Onchain: Delulu
Even outside of crypto, Gen Z has adopted being delusional as a coping mechanism, delulu denoting someone who, despite evidence to the contrary, holds on to idealistic beliefs.
Well, if that doesn't sound like someone still reading crypto newsletters believing some good has to come out of this industry, right?
Story One
Marketing is NEAR
In a world of constant exploits, be the protocol account with 1.8 million followers that stages a hack in an attempt to drum up participants for their hackathon.
The protocol in question is NEAR protocol, an alternative L1, best-known for its founder Illia being one of the contributors to the "Attention is all you need" Whitepaper, paving the wave for the current crop of GenAI. 😏
On September 4th, the NEAR X account's pfp changed, and a first tweet told people they should delete their X account and touch grass since everyone would be going to zero. They followed up with a video featuring a bald guy, looking like what you get ordering Pitbull from Wish.
A bunch of increasingly cringe tweets later, the official account clarified it was nothing but a stunt. It fulfilled its purpose of grabbing attention, as NEAR trended for two days on CT, thanks to the controversy it triggered. Some found it genius; others dubbed it "dumb as fuck". The more sophisticated observer drew parallels to the Fountain by Duchamp, a famous piece of modern art, quickly concluding that this was nowhere close to such a moment.
Takeaway: At least they tried something new, but not even that got them beyond the 2 million followers KPI, which their team had talked about in Town Halls since the beginning of the year. In the long run, this too shall be forgotten quickly.
Story Two
Y'all got anymore of that vape?
It's 2024. And you're still smoking cigarettes? Look, I get it; it's hard to shake that habit, and cigarette smoke is a better accessory for the gangster rapper aesthetic. After all, it can't look like a bad boi and smell like strawberry vanilla.
But, if you've already read all the self-help books on the topic and tried anything to quit to no avail, crypto has the cure. Enter Puffpaw, your friend and helper, the DePin solution that'll help you quit for good. The startup building on Berachain entered the limelight with its $6 million fundraising announcement, led by Lemniscape, which believes this "puts us at the forefront of DePin (decentralized physical infrastructure) to integrate blockchain with health-conscious vaping.."
I want to have whatever these health-conscious VCs are smoking... emm vaping.
Through the Puffpaw smart vape, each puff is registered onchain and rewarded with tokens, adding gamification to the quitting process.
Takeaway: Not the DePin renaissance we wanted, but probably the one we deserve.
Story Three
RIP Friend Tech
Finally, some good news. Except for the people who thought that SocialFi was going to usher in the long-awaited mass adoption since what we all really wanted was to buy and dump our ex's token.
Remember friend.tech? The app was one of the first to launch on Base with the promise of allowing crypto celebrities to sell access to their group chats. For a while, everyone with a reputation to ruin wrote threads on how this was the next big thing while happily seeing their share price quadruple. Until people realized there was little point for creators to further engage in the group chats once they had sold their shares.
Not even the launch of V2 and an airdrop could halt the decline, and the platform is now just another digital wasteland. The founders, too, seem to have given up, transferring the admin keys to a burn address, which means giving up control over the smart contracts.
The friend token tanked in response, marking the likely, unremarkable end of an app I'd never touched because I prefer my friends irl.
Takeaway: The creators walked away with $44 million in revenue, token holders left holding the back. Accountability? Not here. Call me delulu for thinking we have the tools to do better...
Fact of the week: On this day in 1910, Gustav Mahler premiered his 8th symphony, also dubbed the Symphony of a Thousand; it required 1028 musicians, many of whom had to stand due to space constraints since the usual orchestra counts around 100.
Why did he go so big? Because after realizing that both Schubert and Beethoven passed away after nine symphonies, he figured it was safer to stop at 8—a big exit.
In the end, though, he wrote another symphony and left an uncompleted 10th to the world.
Naomi for CoinJar
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