This Week in Web3...

🐧 Pudgy Penguins go parabolic. Absolutely everyone was talking about Pudgy Penguins this week after Luca Netz announced that Pudgy Toys will be available in over 2000 Walmart stores across the US.This is a huge accomplishment for Pudgy Penguins, especially given that Luca Netz only took over the project in April 2022.

Each Pudgy Toy comes with a unique birth certificate that allows the user to claim traits for a ‘Forever Pudgy’ character inside Pudgy World, an online virtual world built on the blockchain. Those traits are NFTs that can be bought, sold, and traded. I’m sure these will be at the top of many Christmas lists!

🖼 Next gen digital provenance. As part of their auction with Christie's this weekend, Alpha Centauri Kid and Transient Labs are launching T.R.A.C.E., a new form of technology that will serve as a new standard for provenance, authentication, evolution, and documentation for physical and digital art.

T.R.A.C.E. stands for “Tokenized Records for Artwork Certification and Evolution”. The idea behind T.R.A.C.E. is a secure chip physically linked to an artwork, pairing the artwork with a certificate of authenticity on the blockchain as an NFT.

👕 More NFCs x NFTs. On Thursday, IYK announced that it has raised $16.8 million in seed funding to grow its NFT-driven infrastructure. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included notable web3 creators like Snofro, Gmoney, and Justin Aversano. IYK provides near-field chips (NFCs) and the infrastructure to pair these with NFTs on the blockchain.

IYK is the tech behind gmoney’s 9dcc clothing brand, where you can scan a t-shirt with the NFC chip to pull up a tokenized certificate of authenticity.

Three huge stories this week all showcasing how NFTs can combine with objects in the real world.

The future is definitely phygital. 

Quick Headlines

• Yuga Labs blocks trading of Legends of the Mara on Opensea and Blur, choosing to only allow trading on marketplaces that respect creator royalties.

• Fortnite developer Epic Games is laying off around 830 employees, or 16% of jobs. They will also be selling their audio distribution platform Bandcamp to Songtradr.

• Su Zhu, the founder of Three Arrows Capital, was arrested in Singapore.

• Crypto personality Ben Armstrong was also arrested in a hilarious live video with his mistress in the car.

AI Corner

The Metaverse is back! Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and podcast host Lex Fridman did a podcast on AI entirely in the metaverse, showcasing their photo-realistic avatars that can capture subtle facial expressions and body language.

Overall, Meta seems to be avoiding their metaverse in favor of AI. Meta’s Connect Keynote talked about Meta AI, their new generative AI assistant, which can answer questions and take on the personality of dozens of characters, including Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, and Kendall Jenner. They also showcased AI-powered image editing for Instagram.

Quick Headlines

• Amazon has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in the AI startup Anthropic.

• ChatGPT can now browse the internet.

• OpenAI is trying to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence” (using Apple’s former Chief Design Officer too!)

Positive Affirmation for the Week

Stop rushing if it doesn't feel right for you. Take the time you need to make decisions and to do the things you love!

Hope you enjoyed this week's edition of the Alpha newsletter!

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With gratitude,

ShiraFrom Bitcoin Setbacks to AI Art ExhibitsP