Hi nerds -

I salute you from Miami, after taking a two-week break immersed in crypto conferences and reconnecting with friends in Mexico.

Throughout that time:

• We announced the first batch of partnership perks lined up for the Surge Passport NFT 🎉 as well as opened the presale list to our community.
• Represented Aragon at ETH Denver answering the question: “Where are the next 10,000 DAOs going to come from?”​

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Having that said, today’s edition is about lessons learned from attending ETH Denver, the largest Ethereum conference in the world.

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3 brain farts

🎭 NFTs: Without a question, the #1 topic on Denver streets was NFTs:

• how to create them,
• how to sell them out,
• how to engage the community, and
• how to manage a project’s treasury.

This is fun because it’s the intersection between identity, art, finance, and technology. It’s also nice because it empowers interesting business models. I’m bullish on:

• ​Education NFTs: as a way to token-gate courses or provide degrees.
• ​Real Estate Fractionalization: splitting ownership of properties.
• ​Music NFTs: replacing record labels as a way for artists to gain funding in exchange for song royalties.
• ​Blockchain games: every kid’s dream - making money playing video games.

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💸 Crypto VCs: VC firms poured more money into the sector during 2021 than all prior years combined. And you could tell. Increased adoption, nich-er use cases, and asset prices all contributed to the high demand and capital inflow.

But investing in crypto projects is not like investing in traditional startups. Here’s why:

• Quicker returns: Unlike traditional investments where investors are locked into a vesting period for 6-8 years, tokenized assets often allow investors to sell within the first year. This changes both (a) how investors perceive opportunities, as well as (b) how project leaders are thinking of their financial runway and growth strategy.
• Decentralization spectrum: If one wallet owns a large portion of the token supply, that means we have a “whale” in the house. Whales often direct the future of an organization, contradicting the ethos of decentralization. There are interesting techniques to avoid this, but it’s certainly still a concern.
• Community growth: Even more important than profitability, the main metric discussed in crypto projects is community engagement. Premise is: community == free marketing == organic growth == profitability.

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👩🏾‍🎤 Diversity: For a decentralized industry working on the ethos of collaboration and autonomy, it’s unfortunate that we still see so much homogeneity in its population.

It’s not strange though. Crypto is the intersection between technology and finance, two industries that have traditionally been dominated by men from a specific social class.

However, based on my experience building Surge, I’m evermore optimistic that we’re still early to change this. As long as we stay true to the Web3 mindset, there is a high chance we may just change the world for good this time.

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2 intellectual goodies

“The resilience of a community is directly correlated to the strength of the 1:1 relationships within that community.”

~ Andrew Zhang from Friends with Benefits​

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“I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

~ Thomas Edison

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1 funky audio

​Stayin’ alive meets Slim Shady - that’s all I have to say. Boogie with a splash of rap.

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Thanks for reading.

As always, feel free to connect by hitting reply and sharing a juicy thought 💡.

We all help the curious community grow.

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Best,

Jules 🤸🏻‍♂️