Chainforest Weekly Recap (04/10/23)

Apr 10, 2023

Chainforest Weekly Recap

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: 💬│general-chat, ⚡│connect-potw, 🔗│links.

Champion of the Forest Challenge 🏆🐯

🏆 Champion of the Forest 🏆
1. 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!)
2. 🏅 Current Standings (After Week 3): The race is heating up! Congratulations to the current leaders:
  1. 🥇 Michael Pope (Research Analyst at vvv.fund)
  2. 🥈 Vasanth Thiruvadi (Head of Finance at Chainforest)
  3. 🥉 Amira Valliani (Policy and Climate Initiatives at Solana Foundation)
  4. Check out our leaderboard to see the latest standings!
🧠 GIGABRAIN 🧠
1. 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 🧠
2. 🏅 Current Standings (After Week 3): We have had some very exciting discourse in our community over the last three weeks! Congratulations to the current leaders:
  1. 🥇 Satyajeet Pal (Engineering Manager at Bitwise)
  2. 🥈 Bryan Linton (Sr. Software Engineer at Tholos)
  3. 🥉Julia Xu (Head of Strategic Partnerships & Community at Scenius)
  4. View the full details (including our point system & leaderboard) here.

Upcoming Chainforest Programming ⛓️🌴

Chainforest x BlockTower x Magna NFT.NYC Happy Hour
1. Details: Join Chainforest, BlockTower, Magna, and our Web3 friends for drinks during NFT.NYC
2. When: April 12th at 5:00 pm EST
3. RSVP: This event is invite-only

Previous Events & Recordings

Monthly Town Hall (April 2023): Did you miss our April Town Hall meeting? Check it out here!
1. Covered during the Town Hall:
  1. We were thrilled to be joined by Cam Greer, Co-founder of heds DAO, as our latest Town Hall guest speaker
  2. What is heds DAO? hedsDAO is a decentralized audio-visual collective. Once a month, hedsDAO will release and auction a collaborative mixtape, created and curated by the community, as its own NFT collection
    - Website
    - Raise details

Discord Highlights 👀

Rainmaker’s share what problems they face in their life that could be improved with crypto 🌟
1. Bryan Linton
  1. Reliable Value Storage: A New Economic System: A new economic system that provides a way to reliably store the value I create in the world by exiting this (in my opinion, currently failing) global monetary experiment that has been going on since the US defaulted in 1971, where there is no backing of Sound Money from the primary currency used in our economy
    1. If you study the history of money, you learn why people that stored their value in Gold were the best off in the long run. Then humans invented Bitcoin, a better version of Gold. Then they invented Ethereum, a better version of Bitcoin (as long as they stick to their word and the protocol ossifies over time). Reliably storing the value one creates in the world without it being taken from them is vitally important to human prosperity
    2. I am extremely thankful that crypto has provided me with something that I know will allow me to reliably store the value I create in the world over time for myself and hopefully future generations
2. Prashanth
  1. Traveling with Crypto: An Ideal Vision: Traveling to other countries. Right now I make sure I have an international Mastercard/Visa debit card. Hoping it works. Making sure I have enough fiat on it. I wish I could travel the world with Bitcoin/USDT in my hardware wallet
  2. Simplifying Contractor Payments Abroad: Paying contractors abroad from my company bank account. International wire transfers take time and require receivers to have an IBAN account
  3. Secure login with wallet: Need to remember my password or use a password manager. I wish I could connect my wallet to generate a signature that can be verified, allowing me to log in
  4. Record Keeping: Keeping track of all my health records is painful
  5. Decentralized KYC storage solution: Doing the same KYC on many applications. I wish I can authorize companies to pick documents from a decentralized secure storage. ( encrypted and stored in IPFS and accessed only via wallet DIDs, NFT-based accesses, maybe)
3. Julia Xu
  1. I definitely echo the others here on dealing with foreign currency - for travel and for paying/getting paid by foreign entities. Conversions/fees/figuring out how I can even pay some people are so annoying
  2. This one's a long shot, but as a New Yorker, the amount of personal info I have to provide every time I apply for an apartment is absolutely overkill. Can't wait for the day zk proofs apply to real-life things like this
  3. Keeping track of multiple membership accounts, passwords, physical stamp loyalty cards, and making sure I brought the right one with me when I visit someplace. Just read my wallet
4. Adag1o
  1. Trust in relationships - like proof of friendship, proof of love, put it on-chain
Members examine and discuss the 12 live use cases for crypto presented by Bitwise 💰
1. Amit Mukherjee:
  1. Novel applications, but flawed: I don't think there is anything new here. These are all examples of novel applications, but it's not evident that any of them have real long-term substance. I agree that Stablecoins have value for disrupting the money transfer market, though I question why this hasn't already happened in a bigger way. Outside of stablecoins, I think each of these products or concepts has a flaw
  2. Value in Different Perspectives: It's also dependent on what lens you are looking through. If you're looking at these products as a VC, I think each has an Achilles heel that prevents a convincing argument for the company having enduring value. If you just want to show that things can happen on crypto that are interesting, then examples such as Uniswap are great
2. 4884:
  1. Underestimating crypto's value proposition: I do not particularly like any of these use cases mentioned in that thread. I feel they underestimate the value prop of crypto
  2. The problem with the "real world use cases" question is it is framed with Web2 applications in mind. This is very short-sighted. Web3’s potential is not in a remittances app, its potential has a higher calling
  3. Zooming out away from all the noise, the underlying value of a public ledger running on nodes all over the world can provide infrastructure for immutable provenance. Which assets are going to be pinned will only increase as more things are built, and with each kind of asset, more people will see the value. Today it's jpegs and digital art. Tomorrow it’s collectibles and luxury items. One day it will be real estate and mortgages
  4. Everything of value should be traded on-chain: Creating immutable provenance that can be tracked and traced over decades. Which eventually can shape identities that can transcend time. I wrote a mirror post about provenance
Members discuss the hypothetical of shorting USDT for Profit: Assessing the Risk and Reward of Trading Above $1.00 💡
1. Ben Gusberg asked the community if one could make money shorting USDT when it was trading at $1.02 as people were fleeing away from USDC because of the Silicon Valley Exposure (if you believe long-term it should settle back to $1.00). Ben adds you have ST risk that it increases even more but as long as you don't overleverage your trade, it seems relatively straightforward
2. Ed Weng says if you're doing the trade in DeFi, the real question is... When you sell the USDT, what asset are you comfortable holding? If you're selling USDT for USDC, then you have to take on USDC asset risk. If you're selling USDT for a volatile asset (like BTC / ETH), then you now have volatility risk. Ed adds that one can check DefiLlama for places to borrow. Here is an example of finding markets where one can use BTC as collateral to borrow USDT
  1. Ed adds that it is important to also understand that most borrowing platforms have dynamic borrow fees (APYs)
Chainforest announces its new and improved deal flow tool to the community 🤝
1. Have you ever missed an exciting shared deal in our deal flow channel due to not checking Discord? 😢
2. Have you ever had trouble following deal comments? 💬
3. Have you ever wanted to search for past deals, but couldn’t? 🔍
4. 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).
5. With this new tool, you can share new deals, comment or ask questions, tag others, search for past deals, and more!
6. Access our new deal flow tool here! 👀
  1. For more on how to share a deal or use the deal tracker, check out this instructional video here
Last week Proof of Teamwork launched a new feature on the Chainforest x Proof of Teamwork hub. Our goal is to encourage the serendipitous feeling of bumping into someone in the hallways of Chainforest. To do that, we’ve launched a new feature that allows you to see who else is on the same page of POTW as you and chat with them in real-time 🔥
1. Here’s a walk-through of how it works
2. Chainforest x Proof of Teamwork Hub
  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Link: access the tool here (Members only)!

Upcoming Events 🗓️

NFT NYC - NFT.NYC events attract the global NFT community to New York City
1. When: April 12-14, New York, NY (Time Square & Hudson Yards)
2. Details: here
Chainforest x BlockTower x Magna NFT.NYC Happy Hour
1. When: April 12, New York, NY
2. Details: Invite-only
LionHack 2023 - An annual crypto-hackathon hosted by Blockchain at Columbia University
1. When: April 14-16, New York, NY
2. Details: Apply here. For more event details, click 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
1. When: April 26-28, 2023, Austin, Texas
2. Details: here

Community Feature of the Month🎉

Our Community Feature of the Month for April 2023 is Alex Palmer, Co-founder of Poet Network! Check out his full feature here!

Connect with Alex Palmer:

Twitter
LinkedIn

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?
1. 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.
2. 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,

Sloan (@sloan0_0)

Chainforest

Chainforest Weekly Recap (04/10/23)