Rough week for leading NFT projects as both Azuki & Memeland Captainz miss the mark with their highly-anticipated mints.

Still web3 continues to thrive with monumental announcements in generative art, partnerships with huge names in sport and entertainment, and record breaking Solana volume. Here are my takes on the stories capturing our attention.

Positive Affirmation for This Week

Express gratitude for the people who champion you, hire you, get you hired, make introductions, etc! It takes a village to build and grow… acknowledge your community and those in your corner!

This Week in Web3...

⚽️ Celebrate women in sport with WoW.World of Women made headlines this week with their partnership with FC Barcelona. Empowerment, the second 1/1 in the football club's ten-piece Masterpiece collection and a collaboration with World of Women, sold for 162 ETH in auction. The work was designed by WoW community member rhi.eth and pays tribute to Spanish player Alexia Putellas.

🎶 80,000 screaming Styles fans, web3 edition. Co.Create & the EVENTZ app debuted a web3-powered fan experience for Harry Styles & his loyal “Harries” at Sloan Castle, Dublin. Fans who used the app were able to explore the venue map, book transport, and posting photos in one app, and in the future, fans can claim rewards for buying tickets, engaging with social content, buying merch, and more, all with their newly claimed wallets.

🎨 OG generative artist, on chain. Sotheby's is bringing Vera Molnar, the generative art pioneer, to NFTs with the help of Art Blocks. Vera Molnar will launch a 500 piece long-form generative collection in a dutch auction format starting at 20ETH in July.

🐵 Solana Monkeys in a barrel. The raffle for Solana Monkey Business’ Gen3 collection saw 79,266 entries. Ticket were 19.9 SOL with a 0.07 SOL admin fee, and those unsuccessful in the raffle had their funds returned. The 157k SOL locked up in the raffle represented 0.1% of circulating SOL supply. Plus, Solana surpassed Ethereum for 24 hour trading volume for the first time in the chain’s history.

Quick Bites

• Azuki raised $38 million in moments with their Elementals mint, but collectors rage as the art is too similar to the OG Azukis. Here’s what Azuki promised to do next.

• Memeland Captainz also released this week with polarizing art. Will the next-gen “Smart PFP” with customizable traits capture our interest or is this the wrong time for such a bold experiment?

• Bored Ape Yacht Club’s new game is out, and includes social voting components. Expect lots of “forging” on the timeline.

• Mastercard is expected to launch the beta version of their ‘blockchain app store’ this summer.

• MSCHF - the ‘art collective’ behind the viral Big Red Boots - is recruiting for an actual Pyramid Scheme on Discord.

AI Corner

🧘‍♀️ Guided meditation by AI. If personalized zen is on your wishlist, Ogimi offers guided meditation sessions built on top of OpenAI's ChatGPT GPT-4 technology.

🎥 Fan-influenced storytelling with blockchain & AI. Space Junk, an animated adult comedy that premiered last month, includes fans in the writers room via the blockchain and AI. A branded NFT from Toonstar, the show’s production company, allows holders to craft story pitches with an AI version of robot character Wellbecca, who is trained on the world of the show. Holders can submit their storylines to the blockchain and those upvoted make their way into the narrative. Neat!

Web3 Phrase of the Week

Whale

WTF is it?

An individual or entity who holds a large amount of a specific type of cryptocurrency or NFTs in a collection. Some collections offer special privileges to their large holders (such as X+ DeGods who hold ten DeGods).

Why Does It Matter?

Due to their large holdings, whales may have the ability to manipulate the market. With Azuki’s disappointing Elementals mint, many whales are exiting the collection. At the same time, the FAF wallet (owned by @pimpcapital) picked up over 100 Azukis.

This Week We're Bullish On...

Diana-Luk Ye (@dianalukye)

Diana-Luk Ye is the Head of Strategic Accounts for World of Women, responsible for coordinating WoW’s partnership with FC Barcelona. She curated art by Rhiana Madeline (@rhi_eth) to represent Alexia Putellas, famous football (soccer) player who captains Barcelona and represents the national team of Spain. The piece sold for 162 ETH in auction, and includes the opportunity to meet Alexia in person. Diana recently was promoted to Head of Strategic Accounts at WoW - congratulations Diana!

There are many amazing people working behind the scenes on mega web3 activations, Diana-Luk Ye is just one of them!

She’s also a fellow Canadian! 🇨🇦

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

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Remember, I'm Bullish on you!

With gratitude,

Shiraeekly