This Week in Web3...

🤷‍♀️ Hello X. How do we not start with last week’s biggest curveball? Twitter suddenly gets rebranded to X, in a shocking tweet (post? Xeet? X?) by Elon Musk, and the company is slowly transitioning the branding away from everyone’s favorite blue bird.

Plus the San Francisco photographer who held the @x handle since 2007 tried to sell it for $1 million, but got it swapped away from them instead. Whoops!

Things might get interesting for X, however. More than 100 tech companies have trademarks for X within the specific trademark category that includes online social media networking. But maybe he was planning it all along?

🎨 OG generative artist, on chain. Sotheby's launched a collection with Vera Molnar, the generative art pioneer, with the help of artist Martin Glasser. The 500 piece long-form generative collection features the letters N, F, and T sits at a floor of around 5 ETH.

🥳 Gen 4 Collectibles. This week, Reddit dropped its latest series of Collectible Avatars. The collection, called Retro Reimaged, smashed it out of the park, minting over 1.2 million NFTs in the first 24 hours. The collection is sold in a series of sets, starting as low as $2.49. In addition to featuring artists from the previous Avatars collections, this series includes artists from Akutars & Cool Cats.

🇯🇵 Big in Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to support Web3, claiming it can transform the country's traditional internet framework and calling it “part of the new form of capitalism”. Plus crypto exchange Binance is set to return to Japan by the end of the summer.

🧘‍♀️ Building JOMO. I spoke to Avalanche on the importance of creating the web3 we want to see, not just economic & financial, but integrating mental wealth and wellness into the foundation. Catch the interview here:

Positive Affirmation for the Week

AI Corner

🎥 AI vs Hollywood. The Alliance of Motion Picture of Television Producers had put forth a “groundbreaking AI proposal” reportedly intended to protect performers’ digital likenesses and require their consent for creating and using digital replicas. However, SAG-AFTRA representatives claimed that the proposal would instead allow studios to gain unlimited rights to an actor’s likeness.

I cover my thoughts on how we could approach this over on What’s Trending:

👁 Worldcoin wants your eyeballs. Turn your eyes to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s new AI-inspired cryptocurrency, which aspires to be a global ID system. To pick up your free WRD token and sign up for a Worldcoin ID, you will need to give Sam Altman a scan of your eyeballs using Worldcoin’s proprietary iris-scanning tool Orb.

Over 2 million eyeballs have been scanned, and Ethereum Co-Founder, Vitalik, weighs in on the whole idea.

This Week We're Bullish On...

Vera Molnar

Vera Molnar is considered one of the pioneers of computer and digital art, and one of the first women to explore the medium. She created some of the earliest computer-generated abstract art and algorithmic geometric drawings, beginning in 1968. Her art is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, MoMA New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Now, she adds her artwork to the Ethereum blockchain at the age of 99, with 'Themes and Variations', a 500 piece collection that sold out in just an hour through Sotheby’s auction.

At 99 years old, she’s proof that it is never too late to experiment with new technologies.

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

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With gratitude,

ShiraWor