#220 - AI comes to Photoshop & Ledger postpones Recover

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the web3 newsletter that keeps you up to speed with the past 24 hrs in crypto, NFTs, and AI. 🤝

Today,

1. AI comes to Photoshop 🤖

2. Ledger pauses Recover launch ❌

3. Mind-to-video generation 🧠

4. Vitalik made an RPG 🧙‍♀️

5. Nifty Gateway collector rewards 🏆

D-Daily takeaway 🥡
Normal service resumes after the 3AC auction.

What's this? 🤔
Our floor price index tracks the biggest, most influential pfp projects, art collections, and gaming assets.

1. Photoshop Beta includes generative AI outpainting

How about this latest Adobe feature for driving mass adoption of AI:

Generative Fill is a new Photoshop tool, now live in the Beta version of the program, powered by Adobe’s AI engine Firefly.

The tool has similar capabilities to AI image generators like Midjourney, the discord-based text-to-image model, or OpenAI’s DALL.E – which is able to “outpaint” images, expanding them based on user prompts and the context of the surrounding image

Photoshop’s Generative Fill lets you generate image layers and assets, edit and extend existing images, and combine parts of images, all using the power of generative AI.

If the beta is successful, this removes the need for artists and designers to generate AI images on 3rd party apps and upload them to Photoshop for editing.

Adobe Firefly is also strictly trained on licensed content, so businesses can safely adopt the tool into their workflows.

Why is that interesting?

Photoshop is a fundamental program in any designer’s toolkit. So the integration of a generative AI tool is likely to significantly increase the number of people working with AI.

Watch: AI artist Julie W demos the new AI Photoshop feature

2. Ledger pauses Recover until the code is open-sourced

After widespread concern and criticism from Ledger users over a new firmware update, the hardware wallet company is holding back the launch of its new feature, called Recover.

Recover is a wallet recovery feature designed for users who find it difficult or confusing to store their fail-safe seed phrase offline.

With Recover, users can opt to have their recovery phrase encrypted and stored by online custodians.

Last week, however, many users pointed out that Recover will introduce a pathway for online seedphrase recovery for all Ledger users – even those who don’t opt in.

For many, the potential for that pathway to be exploited by hackers is an unnecessary risk to their assets.

Ledger leadership seemed to make things even worse on Monday, when they admitted on a crypto podcast that the updates needed for Recover will allow governments to access users’ seed phrases if they hand the company a subpoena.

After receiving a fairly intense backlash, Ledger is now saying that they won’t release Recover until all the underlying code has been open-sourced, so users can check the update for themselves.

Read more: A letter to users from Ledger’s CEO

On the web3 wire

Pudgy Penguins are now live on Blur Blend lending 🎁 
Borrow up to 4.9 ETH on a Pudgy Penguin NFT, or finance one with a 0.8 ETH deposit. Blur will announce a new Blend collection every day this week.

Did Binance commingle customer and company funds? 👎
Reuters reports that Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, breached customer deposit separation rules in 2020 and 2021.

Here are the NFTs collectors are financing through Blend 📊
Borrowers prefer Milady, Azuki, and Mutant Ape NFTs, with only 31 CryptoPunks currently financed on the platform.

3. Mind-to-video generation

If Photoshop AI sounds like old news to you, how about using generative AI to read people’s minds?

Researchers from Singapore and Hong Kong have shown how it’s possible to train Stable Diffusion on data from fMRI scans, and have the AI recreate the things that people see.

In a study, participants were shown videos while being scanned. The AI model was then able to take the scan data and generate videos that appear scarily similar to the source material.

The study improves on a similar experiment conducted last month at Osaka University.

Read more: the academic paper proposing mind-to-video

4. Vitalik made an RPG

It’s well documented that Vitalik Buterin was partly inspired to create Ethereum after playing the online RPG World of Warcraft, and wishing that he could have more control over his game progress and assets.

This week, Vitalik revealed that he also dabbled in game design himself, by uploading a basic RPG game he made in 2011 to the IPFS.

The IPFS or InterPlanetary File System is the storage protocol that holds much of the data for larger assets on Ethereum and other blockchains.

Vitalik’s game is called Slasha. It’s pretty clunky and hard to play, but Vitalik did make a tutorial to walk you through the controls and basic strategy.

In classic Vitalik style, Slasha provides only the game mechanisms and structure – the setting and backstory are up to individual players to create for themselves.

Play: Vitalik’s online RPG game.

Notable Tweets

5. Nifty Gateway launches collector rewards through June

Next month, Nifty Gateway is jumping on the trader incentives bandwagon with its own rewards program.

NFTs minted via Nifty Gateway will be eligible for rewards, whether they’re bought on the platform or on secondary markets.

The are 6 levels of rewards, attributed depending upon lifetime spend on Nifty Gateway. Each level dishes out a cashback percentage on qualified purchases.

The final level allotment happens at midnight, May 31, so there’s still time to boost your level if you’re interested.

Rewards will be applied to Nifty Gateway balances in USD after transactions are completed.

Find out your current collector level: By logging into Nifty Gateway collector appreciation page

Decentra Daily is brought to you by Illuvium

Hey there, champ! I see you like playing video games.

They sure are fun, aren't they?

Well, if you like those games, you might also like this...

Introducing Illuvium, a collectible NFT RPG game & auto-battler.

Explore the alien Overworld to mine, harvest, and capture Illuvials. Then train and fuse your Illuvials into powerful evolutions ready for battle.

Wen release date, I hear you scream?

I know you're keen. And the full game is coming real soon! But first, the developers need your help.

Illuvium is currently inviting players to its private beta, to test out their different gameplay modes.

Battle waves of increasingly difficult Illuvials or explore the lush Overworld to capture your own alien creatures, the choice is yours.

Private beta testers compete for daily high scores that get combined into a leaderboard.

Meme of the day

Have a gud day! 👋