Chainforest Weekly Recap (01/10/23)
Greetings Rainmakers! ⛓️🌴
Welcome to the latest edition of the Chainforest Weekly Recap, where you’ll find up-to-date information on upcoming Chainforest DAO programming and industry events, the community feature of the month, a round-up of the most exciting happenings in our Discord this week, and a welcome to our new Rainmaker’s!
In the past week, 11 new Rainmakers have joined the forest!
The top three channels were: 💬│general-chat, 🔗│links, and 🟣│Solana.
Upcoming Chainforest Programming ⛓️🌴
Monthly Town Hall: We will be sharing the latest happenings/updates at Chainforest DAO, onboarding new members, along with having a Q&A session for all members! This event is open to all members! If you are a new member of Chainforest DAO, please stop by and introduce yourself to the community!
When: January 10th, at 3:00 pm EST in our Discord
RSVP: here
Bi-Monthly Women in the Forest Meeting: Calling all women in the forest! Chainforest DAO will be hosting our women-in-the-forest on Thursday!
When: December 12th, at 2:00 pm EST in our Discord
RSVP: here
Twitter Space: A conversation on decentralized networks with Jason Badeaux from React Networks.
Panel: Amit Mukherjee, Nick van der Vink, and Jason Badeaux
When: January 17th, at 1:00 pm EST (Set a reminder here)
Previous Recordings
Monthly Town Hall (December 2022): Did you miss our December Town Hall meeting? Check it out here!
Covered during the Town Hall:
Reviewed Chainforest's new Investment DAO
Interested in signing up? Check here!
Brainstorming the future of Chainforest: forums versus channels; monthly paid subscription service
To view the entire duration of the Town Hall, download the file
Discord Highlights 👀
Amit shares his view on the current cryptocurrency space heading into 2023 ⭐
Amit is interested in two types of cryptocurrency: those that can legally trade as securities and those that are tied to real-world assets. Amit believes that the current focus on short-term profit in the cryptocurrency market is not sustainable and that projects that offer a real and sustainable return on investment (measured in money, time, or utility) will be more successful in the long term. Additionally, he also thinks that projects that redistribute their revenues to token holders and those that are tied to real-world assets will have more success in the current market. In order for products to do this, they need to solve the securities dilemma. He has pointed to a number of companies leveraging Reg D and Reg A+ to attempt to solve this. Finally, he is interested in next-generation consumer products with a strong product-market fit, even if their long-term business models are unclear
Jason is very excited to see the tokenization of RWAs, especially real estate. He adds that there is too much slippage, bureaucracy, and lack of transparency in RE transactions given the tech we have today
Eric adds that on-chain securities will bring a lot of legitimacy to the space, and open up all kinds of new use cases and markets
Rainmakers share their 2023 cryptocurrency predictions 🔥
Amit:
BTC and ETH will continue to be highly correlated to interest rates. As a result, BTC and ETH won't increase > 20-30% until rates start to decline
Regulatory oversight will be more muted than expected. It will only cover stablecoins and Circle / USDC will get a green light
Outside of Polygon and maybe Solana, most Alt-L1s will become irrelevant
A new wave of vaults/multisig wallets will crypto pill another gen of users trustlessly sharing funds, splitting subscriptions, managing passwords, and adding security
New L1s specializing in defi, art & fashion will pop up “out of nowhere” with killer business development
DeFi winners will continue to consolidate market share
While Binance will not collapse; its market share will decline as they fall under increasing pressure from regulators
Outsized value will accrue to Ethereum and Ethereum dApps with interest in ETH-killers subsiding
Opensea's monopoly over the NFT market will continue to weaken as market awareness of well-funded agile competitors grows
Abraham asks the community, how should a DAO treat a member contribution in $ETH for tax purposes 📝
Abraham adds that the contribution was for DAO tokens, which represented a right to a share of the treasury. The DAO is structured as a C corp
Vasanth states that if there was an exchange that took place where the contributor received tokens for contributing a capital asset ($ETH), then the C-corp would recognize the contribution as revenue. Where it becomes tricky is how you’d account for the outgoing tokens - if the tokens do not have a cost basis, which is true for tokens that have been spun up out of thin air, and they don’t have a discernible fair market value, which is true for tokens that are not being traded and not in liquidity pools. Then the outgoing expense should be zero. If these are the circumstances, then the C-Corp would recognize a net revenue on this transaction for the ETH it received and this would be taxed at the federal corporate tax rate of 21% (Not tax advice)
Amit asks Rainmakers why HNT is not considered a security when he receives HNT for deploying a hotspot 📱
Amira says the straightforward answer to this is that there’s no one who’s gone through the process to register HNT as a security and the CFTC hasn’t recognized HNT as a commodity
Amira adds that the biggest issue in crypto policy in the US is whether/which tokens should be considered a security/commodity/something else. There’s an inherent tension in securities registration and the idea of decentralization
Rainmakers share their favorite movie and television shows of 2022! 📺
Sloan: Severance (TV Show), Top Gun: Maverick (Movie)
Jason: Emily in Paris (TV Show), Top Gun: Maverick (Movie)
Tyler: Severance (TV Show), Top Gun: Maverick (Movie)
Abraham: The Fabelmans & Top Gun: Maverick (Movies)
Julia: Stranger Things (TV Show), Everything Everywhere All At Once (Movie)
Vasanth: 1899 (TV Show), The Northman, and RRR (Movies)
Upcoming Events 🗓️
ETHDenver - Welcome to the largest and longest-running ETH event in the world! ETHDenver is a community-owned innovation festival.
When: February 24 - March 5, in Denver, CO
Details: here
Community Feature of the Month🎉
Our Community Feature of the Month is Devin Becker (Game Design/Web3 Economy Consultant, Gaming Lead at Nami)!
New Members 🎊
Ben Lakoff | Charged Particles
Dariush Ruch-Kamgar | Binance
Gaurav Gandhi | Hashed Emergent
Jaimin Patel | Caddi
James Burns| Meridian Labs
Lindsey Li | Bessemer Venture Partners
Muhammad Yusuf | Blockchain Founders Fund
Russell Ratcliffe | Arbor.finance
Ryan Heger | U.S. State Department
Saketh Kesiraju | Augier.art
Soren Wrenn | TITLES
Interested in joining Chainforest? ⛓️🌴
How to apply: You can apply to become a member by completing our application on Typeform. We will review your submission and grant access after approving your profile.
Apply here: https://chainforest.typeform.com/apply
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of the Chainforest Weekly Recap!
Till next week,
Sloan (@sloan0_0)