Badges update 🏅

For 20 editions of The Metaversalist, we offered you, dear reader, free NFT Badges. Thousands of Badges were distributed, along with a selection of prizes for collectors, including art from XCOPY, a Mad Lads PFP, and fashion from Gossamer Rozen.

We’re hard at work planning Badges 2.0, but for now, we want to thank everyone who collected Badges, and we suggest you keep an eye on your wallet next week... 👀

DYOR 🔬

Ethereum co-founder and drip king Vitalik Buterin ruffled some Bitcoin maxis’ feathers this week when he went on a Twitter Spaces with Taproot Wizards founders and Ordinals maxis Eric Wall and Udi Wertheimer, entitled “What bitcoiners can learn from Ethereum.”

Buterin thinks Ordinals are bringing back a "builder culture" to the Bitcoin network and is excited about both Ordinals and the BRC-20 token standard’s potential to shake up the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“Ordinals are starting to bring back a culture of actually doing things,” Buterin said. “It feels like there's real pushback to the laser-eye movement, which is good.”

One of the big topics of the two-hour conversation was scalability. Wall voiced his concerns about the Lightning Network, saying it can't handle future users and often fails when processing even medium-sized payments. Buterin had some suggestions, though. He thinks the focus should be on Layer-2 solutions and finding ways to make the Bitcoin base layer more efficient.

Wertheimer, meanwhile, is all for introducing zero-knowledge rollups to Bitcoin because that could allow for the execution of smart contracts.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board with these ideas. Some hardcore Bitcoiners believe adding things like Ordinals inscriptions and smart contracts to the Bitcoin network goes against its original purpose as a peer-to-peer cash system. They argue that it's just taking up valuable block space.

Samson Mow, the CEO of Jan3, is one of such critic, but Wertheimer wasted no time expressing his disdain for Mow and his dismissive take on the conversation on Twitter.

On a more conciliatory note, Wall suggested a compromise that might keep maxis’ rage in check: Using Bitcoin as a "proof system" for zero-knowledge proofs rather than running everything on-chain.

What would crypto be without beefs? Dull, that’s what. Moreover, it's through conversations, debates, and exploring new ideas that the crypto community keeps pushing the boundaries of innovation. Plus, you know, it helps keep social media interesting.

To the moon 🌙

• Speaking of social media, on Wednesday, Metagramstabook unveiled its Twitter copycat service Threads, and it promptly got approximately a gazillion users thanks to the ease of setup. Got an Instagram account? Setting up a Threads account takes a few clicks. Is swapping Musk’s service for Zuck’s service a net positive for digital denizens? Probably not. But you can’t blame Zuck for sticking the boot in while Musk is down — that’s the capitalist imperative, baby!

• In slightly more wholesome but still capitalism-powered news, tennis star Andy Murray, Wimbledon, and artist Refik Anadol are selling $150 pieces of dynamic digital art on Manifold:

• Robbie Barrat’s AI-Generated piece “Nude Portrait #7 Frame #111” sold for 175 ETH (~$344,000).

• In genuinely wholesome news, pseudonymous NFT collector and founder of The Edicurial Collection, Elsie, unveiled The Permanent Collection, a selection of 100 crypto artworks collected between 2021 and 2022 covering a range of media and artists:

• Former First Lady Melania Trump released a new selection of NFTs for the 4th of July dubbed “The 1776 Collection.” The $50 NFTs are emblazoned with schlocky patriotic drivel and, at the time of writing, have blessedly failed to sell out, unlike their creator or her spouse, who’ve made grift their entire personalities.

• Luxury brand Dior released a $1,350 physical sneaker called the “B33” that comes with a digital twin:

• Could’ve-been-Zuckerberg Ken dolls, the Winklevii, filed a suit against Grayscale founder Barry Silbert over the Genesis debacle that left the twins’ crypto exchange Gemini with egg on its face.

• NFT marketplace OpenSea announced support for NFT-minting platform Zora:

• Sorry Swifties, but it looks like FTX pulled out of the sponsorship deal with one of pop music’s biggest stars (rumored to be worth $100 million), not the other way around. Nonetheless, it turned out to be beneficial to Swift and meaningless to FTX, which was screwed regardless.

Thread of the week 🧵

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Until next time, see you in the metaverse!