for these investments is to show how the commodities grown and sold can become commoditized and traded via…USDT.

Sponsorships and Partnerships

And of course, the industry favorite sports sponsorships. But in the case of the Tether and its mountains of cash (almost literally lol), they own stakes in the team themselves.

The founders are Italian, so they hold a 10% stake in the popular Italian football club Juventus.

Juventus (and many other football clubs) are no strangers to crypto, and Juventus even has its own fan token, JUV. Beyond that, Juventus has a fanbase of 340 million (not sure how that’s measured) and 60 million followers across social media channels, making it a lucrative distribution and integration channel for USDT.

On top of that, Tether has invested in and is the native token for transaction fees for Plasma and Stable blockchains specialized for stablecoin usage.

Tether is an outlier in terms of companies that have a boatloads of capital to deploy, build, and experiment, but their approach for distribution, engagement, and retention is one that everyone can learn from.

See you next week!

• Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill, providing a regulatory framework for stablecoin adoption and usage in the US. It still needs to be voted on by the House 🤞

• Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, IPO’ed 2 weeks ago at $31 and recently tapped $200 with a chart outperforming 99.99% of memecoins

• Retailers like Walmart and Amazon are actively looking into offering their own stablecoins

• Tech companies such as Apple, X, and Airbnb are actively looking to integrate stablecoins into their respective platforms and products

• Major US banks are considering launching a joint stablecoin

At this point, if you’re a Fortune 500 and not actively looking into stablecoin adoption or integration, you’re probably in the minority.

Even though crypto adoption isn’t looking like how some of us imagined (ahem plz save my underwater nft bags 😭), we’re getting it! And the reasons for it have been themes some of us have been repeating over and over again for years, if not decades.

Why Stablecoins? (Business POV)

Simple, it’s more efficient. And when I say more efficient, it’s faster, cheaper, and more scalable.

Faster

Card transactions take days to finalize due to cutoff windows, weekend and holiday gaps, and process batching. Ever had to put down a deposit for a hotel stay and wait several days for the $200+ hold to disappear? Maybe it’s my OCD mindset, sigh.

Stablecoins settle in seconds (if not less), and that capital is stuck in transaction purgatory waiting to become productive again.

Cheaper

Card transactions involve multiple parties:

• Merchant: Walmart, Amazon, your local coffee shop

• Issuing Bank: The consumer’s bank

• Acquiring Bank: The merchant’s bank

• Card Network: Visa, Mastercard, Discover, which help facilitate the transaction between the issuing and acquiring bank

• Payment processor: Stripe, Square, PayPal, etc., which help to facilitate the transaction between parties

These parties all have an important role and each applies a fee for every transaction, which end up being around ~1-3% based on a variety of factors. Merchants eat that cost, and ultimately increase their prices and consumers end up paying. In short:

Sam Broner from a16z presents the benefits of stablecoin transactions nicely, pointing out how this benefits all of these involved parties.

Scalable

Making a $100,000 purchase? Need to make an international transaction halfway around the world? The gas costs remain a fraction of a cent and stablecoins can be used regardless of location.

Why Stablecoins? (Consumer POV)

The articles I linked above and all the recent headlines have been around retailers, platforms, and financial institutions. But what about consumers?

It makes sense that the end user hasn’t been brought up yet because we need to get the big players who have the distribution firepower to get onboard first. And TBH, I think they’re still figuring out how to communicate this to their respective audiences.

The benefits for consumers not based in the US or developed countries are clear. A digital dollar is a no-brainer if your local currency is inflating faster than Circle’s price, or if you need to send money overseas regularly. And everyone else?

I think we’ll see an evolution of how consumer incentives will evolve with the introduction and integration of stablecoins as a payment method. And the nice thing is, we’re not reinventing the wheel here. We’re simply adding another spoke or changing the rims to be more flashy 🛞

Here’s 7 ways I think stablecoins will be introduced to the public and how they will incentivize adoption, passing along some of the benefits to consumers. Companies should and will be…incentivized (heh) to make this a win-win with consumers, creating a new dimension around incentives, payment methods, rewards, and benefits will look like.

Note that these are hypotheticals and may have some legal or regulatory considerations. But as the saying goes, show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome. And the incentives are pretty damn big.

1. Rewards Programs

Every company listed in the first paragraph has some form of a rewards or incentive program to increase sales, transaction volume, or retain users.

I like to pick on Chase’s Sapphire credit card program because I am a Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) cardholder. Also, they are revamping their program which will launch next week.

What are they doing? Well…they’re increasing their annual fee to $795, holy shit.

BUT…you get all these AWESOME perks you get to brag about to your friends because that’s what life’s about, right?

• (❗️NEW) 8x points on Chase Travel for flights, hotels, etc.

• (❗️NEW) 4x points on non-Chase airline and hotel purchases

• (❗️NEW) Up to $500 credit for The Edit hotel and resorts bookings

• $300 credit for travel purchases

• Access to the Chase Sapphire Lounge Network at airports around the world

• (❗️NEW) IHG One Rewards Platinum Elite status

• (❗️NEW) $300 annual dining credit for restaurants that are a part of the Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables program

• And countless other existing and new perks

I’m listing these to show how perk heavy these premium credit cards are now, to the point where I may cancel the card because I didn’t sign up for a ‘make your credit card worth the $8,500 annual fee’ scavenger hunt.

Sorry, didn’t mean to rant about the weird path credit cards rewards programs have gone down. Black Mirror needs to make an episode about this.

The point is there are a couple of opportunities for stablecoin integration into these bank-issued credit cards:

• Ditch the word points and replace it with dollars, the Chase Dollar

• Earn X% back on purchases made with Chase Dollars

Credit card rewards programs are all about incentives, and adoption will come if the incentives are appealing enough. These programs certainly know a thing or two about that.

2. Cashback platforms

Cashback platforms are another clear as day wedge for stablecoin (and wallet) integration.

These platforms direct traffic to retailers who offer X% cash back deals, promotions, and sales. Some of these retailers have different cash back offers based on the purchase category.

These cashback platforms could integrate stablecoins in multiple ways

• Increase the cashback reward for any purchase made with stablecoins

• Partner with merchants for stablecoin-specific deals and promos

• Introduce their own stablecoin Rakuten Bucks (plz don’t use that name lol)

• Introduce a Rakuten wallet to store the Rakuten Bucks

• Add a bonus multiplier in Rakuten Bucks when your selected payment method is the Rakuten wallet vs. the current options of a physical check, PayPal, or AMEX rewards points

Should consumer receive more benefits for stablecoin usage? If so, share or subscribe!

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3. Payment method incentives

In addition to my CSR card, I also have a Chase Amazon Prime credit card which is fortunately much more straightforward. The biggest perk is I get 5% back on all my Amazon purchases, yippee!

At some point in the last year or so, I noticed that Amazon introduced another incentive, a 6% back offer on select items if I choose a slightly delayed shipping option.

If Amazon is already implementing incentives to encourage users to choose shipping dates to optimize their shipping ops + logistics, they certainly can incentivize them to use other types of payment methods as well, like Amazon Dollars.

4. Gift Card balances ➡️ Stablecoin balances

As merchants start rolling out their own stablecoin programs, it will be a hefty rollout and go-to-market effort. However, the reality is if positioned thoughtfully, it won’t be hard for consumers to grasp what stablecoins are and why they’re better. They’re essentially a supercharged gift card program, and we know how those work.

They’re dollars that can be used within that merchant’s platform, or the web2 version of stablecoins on a closed network.

If merchants like Amazon are incentivized to increase stablecoin transaction volume for reduced costs and increased margins, they could create new programs to promote adoption and usage:

• Create a cashback bonus like the Amazon Day 6% cashback incentive above

• Create a volume based bonus, eg: Make 10 Amazon Dollar purchases and receive X incentive, Make $1,000 in Amazon Dollar purchases and receive X incentive

• Create a habit-based bonus, eg: Reload your Amazon Dollar balance 10 times with $100+ reloads and receive X incentive

Gift card related incentives aren’t new, but now there’s even more incentive beyond the purchase of the gift card itself.

On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if gift card purchases paid in fiat will be redeemed as merchant-specific stablecoin dollars in the near future.

5. Vendor and affiliate payouts and promotions

With faster transaction finality and lower fees/higher margins, vendors and affiliates downstream of the platform benefit as well.

Optimistically, this has a positive tricke-down effect with more capital reinvested into customer acquisition and retention with better incentives. And if one platform and its network doesn’t do it, another one will in its stead, implementing a richer incentive program via stablecoins.

6. Incentivized and survey platforms

Similar to cashback platforms, there is a stablecoin and wallet opportunity. Instead of providing cashback from transactions, these platforms provide payouts or rewards to users for completing surveys or specific tasks.

Payment methods have improved over the years to PayPal accounts or giftcards, but nothing beats (digital) cash.

One rewards platform I stumbled upon earlier this week is EarnOS, which incorporates wallets and stablecoins for payouts. It’s currently in beta, but provides an idea of what a modern rewards app using stablecoins could look like.

Going back to the traditional gift cards as a payout method, merchants could create redemption bonuses for stablecoin-specific payouts as another incentive opportunity.

7. Refunds

The refund process sucks, and I have a personal and timely example of this. I was supposed to go to a comedy show tonight, but yesterday I received an email notifying me that the event was cancelled. Bummer, when do I get a refund?

• 30 DAYS?!

• Usually?!

I get that the event organizer (Cobb’s Comedy Club) needs to send the funds back to the ticketing platform, which will then refund me and that takes some time. That said, I don’t see how 30 days is an acceptable timeframe for a refund these days, especially since my OCD will compel me to monitor this regularly 🫩

Stablecoin payments will help expedite refund processes for negative experiences like these.

As much fun as NFTs and memecoins have been (I still believe in a bright future for both), it seems that stablecoins have been anointed as the chosen onramp for mass market crypto adoption, and I’m here for it.

Less speculation, less complexity, more practicality.

See you next week!

Rekt sells 180k drinks in 17 minutes

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about REKT and the introduction a new subcategory of memecoin: brand coins. Rekt’s public push was ahead of the launch of their newest drink flavor Ship Rekt in collaboration with OpenSea.

How did the drop work?

• Ship Rekt dropped in the form of NFTs on OpenSea

• There were two collections: one for USA/Canada and the other for UK/EU/Rest of World

• Each collection had a supply of 3,750 NFTs was priced at 0.029 ETH (~$75 at the time of mint) on Abstract

• Each NFT is redeemable for a 24-pack of Ship Rekt on a Rekt’s website with a 3 day redemption window

Unless you’re a diehard community member and Rekt fan, why bother? And how the hell did this mint out in 17 minutes, effectively selling 180k drinks?! 🤯

Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome

These Ship Rekt NFTs don’t just get you some tasty drinks. Redeeming the NFT gets you a juicy 4-in-1 deal:

1. The Ship Rekt drink

2. OpenSea XP for their eventual token

3. Abstract XP for their eventual token

4. Rekt DRANK points for their next REKT airdrop, which is already live

Whether your primary reason for redeeming is for the drink itself, to support the Rekt brand, or finding additional ways to gain XP for eventual airdrops efficiently, the answer is yes.

These types of cross-promo + co-marketing efforts exist in our everyday lives, reminding me of credit card cash back bonus and brand loyalty partnership promotions.

Use your Chase card for Amazon, streaming services, or your internet/cable/phone bill in Q2 and get 5% cash back (via XP points). Earn 2x Starbucks Stars and miles every time you reload your Starbucks Rewards account with $25+.

The Ship Rekt drop employs a similar strategy, with the caveats that no one knows what the XP to token conversion rate is and the value of the token itself since they aren’t out yet.

Creating a friendly rivalry

Why create two geofenced collections? To create some friendly rivalry and increase the chances of a sellout of course!

Thanks to Rekt’s global community, this created some good-natured jabbing and cheerleading from both sides. The founder OSF joined in on the fun as well, setting up a poll to fan the flames.

In the end, the US/CA collection minted out in ~10 minutes and the UK/EU/RoW collection followed suit 7 minutes later.

Setting goals and milestones

The Rekt team also set public goals and milestones, encouraging more drinks sold at a faster and faster pace. The About tab of the NFT collections calls out how quickly previous drops sold out, subconsciously creating urgency to purchase instead of a wait-and-see approach.

After the successful sellout, OSF reminds everyone what has been achieved so far.

This type provides anchoring on several levels:

• Each drop is sold out

• Drops are sold out in a matter of hours and now minutes, faster every time

• The goal is to sell 1 million drinks, and once that’s achieved add a 0?

Why create a NFT collection though?

We now understand why the collections sold out so quickly. But why create a NFT collection instead and require an extra redemption step instead of just selling DTC on the website. A few reasons.

The Partner

The Ship Rekt launch was in partnership with OpenSea, so it naturally made sense that there would be a NFT collection minted on their platform as a collaborative effort.

The Art

OSF is also an artist, so there may be some people who minted multiple NFTs and decide not to redeem one (or more) of them to keep as a part of their digital art collection.

Creating an additional revenue stream and margin opportunity

The NFT collection has a 5% creator fee on secondary market transactions, creating an additional revenue stream. At the time of this writing, there is 250 ETH ($600k) of secondary volume which means an additional $30k in revenue.

On top of that, if some of NFTs aren’t redeemed for collecting or forgetfulness reasons, increasing revenue margin.

As unfortunate as it’s been to see almost every major web2 brand shutter their efforts (RIP Starbucks, Nike, and many more 💀, shoutout to Flow and Disney though!), it’s great to see crypto-native brands take the baton and continue pushing adoption forward.

Have you purchased a drink before? If so, share or subscribe!

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LOUDIOOoooooh no…a post-mortem

I’ll admit I was wayyyyy too optimistic about this one when I wrote about it last week.

Although this was an interesting experiment in theory, there were multiple factors that caused the screams of “Loud”, “Loudio” and “$LOUD” to gradually fade into whispers:

• 4% of the swap volume funded the mindshare prize pool, but other liquidity pools with much lower fees popped up and sucked up the volume because they didn’t need a hefty fee to fund said prize pool. As a result, the mindshare pool grew at a slower and slower pace instead of ballooning to a number that could create a positive attention flywheel

• LOUD was not a pure memecoin nor was it a token related to a product. If a token is in no-man’s land, it’s appealing to no one and doesn’t have a good narrative.

• Kaito, the InfoFi partner that Loudio worked with to create the leaderboards, has many toggles to customize scoring (loyalty, insightfulness, sentiment, reputation etc.). Loudio decided to optimize the leaderboards for awareness.

• Market conditions. Although Bitcoin is still flirting with all-time highs, almost everything else is in a much less comfy position, especially memecoins.

Quoting boot and Breadguy with some key learnings:

Loudio has categorically proven that timeline mindshare does not correlate 1:1 with price action.

Attention is needed, but it's not all you need.

And lastly, influencer x product fit matters. Sounds obvious (and it sorta is), and Loudio’s free for all leaderboard optimized for pure awareness and mindshare show that.

You wouldn’t want a bald person to promote shampoo (although that’d be funny and could work). In a similar vein, many of the individuals on the mindshare leaderboard aren’t known for trading memecoins, so why would you buy it because they talk about them?

And lastly (again lol)…I wonder if the overtransparent nature of the Loud’s mindshare prize pool approach is unappealing in a ‘the rich get richer’ sort of way (influencers were able to access a presale and sell at ~100x out the gate). When you purchase a memecoin, the odds are grossly stacked against you, but that reality is obfuscated by Telegram communities, a funny meme, and scammy strategies. As sketchy as that it, it makes the average memecoin buyer more comfortable.

Imagine if you go to a casino and sit at the blackjack table or your slot machine and there’s a digital sign that says “today, we’ve made $41,859,198 from awesome patrons like YOU” with the number updating every 10 minutes. Doesn’t feel great…

In a counterintuitive way, too much transparency may be counterproductive to number go up.

GRIND partners with Slingshot

As one attention token rides off into the sunset that is 0, another one takes its place. GRIND is an attention token created by Pons and The Plague NFT team, which has been around for a few years.

What caught my eye about this token is that they partnered with Slingshot (crypto trading mobile app):

• Users sign up with Pons’ referral code ‘Pons’

• All trading fees will go back to the GRIND team

• The team will split those fees

  • 50% of all fees collected will go toward the buyback and burning GRIND token

  • 40% of all fees will go towards marketing or the LP

  • 10% of all fees will go to the community of your choice

What’s happening is this:

Slingshot flips its fee revenue into user acquisition spend, while GRIND gets an external funding source. This is a creative partnership (this reminds me of the OKX Wallet x Stakestone airdrop) and I expect more flavors of this to pop up.

New stablecoin reports

Stablecoins continue to be one of the major topics and use cases everyone can agree upon in crypto, and a couple new reports were published with some impressive stats.

Fireblocks: State of Stablecoins

Fireblocks surveyed 295 payment providers, banks, and fintech companies and shared some notable insights:

• 90% are using, pilot testing, or planning stablecoin payments

• 86% are ready to support stablecoin integration

• 71% in Latam use stablecoins for cross-border payments

Artemis: Stablecoin Payments from the Ground Up

The actual report (you’re welcome for sparing you from an email signup 😉)

Artemis spoke with dozens of companies to understand how stablecoins are used, gather estimates, and analyzed blockchain data around the $250B stablecoin space.

What stuck out the most to me was how stablecoin volume by blockchain differs drastically by country, even if they’re in the same region. Network effects are very real.

Onchain credit scores with 3Jane

Earlier today I came across 3Jane, a ‘credit-based money market’. I am not qualified to speak about the details of how it works, but in short it’s a credit line based on onchain (wallet) and offchain data sources (Credit Karma, bank accounts, Coinbase account).

By just connecting my wallet, I can access 528 USDC at a 10.92% APR. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but this is just with Jane analyzing it in 15 seconds. No background check, no credit history, just onchain history for one wallet.

I can increase my credit line by up to 4.5x and decrease my APR up to 2x through Credit Karma via zkTLS, and I can increase my credit line up to 2x by connecting my bank account via Plaid.

This is the first instance where I’ve come across a meaningful use case of zkTLS, which I covered last year. Pretty cool if you ask me!

And that’s the roundup, did you make it till the end?

I’ll be out next week, so see you in 2 weeks!

Well get ready to mute those terms, or let the chaos of the Loud experiment commence!

A small team introduced Loud, a tokenized attention experiment. We already have memecoins which are essentially tokenized attention, but this one is arguably a purer form of this.

What is Loud?

Earlier this week, 0x_ultra shared an overview of Loud and what it was all about:

• Kaito has built a platform that measures attention and allows it to be monetized. This ‘InfoFi’ movement has spawned additional platforms, tools, and marketplaces to incentivize content creation to drive attention to specific topics, ecosystems, and products in return for tokens and other rewards.

• Believe has created more effective incentive alignment between builders and speculators

• Loud combines these two concepts to become self-sustaining

  • Yappers talk about Loud

  • Speculators trade LOUD token

  • Trading fees are collected and distributed to the top 25 weekly Loud yappers

  • The flywheel repeats and sustains indefinitely

• The token has no inherent utility and becomes a proxy for attention

• Yapper mindshare and ranking for LOUD is determined by Kaito’s algorithms, and rewards are proportionally distributed

To showcase Loud mechanics in action, the team released LOUD launch details earlier today with the (first?) Initial Attention Offering, or IAO which will happen on Saturday, May 31st (in 2 days):

• 45% of the LOUD token supply will be sold in 2 phases

  • Phase 1, Priority Access: Top 1,000 LOUD yappers. The leaderboard is tracked here

  • Phase 2, Community Access: Kaito users with a linked Solana address and 10+ smart followers (a set of Crypto Twitter accounts with the highest inter-following ratios within the CT social graph, signifying a high-quality user). This phase will be FCFS (first come first served) with ~120k wallets that currently qualify. This number will increase leading up to the IAO.

What’s the point of Loud?

This is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard TPan.

And if that’s what you’re thinking, I agree…to a degree 😉

Skeptical folks like Xeer are prudently calling out the short-term attractiveness of the experiment, and the reality that some participants aren’t thinking about the medium to longterm implications around the tradeoffs some creators will be making by constantly posting about Loud.

Reputational risk is the primary reason why professional accounts like founders and VC’s aren’t participating.

Cobie subtweeted Loud and the general theme of the ‘pigeonification’ of crypto Twitter, calling out the increasingly eroding quality of content in the space with very valid points.

What’s the point of Loud? Why is it interesting?

So if that’s the case, WTF is the point of Loud? Why is everyone talking about it? And when I mean everyone, I mean 57.80% of mindshare in the pre-TGE (projects that haven’t launched a token yet, not all topics in crypto/web3) category is about Loud.

Loud’s posts are getting botted, with the IAO article getting thousands of replies, reposts, likes, and 1.7M views.

Loud isn’t just loud. It’s a lot of loud noise.

But what if there was so much noise that signal could actually come from it? That’s what I’m curious about, and I think there are some early signs of that.

Becoming unignorable with (3,3) and a large rewards pool

Regardless of how silly or interesting we think the Loud experiment is, it’s worth following at least at a high level.

Breadguy simplifies the main points of Loud with the Prisoner’s Dilemma concept of (3,3), where both parties cooperate for the optimal outcome for both sides. For Loud, the two parties are the yappers and the speculators.

In the ideal scenario and likely in the short term: Yappers yap ➡️ Speculators buy ➡️ Price go up ➡️ everyone happy ➡️ positive reinforcing loop.

At some point with most things in this space, the music eventually stops. Less speculators come in and there are more sellers ➡️ Price stagnates or goes down ➡️ Yappers yap less ➡️ everyone abandons ship ➡️ negative reinforcing loop.

Both sides have to cooperate to keep the Loud machine humming yapping.

And what would the best case scenario look like? Ultra lays it out for us. Sounds crazy, but there’s a non-zero chance and crazier things have happened.

As a simple comp, Believe’s most traded token is Gooncoin, with $279M in trading volume in the past ~2 weeks (total platform volume is $3.4B 😵). Believe applies a 2% fee on trades, which are split 50/50 between the platform and the creator.

This means Gooncoin has earned a total of $5.58M in fees total (token price is volatile so it’s less but still several million).

LOUD will have a 4% trading fee with 72% of the fee going to the mindshare pool. So to reach a $1M prize pool, there would need to be ~$35M in trading volume. Considering how much attention Loud already has pre-launch, a million dollar mindshare prize pool (in SOL) doesn’t sound as crazy as it sounds.

Countless celebrities have dabbled in crypto, NFTs, and memecoins. What’s a few posts about Loud over the course of a week for a quick 6 figure or more payday? And with no legal risk that comes with launching a memecoin or NFT collection? Cha-ching! 🤑

Creating an ecosystem out of noise

If Loud gets noisy enough, a community will organically form and with it an ecosystem.

• Builders will create additional tools and dashboards to track LOUD and the Loud ecosystem

• NFT collections will be minted

• Memecoin derivatives will launch

• Loud and LOUD will get integrated into other products and platforms

The last point seems to be happening already. Fantasy Top, the popular SocialFi game already shared early sneak peeks of a Loud integration, which will help creators provide revshare to their followers if they get into the Top 25 for the mindshare rewards pool.

Behavioral changes from content creators

We’re already seeing content creators pivot their strategy to position themselves ahead of the IAO and mindshare leaderboards, some more unapologetically than others:

• Follow for follow

• Farming engagement for a Smart Follower follow back since you need at least 10 Smart Followers to qualify for a shot at the Phase 2 sale of the IAO

• Posting memes about Loud

• Signing off posts about other topics with Loudio, a tactic which I’ve detailed in a previous post

• Sharing earnings with audience if they follow the creator’s accounts on other platforms

Versions of this have existed before

Although Loud has incorporated more cogs into the flywheel to make things more interesting, it isn’t a completely new idea.

In late 2023, Portalcoin ran a campaign incentivizing users to engage with the brand account and post about the project. Posts that received engagement earned points, which were converted to crystals and eventually the PORTAL token. The feed was littered with posts on PORTAL, similar to what some of us are seeing today with Loud.

The big difference here is that the rewards were in PORTAL token, while Loud’s mindshare pool is in SOL. Also, Loud is using Kaito to measure mindshare while Portal didn’t have the same tooling to filter the noise from the…noise.

Simpler non-financialized versions of Loud have existed as well. Remember the Instagram egg?

This 2019 post had a simple goal: To become the most liked post on Instagram. The post broke the previous record of 18.4M likes in 10 days and reached 45M likes by day 12. Currently, the post sits at 60.6M likes.

In many ways, Loud is like the egg but with a financial twist: What if you could put a value on the attention that something receives and reward those who drive the most attention towards it sustainably?

The evolution of attention financialization and attention markets

Again, it’s completely fair to think that Loud is a crock of shit. And my response to that is that’s sorta the point. The more important questions are can this crock of shit be useful? How big can this pile of shit get? What happens if it gets so big that the smell wafts beyond the petri dish Loud originated from? Can this last beyond a day or even a couple of weeks?

Besides the top 25 users who get a cut of the weekly mindshare pool, the clear winner here is Kaito and other InfoFi platforms. They’re presented with a live case study of what it looks like when a new entrant becomes a mindshare blackhole. What happens when the timeline is overwhelmingly flooded with talk about a single topic that came out of left field?

Loud was literally at 0 a week ago. Meanwhile, other tracked topics have been at it for months and years.

Even if LOUD flops out the gate, you can make an argument that Loud was already successful, albeit for a small number of players.

And it’s good to zoom out to the larger point that the Loud team is making and looking to answer:

This is an experiment on if attention is really all you need to make something valuable. If something has attention, does price follow and vice versa?

Influencers and creators across all formats accrue attention and charge sponsors for it /get payouts. Ads are inserted between shows and events, both IRL or on the screen. And if you don’t want ads? Well you gotta pay for that too.

Smart contracts and blockchain expand how attention is getting financialized, monetized, and conceptualized. Even if it started as nothing.

See you next week!

Loudio (lol)

Alright, on to the serious stuff.

REKT and brand coins

Over the past years, we’ve seen the memecoins proliferate to a point where there are subcategories of them. From my piece on memecoins last year, we’ve seen these terms pop up along with others that I didn’t mention below (celebcoins, startupcoins à la Believe, etc.)

And now we have a new genre of memecoin, “brand coins” with REKT claiming the title of the first. For REKT’s third anniversary, the founder OSF shared a post detailing the history, thesis, and vision for REKT as a brand coin.

TLDR of Rekt brand history:

• OSF was a former trader (and still trades) who started creating digital art during the height of the NFT cycle

• May 2022: The REKT brand started as a free mint NFT collection with no proceeds or roadmap

• Summer 2023: As the Rektguy community grew, OSF and team explored products for the emerging Rekt brand and landed on drinks. Mass marketable and on brand (all Rektguys are drinking from a bottle like the above).

• Early 2024: The team manufactured the first batch of 10k drinks, brought them to IRL events, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback

• April 2024: Rekt Brands (parent company) gave 10% of the company equity to NFT holders, further aligning the company and community. Details here

• October 2024: Manufactured 250k drinks and sold out in <48 hours

• November 2024: Raised $1.5M

• November 2024: Launched the REKT token to the ecosystem

• May 2025: Launched a new flavor in partnership with the Abstract blockchain, and sold 223k drinks in 40 minutes

The history and milestones OSF shared are important because he’s making the case that rekt isn’t just a NFT collection, product, or token. It’s all these things and more: it’s a brand with traction.

So where does the concept of a brand coin come in? I don’t want to butcher OSF’s take, so here it is in its entirety and is worth reading, at minimum as a thought exercise:

While REKT is a memecoin, if you have spent a lot of time in memecoins you will know that the term is actually rather broad. There are internet memes such as PEPE, there are celebrity coins such as TRUMP, there are culture coins such as MOG, etc etc. These all fall into the category of a memecoin, and the common denominator for the most successful coins is that they are relatable and something a large group of people identify with. I feel BOTH of these points describe the feelings of our community to the concept of REKT.

However, REKT is not a concept that fits into any of the former sub-categories. Rekt Brands is a brand that encompasses a range of ideologies including aggressive risk taking, degeneracy and the ability to survive even when you’re down bad. Rekt Drinks are the tangible engine to the brand, but like Red Bull or Monster Energy, REKT is more than just a drinks company, it’s a way of life.

Now, let’s say you’re a fan of an upcoming brand (in any industry), you probably buy a lot of their products and express some loyalty to them, and are rooting for them to make it big. One day you will boast about how you “found them first”. However, beyond bragging rights, you have nothing to really show for your vision.

Now, imagine that this brand had an official coin. The coin does not own any of the IP or technically benefit from any of the company’s revenues unless the company decided to buyback the coin like Rekt Brands has, however, it is an asset that appreciates in price due to speculation, attention and an improving sentiment for the company it references. It is not a security or a financial instrument, it has no inherent value, yet its price moves up as the company expands and gains success.

Now as the brand succeeds, you can show off how early you were, how much you supported and believed in the vision. Additionally, as the brand succeeds and the brand coins price increases, not only did the brand and its shareholders win, you won too. The brand also has a mechanism to easily track who believed and followed them, who supported at every opportunity.

This is, what I am officially classifying as a “brand coin”. A brand coin is a token for supporters of a brand; it’s for fans who may not have the opportunity or capital to invest in a private seed round, but should be rewarded for their loyalty and playing an instrumental part in a brand’s success.

And this is exactly what REKT is.

Does REKT own the Rekt IP? No. Does REKT earn revenues from Rekt Drinks sales? Not strictly. Does REKT share company profits with its holders? No. However, if REKT Brands and Rekt Drinks becomes a globally recognised brand, will REKT appreciate in price? The answer is almost certainly yes, not to mention Rekt Brands Inc. has also been repurchasing REKT from drinks revenues.

Brand coins as a proxy for brand value

A couple years ago I wrote What is the Value of a Brand, making the argument that owning a NFT does not represent ownership in a company, but rather ownership in the brand of a company. And as 99.9% of NFT collections trended to 0, the collections that still hold some degree of value today confirm that.

To emphasize that point, I pulled a chart from the most valuable brands in 2022 and what % that amount was compared to the company’s market cap.

Analyses like the above prove that brand value:

• Can be quantified

• Actually is valuable

• Grows as the company grows

OSF’s argument with REKT as a brand coin adds one more point to the concept brand value: it can be represented by a token.

Where can brand coins go?

OSF is on to something intriguing with the positioning of REKT as a brand coin. If we’re on the path of tokenizing everything from stocks to Pokemon cards to memes, why can’t you tokenize something like a brand as well?

And if we lean into the concept of brand loyalty and fandom, brand coins (along with NFTs) are a great vehicle to symbolize precisely that. The amount you hold represents how much of a fan you are, based on a combination of how early you were and/or how much you’ve purchased. There’s no ‘real’ value in the coin, and there is no explicit utility in the practical sense.

This is no different than collecting memorabilia, trading cards, or Pop Mart Labubu’s (all the rage right now), but in a digital fungible format.

I don’t expect brand coins to start spawning out of nowhere like your 59848922th animal memecoin, or another NFT collection promising to be better than all the rest. In fact, I think very few will be able to pull it off in the way REKT has due to investor considerations, speculation, and execution risk for the token itself.

One thing’s for sure though. The concepts of brand loyalty and fandom are evolving, and brand coins are pushing the edges of what they can look like.

Do you think brand coins will be a thing? Share your opinion by sharing or subscribing!

Polymarket's experiments with awareness and gamification

As Polymarket’s posts periodically make their way to my newsfeed, I’ve noticed that their cotent strategy has diversified to stay top of mind as the leading prediction market ($800M+ in monthly volume still!).

Highlighting user behavior

Last month, Polymarket’s account showcased a user who held ‘No’ positions on almost everything with lifetime profit of $2M+.

Although this user’s ‘only no’ strategy was quickly debunked, the post was already blessed by the algorithm gods and the brand account cheekily replied to the callout.

User profiles, positions, and performance are public, so Polymarket has another category of content to post to keep things fresh.

Clickbait prediction market titles

The vast majority of Polymarket prediction markets have clear titles, such as ‘NBA Champion’, ‘Fed decision in June?’, or ‘Poland Presidential Election’. However, there was one that caught my eye last month, “Nothing Ever Happens”.

Although this post was nowhere near as viral as the previous example, this one got me to click on the link to see what the hell this meant. Turns out this prediction market was essentially a parlay (multi-condition bet) that several events would not happen, hence the title.

The market was popular enough that Polymarket created a new May edition with different conditions.

Controversial topics: Prisoner parlays

Last week, 10 inmates escaped a New Orleans prison, with 5 of them remaining at large. What did Polymarket do? Launch a prediction market and post about it of course.

Although the prediction market itself has very little volume ($12k at the moment), the post went viral (and is currently the pinned post on the brand account) because of the topic and how it turned into something that could be bet on.

The post is distasteful for some while entertaining for others, and underscores the reality that you really can bet on anything. And in the attention game, controversy wins.

Polymarket’s content strategy continues to impress me with their creative approach towards promoting topics and gamifying them, especially in a vertical that has historically been more vanilla (they’ve been experimenting with this for a while). It’s a moat that seems like they’ll hold onto for a while.

See you next week!

As the buzz around Believe took off, the term “ICM” (Internet Capital Markets) started making its rounds again, reminding me of the chaotic weeks post-TRUMP memecoin back in January. I mean, remember my pieces on VINE and jellyjelly (holding at $48M and $35M market caps which, all things considered are respectable)?

It’s round 2 for the ICM movement and it’s off to a strong start so far.

Clout

To understand Believe, we have to understand what Believe was formerly known as, Clout. During the initial ICM movement back in January, I caught wind of the Clout app, which I found interesting. It was a mix of Bitclout and friend.tech, allowing vetted creators launch a token and create token-gated chatrooms for their token holders. Each creator token had a presale phase users could participate in. Naturally, they filled up in seconds as people were in mass speculation and memecoin mania mode.

The first wave of creators lined up was impressive, including notable VCs, founders, and crypto influencers such as Alexis Ohanian, Rus (Vine founder/VINE creator), Bobby Shmurda (rapper), Nikita Bier, icebergy, and more.

One notable feature of Clout was that token creators didn’t have to buy their own token. They earned it through trading fees, which were split 50/50 between Clout and the individual (the fee model is still similar today). This model aligned incentives more effectively between the creator and holders (keyword more).

The first token launched was PASTERNAK, based on the founder Ben Pasternak. The launch of the token quickly surged to a $80M market cap on its first day while revealing a lot of issues with the app that needed to be fixed as new users flooded in to join the remaining available presales.

Ultimately, Ben and team decided to take a pause and incorporate more features, with the awareness that the appetite for this type of token launchpad was veryyyy high.

Clout ➡ Believe

3 months later, it was time.

Clout rebranded as Believe, and instead of launching tokens based on people, the launchpad focused on launching products with a nifty bot, @launchcoin on X. Anyone could launch a Believe token, with the more interesting and reputable ones featured on Believe’s account and the app itself, providing extra visibility.

The relaunch started fairly quietly, but as reputable projects with actual users and traction were launching and featured on Believe, interest started exploding.

‘Exploding’ may even be a conservative term. Stats since the April 28th relaunch, with a vast majority over the past ~72 hours:

• 15,973 tokens launched through Believe

• $2.15B in trading volume

• 257k wallets traded Believe tokens

• ~$7.7M claimed in fees in the past 24 hours, split 50/50 between creators and Believe. Note that this is a volatile figure due to fluctuating token prices

Additional tools were also made for the ecosystem, such as Believe Screener and Believe Leaderboard. And you guessed it, both were launched as Believe tokens as well 😉

As Believe interest, token launches, and market caps reached a fever pitch, Ben prudently decided to take another pause on featuring projects to focus on building out more tools for the successfully launched projects to provide more value to token holders. IMO smart move as the pace would’ve been unsustainable.

Do you believe Believe’s success is short-lived? Share or subscribe to show your belief!

Launchpad themes

As Believe has caught the attention of the broader space by storm, many opinions have emerged around the actual implications, both positive and negative. Are these new Believe tokens basically investment contracts and subject to SEC rules? Has Believe brought in more builders in a few weeks than ecosystems do in years?

It’s all too early to tell, but there are some interesting observations and questions I have, which Father Time will reveal the answers to.

Launchpads are competing ecosystems

Token launchpads like these are still quite new, with the OG Pump.fun just launching a little over a year ago. Fast forward to today, they’re popping up like weeds. Off the top of my head:

• Pump.fun (still the undisputed champion)

• Launch Lab

• Believe

• Boop.fun (launched just a few days after Believe)

• LetsBONK (created by the BONK memecoin team)

• Virtuals (AI focused)

• Clanker

• Zora (content as tokens)

It feels like there are parallels to what we’ve seen with the proliferation of blockchains, and many have become more specialized and focused. For example:

• IP: Story, Camp

• RWAs (real world assets): Ondo, Centrifuge, Provenance

• Consumer: Abstract, Sophon

• Stablecoins: Plasma, Codex

As for Believe, they’re positioning themselves as a token launchpad for founders, builders, and projects to disrupt traditional venture capital and revolutionize how founders raise funding. Although anyone can launch a token on Believe, their focus is on creators with products, moving beyond the average meme.

If this is an indicator of things to come, launchpads will continue to pop up and will niche down to a specific audience or use case with features catering to them. That said, there’ll always be memes despite the focus, and Believe has had their fair share 😂

Believe is onto something and it’s fraught with tradeoffs

I think it’s fair to say that Believe is onto something. They’ve attracted a new wave of builders who previously weren’t considering crypto or incorporating a token. And because they’re coming in with fresh eyes, there’s potential for new primitives, ideas, and innovations that crypto founders who’ve been around for years or decades have become closed-off to. To the new blood, a token is a new tool and lever. Question is, how will it be used?

Additionally, the timing is right. Tooling, infrastructure, and regulations are at a point where it’s easier than ever to integrate tokens into a product.

On the other hand…

That something has tradeoffs, with the burden of those tradeoffs ultimately on the founders who participate.

During the NFT frenzy of 2021, creators, entrepreneurs, and artists launched their own NFT collections, and many were wildly successful in the moment. As time passed and smart money sold, the community members and holders remained, angry and resentful that the price of the $20,000 toucan with a gold beak that they bought was now only worth $20.

The same will be with some (vast majority?) of the founders and tokens launched on Believe. In fact it already happened with one of the featured launches, Afterhour. The founder decided to pull support for the token the next day after realizing how serious launching a token was, and made a public apology to his users in the Afterhour app.

The pressure isn’t just for unsuspecting founders. Last week, ZEREBRO (an AI agent whose token reached a $800M peak market cap) founder Jeffy Yu faked his own death and was found at his parent’s house.

Meanwhile, other founders see Believe as a gateway to reach a new audience and monetize extract, in the case of Money Making Machine, for a 4th time 😰

Last but not least, are these traders even the right target users for the respective product? (the answer is no) And if not, aren’t they just fodder for the funding mechanism Believe is building?

Can Believe create belief?

Concerns aside, I have the optimistic take that Believe is moving in the right direction. Like NFTs, it wouldn’t be surprising if many of the Believe-launched tokens, projects, and associated founders give up, return to their non-tokenized roots, or max extract and bounce.

Hopefully before most do that, the team is building a SDK (software development kit) with additional features making it easier to integrate their respective Believe token into the product.

And if a few projects can figure it out and be successful, maybe we can all believe that Believe is more than just your average token launchpad for memes.

See you next week!

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Happy $100k Bitcoin…again! The milestone may have lost some luster compared to the first time back in December 2024, but it still brings a sense of joy and excitement. Sorta like how your favorite holiday comes around every year. Anywho…

Playbooks

One trend that’s been popping up on my radar has been publicly published playbooks that share best practices from ecosystems, platforms, and apps for various audiences they’re trying to attract.

Ronin’s Growth Playbook

Ronin (a gaming-focused blockchain from the team behind Axie Infinity) recently published the Ronin Growth Playbook, covering topics ranging from Pre-Product Launch all the way to Post-TGE strategy.

Naturally, this caught my eye since this is a growth-focused playbook, but there were several other elements that made it notable.

Ronin Wallet CTA

When visiting the playbook page, the CTA at the top right is ‘Install Ronin Wallet’. Although that’s not the primary goal of the Playbook itself, it’s a great entry point for curious builders to explore the Ronin ecosystem and use its products.

The playbook also serves as an initial touchpoint that leads to other common resources like documentation and grant info.

Playbook Sneak-Peeks

2 of the 15 chapters are free:

• Social Media and Community Content

• User Bootstrapping, Incentives, and Tangible Engagement

Despite being free, they go in-depth and have insights that are at minimum helpful reminders for experienced folks.

And if you want the other 13 chapters, what do you have to do? Pay a flat fee? Subscribe to a newsletter?

Nope. You gotta DM Ronin’s BD team. The playbook isn’t just a helpful resource, it’s a lead magnet 😉

Co-created by an agency

If you scroll to the bottom of the playbook, you see a section focusing on Crescendo, the web3 growth agency that worked with Ronin to create the playbook.

Shoutout to Crescendo for negotiating with Ronin to have a big plug for their company at the bottom of the playbook. It’s rare to see a vendor to have the opportunity to promote themselves directly on the work they’ve done for a client.

The Base Launch Playbook

Base also recently launched their own playbook, providing resources for two types of builders: Apps and Tokens

Each track is broken out into Pre-launch, Launch, and Post-launch sections with various topics and associated links to other resources.

My immediate thought after seeing this was ‘this should be an AI Agent”. Only a matter of time…

Are playbooks helpful? If you answered yes, share this with your best friend. If you answered no, share this with worst enemy.

Believe’s Builder Playbook

Last week Believe (previously Clout), a project launchpad for users to fund builders and their projects, published their Builder Playbook. Believe is more an app vs. an ecosystem, but still applies the playbook around playbooks. This is likely in response to baggage that comes with launching a token: angry degens demanding price go up.

This playbook is simpler than the previous two, but helps answer important questions and provide high-level guidance around topics such as community management, token launch best practices, and legal considerations.

Manifold’s blog highlighting their community

Manifold launched their blog this week, and one of the tags is ‘Community’, highlighting notable creators who have launched on their creator platform and incorporated unique mechanics and features.

Although they don’t explicitly position these blog posts in this way, the community posts are effectively individual playbooks and case studies providing more insight on what the creator did, how they did it, why, and the results.

Themes around playbooks

With this sample of playbooks that I’ve organically come across in the past couple months, it feels like playbooks are becoming a more popular tactic. So with that said, what are some themes on playbooks specific to this space?

They aren’t new

No shit TPan. Ya I know lol, but it’s worth bringing this point up in the sense that playbooks aren’t exactly an early-stage tactic for growth and marketing. We’re now seeing more of these types of playbooks pop up which suggest that:

This space is maturing

Which is generally a good thing! Unless you want to buy Bitcoin at $10k which…sorry, can’t help with that and even if I could I’d be ahead of you in that line.

On the other hand, we’re still early enough where we aren’t using the terms ‘customer success stories’ or ‘case studies’ like our Salesforce friends here cheesin’ so damn hard at the customer success they’ve enabled.

Playbooks can serve different purposes

With the above examples I’ve shared around playbooks, we see each of them serve a different purpose. Playbooks can be a:

• set of best practices, guides, and case studies (Ronin)

• richer version of a resource library (Base)

• richer version of do’s and don’ts (Believe)

• category of content under a blog as short case studies (Manifold)

There isn’t a right or wrong with this, it’s more about how you want playbooks to fit into your overall strategy and what makes sense for you. If we were to compare the them again by how long it took to create the playbooks, which provides a rough idea of what the purpose each playbook is:

• Months (Ronin, literally) - Valuable resource that elevates Ronin’s brand perception to builders and ideally create a business relationship

• Weeks (Base, maybe even days?) - Self-serve directory that leads Base ecosystem builders to the right resource

• Days (Believe, maybe even hours?) - Action-oriented FAQ for builders

• Evergreen with new posts periodically (Manifold) - Source of inspiration for other creators

Why the sudden influx of playbooks?

Maybe it’s just me, but it does seems like they’re more playbooks being shared or popping up. Why is that?

The space is maturing

As mentioned earlier, the space is maturing and as a result teams implement more boring mature tactics. However, boring ≠ ineffective or useless. It’s just that you won’t get the average Gen-Z growth/marketing person enthusiastically suggesting ‘we should create a playbook!’

Buzzword

The term ‘playbook’ are certainly an engagement bait-ish buzzword. Fortunately the one’s I’ve come across are generally helpful and the term isn’t saturated to the point of cringe (hopefully not anytime soon!).

It’s worth noting that Manifold’s approach of positioning their version of playbooks/case studies into community-oriented content is a great way to avoid the buzzword baggage along with the fact that it’s more aligned with their creator audience.

Other channels are prioritized

Let’s be real, we don’t read anymore. And if we do, we’re probably skimming. So a playbook regardless of the form? That’s a lot of words, and a good number would probably throw it all into ChatGPT to extract the juiciest of details.

Combine that with the preferred marketing channels of short-form written (Discord, Twitter, Telegram), voice (Spaces), and video (Twitter Live, YouTube) which are either more engaging or require less dedicated attention, and long-form written playbooks sink to the bottom of the barrel. And because they’re at the bottom of the barrel, they become an effort worth pursuing when all the lower hanging fruit has been picked, or if there’s a specific use case for one.

And despite all this, there are still advantages to playbooks:

• These playbooks live in owned and operated formats on your own website, so you can edit them at will

• Content can be repurposed into other formats of varying lengths. It’s easier to go long —> short vs. the other way around

• Playbooks could serve as a screening mechanic helping candidates stand out, eg: bringing up specific details of Ronin’s Growth Playbook to the BD team

• The ‘shelf life’ of the content typically lasts longer and remains relevant over time

• Because playbooks are a lower-priority tactic, they are more effective if executed well

So with all that, long live playbooks. Just the good and creative ones though 😉

See you next week!

These days, new blockchains highlight how fast they are with TPS (transactions per second) to show what they’re capable of. However, nothing beats showing vs. telling.

Last week MegaETH launched Crossy Fluffle, inspired by the popular Crossy Road mobile game. Like Frogger, players have to get their Fluffle bunny character as far as possible in 1 minute.

The way the MegaETH team showed it was also notable:

• Each move is a transaction, reflected in the lower left corner of the game

• The character can only make the next move once the transaction is confirmed. If the transaction takes too long to confirm, you unfortunately get run over 😵

• Players could play the game on 3 testnets to compare the game experience: MegaETH Testnet, Base Sepolia, and Monad Testnet

Try it out for yourself and you’ll see what I mean (if you need some testnet tokens, let me know and I’ll send you some).

Speed doesn’t always matter but for use cases like onchain gaming, it certainly does. You don’t want to be in a situation like this:

This show vs. tell moment even caught the attention of Optimism (their tech powers Base), and turned MegaETH’s game into an opportunity to promote their new Flashblocks integration. With Flashblocks, Crossy Fluffle gameplay on Base was nearly as fast as MegaETH’s.

Bravo, MegaETH. I hope this serves as an inspiration for other ecosystems to walk the talk in creative ways.

Do you think showing is as important as telling? If so, show me by sharing or subscribing!

Fantasy introduces Clout

Earlier this week, Fantasy Top shared updates to their fantasy sports x Twitter influencer game. The most interesting part to me was Clout, a new points system based on players’ crypto-related Twitter content based on quality, relevance, and virality. You can check out your Clout score here.

At the end of each Season (also newly introduced as part of this update), the top 15 Clout earners become Heroes on the platform and replace the bottom 15 Heroes.

If Clout is making your Spidey Senses tingle you’re unfortunately not Spiderman, but you are right! Clout is similar to Yaps by Kaito, which was launched 6 months ago. And I don’t think this will end with Clout.

Adjacent to this, there are also credibility platforms like Ethos with the goal of helping people understand who is and isn’t trustworthy.

Over time, infofi/socialfi will fuel more dimensions of an individual’s knowledge, influence, and impact. The most obvious use case for this data today is for influencers/KOLs for partnerships and airdrops for posting about certain products and topics:

• Top X Yapper for ABC ecosystem on Kaito

• Helped Y Protocol reach 10% mindshare in March 2025

• Gained 1,000 Clout in Season 2 of Fantasy

This use case is the most applicable today and IMO too narrow when considering the longer-term implications. As these scores continue to be refined (reducing spam, low quality content, farming activity), they can also become:

• Supplemental datapoints for certain types of roles (eg: social media manager, content lead, BD etc.)

• A qualifier for access to certain products (eg: “Connect your Kaito profile to see if you qualify for early access”)

• Perks or discounts on products based on the topics you talk about

There’s also an opportunity for someone to create a composite score across these different platforms to balance the different methodologies of determining who has more influence.

The bigger question around social influence

I can’t put a finger on it yet, but these new approaches to determining social influence feel like the beginnings of an effort to chip away at the prevailing metric on social media: followers.

Followers as a social media metric is great. It’s easy, universally understood, and is a common denominator across every major platform. However, followers as a metric is also flawed in many ways. You can buy them to boost your follower account, they don’t account for recency (you can gain a ton of followers early on and then become irrelevant), and aren’t the most reliable signal for impact.

As a simple exercise, legendary footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed account on Instagram, with 652M followers. Does that make him the most influential account on Instagram? ❌

And that’s what I believe that’s what Kaito Yaps, Fanatasy Clout, and Ethos scores are trying to tackle. How can you more reliably measure the impact of someone’s social media account?

• Do followers take action from your posts?

• Do followers trust your thoughts and opinions?

• Do followers get inspired from a spark you provide that influences a decision they make weeks, months, or years later?

Followers as a primary metric won’t go away, but in the coming years we’ll likely see other metrics get adopted to make our social profiles more well-rounded to show the impact we make underneath the surface.

See you next week!