Hey there, I’m Luca - lifelong startup nerd, crypto fanatic since 2016, and now keeping up with trends across Web3 is my second full-time job.

Here’s everything you need to know about the last week in Web3 - in 5 tweets 🐦

🏈 #1 - Financial literacy for athletes via DAO

Sheldon is a football players for the Cleveland Browns. In this thread, he tells his story of learning about financial literacy, something that most pro football players struggle with (e.g., 78% of NFL players are in financial distress 2 years post-retirement). As a result of his journey, Sheldon created a DAO to educate his peers about smart financial decisions.

Note that this DAO has nothing to do with a Web3 goal or crypto education. However, structuring the group as a DAO meaningfully contributes towards its mission of teaching financial literacy as opposed to setting it up as a normal club. This extra impact comes from the added incentives and skin-in-the-game that participants organically get by virtue of being active in the DAO.

🔮 #2 - The future of NFTs

At the surface, it's pretty ridiculous that people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cartoon pictures of apes. Even the most die-hard NFT enthusiasts will agree that this is a pretty bonkers phenomenon that, in it's current state, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So what the heck gives?

Everyone who spends enough time in the NFT space reaches a point when the so-called "veil is lifted," and they see the universe of possibilities that NFTs offer. This could be new financial systems, ways of participating in a digital world, or earning a reasonable living. Whether NFTs will ever get to that point is fully up for debate, but this largely explains the excitement behind NFTs right now (in my mind).

🏀 #3 - Owning a basketball team

Krause House is my absolute favorite example of a DAO. They built a fire community and raised 1,000 ETH (~$4M at the time) on the premise of buying a professional basketball team. They have a long way to go towards that goal but a very reasonable and realistic roadmap for getting there.

The reason I want to highlight Krause House is because it epitomizes how DAOs can revolutionize the fan experience. Imagine being part-owner of your favorite sports team and having a say in decisions that are made on the team, all for a couple hundred bucks or less. Now extend that to TV shows and other media that you follow. It sounds pretty far-fetched, but this trend is already starting with shows like Stoner Cats and Mad Realities.

📚 #4 - How to read smart contracts

One of the coolest parts of Ethereum is that smart contracts, the pieces of code that enable NFTs, DAOs, and automated finance applications, are entirely public. Anyone can view the blockchain and the immutable code that these contracts are written in. Of course, this code is pretty meaningless to most people (myself included).

Luckily, you don't have to be a programming whiz to perform some basic diligence on a smart contract. Using a tool like Etherscan, you can view high-level facts and details about a smart contract you're curious about. This is the most technical we'll ever get in this newsletter, but the accessibility and transparency of the blockchain is one of its greatest strengths.

💥 #5 - All the sh*t that goes down in Web3

I love to talk about all the dope things happening in Web3 on this newsletter, but that's not to say that bad things don't happen... they most certainly do! Molly created this semi-satirical website back in December to create a live timeline of all the scams, bugs, rug-pulls, and bad things that happen in crypto.

This website is a great reminder that Web3 isn't all sunshine and unicorns as some of us might want to believe. There are plenty of drawbacks, a plethora of bad actors out there, and a ton that everyone in the space is still figuring out.

🔥 That's all for this week! Which tweet taught you something new? Which corners of web3 would you like to learn more about?

Let me know by replying to the email or tweeting at me - any and all feedback is welcome :)

🎉 P.S. Pass along the ~good vibes~ by forwarding or sharing this to your friends if you learned something interesting!