Newsletter: Creator Value Flow + Forefront Onchain

This week we’re covering: Forefront’s new Onchain Signal, Zora Protocol Rewards, DeSci’s opportunity + Digital Object meaning… and much more!

Happy Monday!

Welcome to edition 152nd edition of the Forefront Newsletter. If you’re new here, we give you a weekly roundup of the best news and insights at the intersection of crypto, culture, and community.

This week we’re covering:

• Forefront's new Onchain Signal
• Zora Protocol Rewards
• DeSci's opportunity + Digital Object meaning
• ...and much more!

Let’s get into it…

Week’s Highlight

Forefront Community Updates: Onchain Signal, Inbox Signal, and Annual Memberships

Forefront is the home for explorers -- creators, founders, and operators -- at the frontier of collective creation on the new internet.

Over the last year, Forefront's community and media offerings have evolved, with Signal (our daily community-curated feed) becoming one of the most actively used avenues for keeping a pulse on consumer and creator crypto.

This week, we announced three updates to the Forefront media suite:

1. Onchain Signal. Signal is now onchain, including commentary and voting, contribution and curation tracking, and an API for members available soon.
2. Inbox Signal. Many members of the community expressed that they wanted new ways to consume the Signal feed, so we're launching Inbox Signal: a twice-weekly digest of highly curated insights and news from across consumer and creator crypto. FF Members can subscribe here.
3. Annual Membership. We are transitioning from Lifetime to Annual Membership for the Forefront community. Anybody who has minted a membership already will maintain lifetime access with no changes. Beginning Wednesday, new members will be able to mint a 2023 Membership Pass at a more accessible price point.

Take Note: The Forefront team is excited for these new developments and for our plans to continue to improve and grow the Forefront community and media offerings over the next few months. If you've been looking for an opportunity to join the Forefront community and get full access to Signal, events, reports, and more, keep an eye out on Wednesday for an Annual Membership!

What's Poppin'

Zora Introduces Protocol Rewards: Creators And Developers Now Get A Cut Off The Mint Fee

Creators and developers should be rewarded for creating value in the ecosystems they participate in. This week, Zora upheld this belief by announcing Protocol Rewards: creators releasing Free Mint projects and developers building on Zora will receive a portion of the Zora mint fee on every mint. The Mint Fee will remain 0.000777 ETH per mint, with the guaranteed Zora portion being drastically reduced. The rest is available for creators and developers to make new experiences and tools. This is a huge step forward for creators and builders in the Zora ecosystem, and we're excited to see what comes of this experiment.

TITLES Launches SOURCE: A New AI-Powered Creative Suite And Publishing Tool For Cryptomedia

Speaking of experiments... TITLES launched an awesome new product this week called SOURCE. SOURCE is a new AI-powered creative suite and publishing tool for cryptomedia. It allows you to edit, combine, remix, and recreate any NFT in your wallet, and then publish your new creation onchain with automatic attribution & proceed splits. The app is super fun and easy to use, and is opening eyes to the power of onchain media and how value will be effortlessly distributed across the blockchain for creators and developers alike. Congrats to the TITLES team!

Hair is Money

The article goes deep on DeSci, which the author describes as a blend of the experimental spirit of Victorian-era science and modern scientific rigor. It highlights the opportunity for online communities to come together to find solutions for ailments that modern medicine may not address. One such community, HairDAO, is focused on the issue of hair loss. HairDAO aims to change this by crowdsourcing research and experimenting with treatments. $HAIR token is used for community rewards for members for self-reporting data, potentially fast-tracking the research process and drug development for hair loss solutions.

Digital objects, economies, and the challenge of meaning: a beginning

In this essay, Holladay Saltz discusses Derek Edwards's article which argues that the value of digital objects, notably NFTs, saying that they can serve as genuine stores of value over time, particularly as they draw more human attention. The essay distinguishes between goods, which satisfy immediate needs and have no lasting value, and assets, which hold potential future benefits and can accrue value over time. An item's classification isn't static; it can shift along the spectrum influenced by factors like time and meaning. Central to this classification is a market, which relies on a consensus of value. Digital objects face challenges in value recognition due to their novelty and intangibility, and to be deemed valuable, they must meet fundamental economic principles and human needs. Despite uncertainties, the author believes that understanding the interplay of meaning will help in crafting valuable digital items.

Base launch + Onchain Summer Base -- Coinbase's L2 built on OP Stack -- is now open for bridging after a developer-only beta. Base opens for everything on August 9. To celebrate the launch, the Base community is throwing an onchain festival: Onchain Summer. Every day in August, the Base team will bring you something fun to do onchain --- a first-of-its kind onchain festival. There will also be 100+ ETH in grants for those building and creating on Base in partnership with Nouns Prop House. Base already saw tons of activity with the drama around the $BALD token, but it will be even more exciting to see what can be built on the Base L2 given the massive amounts of support and excitement around it.

Economies of Scale

This essay from Chris Ahn discusses two mechanisms for business effectiveness with scale: network effects and economies of scale. Network effects make a product more valuable as more users join, reducing acquisition costs. Economies of scale make businesses more efficient and cost-effective with a larger customer base, spreading fixed costs. While network effects are rare, most businesses rely on economies of scale. The essay proposes introducing economies of scale into blockchains to enable diverse crypto applications and emphasizes the need for creative design and tradeoffs between onchain and offchain components to achieve this.

Mainstream headlines this week…

Ethereum ETFs. First off, two sources tell Blockworks that the SEC is now ready to consider ETH futures ETF applications.

Regulatory exits. Next, $33 billion neobank startup Revolut cites 'evolving regulatory environment' in decision to end crypto service to U.S. customers.

Binance in China. Finally, Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, was supposed to leave China behind when the country made cryptocurrency trading illegal in 2021. Almost two years later, users traded $90 billion of cryptocurrency-related assets in China in a single month, according to internal figures viewed by The Wall Street Journal and current and former employees. The transactions made China Binance's biggest market by far, accounting for 20% of volume worldwide, excluding trades made by a subset of very large traders.

Signal TL;DR

The Paradox of Talent in Web3

The article discusses the paradox of talent in Web3, where work boundaries dissolve, but decentralized talent marketplaces face challenges. To succeed, they need data ownership, interoperable tools, and flexibility for workers. Token rewards alone won't drive demand; real value and addressing pain points are crucial to democratizing opportunities in the future of work.

▹ Update - a16z Selling MKR (MakerDAO)
▹ Adoption - DraftKings would be third highest volume chain
▹ SquiggleDAO - ERC20 → NFT Membership
▹ Read - Stablecoins: A Potential Counter to De-Dollarization
▹ Discussion - DAO Governance of Lending Protocols not a good idea
▹ Listen - Post-Token Worlds w/ Sean McCaffrey
▹ Directory - Art Projects Entirely Onchain

◎ Check out Onchain Signal for daily top web3 social headlines. If you are a Forefront membership holder subscribe to Inbox Signal

For the Culture

The information in this newsletter is not intended to constitute legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied upon as such. Any opinions reflected are the opinion of the author(s) of the newsletter only and not necessarily of Forefront. Please DYOR.