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Am I a millionaire?

Welcome to The Web 2.5 Newsletter featuring news, content, musings, and memes at the intersection of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

Share a Coke, On the Blockchain

Coca-Cola launched a new “first-of-a-kind, generative, and shareable” NFT to celebrate International Friendship Day. The beverage brand dropped more than 4,000 free NFTs to holders of its first collection with the ability to share a second collectible with a friend — proof that regular old marketing goals like driving referral are still alive and well in web3. The company said holders would soon have access to perks and rewards including gaming events, Coca-Cola Studio-powered experiences, and access to Coca-Cola Creations product launches. 

This Week In Sports

If you’ve never fulfilled your childhood dream of winning a Super Bowl ring, now you can (kinda). The Super Bowl LVI champion Los Angeles Rams announced a partnership with Dapper Labs to release three tiers of digital collectible NFT Super Bowl rings. Available tiers are: Common (for $9 with 5000 available), Rare (for $59 and 1000 available), and Legendary (for $699 with 50 available)

That’s Hot

Paris Hilton will sell NFTs and hold virtual parties in The Sandbox metaverse.

A Reddit user on a mission to combat NFT critics is minting a new collection aptly called Worthless JPEGs!. The collection uses the top anti-NFT comments found online, including ones from famous skeptics like Warren Buffet, Peter Schiff and Dan Olson, as the basis for NFTs you can buy.

But Her Emails…

Email service provider Mailchimp unexpectedly cracked down on crypto newsletters this week with unannounced account suspensions that left publishers scrambling. Decrypt reports that impacted customers included self-custody crypto wallet Edge, crypto intelligence firm Messari, and Decrypt itself, a four year Mailchimp customer. Mailchimp has been relatively quiet on the issue aside from a 2018 tweet about its Acceptable Use Policy.

The ‘Space’ Between (the tears we cry…)

MoonDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a mission of decentralizing access to space research and exploration, shared that it sent popular Youtuber Coby Cotton into space through the Blue Origin space tourism program. Cotton is a member of the viral YouTube trick-shot group Dude Perfect, and was chosen in a Discord vote by the DAO’s more than 5,000 members to be its astronaut representative.

NSFW

In news that I would classify as “I don’t quite understand it, but you need to know about it” — this week’s trending NFT collection is a NSFW-named NFT collection based on a 2006 comic from K.C. Green. It’s the third series for this cartoon, and sales surged this week, landing the collection at #10 on OpenSea at the time I’m writing this. So if you have 3.6 ETH, or $6,700, you too can buy one. Because why?!

Artist The Weeknd went on an NFT spending spree, dropping $70,000 on 47 NFTs directly from the artist FVCKRENDER.

$$$

Pinata raised $21.5M to scale its NFT media infrastructure offering, supporting NFT marketplaces, metaverses, web3 apps, and other crypto projects with managing, sharing, and monetizing their media.

CreatorDAO raised a $20M seed round from a16z crypto and Initialized Capital to invest in creators.

CreatorDAO invests in creators in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings. The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) structure allows investment decisions to be crowdsourced, and contributions to the DAO such as mentorship and collaboration to be rewarded. Top creators such as Paris Hilton, The Chainsmokers, Shawn Johnson, Andrew East, Joma Tech, and Swaggy Wolfdog, representing 50MM+ audience members, have already signed on to share their time, expertise, and/or earnings with the CreatorDAO community.

Threads of the Week

Deeper Dives

4 changes in the NFT space that will inform the future of art and Web3. Fast Company.

How do you pick your next NFT? Cointelegraph.

Is it too late for brands to get into NFTs? Glossy.

NFTs Are Conquering Soccer. And not in a good way. Wired.

Web 2.5 Jobs & Hires

Director, Web3 Go-to-Market, Amazon Web Services, to “develop and lead go-to-market for Web3 at AWS”. Apply.

Group Creative Director, Metaverse/Web3, Razorfish, where “you will be responsible for leading a team working on creative emerging experiences, Web 3.0 and Metaverse and next generation digital innovation projects and experiences”. Apply.

Manager, Metaverse Experience, TIME. Apply.

SVP, Strategy Director, Residents, and more at Vayner3. Apply.

Dapper Labs hired Nick Grudin, former Head of Content Partnerships at Meta, as Chief Business Officer.

Musings, Ramblings, and Fun Stuff

Truth

Screenshotting Discord is the new screenshotting the Notes app

And lastly, you gonna come to the panel?

And that’s all, folks! Thanks for reading The Web 2.5 Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

To state the obvious, none of this is financial advice.