A Dot Swoosh Amuse-Bouche

Hi. It’s Dana. Welcome to the Web 2.5 newsletter featuring news, content, musings, and memes at the intersection of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. This week we have:

• Nike entering Web3

• Zeneca on the podcast

• And a whole lot of news

So buckle up, and let's head to the Metaverse, the Football-Verse, or any other Verse, Chorus, or Bridge you'd like. We're off to the wild world of Web 2.5.

💥 Breakdown of the Week: Nike 💥

This week, I'm choosing goodness over evil. Lightness over darkness. I'll share the FTX updates below in the news section. But up here, above the fold, I'm going with Nike.

Nike and its new division Nike Virtual Studios gave us a taste (yes, an amuse-bouche, if you will) of its plans for a new Web3 platform called Dot Swoosh (written .Swoosh), housing all of Nike’s virtual creations. 

The platform will allow fans and users to buy, show off, and trade phygital and virtual products, unlock access to events and products, and co-create products. Users will also have the ability to sell and earn royalties on co-created products as well as create their own destination to display and sell their products. Fans were given access to register on Monday in preparation for the platform’s launch this Friday. There's a lot to the story. A pretty comprehensive roundup is here in Vogue Business.

Here's what's interesting to me about the news and what's applicable for other brands:

1) Start With Your Strengths. A big piece of the Nike announcement is the ability for consumers to co-create products.

News flash -- customer-driven Nike creations are not new for Nike. They've been allowing customers to officially create and customize gear for years (I think I have an old pair of Nike ID's somewhere). Plus, it's wildly popular in the after-market, too. What's different this time is just that the blockchain now enables creators and Nike to capture more value from it. My POV is that instead of leveraging Web3 for new applications for your brand, start with what you already do and what customers already love -- and find ways that the technology makes THAT even better.

2) BYOC. There is a lot of education needed to onboard folks into Web3. And as we've seen from many brands (e.g., BFF's Minted event being one great example), if you want to bring folks into the fold, you have to do it yourself.

And Nike is no exception. They plan to host educational events in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Tallahassee, Louisville, and New York as a way to onboard customers into their experience. My POV is that any brand looking to drive significant scale in their Web3 programs MUST evaluate including an educational onboarding piece in their launch plan. In other words, Bring Your Own Customers.

3) Virtual Marketing Is the New Digital Marketing. A final piece of the announcement is that Nike hopes that the digital goods the community will create can be worn anywhere online (e.g., across digital metaverses, video games, etc.). If this sounds familiar, it's because it is. Nike is banking on the fact that virtual eyeballs will matter in the metaverse just like they do IRL, and they are looking to turn virtual goods into virtual billboards. If you ask me, we're going to have virtual merchandising that all sounds very Web 2.5 like product placements, promotions, ads, and celebrity endorsements. So bring your Web2 marketing toolkit with you to the Web3 metaverse. You're going to need it. 

Well, that was fun! Now, off we go...

💥 But First, A New Podcast Episode 💥 

Oh hi, it's still me. I'm back to remind you to check out our newest podcast episode with Zeneca, Founder of ZenLabs, ZenAcademy, ZenMedia, and all the Zens (except NOT Zenefits, Zenfolio or ZenPayroll). Zeneca is a Web3 native who is now trying to cross back over into the land of Web2 to build "The McKinsey of Web3" as he calls it, one of the many organizations working to onboard the next billion users into crypto. We talk on the show about how he got into crypto, his success building the ZenAcademy community, and his plans to scale.

🎧 Have a listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧

💥 Weekly Web 2.5 News Roundup 💥

📉 FTX

Last week, we hit publish on the newsletter JUST as the FTX & SBF drama was unravelling (SBF is FTX's former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried). The company had just imploded after a liquidity crisis, and a last minute effort for a lifeline from rival firm Binance had fallen through.

Well, it turns out that part 2 in a multi-part series is just as wild. In the last week alone, FTX filed for bankruptcy, $1-$2B disappeared, SBF tried to sell his Bahamas apartment for $40M, SBF sent erratic tweets, Visa pulled the plug on its FTX partnership, and so did the sports partners. We also learned that Michael Lewis has been following SBF for months in preparation for a book, the NYTimes got slammed for writing what many thought was a puff piece on SBF, Tom Brady and other celebrities are being sued for endorsing FTX, and the contagion is spreading to Gemini, BlockFi, and Genesis. Also it seems as if SBF may have lied about being vegan. So it's, you know, a lot. Like 32 tweets a lot. But now you're caught up!

💰 Finance

The ooops of the week goes to Crypto.com, which accidentally sent 320,000 ETH or $400 million to Gate.io, a competitor exchange. Although all funds have been returned, Crypto.com’s token, Cronos, is down more than 50% for this week. The self proclaimed ‘FUD’ (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) has caused customers to doubt the exchange’s transparency following the collapse of FTX.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, along with global banking giants including Citigroup, HSBC, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo, are starting a 12-week digital dollar pilot. This means that the banks are testing an “interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger.” If that doesn't make any sense, here's more from the Fed.

Uniswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX), has overtaken Coinbase as the world’s second-largest Ethereum trading platform. The company now sits right behind Binance by hosting upwards of $1 billion in Ethereum trades. 

Circle, the issuer of USDC Stablecoin, announced that businesses who accept its currency can now make transactions through Apple Pay. Yes, basically you can pay with USDC using Apple Pay. If you weren't sure, this news wins the Web 2.5 Award of the Week.

⚽ Sports

The FIFA World Cup is coming up. And so too are the brand activations. Budweiser, and Visa are among the brands bringing NFTs to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Visa kicked-off the NFT hype by holding an NFT auction, which included five historic World Cup goal collectibles. Budverse users will have access to a live scoreboard NFT and digital collectibles including scarves, color changing aluminum cups, and trading cards. FIFA has also created a collection of Web3 games related to the World Cup. And Adidas is showcasing its Bored Ape Yacht Club character, Indigo Herz, in a World Cup ad alongside football superstars Lionel Messi and Karim Benzema. 

Cristiano Ronaldo, the world renowned footballer, is launching his first NFT collection in partnership with Binance. The collection will include seven animated statues of an iconic moment in the athlete’s life. The collection will drop this Friday. No one is talking about this yet, but I'm thinking that this statue won't be included.

Also, apparently Scottie Pippen is one of us, too...

👓 Fashion, Beauty & Accessories 

A pair of Birkenstocks, owned by Steve Jobs, have sold for $218,750. If the sandals weren't enough, the shoes also come with an NFT of a "360° digital representation of the sandals." Jobs, the late founder of Apple, wore the sandals in the 1970s and 1980s while he created Apple in his Los Altos, California garage.

🖼️ Art

Yuga Labs recently donated an NFT, CryptoPunk #305, to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Miami. This donation was the first step in its Punks Legacy Project, which aims to bring more CryptoPunks to global contemporary art museums. Yuga also plans to provide resources to museums on Web3 education, crypto art history, crypto security, and NFT best practices.

🎮 Toys, Games & Gaming

Cryptoys and Mattel have collaborated to create a Masters of the Universe (MOTU) digital toy series in celebration of the toy franchise’s 40th anniversary. The Cryptoys NFT platform will now house 12 limited edition MOTU characters, along with its toys, games, and entertainment. 

If trademarks don't lie, neither do patents. Sony Interactive Entertainment, owner of PlayStation, recently published a patent titled, “Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger.” The move led to speculation that the company is working on NFT and blockchain technology for PlayStation to "track the creation, use, modification, and transfer of digital assets that are created within or based on a video game."

🎶 Music

Ok so, Snoop Dogg, Billy Ray Cyrus, and The Avilla Brothers walk into a bar. Ok, just kidding that's not the update. But Snoop Dogg, Billy Ray Cyrus, and The Avilla Brothers DO team up to bring their collaboration, a song titled “A Hard Working Man,” to the metaverse via their partner Animal Concerts. The song has been transformed into a program complete with a PFP collection, a gamified NFT experience, and a tokenized incentives program. Users will have the chance to complete various challenges to win live concert tickets, backstage passes, a party with Snoop, and more.

It seems like the music video left off one hardcore job from the list, however...working at Twitter.

 🍼 Babies

Finally the days of Excel spreadsheets with must-have baby gear is over. Babylist, a baby registry service, recently launched a metaverse baby registry virtual showroom called “Babylist Land – Gifting Edition.” Shoppers can search through rooms of clothes and gear, click-to-learn about different products, and place orders as if they are shopping in a physical store. Hopefully there's no scanner gun in this store (remember those!?).

❤️ Social Good

StreamCoin, a blockchain company, has partnered with One Tree Planted to create a greener (as in trees, not money) and more sustainable planet. The company plans to launch nonprofit initiatives to support global reforestation, and the proceeds will be donated to One Tree Planted. StreamCoin hopes that its actions will show that NFTs can be used for good causes.

✨ Web3 Deals, Drops & Alpha

The consolidation trend continues, this week in the land of art and apes. Yuga Labs, owner of Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquired Beeple’s Web3 platform, WENEW, along with its NFT collection, 10KTF. The company has since teased the integration of 10KTF and Otherside, its own metaverse platform. Michael Figge will join the Yuga team as its chief content officer while Mike Winkelmann will sign on as an advisor. 

Not your keys, not your coins. Ledger and Trezor, two hardware wallet manufacturers, experienced huge spikes in sales after the collapse of FTX. Customers rushed to purchase a crypto wallet that will safeguard their digital assets. Unlike software wallets, hardware wallets store private keys securely and are mostly immune (let's all hope!) to online attacks. 

™️ Trademarks

📰 Weekend Reading

How Retailers are Connecting the Metaverse to the Real World and Revenue. RetailDive.

What Does a Digital City Look Like in the Metaverse? Bloomberg.

The Metaverse Is The Marketer’s Digital Playground: How Can They Play? Forbes.

Brands Face New NFT Dilemma As Marketplaces Pull Back Creator Royalties. AdAge.

🧰 Jobs

Nike Virtual Studios, Director Education & Support (NYC, LA, or OR). Apply.

Manager of Innovation & Emerging Technologies, Charlotte Hornets. Apply. 

Lots of open jobs at Apple hint at a foray into ‘3D mixed-reality world.’ Cointelegraph.

AND lastly, if you live in Lisbon, this is one for you: 

🫶 And that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading Web 2.5. See you out there in the interweb3s. Also, if you like our work, would you share it with a friend?

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is strictly educational. None of this is financial or investment advice — and not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please always Christian DYOR (Do Your Own Research).