Wow 6-month Anniversary, EIP-1559, Social Media companies, Crypto Crash

Welcome back to Space Talk!  I’m back in grad school as of last week, so my content here might become a bit less frequent, but I’m naturally still paying attention to the space, and I’ll be keeping you updated as best I can.

As always, nothing in this post is financial advice.

WoW!  Happy Six-Month Anniversary!
The biggest news for me personally was that I got a follow on Twitter from World of Women NFT this past week!!  Anyone who reads this knows I’m a WoW superfan and supporter, so I was very, very honored by the follow!

Speaking of WoW, holders got the new January Artdrop last week, and those of us who were available went on the subsequent Twitter raid for an hour or two, which is one of my favorite things to do because I get to meet other members of the community, make new friends, see new WoW PFPs I haven’t seen before, and engage with some of the artists featured in the Art Drops.  The raid was followed by a six-month anniversary Twitter Spaces with the artists who were featured for the recent Season 5 Art Drops.  It was so cool to hear from the artists themselves, and of course, Yam & Raph.  The artists for Season 5 are: Amber Vittoria, Beryl Belici, Camila Nogueira (personal fave!), Haruko Hayakawa, Ismail Zaidy, Laya Mathikshara, and Twinz Garden.  I love being a part of the Wow Fam!

EIP-1559, Polygon
Some big news came out for Polygon on 1/17/21 with the EIP-1559 Upgrade.  EIP stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposal which means a significant upgrade is being implemented on Ethereum.  I’m specifically linking the article above about how that upgrade impacts the Polygon blockchain, because Polygon is an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain.  I’ve touched on this before, but if you think of Ethereum itself as Layer 1, then Layer 2 “solutions” as they call them, are additional blockchains that inherit aspects of Ethereum while functioning on their own as connected, but separate entities.  I’m referencing Polygon because it’s one of the more widely used Layer 2 solutions by NFT projects looking to avoid gas fees and speed up transactions while retaining Ethereum’s security and other benefits.  Check out the article for more details, which include a burnable $MATIC token.

NFT PFP news, Facebook, Instagram
It’s old news by now, and I haven’t participated myself, but Twitter introduced the ability to link your Twitter profile picture to your blockchain wallet address to verify your ownership of your NFT.  I think it’s a cool feature, but it requires a $2.99 monthly subscription to Twitter Blue.  My personal opinion (until I feel like paying for Twitter Blue, that is) is that it’s verifiable on the blockchain that I own the NFTs I do, and if anyone wants to know that, it’s publicly available info that I can show with my wallet address.  I frankly thought it was a bit of a cash-grab by Twitter, and mostly just a way for them to onboard a bunch of people into Twitter Blue.  We’ll see how it shakes out or matters over time.

Facebook and Instagram (who is owned by FB for anyone who doesn’t know) have announced plans to develop their own NFT marketplaces and tokens, naturally with the ability to link to your NFT as your profile picture on those platforms as well.  While Meta would undoubtedly like to own the Metaverse of the future, I’m of the belief that there will be multiple, perhaps interoperable metaverses.

Crypto Crash
We started to see the crypto market dip about 10 days ago, and it’s developed into a full-on tanking, though we’ve seen a gradual rise again for the past week.  At the time of this writing, Bitcoin sits at $37,877.87, after starting 2022 in the high 40s, and Ether sits at $2,599.29, after starting 2022 in the high 3s.  Is it still a good time to buy?  It sure looks like it!  Ether is now back down to the same price I bought it at back in August, for reference.

Interestingly, the NFT market has been booming regardless of the crypto (and stock market) crash.  And perhaps crash is too strong of a word, maybe it’s more of a balancing out, but my guess is we’ll see crypto rise again this year.  But, NFTs remain strong, and that’s a good sign for now.

Notable
*The Federal Reserve finally revealed the whitepaper for its digital dollar.
*CCC announced this partnership.
*My personal prediction for 2022 is that we will see far greater adoption and NFT use-cases coming into play in the mainstream, and that many NFT projects will continue to see big gains.

Fun
*Snoop Dog is the best