Chainforest Weekly Recap (03/06/23)
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, 3 new Rainmakers have joined the forest!
The top three channels were: 🔧│gen-infrastructure, 💬│general-chat, and 🏀│sports.
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!
Agenda:
New member onboarding: If you recently joined Chainforest DAO, we highly encourage you to attend and introduce yourself to the community
Community and event updates: Review the recent updates to the Chainforest Proof of Teamwork tool and receive the latest information regarding our March schedule, including the WTF Bi-Monthly meeting and monthly workshop
Brainstorm and workshop session: Update Amit's working document on the current thinking of each sector of cryptocurrency, including what has been proven, the core challenges, and what we need to see to prove real value, and discuss during the town hall. Check out the document here
When: March 7th, at 3:00 pm EST in our Discord
Set a reminder: here
Women in The Forest Bi-Monthly Meeting: WTF is a community of women passionate about blockchain and crypto, providing a supportive and inclusive environment for collaboration, learning, networking, & personal connections in web3
When: March 17th, at 1:00 pm EST in our Discord
Set a reminder: here
For more details: click here
Previous Events & Recordings
Monthly Workshop (February 2023): Did you miss our February Workshop? Check it out here!
On February 17th, Vasanth Thiruvadi (Head of Finance at Chainforest) & Sugam Sharma (Founder of Clearbooks, CPA), hosted a Taxes 101 workshop to help our members get ready for tax season! Topics include NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, airdrops, loss/theft, mining, and a Q&A session
Monthly Town Hall (February 2023): Did you miss our December Town Hall meeting? Check it out here!
Covered during the Town Hall:
Introducing our newest members to the community
Providing exciting updates on our upcoming events, including the Chainforest ETHDenver meet-up and Tax 101 Workshop
Engaging in a lively discussion with the community, sharing progress, and receiving valuable feedback on recent changes
Exploring potential investment opportunities with Amit Mukherjee and Regan Bozman, who presented a promising deal to the community, known as IYK
IYK bridges the physical and digital worlds by using NFC and blockchain technology. By tokenizing physical items and IRL experiences, they are building the tools necessary for brands, companies, and creators alike to deliver new, innovative experiences to their fans
To view the entire duration of the Town Hall, download the file
Twitter Space: A discussion with Jason Badeaux, Co-Founder of React Networks, on Decentralized Energy! (listen here)
Panel: Amit Mukherjee, Nick van der Vick, & Jason Badeaux
Discord Highlights 👀
Amit shares his current thinking on every sector of crypto, including what has been proven, core challenges, and what is needed to prove real value ⭐
Kyrie believes the gaming sector is one of the safer bets because it requires the least innovation. A fun game will be popular on its own, and even random flailing will eventually hit a decent way to integrate web3. Crypto can just be in the monetization model here, not a core part of the product. Kyrie adds, DeFi advocates tend to rely too heavily on automation through code advantages. He thinks friction and manual judgments in moving large amounts of money around are often a feature, not a bug
Alex Palmer provides additional context on Governments allowing tokens to represent real assets:
Crypto-native share of the asset that gives its owner rights to the asset. This works like non-certificated stock in a corporation. From the regulatory perspective, no one can block a corporation from issuing its own securities as non-certificated stock. If you were to incorporate a new entity, and manage its cap table yourself or using a transfer agent, shares of the corp already live in a purely digital domain - on a database. Seeing that blockchain is a type of distributed and programmable database, a corp can elect to issue its stock in the form of a token. (We're going to do this with Poet)
The token is the certificate for each share of the asset that gives the certificate holder rights to the underlying asset. This works in a very similar way as the above example with one key difference - the token is not the actual share, it is a digital representation of the share
Alex provides a few examples of tokens that represent real assets in the US
Exodus Movement (maker of the Exodus Wallet)
BCAP Token issued by Blockchain Capital TokenHub Pte. Ltd. that represents an indirect fractional non-voting economic interest in the sole limited partnership interest in Blockchain III Digital Liquid Venture Fund
22X is the secondary on the Batch 22 of 500 Start-ups
NYCE token represents an ownership interest in a 100-bed student housing at Temple University that is being developed by NYCE Companies, Inc in the North Central Philadelphia
Casey Weiss shares a post from Ashbury Legal concerning the SEC's settlement with Kraken over their staking program in the US (Check out the full thread here) ⚖️
Key Takeaways from Ashbury Legal:
This is a negotiated settlement between the SEC and Kraken. As such, it doesn't create "law" that courts are required to follow, but it does show how the SEC thinks about staking
The SEC is clearly taking aim at “staking as a service” products that create financial risks and returns that differ from staking directly on-chain
Examples include:
removing a unbonding period to provide immediate liquidity
pooling assets to remove minimum staking thresholds
arbitrarily determining the amount and timing of rewards
custodial staking services
The SEC’s position is that “staking as a service,” itself, can be a security regardless of whether the underlying staking protocol or token is a security. This is both good and bad news
Bad News: Even if the underlying token, such as ETH, is widely considered not to be a security, providing a service that fundamentally alters ETH2 staking could still be considered a security
Good news: while the SEC alleges that Kraken's staking service was a security, this does not necessarily mean that the underlying staking protocols are securities themselves
Alex Palmer says it's true that crypto being worried about "is everything in staking now a security?" is misguided. I wish that law firms wrote more useful content in a concise, and helpful format. We do that too on account of being deep in all things securities trading (building a regulated DEX for tokenized securities), and founders in crypto reach out to ask follow-up questions because they've read some of it
Stay up to date on the latest news surrounding the Silvergate saga 👀
Chainforest DAO is excited to announce our partnership with the Proof of Teamwork team (Ben Gusberg & Jim Zheng, both Rainmakers!) to bring you an invaluable new community tool for the Chainforest community. The current version of this tool contains a member database, accessible via the link below. The database contains information about each member, including current company, role, expertise, contact information, Core Ecosystems (L1/L2), social media profiles, and more 🔥
Goal: Strengthen bonds and drive business prospects within our network, especially during these turbulent market times. We envision this database as a catalyst for forging partnerships, fostering friendships, amplifying deal flow, and unlocking new hiring opportunities
Note: Stay tuned for exciting updates on our community tool! We are committed to continuously enhancing the Chainforest community experience, which is why this tool will be updated periodically with new features and improvements
Link: access the tool here (Members only)!
Upcoming Events 🗓️
Paris Blockchain Week - Regarded as one of the most influential gatherings in the blockchain industry, the Paris Blockchain Week Summit attracts leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, and developers from around the globe to explore opportunities for advancing the technology
When: March 20-24, Le Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France
Details: here
WOW Summit - This global event will bring together industry leaders, government officials, digital artists, entrepreneurs, companies, and enthusiasts
When: March 29-30, AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong
Details: here
Consensus 2023 - Consensus is the world's largest, longest-running, and most influential gathering that brings together all sides of the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 community
When: April 26-28, 2023, Austin, Texas
Details: here
Community Feature of the Month🎉
Our Community Feature of the Month for March 2023 will be announced on Wednesday, March 8th! Stay tuned!
New Members 🎊
Jo Zhu | Previously Doordash, Uber, Cameo, and a16z
Jonathan Huang | Metamatic.co & CambridgeBlockchain.org
Shiyan Koh | Hustle Fund
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)