Rug Radio Recap - August 20, 2023

gm fam! It was another exciting, rollercoaster week with a crypto flash crash, OpenSea updating it’s royalty policy, and a new decentralized social media platform called Friend Tech dominating the timeline that brought a little bit of fun to the chaos.

This is Rug Radio. Stay curious.

Here's what we've got in this week's recap...

• Cory Van Lew STUBS🎟️

• Friend Tech, the new decentralized social media platform🐰

• OpenSea updates it royalty policy…again😬

• Jen Stark releases collaboration with Sketchers🌈

STUBS

This week's featured artist is someone you might already be familiar with, Cory Van Lew! He’s the artist behind our Faces of Web3 PFP collection and is most well known for telling personal stories through his bright, colorful art.

This week’s piece by Cory, Kush Nap, is a scene from his studio while he was working on the PFP project of two of his close friends who fell asleep on a couch after ‘blowing clouds’.

• Ready to claim? Head over to the Fair mint site

• Need more mint passes? Grab a couple on Opensea

• Not familiar with Stubs? Check out our guide

Welcoming Quinn to the team

In case you missed it, we announced that Quinn Button has joined the Rug Radio team as our new VP of Operations to oversee and optimize day-to-day business operations.

Previously, Quinn was the VP of Growth for NFT NYC and NFT Kred, working with leading enterprise brands like PwC, SAP, and Coach to guide them into the web3 landscape, and will be bringing that experience to Rug Radio as we continue our focus of sustainable, long term growth.

Friend Tech

If you’ve been in the crypto space for a while, you’re probably familiar with Bitclout, a blockchain-based social media platform where users can earn through their posts and trade creator coins. Well, there’s a new, somewhat similar version of it that’s quickly become popular called Friend.tech.

Friend.tech is a new invite-only decentralized social media platform built on Base, Coinbase’s new layer 2 blockchain, that allows creators to tokenize their social network - people can sell “shares” of themselves, and these share owners can privately chat with the person they own shares in.

As of August 20, the platform has seen more than 65,000 users and nearly 715,000 total transactions since launch. Top users on the platform, primarily determined by Twitter following, even have “share” prices of more than 3 ETH (~$5,000 USD) - whenever a share is bought or sold, the creator also earns a part of the trading fee

Here’s how it works:

• Go to friend.tech on a phone and install it following the steps

• Create an account, enter an invite code, and connect your Twitter

• Once you’re setup, you’ll need to bridge ETH to Base where you can start buying and selling shares

Friend.tech is still a new platform, so it still has a lot of work to be done around UX, performance, and functionality, and it’s primarily based on speculation. However, it’s a new app that people are having fun with and gives creators another way to monetize and connect with their core supporters.

OpenSea & Royalties

Royalties are back in the conversation after OpenSea made further changes to its creator royalties policy.

• Starting on August 31st, creator fees will be optional for all new collections.

• Also on August 31st, the Operator Filter will be disabled

• Starting in March 2024, creator fees will become optional on all sales

The Operator Filter is a feature that allowed creators to restrict secondary sales of their NFTs to marketplaces that enforce creator fees. With the Operator Filter being disabled, creators will no longer be able block these marketplaces.

These changes come just 6 months after announcing that they would make creators royalties optional for any collections not using the operator filter, as they continue their efforts to maintain market share against Blur in a market where NFT volumes are at their lowest levels since May 2021.

The community reaction was overwhelmingly negative with people like Mark Cuban, an OpenSea investor, speaking out against the changes, as well as large brands like Yuga Labs - the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club - announcing that they would stop supporting the OpenSea protocol.

What’s next for marketplaces and royalties? Well, that’s a somewhat complex question:

• Projects can choose to develop their own collection-backed marketplace, but this isn’t inexpensive and fragments the broader ecosystem.

• A new marketplace could come along with a friendly UI/UX that enforces royalties, but that would require a heavy marketing push to get everyone on-board.

• Incentive mechanisms that actually reward people for paying royalties, particularly social incentives.

Artist Jen Stark launched her sneaker collaboration with Sketchers. The design and color is incredibly eye-catching.

Coinbase got regulatory approval to list crypto futures in the US. A big win for both crypto and Coinbase.

Shiba Inu launched it’s layer 2 Shibarium blockchain. At one point $1.7 million in ETH was locked in the bridge before devs fixed the issue.

DeGods dropped their Season 3 art, and postponed female DeGods. Additionally, they released points parlor allowing holders to win digital and physical prizes (including a Tesla).

Context

• NFTs: Despite the crypto flash crash, NFT volumes continued to stay relatively stagnant with DeGods leading the weekly volume after their Season III announcements.

• Crypto: We saw a huge wick down on what was primarily due to an overreaction to a headline that SpaceX wrote down $373 million in Bitcoin holdings. It sounds like the market interpreted this as an actual sale, when it was likely a standard accounting move.

Interview with DAO Council Member, Yaffe

Yaffe's deep involvement in web3 arises from his foundation in crypto trading. As a dedicated participant in the decentralized media movement, he embraces the potent synergy of collaboration, creativity, and community.

Waggin Wendy sat down with Yaffe to learn more about his passion for decentralized media and his vision for the future of the RugDAO.