Stealth Ethereum addresses, celebrity NFT shills, and textbooks coming to the blockchain

Welcome back to Decentra Daily, the place for all your NFT needs.

Estimated read time: 5 minutes

Today's agenda:

• Vitalik's stealth addresses

• Celeb NFT shills get told off

• NFTs in traditional publishing

• Top NFT sales of the day

Ethereum stealth addresses

Here’s Vitalik raising the idea of more privacy for Ethereum’s standard token. Under this format, it would be possible to receive (mint, burn, etc.) NFTs anonymously.

How it would work

Here’s the actual research for all you engineers.

Why privacy?

Is it always a good thing for everyone to know what you’re hodling?

Say that NFTs were one day adopted by spaces like the medical industry – people might want to keep certain procedures or facts about themselves private.

Or, what if it became common practice for employers/landlords/governments to trace your transactions? Curating your history might be worthwhile.

What if you live in a corrupt country? Even if they can’t seize your crypto, they could track your activity and put some men in black suits outside your house.

Isn’t that against the spirit of NFTs?

Maybe. If you think NFTs are all about transparent, decentralized activity, then you’re unlikely to see the benefits of hiding wallets.

It could also make Ethereum a bigger target for shady characters. With no public address, finding stolen property becomes extremely difficult.

– plus, many legal systems currently demand a fully public blockchain as a condition for allowing crypto trading.

Immutability, not transparency

Transparency is often seen as a key part of immutability – the word often used to describe how blockchain ledgers are permanent and uneditable.

But the two concepts don’t have to come together. A (trustworthy) blockchain with privacy functions could still be immutable; it’s just that viewing some transactions would require special access.

Celeb shills get told off

Truth in Advertising is a nonprofit consumer watchdog that tries to protect people from deceptive marketing and false advertising.

On Monday, they sent letters to 17 NFT-pumping celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon, Logan Paul, Tom Brady, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The letters don’t accuse anybody of violating Federal Trade Commission guidelines – probably because the watchdog doesn’t have evidence that they feel ready to act on.

Instead, they highlight that “celebrity NFT promotions is an area rife with deception” and “urge” celebrities against hiding project connections & paid promotions whenever they publically endorse a collection:

That cringeworthy moment

The most awkward moment so far in the history of NFTs?

The studio ‘applause’ sign was definitely working overtime that night.

Ongoing monitoring

The letters come as part of an ongoing effort by Truth in Advertising to monitor celebrity NFT endorsements.

In the past, they’ve made stronger claims against individual celebrities.

In June, Justin Bieber and Reese Witherspoon both got letters from the nonprofit, detailing evidence of deceptive NFT promotion through their social media.

Often mentioned by Bieber, the inBetweeners is a hand-drawn collection of over 10,000 NFTs by Italian artist Gian Piero. Current floor is 0.16 ETH. Biebs likes to pump them:

Bieber says: “Some new inbetweener NFT’s I just bought. Come join the community, I’m gonna pop on discord one of these days”

Reese Witherspoon seems to have even more involvement with her chosen collection, World of Women, a series of collectibles created to support female digital artists in web3.

This February, she announced that her production company will be partnering with WoW to make a TV series.

NFTs in traditional publishing

Remember books? Me neither.

Apparently, they’re made out of trees and some people still read them.

According to this Cointelegraph article by Rachel Wolfson, some of the biggest traditional publishing companies are now experimenting with NFTs to help retain revenue and readers.

Article highlights:

• Big nonfiction textbook publisher Pearson is making plans to tokenize its textbooks to track them across secondary markets (apparently the average college textbook is resold 7 times).

• TIME magazine & media company have launched TIMEPieces, a series of collectibles that “represents an important first step in TIME’s Web3 community strategy.”

• Historic Dutch publisher Royal Joh Enschede is producing Crypto Stamps for collectors that can also be used in the mail.

• Publishing thought leaders are pushing a move from seeing audiences as individual readers to web3-ready communities: “an audience simply engages with content for a moment … a community aligns around shared values and is provided with the opportunity for constant engagement.”

Read the full piece here.

Top NFT sales of the day

1. @BoredApeYC #3969 - 124.16 WETH ($211,359.66)

2. @BoredApeYC #9108 - 85 ETH ($151,191.52)

3. @BoredApeYC #7644 - 80.1 ETH ($136,355.94)

4. @BoredApeYC #6148 - 79 ETH ($134,482.39)

Headlines of the day

• Magic Eden Wants to Build an ApeCoin NFT Marketplace Just for Bored Apes

• Nick Grudin Exits as Meta Head of Content Partnerships to Join NFT Startup Dapper Labs

• Paris Hilton will sell NFTs and hold virtual parties in The Sandbox metaverse platform

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article/newsletter should be considered financial advice. The purpose is to inform readers of the current trends and news in the web3 space. We encourage every reader to do their own research and not act upon information put forth by Decentra Daily.