📔 Weekly Journal: Decentralised Twitter Alternative
[6 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news as well as all about a platform emerging as a great decentralised Twitter/X alternative.
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 71 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge.
New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
Enjoy your weekend! 😎
- Ryan
Digital Assets Market Update
🔥🗺️ 7-day heatmap below, which shows the current share of market for the top cryptocurrencies, alongside total marketcap (USD) and the change in price over the last week. Lots of red!
🎭 Crypto Fear and Greed Index is based on volatility, social media sentiments, surveys, market momentum, and a few other bits and pieces. Surprisingly this is still quite high, I think the market sees this as a healthy consolidation on the way up to $100k Bitcon
Interesting news from this week🗞️
📲 Farcaster's parent company, Merkle Manufactory, is on the brink of achieving unicorn status with a valuation surpassing $1 billion, thanks to a new funding round led by Paradigm. Founded in 2020 by former Coinbase executives, Merkle's flagship product is the social media app Warpcast, operating atop the decentralised Farcaster network. The recent surge in user activity on Farcaster, fueled by the introduction of Frames allowing in-app functionality, underscores the growing appeal of decentralized social media platforms, despite challenges in user retention.
🛰️ NASA has developed virtual reality (VR) technology to train astronauts for life on a lunar space station. Known as "Gateway," the station serves as a next-generation science lab and living space for international astronauts. The VR metaverse enables astronauts to immerse themselves in a 3D environment, preparing them for the challenges of deep space. Gateway, integral to the Artemis programme, aims to establish a lunar base as a stepping stone for Mars missions. Astronauts will operate Gateway from a distance of up to 386,243 kilometres, a significant leap from the International Space Station's orbit.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of embracing the emerging metaverse, seizing its potential across sectors such as education, entertainment, urban planning and real estate. The metaverse, breaking geographical barriers, promises unprecedented collaboration and connectivity. With investments like NEOM's metaverse component, Saudi aims for operational efficiency and economic diversification. Vision 2030 aligns with metaverse goals, targeting cultural enrichment and economic growth. Sectors like gaming, real estate, and education stand to benefit, but there is a massive need for workforce reskilling to capture the opportunity. The metaverse embodies a shift towards immersive, interactive experiences, reshaping industries and societies alike.
Here are some of my favourite quotes from the interviews with Saudi leaders:
“The metaverse, as an extension of this digital evolution, presents unparalleled opportunities for sectors like entertainment, real estate, and education,”
“By utilizing our virtual tours, clients can explore near-realistic off-plan projects in detail without physical travel, saving time and resources, and boost decision making.”
“Urban planning simulations will enable urban planners and architects to model and simulate new projects and city layouts in the metaverse including digital twins and connected systems.”
👓Read of the Week
This weeks read is “What Is Farcaster and How to Get Started With Warpcast”.
Farcaster is a decentralised social protocol built on Optimism, a Layer 2 scaling network, which allows developers to build diverse decentralized social media applications using pre-developed features powered by its smart contracts.
Since its launch, Farcaster has welcomed over 200,000 users, according to data from Dune Analytics. Notable users include Vitalik Buterin and Base network founder Jesse Pollack.
One of the key drivers for Farcaster's recent surge in popularity is the Farcaster Frames feature. Frames allow users to develop small apps that run inside of posts on Warpcast, enabling them to perform various actions such as minting NFTs, subscribing to newsletters, and playing games, all within the Warpcast platform.
Warpcast, an interactive social media platform with a concept similar to Twitter, is the most prominent application built on the Farcaster protocol.
Want to try it out? Here is a referral
🎥 Watch of the week
Farcaster co-founder, Dan Romero, joins CoinDesk to unpack Web3 social protocol Farcaster, and whats coming up on the roadmap
AI 🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
Suno AI, dubbed the ChatGPT for music, creates songs based on prompts like musical style and lyrics. It's addictive but often silly, producing anything from power ballads about coffee to jingles. While it aims to democratise music creation, concerns arise over its impact on musicians. Suno offers free accounts for up to 10 songs daily, with paid options for commercial use. Despite claims not to replace artists, fears persist about copyright infringement and dilution of royalties.
I gave it a go with this prompt:
Within 5 seconds I had this song, and its really quite good!
That’s all for the free version this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from learning about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Educational workshops are one of many consulting services I offer.
DCA With Me 🤑
Dollar Cost Averaging is an investment strategy in which an investor regularly invests a fixed amount of money into a particular asset/asset class at regular intervals, regardless of its current market cycle. By doing so, the investor can reduce the impact of market volatility and potentially earn a better return over time. Motto = time IN the market beats trying to time the market
To experiment with this, I invest $50 NZD into a Digital Asset every week. Each week I will choose an asset that seems underpriced in the short term and has positive long-term potential. My timeframe is 3-5 years. I don’t give financial advice but if you want to follow along with me you can use my easycrypto.co.nz referral link to support this newsletter. Let’s dive into this week’s pick:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Metaverse Field Guide to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.