Chainforest Weekly Recap (04/03/23)
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!
The top three channels were: ⚡│connect-potw, 💬│general-chat, 📑│regulatory-policy.
Champion of the Forest Challenge 🏆🐯
🏆 Champion of the Forest 🏆
Champion of the Forest is an 8-week journey consisting of a series of quests and games in Chainforest. For each quest a member participates in, they will receive TEAM points based on performance. The top TEAM point earners will win prizes! (For full event details, check out our announcement post!)
🏅 Current Standings (After week 2): The race is heating up! Congratulations to the current leaders:
🥇 Michael Pope (Research Analyst at vvv.fund)
🥈 Amira Valliani (Policy and Climate Initiatives at Solana Foundation)
🥉 Satyajeet Pal (Engineering Manager at Bitwise)
Check out our leaderboard to see the latest standings!
🧠 GIGABRAIN 🧠
Looking for a challenge? Come and participate in our ongoing 4-week event on Tuesdays and Thursdays in our Discord. We post thought-provoking questions that test your knowledge and spark lively discussions. By joining in, you'll have the opportunity to win prizes, as well as showcase your unique insights 🧠
🏅 Current Standings (After week 2): We have had some very exciting discourse in our community over the last two weeks! Congratulations to the current leaders:
🥇 Satyajeet Pal (Engineering Manager at Bitwise)
🥈 Bryan Linton (Sr. Software Engineer at Tholos)
🥉 Michael Gutierrez (Fmr. Head of Operations at HOLE DAO)
View the full details (including our point system & leaderboard) here.
Upcoming Chainforest Programming ⛓️🌴
Monthly Town Hall: Join us to stay updated on the latest developments at Chainforest DAO including upcoming events, new member orientation, in-depth analysis of deal flow, and much more! 🏛️
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: Discuss the ongoing 🏆 Champion of the Forest 🏆 and 🧠 GIGABRAIN 🧠 events, and receive the latest information regarding our April schedule, including the Chainforest NFT.NYC event!
Deal Flow Discussion: Review the updated Deal Flow tool and sharing process on POTW. We will also be discussing a deal with the community (Heds DAO)!
REMINDER: Members receive TEAM points by participating in Chainforest-related content, including our Town Halls! TEAM points count towards your 🏆 Champion of the Forest 🏆 rank!
When: April 4, at 3:00 pm EST in our Discord
RSVP: here
Previous Events & Recordings 📼
Monthly Town Hall (March 2023): Did you miss our March Town Hall meeting? Check it out here!
Covered during the Town Hall:
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
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
Discord Highlights 👀
Rainmaker’s share crypto projects that they think more people should know about and why 🌟
Enhanced Block Explorer Experience: I’ve been using this for the last few weeks and absolutely love the product, it's a block explorer that offers a 10x user experience improvement compared to etherscan. My primary use case is finance/accounting related as I work through transactions and think about how they should be classified in a financial statement, though Once Upon also offers a number of use cases for active degens/traders
Rainmaker, 4484, currently works at Once Upon to build a better web3 block explorer. Per 4484, coming out soon are dashboards with persistent filters (think of them as preset windows), and preset filters as well (easy way to filter txn lists to common on-chain activity like NFT swaps, ens, etc.)
Michael C. Joseph: [Pocket Universe]
Additional Security for Transactions: I've been using it to review any transactions or signings before I actually go through with it in my wallet. There are a few options in the space, but in general, I think it's smart user behavior to add some extra security checks before you actually do something with your wallet. Right now Pocket Universe only really works with browser wallets like Metamask. Ideally, you wouldn't even need such a solution, but that's definitely not the world we live in at the moment, and the more people that can protect their assets, the better
Bryan Linton: [Sansa] & [Artacle]
Generative Art & Analytics: I got really into Generative Art NFTs several months ago and found these sites: Sansa & Artacle. Sansa has a really cool feature that allows you to explore the algorithm and generate new artwork (here is the link for an example: Fidenza. Artacle is super interesting for analyzing NFT collections and provides analytics/dashboards on price, ownership distribution, community, etc.
NFT Lending Rate Aggregator: I thought SnowGenesis was cool. They're an aggregator of NFT lending rates across providers. Haven't seen another tool do this yet and with the rapid growth of TVL for nft lending, think its worth watching
Decentralized Social Network: Farcaster is a self-proclaimed "sufficiently decentralized social network". The key here is that it's not willing to compromise on user experience for the sake of decentralization. They're really trying to make something on par with or better than existing Web2 alternatives (Twitter)
Open Alternative to Twitter: If you've ever thought that Twitter, the global "town hall" should be a public infrastructure, uncontrollable by a specific organization, CEO, etc, then you might find Farcaster interesting. For the same reasons that Mastodon became popular, it feels clear that there should be an alternative to Twitter built on open infrastructure
User Experience: Farcaster is mostly interesting for crypto-native users right now, they're starting small. It's definitely not fully decentralized yet. It's invite-only, there's only one primary node that handles messages (soon to be multiple), and the sign-up UX is still not great (because crypto wallets are hard to use), but it's building momentum
Multiple Use Cases: The last thing I'll add is that Farcaster isn't just for people who are worried about being de-platformed/censored. You may wonder why an ordinary user would care about that. Well, 1) after Musk bought Twitter, it wasn't just the de-platform crowd that felt an alternative is necessary. people who were worried about single-person control of the feed, control of the interface, etc 2) an open-client, public shared-network model might actually create better UX than Twitter. the ability to build any client on top of the network itself might allow for more innovation and better long-term experience for users
Ben Gusberg follows up: Farcaster was actually going to be my choice as well! It feels like an exciting experimental playground with the various clients people have launched and features Dan and the team are testing
Farcaster vs. Lens: Curious about what Rainmaker’s think about Farcaster vs. Lens or other web3 social projects that are out there? I haven't used Lens (I have an invite sitting in my DMs but feel overwhelmed already with Twitter + Farcaster since they are so similar + limited time as a founder - which I think is actually a broader challenge for all these web3 social projects competing with incumbents). I know Lens is focusing a bit on creator monetization, which is interesting. I wonder how the design choices of each will contribute to which (if any) becomes the dominant protocol (with resulting massive network effects)
Members share their latest insights on the current regulatory environment 📑
Amit Mukherjee: shares that he has heard more concern from investors on upcoming regulations this past week than ever. Here is some of what he is hearing:
Concerned about SEC coming after Coinbase, although most think the upcoming penalties won't hold up in court
Concerned about CFTC revelations about Binance - trading against customers, warning of the police investigation, fake audits, encouraging users to access exchange through VPN
Anti-crypto Stance From the Biden Administration which seems to come from Elizabeth Warren
Worst case scenario of a total ban on crypto is a non-zero probability
Amira Valliani: At a High level:
Concerned about regulatory action over the next 2 years: Regulatory action generally translates to more enforcement actions (mostly from the SEC). The SEC is rolling out a strategy that bites away at jurisdiction over the space, without creating clear inroads for new projects to register and be compliant
The Coinbase actions are concerning and a HUGE reach by the SEC. The SEC's case isn't an absurd one - if you believe that the tokens trading on Coinbase are securities, then Coinbase is an unregistered securities exchange. But, it's absurd because Coinbase has been so, so engaged on the regulatory front and been trying to do everything right. The enforcement action is just demonstrative of bad faith on the part of the SEC. There's really no intention that Gensler is trying to find a middle ground for the industry
Congressional Action is Needed. Congressional action would be awesome in that it would actually lay out the rules of the road. But, it's unlikely in the next 2 years. The most likely thing we'll get is stablecoin legislation, which I'd put at ~10%, just because of current Congressional dynamics
An All-out Ban on Crypto Ain't Gonna Happen. That's not really on the table and impossible to enforce
Binance actions are the tip of the iceberg, and IMO, seems totally justified. We'll likely see substantiated evidence of money laundering and advising customers to circumvent the law. That's not anti-crypto as much as it is countering general illicit activity, mixed with some anti-China sentiment
Warren is definitely leading the anti-crypto charge, and the Biden admin seems not to have much love for digital assets
Generally, the regulatory environment over the next couple of years will be more enforcement actions from the SEC, and very little clear legislation coming out of Congress
Community members discuss how will AI and crypto intersect 🤖
Julia Xu: On one hand I could see a world where AI drives more people to blockchain as a way to prove a piece of work was human-made or prove authorship
Blockchain to Authenticate Art: I have some friends in the art space who are concerned for example about gen AI's ability to "give me X image in the style of [living artist who didn't consent to having their stuff trained on]." I'm not talking about the anti-AI crowd, but artists who are legitimately concerned about knockoffs made in their style out there being confused with their actual works. Some of them have started to be more open to looking into blockchain as a watermark of "oh, maybe if all my actual works are minted or have this record that they were made by me, this is how I can establish truth"
Blockchain for Creative Ownership: Another example would be the tweet that's making rounds about someone who recorded some rap verses and had "AI Kanye" record over it. There's been a flurry of responses of people having "Kanye" "sing" other people's songs as a response. Jay-Z sued for something like this a while back (someone using AI trained on his body of work to have his voice "cover" songs he never did) and lost. I'm not a lawyer and don't know the details of the case and on what grounds he lost, but one use case for blockchain is as AI's ability to fake someone's appearance, voice, art or writing style gets more sophisticated, people may want a way to definitively establish what works are truly theirs vs AI derivatives that have nothing to do with them
Shaan Bhagat responds to Julia Xu: I agree that this is a great concept
Building on top of this, what entities would be most incentivized to build something like this? Companies like Hipgnosis? Talent Agencies? Associations like RIAA or RAG? Spotify or Apple Music?
Public Blockchain for Public Good: This is another excellent example showing the potential of public blockchain as a public infrastructure for better public goods/services. However, it's still hazy who is incentivized to build these solutions and how they can be turned into sustainable businesses
Ben Gusberg: Crypto & AI are two sides of the same coin. When the cost to create or fake ANYTHING digital approaches zero (using AI), the need for EVERYTHING to be digitally signed & verified easily (using cryptography) becomes most important
AI Challenges Trust, Crypto Enables Safety: While AI will create exponential increases in productivity, it will also create exponential decreases in trust, because anything (information, images, videos, etc.) can be nearly perfectly faked at virtually no cost. Thankfully, crypto thrives in low-trust environments, bc blockchains let us interact, transact & relate without relying on 3rd-parties (or each other) to verify interactions. On-chain data creates an immutable record and on-chain rules and credentials verify interactions & identities automatically, so we can transact safely
AI Needs Crpyto’s Decentralization: Today, “decentralization,” “trustless” and “permissionless” are just crypto jargon with relatively low importance to most people in developed nations (this makes sense today!). If AI achieves its potential, these jargon words may be the primary threads holding society together. If you believe AI is the future, then you implicitly believe crypto is the future as the key force to counterbalance that
Satyajeet Pal: AI, Blockchain, & Cryptography Intersection: I like Julia Xu’s and Ben Gusberg’s takes! One thing to separate is where AI intersects with blockchain crypto and where AI intersects with cryptography crypto. There's probably a bit of both, but the cryptography aspect is more obvious to me. But I generally agree with the broader takes that we will need more ability for things to be digitally signed and verified for authenticity
There is a good episode of Chopping Block that dives into the intersection - I think everyone would enjoy it. They use the Nikon camera with zk-proof generation that an image generated on the camera is the image that gets shared elsewhere
Shaan Bhagat: There's potential for combining homomorphic encryption + tokens + AI to provide the appropriate infrastructure for siloed data accessible by the AI community. From the limited amount I understand, homomorphic encryption is a holy-grail innovation. Still, it has the potential to allow for data to be analyzed without it being revealed to the end user
Ocean Protocol is a solid example of how crypto and AI can intersect in the short to mid-term future
Secure Data Marketplace for AI: There are industries, like life sciences, where the data that is needed to train new models are often sourced in many different places (e.g., lab data, imaging data, patient records, clinical study data, RWE data) and is well regulated where there is a need to audit where data was obtained from as well as the permissions to access that data. In theory, Ocean protocol could power a data marketplace for CROs and digital health companies to make their data available for companies to license to use as training data for their AI algorithms. In an ideal world, patients could provide their data with their permission (via more granular informed consent) and be compensated by a lower insurance premium or hospital bill
Chainforest announces its new and improved deal flow tool to the community 🔥
Have you ever missed an exciting shared deal in our deal flow channel due to not checking Discord? 😢
Have you ever had trouble following deal comments? 💬
Have you ever wanted to search for past deals, but couldn’t? 🔍
NO MORE! We’re launching a new deal tracker in our Proof of Teamwork hub. Starting today, all new deals will be sourced in the deal tracker, with updates automatically shared to Discord (In the #share-deal-flow channel).
With this new tool, you can share new deals, comment or ask questions, tag others, search for past deals, and more!
Access our new deal flow tool here! 👀
For more on how to share a deal or use the deal tracker, check out this instructional video here
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 to the Chainforest community. The current version of this tool contains a member database, a shared deal flow section, and a community leaderboard all accessible via the link below 🥳
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 🗓️
NFT.NYC - NFT.NYC events attract the global NFT community to New York City
When: April 12-14, New York, NY (Time Square & Hudson Yards)
Details: here
LionHack 2023 - An annual crypto-hackathon hosted by Blockchain at Columbia University
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 April 2023 will be announced on Wednesday, April 5th! Stay tuned!
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.
Why join Chainforest?
Becoming a Rainmaker means accessing our Discord, our IRL events, our deep dives, and our complete programming. Most Rainmakers love the community because it offers the best environment for web3 learning and exploration on the Internet today.
Rainmakers also have the opportunity to support Chainforest's VC fund. Rainmakers have the opportunity to earn $RAINDROP, our token backed by carry in our VC fund, in exchange for identifying, evaluating, and supporting investment opportunities. Note that Rainmakers are not required to invest in order to participate, but also do not have a vote on investment decisions.
Apply here: https://chainforest.typeform.com/apply
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of the Chainforest Weekly Recap!
Till next week,