DAOs, Layer 2, Staking, more

GM!

Well, a year has come and gone with remarkable development in the NFT space, yet time moves so quickly in NFTs that New Year's Eve/Day feels like a month ago.  The coming year looks to be no different from the one we just finished in terms of innovation and discovery, so let’s talk for a moment about what’s happened in the past week.  By the way, nothing in this post is financial advice.

DAOs
The rise of the mighty DAO.  I’m not talking about an eastern religion here, I’m talking about decentralized autonomous organizations.  It’s certainly not a new concept in the NFT world, but it is gaining more adoption, and probably still sounds like a foreign language to most outside NFTs and crypto.  The concept is simple enough in theory; it’s sort of like a collective.  Being a member of a decentralized autonomous organization gives you a voice, with the ability to vote on community initiatives and proposals.  Certain projects, like World of Women, are revealing a DAO as part of an update or addition to their current project.  Others have sprung up around various communities, projects, or tokens, like the $SOS token.

Advancements, Carbon Neutral NFTs
Projects are continuing to outsource to Layer 2 Ethereum, finding scaling solutions that eschew Proof of Work gas fees.  This requires new and different marketplaces outside of OpenSea, such as Token Trove, a currently niche, card game and collectible NFT marketplace on Immutable X, a Layer 2 of the Ethereum blockchain.  VeeFriends Book Games, anyone?  Trading on these Layer 2s is a win-win, and this is something worth knowing for those raising environmental concern over blockchain and NFTs.  All NFTs traded on Immutable X are carbon-neutral!  This is related to the fact that there are no gas fees on Immutable X.  Gas fees are the transaction fees paid to miners, the term given to the process of computers solving incredibly complex math problems to verify blockchain transactions.  This process is very energy-intensive, and very not-carbon neutral, one of the motivations prompting the adoption of emerging Layer 2 solutions.  These solutions have many benefits, one being that they inherit many of the positive characteristics of Ethereum without having to use so much energy to process transactions.

Smol Brains, More Layer 2, Staking
Continuing this trend of Layer 2s and alternative marketplaces, I first heard of Smol Brains (pronounced like Small Brains) last week in a Spaces chat on Twitter.  The project was also retweeted and mentioned many times by GaryVee.  One thing I admire about Gary is his tireless pursuit of giving people the opportunity to learn, if they’re willing to follow through on their end with the curiosity and optimism to educate themselves.  He’s certainly doing that again with Smol Brains by tweeting about them and telling everyone to read up on them in order to learn about new developments.  Smol Brains is a project based on a Layer 2 called Arbitum.  Treasure Marketplace, which accepts and uses the $Magic token, is where you can find Smol Brains.

I don’t have experience with staking cryptocurrency, but my best understanding of the idea is that you can take your tokens, or a certain amount of them, out of the market for sale and stake them on the blockchain to aid in the process of verifying transactions.  If you do this with Bitcoin, for example, your reward for doing so is gaining more Bitcoin; it creates passive income amongst other things.  You can read through the Smol Brains Medium article above, but the project allows you to stake your NFTs to acquire points and resources which all help grow the project and it’s value in theory.  The requirements for this are quite different than, say, staking Bitcoin or Eth, which require owning far higher amounts of those cryptocurrencies before being able to stake.  With Smol Brains, and other projects using staking, you simply need to own one of their NFTs to stake it - typically a far less expensive prospect.  

I mention staking here not because it’s a new idea in NFTs (and certainly not in crypto), but because it seems to be increasingly popular and it looks like we’re going to see more of it.  It’s benefits are working their way into NFT projects, particularly as they expand into new Layers and marketplaces.  My own Crypto Canna Club has a staking feature looming on the horizon, something they’ve teased since the beginning.  In the context of that project, you can stake your NFT in a “greenhouse” to passively earn income.  I’ve been hodling my NFToker since I bought him, with no current plans to sell, so I’ll be very interested to see how the staking process works within that project whenever it rolls out.

Notable Projects/Drops
There are too many to name, but one that stands out is the FlyFish Club, the first NFT restaurant.  GaryVee is a team member, it’s based in New York City, and the NFT will serve as access to the restaurant and it’s various experiences.  Look to this as an example of the expansion of the real-world use-cases for NFTs.  An initial round of NFTs have already been minted, but the public sale is Jan. 7 via their new website which will be released Jan. 5.  Word isn’t out yet about the upcoming sale price, and it isn’t likely to be cheap, but the flipside is that projects that GaryVee is involved in tend to do well, and this is a first considering it’s a restaurant.  One wonders if these passes will become quite valuable.  

Recur Pass status
The Recur Pass is a project I bought into about three weeks ago.  64,000 passes were minted on 12/14/21, with promises of early beta access to major IP projects entering the NFT world, including projects using IP from film and television, cartoons, and sports teams.  This includes major universities across the country in terms of sports teams, and legendary IP such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  At the time of this writing, the floor for Recur Passes has more than doubled since the mint, and in recent days we’ve even seen it nearly triple.  Passes are available on Recur’s marketplace at the link above, with many developments in the works in terms of the aforementioned beta access as well as ability to resell the passes on secondary markets like OpenSea.  

Fun Things
*Two of the projects I own made this top-six NFTs of 2021 list by Boardroom.tv.  Shoutout World of Women and Crypto Cannabis Club!
*Snoop Dog tweeted Gm (Snoop recently started repping Bored Ape Yacht Club)
*I’ve been running around Decentraland in my CCC hoodie, mostly mining meteors to accumulate enough materials to mint a wearable NFT
*VeeFriends Book Games drops anytime between now and 1/10!

Ok, thanks for reading, I’ll see you next time here in Space Talk.

GN.