The role of the metaverse and NFT art as new battlegrounds for the creative, ethical and political is already showing its power and influence in a time of increasingly decentralized governance, globalised politics and hyper-individualism. For example, controversy continues to plague Yuga Labs, the creators of the bluechip NFT PFP project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and the Otherside metaverse.
Online sleuths have raised a storm of coincidences related to the project that could suggest racist simianization and links to 4chan and the alt-right movement. The original Asian-American lead artist who is no longer with the project has already tweeted about her distaste for the “racist” imagery.
Is the media circus just a desperate attempt by opportunistic artists and wannabe crypto influencers to garner fame and interest in their own copycat collections, such as Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club (RR/BAYC)?
You can watch the latest conspiracy video from Youtube user Phillion and decide for yourself.
After over $3 mil in total volume traded on OpenSea (OS), RRBAYC has been taken down on both OS and Foundation.App at Yuga Labs request.
Jack Dorsey dares to think outside the Square, and instead wants to think inside the Block?
Block, aka the company formerly known as Square, thinks that web3 is just pseudo-centralization with too much VC control… therefore creating Ion, a layer-two exclusively for the Bitcoin network is the logical panacea?
Coincidentally, Block’s balance sheet held $365 mil in BTC at the end of Q1 this year. Dorsey, who has not hidden his ‘Bitcoin Maxi’ views thinks that Block subsidiary TBD’s web5 will be so good that it was not too inappropriate to skip web4 altogether.
The last time a would-be crypto demi-god got too cocky, it perhaps put a bullseye on their back and did not end well. Perhaps web5 will solve the nagging conundrum of transparency AND privacy. One layer-1 blockchain to rule them all? Web3 VCs, time to start your engines.
For more about the web5’s ‘extra-decentralized’ web the pitch deck is here.
Web3 projects already working on identity3 and true peer-to-peer monetization are KILT Protocol and Subsocial .
As blockchain tech has enabled actors in the space to easily siphon off large sums of capital, the need for regulation of institutional actors has certainly become more pressing than ever.
The LUNA revelations and snowballing fallout from the collapse of UST continue.
This was later debunked by crypto Twitter sleuth @FatManTerra and CZ of you-know, Binance.
2.7 billion in assets (which could have otherwise been used to defend the UST peg) is alleged to have been cashed out by Do Kwon shortly before the apocalyptic crash, with employees citing habitual boasting of such practices from Kwon.
A US-court class action lawsuit has been filed against TFL and their partners (such as Three Arrows Capital, more on that below. Hacktivist group Anonymous have also declared they now have Do Kwon in their sights.
Oh, how the plot thickens.
The ripple effect on the wider crypto markets of the Terra collapse has in fact yet to play out.
The founders of one of crypto’s largest hedge funds, Three Arrows Capital (3AC) have ghosted their investors and the media amid the shadow of insolvency after losing a rumoured half-a-billion dollars of investor funds in the UST collapse alone.
At its peak, 3AC managed some $16 billion in assets and appears to have taken greater risks in recent times. The founders Kyle Davies and Sun Zhu are alleged to have deposited significant funds (without investor knowledge) into failed protocols such as Anchor or illiquid protocols such as stETH which then complicated paying back margin calls from their various lenders. BlockFi was one of the first to reveal that they had liquidated 3AC’s significant position and more are sure to follow.
Review written by Quoc Nguyen
