Rug Radio Recap - February 26, 2023

gm! As part of our commitment to reward our most active supporters, you can now earn a Membership Pass or Faces of Web3 PFP just for reading our newsletter.

Starting today, we'll choose one reader to win a Membership Pass every week on Sunday and one reader to win a Faces of Web3 PFP on the 1st of every month. If you're the winner, you'll receive an email with next steps!

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

• Rug Radio Updates

• VeeFriends announces the first wave of the VeeCon speakers

• Coinbase launches Base, entering the L2 wars

Rug Radio 🤝 Fair.xyz

On Monday, we announced our partnership with Fair.xyz to launch Stubs, a new "proof-of-listenership" rewards concept that aims to reward active participants while also spotlighting artists in the NFT space.

Starting in March, Rug Radio and Degenz Access Pass holders will be able to claim Stubs Mint Passes during every episode of GM Web3 that can then be burned for a piece of art (Stub).

Rug Radio takes on Paris

Bonjour de Paris! The team was in Paris this past week for NFT Paris where Farokh spoke on a few panels, we hosted a cocktail event with Yuga Labs and Improbable, and made an appearance at the Rekt Show with Ledger...Don't worry OSF, what happens at the rektshow stays at the rektshow👀

Creator Spotlight, Carlo⚖️.eth

Everyday, new legal developments in web3 impact how creators, businesses and investors interact. More than ever, there’s a need for high quality discussion of legal issues, from intellectual property to securities law. Rug Radio’s LexLine show, hosted by Carlo⚖️.eth and Ray@gencolaw, fits that bill and is a must-listen.

WagginWendy sat down with Carlo, whose passions range from crypto criminal defense to Italian cooking.

VeeCon Speakers: Round 1

VeeCon, the NFT-ticketed super conference for the VeeFriends community, announced the first round of speakers for VeeCon 2023 with Busta Rhymes kicking off the event as the headline entertainer. The speaker list includes a variety of personalities from the business, NFT, and pop culture community including Daymond John, Sara Baumann, and Jeff Staple.

This is the 2nd year of the conference and is one of the most highly anticipated NFT conferences of the year. Here's a few things you need to know...

• This year's conference will be hosted from May 18 - 20 in Indianapolis, IN

• Tickets will only be airdropped to VeeFriends series 1 holders as NFTs, but will likely be available on secondary marketplaces

• The conference is offering attendee room blocks, but they're going fast

So, should I go? The VeeFriends team knows how to host a conference and they proved it during the 1st year of VeeCon in Minneapolis. The VeeFriends community is also one of the most passionate groups of people out there and they know how to have a good time. Last year, tickets were going for 1-2 ETH on secondary up until the event, so if that's in your price range, it's definitely worth the experience.

Coinbase launches Base

On Thursday, Coinbase announced the testnet launch of it's own Layer-2 blockchain called Base with the goal of "making onchain the next online and onboarding 1B+ users into the cryptoeconomy."

Let's take a step back, what is a Layer-2 (L2) Blockchain? A layer 2 blockchain is essentially a secondary chain that's built on top of a layer 1 chain like Ethereum or Bitcoin. The primary purpose of these chains is to increase the scalability and performance of the blockchain it's built on top of by reducing congestion to enable faster, cheaper transactions; This is especially important as the use of blockchain technology grows over the coming years and decades. 

Remember the days of 250+ gwei gas fees? That's what L2's fix.

Why is this significant? L2's like Arbitrum and Optimism already exist and process hundreds of thousands of transactions from 40K - 80K unique addresses every day. Well, Coinbase has over 100 million verified users and a layer 1 blockchain like Ethereum isn't yet ready to handle that level of volume without insanely high gas fees and transaction times. 

Let's also look at the fact that setting up a MetaMask wallet with the Optimism network and then bridging your assets over isn't the most user friendly experience for the average person. The most successful products are those that prioritize a seamless user experience, and I would expect Coinbase to integrate an "easy bridge" ability directly into the app.

To celebrate the launch, Coinbase also released a commemorative, free open edition NFT called Base, Introduced which has more than 233,000 mints and is open until today at 11:59pm EST.

LinksDAO, a DAO centered around golf lovers, may soon own a golf course in Scotland after the proposal was approved.

Friendsies sparked controversary after tweeting they would be pausing the project and then deleting their Twitter.

PROOF cancelled their PROOF of conference citing a lack of interest causing confidence in the project to fall.

Manifold and Uniswap are introducing the ability to purchase NFTs with any ERC-20 token, a long standing request from artists and collectors alike.

Spotify is testing token-enabled music playlists, starting with token holders of 4 different communities.

Context

• Blur airdrop farming accelerated this week resulting in $570M USD in volume while a new mint generated 125,000 ETH in volume on OpenSea. To put that into perspective, we haven't seen volume like that since the Otherdeed mint in May of 2022.

• Crypto fell along with the macro markets as economic data showed that inflation continues to remain elevated and minutes from the last FOMC meeting showed that the fed is committed to bringing inflation down even if means continued rate hikes.

We love you too Camila❤️🫂

Camila has been an early supporter of Rug Radio and creates amazing, colorful art - Check out her work and show some love!