🤠 Web3 Weekly Round-up #7

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 - OpenSea phishing scam

Far and away the biggest news in Web3 this week was the OpenSea phishing debacle. It all started with OpenSea announcing that they were going to upgrade the smart contract by which all users list and sell their NFTs. Because the blockchain is ~immutable~, they couldn't just change the old contract. Instead, OpenSean created a new smart contract, and everyone with an NFT listed for sale had to migrate it to the new contract.

Shortly after OpenSea made the announcement, there was a phishing email sent to a swathe of OpenSea users asking them to follow a link and sign an "OpenSea" permission with their wallets to migrate to the new contract. It's unknown how many users received the email, but 17 were ultimately targeted with a total of 254 high-value NFTs worth $1.7M.

There was a ton of confusion when people initially identified the scam. First, people thought there was an exploit with the new OpenSea contract itself, and this announcement was all over Twitter and Discord. Then, people realized the phishing email was the culprit. Finally, it took 2-3 days for OpenSea to find the ultimate impact of the scam, hence the inflated $200M number in the tweet.

🚦 #2 - Canada's financial censorship

This story extends far beyond Web3, so for some context: Canadian truckers have been protesting a vaccine mandate since late-January by blocking streets in Ottawa and at a few US-Canada border crossings with their trucks. During the protest, the truckers set up a GoFundMe that racked up nearly $8M in donations, but the Canadian government had the company block the funds from reaching the truckers.

What does this have to do with crypto? The Canadian government also invoked the Emergencies Act to freeze protestors' bank accounts and attempt to block crypto transactions to their crypto wallets. These actions have sparked a huge debate over the government's role in overseeing groups' or individuals' finances and shown the benefits of crypto's decentralization.

🧼 #3 - The Web3 bubble pt. 1

The annual ETH Denver conference is one of the biggest gathering in Web3 and took place through all of last week. As with any conference, there were tons of speakers, events, and parties, but ETH Denver wasn't always like this. It started as a small gathering of computer nerds who geeked out over this new technology called Ethereum. By contrast, the 2022 conference was the most diverse, and wide-reaching yet.

The result of this diversity of people, ideas, and thought also accentuated just how wide Web3 has become. Each of DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs could have humongous conferences of their own (some already do!), so gathering everyone in one place makes for a massive melting pot. The scale of ETH Denver is a huge win, but it's also insanely overwhelming. For newer people in the space, it's more important than ever to start with the corner of Web3 that interests you most.

My TL;DR guide on where to get started in Web3:

• DAOs - If you've ever been part of a club before and wouldn't mind doing it again :)

• NFTs - If you love keeping up with trends, pop culture, and occasionally some good ol' celebrity gossip!

• DeFi - If you're a finance and investing nerd!

🛁 #4 - The Web3 bubble pt. 2

For context, this tweet is entirely satirical. However, it gave me a sharp reminder of how much of a bubble and echo chamber Web3 is. In a sense, Web3 is a new school of economic and technological thought, but it's a school that relatively few people subscribe to right now.

As we saw in the crypto Super Bowl ads, they effectively only advertised for the buying of assets like ETH and BTC. There were no mentions of the unique Web3 technologies that people in the space are most excited about. Buying ETH is certainly a launchpad to everything else, but it's going to be a while before DAOs, NFTs, and the like totally reach the mainstream.

On the bright side, if you're reading this, you're still very early ;)

🌠 #5 - Calling BS on NFT collections

If there's any aspect of Web3 that will hit the mainstream first, it's almost certainly NFTs. It feels like every week there are more people, more capital, and more NFT projects entering the market, but this also means more scams. I can tell you from experience that NFT scams have hit a new peak in the last few weeks, and I'm sure there's more to come. With that said, it's important we all learn what to look for in NFT scams, as laid out in this tweet.

In as few words as possible:

• Undoxxed Team - You know who the founders are, their accounts and names; they're not just anon cartoon pictures

• Fake Followers - Identified by large follow #s but low engagement on tweets

• Artificial Hype - Celebrity endorsements and excessive giveaways

• Unrealistic Mint Price - anything above .25 ETH is suspect and may indicate a cash-grab

• Predatory Tactics - Kicking people out of Discord, threats and harrasment

• Meta Cliche - Similar roadmap and promises to popular past projects

🔥 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 :)

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