Chainforest Weekly Recap (12/13/22)
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 week, 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, 7 new Rainmakers have joined the forest!
The top three channels were: 💬│general-chat, 📥│share-deal-flow, and 🔗│links.
Upcoming Chainforest Programming ⛓️🌴
Bi-Monthly Women in the Forest Meeting: Calling all women in the forest! Chainforest DAO will be having our women-in-the-forest meeting on Thursday!
When: December 15 at 2:00 pm EST
Details/RSVP: here
Cryptogeddon Holiday Bash: Chainforest DAO presents the holiday party that web3 needs after a rough year in crypto. Many of us are hurting, and we want to put an event together to bring a little levity to the end of the year.
The theme is Post-Apocalyptic Christmas. We’ll commiserate together over the major capitulations and negative shocks to our ecosystem. We hope our satirical take on the traditional tech holiday party will end your year with a bit of much-needed light-heartedness and laughter!
Yummy thematic appetizers and drinks will be provided
When: December 16, 2022, 6-9:00 pm EST
Details/RSVP: here
Sounds of the Forest (Prior recordings) 💾
Monthly Town Hall: Did you miss our December Town Hall meeting? Check it out here!
Covered during the Town Hall:
Reviewed Chainforest's new Investment DAO
Chainforest co-investment opportunity
Brainstorming the future of Chainforest: forums versus channels; monthly paid subscription service
To view the entire duration of the Town Hall, download the file
Monthly Workshop: Myosin.xyz Co-Founders, Blake Minho Kim and da0uch, hosted a web3 marketing workshop. Check out the deck (here). Stay tuned for our tax office hours workshop with Vasanth Thiruvadi, CPA in January 2023!
Discord Highlights 👀
Apple is asking Coinbase for 30% of the gas fees to transfer NFTs 🌟
Amit notes that Apple has gotten increasingly aggressive as of late while the world is distracted. Amit adds Apple has become a real monopoly and is exercising that power in noncompetitive ways
Abhinav agrees with Amit. He says this is starting to head toward the worst end of the spectrum of possible behaviors. Adds that Apple was already painful with things like NFT gating in apps, but this is a step further. What is to stop Apple from asking for 30% of gas fees from any Metamask or Phantom
Rainmakers test out ChatGPT and share their experiences! 🎨
Pal says ChatGPT feels like magic. Some of the prompts Pal used: Asked it about an ideal dinner date in Nashville for someone who likes spicy food, or Ask for it to write a MySQL query that does the thing that you always forget how to do
Sloan notes that using ChatGPT together with MidJourney has produced amazing results. Take a look Guy Parsons's stunning results
Vasanth explains the Infura versus Alchemy situation 📝
Vasanth says that it was recently discovered that Infura, which is the infrastructure on which MetaMask is built, has been logging IP addresses of users on every transaction. Both softwares are developed by ConsenSys. This has pretty important implications for users attempting to stay anonymous/pseudonymous, so the outrage has been intense. Vasanth adds that the founder of ConsenSys wrote a long thread explaining that folks are free to switch the backend provider of MetaMask if they please
Members discuss whether traditional brands see crypto as a cash grab after Polygon's recent partnership with Starbucks 💰
Jason asks if it even matters if this is true. Grants are issued for devs and hopefully, they create more value. He adds is this not true for all chains?
Amit says that it matters because people view Starbucks getting involved with Polygon as a data point on the space’s traction. If they’re not dedicating any resources, particularly money, to the cause it suggests a lower level of product-market fit for polygon and crypto overall
Jason says that he was running under the assumption that this is still true though. It’s not like Starbucks will take $20M and run. It is true if they aren’t putting a financier stake into it. I wonder what the terms are because I don’t see how they give a $20M grant without some level of commitment
Alex ask the community if they are aware of any protocol, project, or DAO that is building something that can be broadly categorized as a “Central bank for crypto-native companies” 🏦
Amira ask what this would look like in practice
Alex follows up: An independent (or multi-) party managed pool of capital that is able to lend to crypto native companies that are illiquid (with otherwise stable and sound business) but are not insolvent. The important thing that it would have to do would be to audit financials and conduct risk scoring and credit scoring
Ethan says if you think there should be a crypto central bank, there are several major moral questions that should be answered:
Under what circumstances does it make sense to save an illiquid institution?
Why does it make sense?
At whose expense are these bailouts?
What moral hazard is created?
Is there a potential for zombie financial institution creation?
Upcoming Events 🗓️
Chainforest DAO Cryptogeddon Holiday Bash - The theme is Post-Apocalyptic Christmas. We’ll commiserate together over the major capitulations and negative shocks to our ecosystem. We hope our satirical take on the traditional tech holiday party will end your year with a bit of much-needed light-heartedness and laughter!
When: December 16, 6-9 pm EST, in New York, NY
Details/RSVP: here
Taipei Blockchain Week 2022 - Bringing together industry experts from all over the world in the blockchain space to educate and empower Taiwan to become a growing hub for web3 innovation
When: December 12-17, 2022, in Taipei, Taiwan
Details/RSVP: here
New Members 🎊
Amanda Young | Collab+Currency
Lisa Xu | FirstMark Capital
Mark Grace | M13
Mario Lopes | Krause House
Michael Gutierrez | HOLE DAO (Previously)
Nicholas Charriere | Privy
Shane Sabine | Punch 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)