#198 - Web3 threads 🧶 of the week

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the newsletter that ends each week with some Twitter goodness, by sharing our favorite threads!

Today,

• @dotSWOOSH on OF1s

• @jackbutcher on Opepen evolution

• @BanklessHQ on ETH next steps

• @jenny__ai on AI Drake

• @0xPajke on AI traders

• @k2_nft on floor prices

• @davincithreads on Ringers

• @thealexbanks on BloombergGPT

• @twobitidiot on Gensler & congress

First up, @dotSWOOSH teases designs for their new, digital Air Force 1s

Called OF1s instead of AF1s, Nike's first independent NFT drop goes all-in on the brand's most respected product and franchise.

This range of digital Air Force sneakers takes inspiration from classic editions and community-submitted designs, and come with 3D files to make the shoes compatible with video game avatars.

This week, Nike trailed a few of the new OF1 designs in a series of posters, which also acted as early access passes for members of their web3 community, SWOOSH.

This thread looks at the posters in more detail, highlighting different OF1 categories, including:

• Innovation - with designs like the "Upstep"

• Cultural - inc. "Year of the Rabbit" sneakers

• Heritage - check out the "Baseball" OF1s

• Regional - with designs inspired by LA and NY culture

Second, @jackbutcher's never-ending threads on Opepen

Jack is live-tweeting the development and launch of his new NFT collection, Opepen.

Wait, isn't Opepen old news?

In the Jack Butcher ecosystem, nothing stays static for long. 

New, AI-developed Opepen artwork will be launched through the metadata of the already-minted collection, with holders who also own Checks assets receiving rarer art.

This is just one of a few long threads covering project updates that Jack has written this week. Take some time to read through them all if you're interested in the collection.

Third, @BanklessHQ tells us what's next for Ethereum

With the Shapella upgrade completed and fears of a "withdrawal death spiral" allayed, it's time to ask what's next for the most fundamental piece of web3's infrastructure.

Here, Bankless summarizes the next big developments on the Ethereum roadmap.

First is the Cancun Hard Fork, which aims to supercharge the speed of rollups — efficiency measures that bundle transactions together. Expect this update by the end of the year.

Second is Distributed Validator Technology, which allows multiple users to share staking benefits, expected in either '23 or '24.

After that, the next big update should be Proposer-Builder Separation. This one is designed to prevent any incentive for centralization among chain validators. Expect this one to begin in 2025.

On the web3 wire

Stability AI reveals a new large language model 🤖Unlike the other big AI companies, Stability AI makes its models open source, which means we know that StableLM is trained on Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and PubMed.

$60 million of dormant BTC just woke up and moved 😴After 9 years of inactivity, a wallet containing over 2000 BTC just transferred the whole amount.

The Bluesky beta is now available on Andriod, IOS, and desktop ☁️Jack Dorsey's "decentralized Twitter" gets closer to a full launch. The site currently has around 25,000 early access users.

@jenny__ai recaps what happened when AI Drake and AI The Weeknd hit the studio

This week began with news of an AI-generated collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd, called "Heart on My Sleeve."

And the song was... actually pretty good?

Heart on my Sleeve accumulated over 250,000 streams on Spotify, with artist behind the AI track getting a verified page, before it was removed from the platform.

@Jenny_AI provides the links you need, on a moment they're calling "Napster 2.0."

@0xPajke on their self-made AI NFT trading bot

Another AI story in this thread. Here, @0xPajke documents the progress of their AutoGPT bot, "NFT-GPT."

This AI agent has been given the (let's face it, impossible) goal of becoming a profitable NFT trader.

The agent is up and running and has already started to research and compare different NFT marketplaces.

It also compiled a list of NFT signals and news sources, then set to work, creating its own crawler bot.

However, the bot then seemed to get too ambitious and started coding itself into circles.

So basically, GPT is doing things all wrong. Doesn't it know that the correct way to trade NFTs is to see a random clickbait Tweet, then FOMO-in without so much as googling the project founders? 😂

@k2_nft on how to stop this week's floor price freefall

This week, the NFT market has seen some of the lowest activity since 2021, with floor prices of so-called "blue chips" like BAYC and CryptoPunks sliding to 12-month lows.

Why? Part of the slump is due to "traders" farming for Blur rewards – buying, bidding, and selling NFTs at or near the floor price, regardless of rarity. 

How to stop the rot? @kycrypto says that we need to move from an environment of "excess supply" to one of "excess demand."

You do that by getting real holders to coordinate and create a wall of bids above the floor price. Check out the thread and see if you agree. 

@davincithreads gives us an art history lesson on Ringers

Dmitri Cherniak is a Canadian artist and coder who got into web3 nearly a decade ago.

His 2021 NFT collection, "Ringers," is one of the most iconic generative art projects on the blockchain.

Ringers are made from algorithmic patterns of "strings" wrapped around "pegs" – they sold out in under 20 minutes and have since generated millions on the secondary market, becoming the most valuable NFTs on Art Blocks.

Take a look at this thread from @davincithreads, which includes interview clips with Dmitri and a profile of prominent Ringers holders.

@thealexbanks gives us the pitch for BloombergGPT

Alex Banks wrote this thread about the new AI model trained by the finance media company, Bloomberg.

Called BloombergGPT, it's designed to answer financial questions, help with financial analysis, and make complex tasks like risk assessment and financial modeling much easier.

Bloomberg fed the model press releases, news articles, and financial data, to produce their tool, which (they say) could revolutionize the way financial professionals interact with data...

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And finally, @twobitidiot can't get over Gensler's performance in front of Congress this week

Last up today, Ryan recaps what happened when SEC Chair Gary Gensler took the hot seat for questioning by Congress on his agency's treatment of crypto companies.

Ryan thinks Gensler's "war on crypto" is basically a blind attempt to please Senator Warren – Gensler couldn't even answer basic questions on whether ETH is a security, or how crypto exchanges can actually stay compliant with the SEC.

To top it off, Gensler claims to be an expert on crypto, but the hearing revealed he's *never* owned crypto or interacted with the blockchain... 🤔

 I'll see you in the next Decentra Daily 👋

Meme of the day

What we're reading this week