GM, this is the Milk Road where our daily screen time is 18 hours, just so we can bring you the best of crypto and you can spend time with the fam.
Let's get into the good stuff:
Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 9 seconds
- 🧐 The State of Crypto
- 👀 VillageDAO: Web3 customer support
- 🍪 Bite-sized cookies
- 🤣 Meme of the day
A16Z: THE STATE OF CRYPTO
A16Z just released their first-ever State of Crypto Report. It’s 56 pages long.
Do we read 56-page PDFs? Say it with me now: “No way!”
Do we let the Milk Road Gang read it and then summarize it into a few bullet points: “Yes We Do!”
Alright, here's what they said that got our attention:
1/ This is the 4th “Crypto Winter”
We've had crashes in 2011, 2013, 2017, and now 2022. If you’re new to crypto, congrats on your first cycle!
2/ If you zoom out, the cycles fade away, and all you see is PROGRESS
3/ During price dips, go into BUILD MODE
Let’s say it’s 1999 and you’re excited about this “internet” thing.
If you lost interest during the 2000 dotcom crash, you missed a once-in-a-generation cycle to build stuff like social networks, video streaming, cell phones, cloud computing, etc.
Don’t let price dips kill your enthusiasm.
Don’t be Mr. Market….Be Bob the Builder.
4/ DeFi has had incredible growth
DeFi has gone from $0 to $100B+ TVL (Total Value Locked) in 2 years.
5/ Creators make A LOT more from NFTs than from YouTube, Spotify, etc
Last year, ~23k NFT creators collectively made ~$4B. That’s $174,000 PER CREATOR on average.
The report compares that to creators on Spotify, YouTube etc.. .
Facebook: $0.10 per creator
Spotify: $636 per creator
Youtube: $2.47 per channel
OpenSea: $174,000 per creator
6/ Ethereum still leads the pack, but other contenders are emerging
Blockchains are only as strong as the developers building on them, and Ethereum is still clearly in the lead with ~4k monthly active developers. Solana is second with ~1k monthly active devs.
Milk Road’s Take: Tbh, all these numbers are super small. I’m shocked Ethereum only has 4,000 monthly active developers. For reference, Roblox has 345,000 app developers who make money building Roblox apps. And my research staff tells me Roblox is some kind of game for children who still believe in the tooth fairy.
7/ So, what’s A16Z predicting happens next?
More creators will move away from using platforms like Youtube, Spotify, and Instagram over to creating NFTs once they see the benefits.
More of the top-tier gaming developers will enter web3 and launch their own games in the upcoming months.
DAOs, social tokens, and decentralized social networks are next in line to explode in crypto. Similar to how DeFi and NFTs grew over the last year.
Milk Road Takeaways:
- We’re still super early. That’s exciting
- Keep an eye on web3 gaming
- This 56 page pdf could have been an email
The Milk Road is curious…. do you own any NFTs? Hit us back with yes or no and we'll share the results later this week!
A NEW DAO IS HERE TO HELP WITH CRYPTO CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Let’s be honest, using web3 is full of dead ends.
If you try using web3 apps, you feel a strange mix of excitement, confusion, and fear of f*cking up.
Basically, it’s my high school prom all over again.
Sometimes you just wish there was a 1-800-number you could call when you need help.
That’s why I LOVE this new idea.
ConsenSys and LivePerson are teaming up to create decentralized customer support through a new DAO called VillageDAO.
The concept is simple: have a group of crypto experts that are available to offer help that whenever you run into a problem (your transaction failed, you don’t know how to add a new coin to your wallet, etc), VillageDAO is there to help.
The DAO plans to offer rewards and other perks to community members that participate and become experts in crypto products. The first product they want to provide help for is MetaMask (ConsenSys created MetaMask, so no shocker there).
ROBINHOOD IS LAUNCHING A NEW WEB3 WALLET
Raise your hand if you bought crypto on Robinhood because it’s easy…and then realized you don’t actually have access to your coins and can’t move them off Robinhood.
Just me? OK
Robinhood tried fixing this with a crypto wallet they released earlier this year, but there were two problems.. there were only like 7 coins you could transfer out and there was a $5,000 daily cap on outbound transfers.
So Robinhood is trying again, this time with a wallet that has some real functionality to it - The Robinhood 3.
It will let users: have control of their own keys, earn yield and trade or swap crypto on other exchanges, and buy & hold NFTs - all with no network fees. It's the full package.
TODAY'S MILK ROAD IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY FTX US
I’m sure you’ve heard of FTX US by now, whether it’s because of all of the new products they've launched (we talked about their white label product here), their Super Bowl commercial with Larry David, or their Founder, SBF, on Twitter.
FTX US is a safe, regulated way to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, plus you can trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than any other exchange on the market. You can even buy NFTs on the FTX app from top ETH and Solana collections without getting hit with fees.
Simply put, FTX gets it and makes crypto exposure accessible, easy, and secure.
Download the FTX app on your phone today, use code MILKROAD for free crypto on every trade over $10, and start building your portfolio in less than 3 minutes. It’s that easy.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES
Getty Images is launching their first NFTs. They plan to take their collection of over 465M images and make “never-before-seen archival works” into NFTs.
NASA is offering $70k as a prize for the developer that can create the best design for a Martian Metaverse. Cool idea. But $70k? What is this, a school for ants?!
The Justice Department has filed charges against someone that used $10M in bitcoin to try to avoid sanctions.
Ledger is rolling out a new browser extension that lets you easily connect their hardware wallet to web3 applications.
Members of the in-house legal team at Terraform Labs have quit. What?! They quit? Lawyers are supposed to go down with the ship. Cowards!
MEME OF THE DAY
Every time I hear people talking about NFTs I think of this
— Potato Guard (@feistybunnygirl)7:31 PM • May 11, 2022
Shaan aka “Elon’s chocolate milk” & Ben "2% Milk" Levy
See ya tomorrow!
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DISCLAIMER:
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.
