🍨Unstoppable Innovation: Web3 Developers Defy NFT Downtrend

Welcome back to The Geral- the web3 community newsletter that comes out every two weeks and will keep doing so. Bitcoin could come down to $10,000, the SEC could sue Satoshi Nakamoto and the sun could crash into Earth, you will still get your monthly scoop of news with us (maybe except for that last one). Get ready for another anthology of unique insights into the world of token communities, as usual.

Coverage:

• NFT Trading keeps sinking, builders keep building

• Google Play welcomes NFT integrations

• World’s largest web3 event is coming soon

• The state of web3 identity

NFT Trading keeps sinking, builders keep building

A lot has changed since 2021, besides ChatGPT literally taking over your kids’ homework and some debatable Tiktok trends. If you were already in web3 back then, you may be nostalgic about when you thought quitting your full-time jobs to trade JPEGs was a good idea. No worries, many are on the same boat and the narrative that web3 is done has been exhausted every single time that $ETH drops by 0.1%. But that’s not the reality.

According to Alchemy’s latest Web3 Development Report, while NFT trading volume is down 41% in the second quarter of 2023, the number of smart-contracts deployed across Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) networks is up by a whopping 1,107% since late 2022. These numbers tell a different story than the one we’ve been hearing for a while now.

The reason behind this? Simply that web3 is still evolving at a rapid pace, with new technology use cases being developed as time goes on. Everything we’ve been talking about in this newsletter so far is a living proof of the resilience builders show to keep advancing this space and make it successful. Probably nothing but another good reason to follow The Geral😝.

Google Play welcomes NFT integrations

One of the main hurdles to web3 adoption is the lack of support from mainstream platforms. How would your 14-year-old Fortnite player cousin or your 60-year-old Candy Crush addict auntie experience NFT-backed in-game assets if they are not allowed by the service providing these apps in the first place?

Google Play changed its policy earlier in July to allow the integration of NFT assets in apps supported by the platform. True ownership of in-game digital items starts to become an obvious added value brought by web3 to gamers, and Google did not wait for too long to take action on it. An exciting turn for mobile gaming, which seemed to slowly die down since Angry Birds and Subway Surfer became out of fashion. Kudos to Google for truly being a true game-changer.

World’s largest web3 event of the year is coming soon

In the past 12 months we’ve had Devcon, MCON, ETHWaterloo, ETHCC, the FIFA World cup, and a number of other events that moved crowds of people. Web3 conferences have certainly shown to be valuable overtime, and we’re not the first ones to say it.

Well, TOKEN2049 should definitely be one we will remember based on its projected numbers. 300 sponsors and over 10,000 attendees will gather in Singapore on September 13, making it the biggest web3-related event of the year. If you can make it there, you’ll see quite a lineup of speakers including prominent web3 founders, regulators and even F1 drivers (because why not?). A crypto conference of this size being organized away from the West definitely makes sense, with Asia being a main innovation hub for web3 as of recently. Definitely one of the places to be in September.

Best practices for your token community

We’ve all heard about Decentralized Identity (DID) as one of the hot topics related to web3, and even more so since Sam Altman poked his nose into it. Today, we present to you an extensive piece on DID from our partners at Myosin. A clear and concise explanation of the topic along with the best tools to allow you to master it. As usual, The Geral puts you one step ahead in terms of knowledge to share with your community.

Cool Stuff seen on CharmVerse

Managing grants in an efficient way is a challenge that the Optimism Grants team has successfully cracked. Using Discourse and Google Sheets to manage a web3 grants program will sound silly to you after reading this piece, with insider feedback from the OP Grants team.

Memes of the month

And because they say always finish with a sweet, here are some 🔥 memes as usual.

This has happened to all of us, right?

Probably better than the alternative situation though

It’s usually all fun until you meet people like

That would almost think about this fr💀

And that’s a wrap for this edition of The Geral! See you in two weeks for another deep dive into the world of web3 communities.