Rug Radio Recap - March 19, 2023

gm fam! It's been another wild week and we're here to get you caught up on all the Rug Radio, web3, and market news in less than 5 minutes (or your money back, jk).

Just a reminder, we're giving away Faces of Web3 PFPs and Membership Passes to our readers every week, and we'll be giving away 5 passes and 2 PFPs later today. Keep an eye on your email to see if you're the winner!

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

• Rug Radio Updates

• Instagram is shutting down their digital collective initiatives

• Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank Updates

• Oncyber previewed a GPT AI integration

March 17th Town Hall

In case you missed it, we hosted our bi-weekly Town Hall on Friday where we introduced our latest DAO proposals and a new member of the team. We also talked about a little bit about our recent partnerships, the launch of the rewards store, and heard from a few other members of the team about what they've been up to!

Town Hall will be moving to bi-weekly on Monday's from 5pm - 6pm ET starting with our next Town Hall on April 3rd, and notes will be sent out the next day on Tuesday's.

Sorare Partnership & Buster Announcement

On Wednesday, we announced our partnership with Sorare and the launch of a new sports vertical within the Rug Radio ecosystem. As part of this partnership, we'll be giving away tickets and limited edition cards to our community as well as creating Premier League and NBA leagues over the next few months. 

In addition to the partnership with Sorare, we'll be launching a sports vertical led by Buster Scher, founder of sports media company HoopsNation which has over 8 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

When you use our link below, you'll get 20 free common cards and 1 limited edition card when you buy 5 cards on Sorare's marketplace.

Rewards Store Launch

On Monday, we launched our rewards store starting with a series of auctions that including a 30 minute consultation with Farokh, project review by our team, and more. In total, 15,196 $RUG was used across 5 different auctions with the highest bid being 6,069 $RUG for the 30 minute chat with Farokh!

In addition to the auctions, a Membership Pass and Genesis NFT were also purchased at 420 $RUG and 5,555 $RUG, respectively. 

DAO Proposals

We have 3 new DAO proposals open for voting! Each proposal is your opportunity to influence the direction of the Rug Radio ecosystem. The three proposals up for vote include...

• Core Team Long Range Plan and Budget: Ratify the long range plan that we talked about in our last Town Hall where we are requesting $1.25 million in funding for the next 6 months.

• DAO Operational Council: Ratify the new DAO Operational Council who will serve over the next 3 months supporting and overseeing the DAO.

• Probably Nothing x Rug Radio Token Partnership: Approve a partnership with Probably Nothing who will incorporate the $RUG token into the Zerø ecosystem, allowing us to provide novel utility and use cases for $RUG while rewarding active participants.

Instagram is removing NFT features

On Tuesday, Stephanie Kasriel, Commerce and FinTech Lead at Meta, announced that they're removing all digital collectible features and will be shifting focus to their traditional products. This move comes just 4 months after they opened the ability for a small number of creators to mint NFTs on the platform, with most of the drops selling out in a matter of seconds.

Now you might be wondering, why shutdown a seemingly successful product after such a short amount of time? While Meta hasn't given a detailed reason for why they're shutting down the feature, it likely falls back to the company's financial woes and taking an opportunistic, short term approach to implementing the tech.

There's been mixed reaction among the community. Dave Krugman - one of the artists who had a mint on the platform - called the move "short sighted" and said that the "inclusion of digital collectibles has so much potential to help creators engage their communities." NFT writer and strategist, Hunter Solaire, suggests this might actually be a good thing as it gives us time to improve the experience from a product, security, and end user perspective.

From my perspective, it's always important to keep in mind that we're still early and the most passionate people who really want to push this space forward are right next to us on the timeline and working behind the scenes every single day.

Signature & Silicon Valley Bank updates

Last weekend, there was chaos everywhere after Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank were shutdown by regulators due to solvency and liquidity concerns with uncertainty surrounding whether depositors would be able to withdrawal their funds.

As a refresher, SVB was primarily a concern for crypto as Circle - the issuer of the USDC stablecoin - had about $3.3 billion USD in reserves deposited at the bank. The shutdown of Signature Bank was a concern as it was one of the only remaining crypto friendly banks next to Silvergate, which was voluntarily shutdown.

On Sunday, the chaos and concerns were somewhat mitigated after the Federal Reserve, US Treasury, and FDIC released a statement saying that they would step in to backstop all deposits, essentially bailing out the banks meaning that companies like Circle would have access to their reserves.

So the funds are safe, but what about crypto banks? The good thing is that a handful of banks, including HSBC and Deutsche Bank, are still willing to bank crypto companies but with a set of restrictions such as limiting the types of services and exposure to crypto, according to Coindesk.

What does this mean for the future of crypto? We're likely going to see crypto come under attack from regulatory pressure for years to come, as well as volatility from the already fragile state of the economy. The best thing that you can do to protect yourself from your crypto being frozen by an exchange is learning how to self-custody your assets and only using exchanges as an on/off ramp for fiat conversions. Remember, not your keys, not your crypto.

LinksDAO, a DAO focused around golf enthusiasts, won the bid to buy a Scottish golf course, a key ambition since their launch in November of 2022.

Veefriends announced that Veecon 2022 NFT ticket holders will be able to enter an auction for 3 Chromie Squiggle NFTs by burning the tickets as part of Burn Island.

Yuga Labs launched The Summoning, the next stage of the interactive mint where holders could burn a Sewer Pass for HV-MTL Power Sources.

Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, said that there are approximately 20 crypto-enabled games set to be released by independent creators.

OnCyber, a platform for 3D immersive experiences, previewed a GPT AI powered feature to simplify building words.

Context

• Crypto rallied double digit percentages after positive economic data and the Federal Reserve, US Treasury, and FDIC issuing a statement saying that all depositors in Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would be made whole.

• NFT volume and floor prices declined as we typically see an inverse correlation between NFT prices and crypto prices. For example, people bet on crypto prices to rise and don't rotate as much into NFTs or they decrease NFT prices to take advantage of the higher fiat value of crypto.

• In the week ahead, all eyes are going to be on the next interest rate hike decision on Wednesday. The consensus appears to be a rate hike of .25%, but there is speculation of no hike given the recent bank collapses and the impact of higher rates on bank liquidity.