At least three quarters of web3 games have entirely failed, according to researchers at CoinGecko, who found that a stunning 2,127 abandoned or inactive web3 games have launched over the past six years.

CoinGecko used Footprint Analytics’ data for its study. It defined a failed game as one whose activity had declined by more than 99% since its peak.

In 2018, crypto founders launched a total of 422 games. Within 12 months, 307 of those had failed. In 2019 and 2020, failure rates for web3 games declined to abysmal annual lows of 94%.

Unfortunately, this year is faring no better. 509 out of 720 games launched in 2023 have already failed — representing a 71% failure rate.

Below is a list of some failed web3 games. All of this assumes, of course, that web3 even exists beyond a marketing buzzword.

Failed web3 games in 2023

• ConDragon, a game in which players caught, upgraded, or traded dragon-themed NFTs.
• Play Today, a blockchain-based golf game. Its X account no longer exists, which likely crimps its social media engagement.
• MetaCash, a virtual world video game with a market capitalization so small ($1.7e-10) that CoinMarketCap has to use negative-powers to express it mathematically.

Other games had initial signs of promise, only to later tank in value:

Gods Unchained (GODS) peaked at $8.83 and currently trades around $0.39. This game was, unfortunately, removed from the Epic Games store due to an “Adults Only” rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which is likely to negatively impact its potential user base. Its developers say it is appealing the ruling, which they say was likely based on the play-to-earn component and not the game’s content. In any case, its number of daily active users peaked at 947 and currently sits near zero.

League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) peaked at $5.37 and is now trading at just over $0.30. In 2021, it raised $3 million in a funding round with the participation of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Phantasma (SOUL) peaked at $3.97 and is currently trading at just above $0.22. Its boasts a blockchain that supports “SmartNFTs” that can change based on certain conditions. For instance, some users have a “pocket monster” that evolves into a powerful form once it gains a certain amount of experience. However, vanishingly few NFTs on its platform are used today.

Splinterlands (SPS) reached a high of $1.27 but is currently trading around $0.03. Created with the goal of giving gamers greater control over their assets, Splinterlands was a web 3 game that peaked at just over 490,000 active users and has lost well over 90% of them.

WAX: This token peaked at $5.01 and currently trades at $0.07. It was once billed as a way to trade virtual representations of assets, including in-game assets. It got a temporary boost from a recent collaboration between the makers of the Funko POP! bobblehead figures and Disney, which uses the WAX blockchain. However, despite spikes in trading volume that sometimes went over $1 million, its day-to-day volume has cratered. Recently, it has logged daily trading volume of just $13,000.

Read more: The play-to-earn crypto bubble has popped — Axie Infinity leads, down 99% from ATH

GameFi and metaverses: Crypto gaming revolutions that weren’t

The $600 million exploit of Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge in 2022 was the nail in the coffin of ‘GameFi’ — a portmanteau of games and finance. At its zenith, Axie Infinity employed 20,000 Filipino workers who repeated in-game tasks to earn in-game potions and character upgrades. None of those jobs exist anymore.

Another attempt by crypto promoters to revitalize their web3 promotion was the metaverse. This time, web3 promoters pitched a suite of metaverse currencies, land parcels, characters, and tickets, each of which had an associated token or NFT.

Like all web3 games, metaverses have failed to gain much traction after their promotional periods. Demand for metaverse tokens has plummeted. 

Even Meta’s $36 billion metaverse, Horizon Worlds, flopped entirely. Despite a flabbergasting tens of billions of dollars spent building this metaverse, researchers found only 900 average daily users inside Horizon Worlds — most of whom were children.

Like many other crypto industries, web3 games and their backers frequently fail. CoinGecko found that 75% of the 2,817 web3 games launched since 2017 have fallen inactive.

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The post Web3 games that rose and failed in 2023 appeared first on Protos.

Killer Whales, the new show created by HELLO Labs and CoinMarketCap, is described as “Web3’s answer to Shark Tank.” In the show, a team of several crypto professionals (described as “the Web3 industry’s most credible VCs, popular influencers and famous founders”) vote on a variety of different projects, giving them either a ‘SWIM’ or ‘SINK’ vote to decide which project will emerge victorious. 

CoinMarketCap, one of the show’s co-producers, is owned by Binance, a firm accused of wrongdoing by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). 

Not only that, but many Killer Whales judges also have controversial crypto-related histories. 

Mario Nawfal

Mario Nawfal hosts of a variety of Twitter Spaces (this is apparently still the name of the feature, despite the platform’s rebrand to X), often creating content around current crypto controversies. Nawfal has reportedly used inauthentic engagement to help grow those Spaces.

He has also apparently confessed to charging tens of thousands of dollars for the opportunity to pitch products on his Roundtable spaces. 

Nawfal also founded and led a startup incubator called International Blockchain Consulting.

This firm reportedly heavily marked up services for incubated companies, despite promising to do it at no cost. International Blockchain Consulting was also paid for services by other Nawfal companies, including NFT Tech, to promote his own Twitter Spaces.

Read more: FBI and SEC likely investigating Mario Nawfal after wave of complaints

Nawfal’s investment portfolio also appeared to be deep in the red when Upper Echelon made their video, raising concerns about his qualification as an investor for a show that is nominally about investment. 

Anthony Scaramucci

Anthony Scaramucci was infamously one of the shortest-lived Trump White House hires, serving just over a week as communications director in 2017. More relevant to his cryptocurrency bona fides is his deep relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried, a relationship in which he “opened up his Rolodex” to help Bankman-Fried get established.

FTX Ventures purchased one-third of his firm, SkyBridge Capital, a few months before the collapse. As part of this deal, SkyBridge Capital took a long position in FTX Token (FTT). Scaramucci also claimed he received a call from Joseph Bankman a few days before the bankruptcy. This call preceded Scaramucci flying to the Bahamas and his firm and an FTX firm entering into a series of agreements described in the FTX bankruptcy as “Letter Agreement — Release and Unwinding of Certain Relationships Dated 11/9/2022.”

Outside of these agreements, Scaramucci has claimed that his investment in bitcoin more than compensated for his losses on FTT and that the quarter following the bankruptcy was one of his company’s best ever. It has also closed withdrawals for its funds, citing “extreme digital asset market conditions following the FTX bankruptcy.”

Hopefully, he still has enough funds to be considered a ‘Killer Whale.’

CryptoWendyO

CryptoWendyO is a popular YouTuber covering cryptocurrency. She’s been accused of promoting a variety of different coins that ended up being scams, rug pulls, or otherwise illegitimate.

Read more: Leaked doc allegedly shows how much influencers charge to shill crypto on Twitter

NFT God

Alex Finn, who goes by the name ‘NFT God,’ is an NFT collector and newsletter writer. He had the unfortunate experience earlier this year of having his wallets drained and his account hijacked to send out phishing scams to his followers. 

Also, unfortunately for him, the Mutant Ape he was able to get back currently has a high offer of 4.8 WETH, a sharp decrease from the 15.47 ether needed to purchase the Ape back after it was hacked.

Ran Neuner

Ran Neuner is a crypto YouTuber and influencer who has also run investment firms and media companies in the digital asset space.

He sometimes tweets his recommendations about specific cryptocurrencies, even cheekily including the text “this is financial advice.”

His team appeared to at least occasionally follow these recommendations by selling their positions right away. 

Gracy Chen

Gracy Chen is a managing director of Bitget, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange.  

Chen recently wrote a piece for Cointelegraph in which she argued that “in instances where misconduct has occurred and users have suffered financial losses, clear mechanisms are needed to initiate asset recovery from the guilty parties.” 

In 2021, Bitget was suspended in Singapore for listing a token that pretended to be associated with the popular Korean band BTS. 

Altcoin Daily

Altcoin Daily is a YouTube channel that covers cryptocurrency. ZachXBT, an independent researcher, has shared a document that appears to show that Altcoin Daily charges $65,000 for promotion on its YouTube channel.

Zach did note further down in the thread that, as far as he knows, Altcoin Daily has always disclosed when it has been paid to promote cryptocurrencies. 

Kevin Sonei

Kevin Sonei is a comedian who frequently discusses cryptocurrency topics in his videos on Instagram. 

He has made a few bumbles on his investment journey, at one point leaving himself “dead inside” after losing so much of his wealth in SafeMoon.

Killer Whales, home to Web3’s most credible grifters

Binance-owned CoinMarketCap is one of the most important websites in the cryptocurrency industry, receiving a self-reported 340 million views every month. This means that this project is connected to the world’s most popular exchange and most commonly used aggregator and still decided to choose judges that include: 

• a Twitter Spaces host with no evidence of investment success accused of undisclosed shills,
• a failed White House aide who engaged in deeply suspicious transactions with FTX,
• a YouTuber who promotes coins that have a nasty habit of failing,
• an NFT expert who lost their main NFT in a hack,
• an influencer who offers ‘financial advice’ while his team sells the token,
• the managing director for an exchange that gets in trouble for how bad the assets it lists are,
• a comedian who almost lost everything on something called SafeMoon, and
• YouTubers who sell promos for tokens.

‘Killer Whales’ indeed.

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The post Meet the grifter cast of Killer Whales, ‘Web3’s answer to Shark Tank’ appeared first on Protos.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) continues to call web3 an “evolution of the internet” in its latest pitch deck. It cited supposed upgrades from web2, including the potential for democratized ownership of Internet properties. It claims this inevitable transformation will return power to the hands of users.

Of course, plummeting interest in web3 — 75% below its December 2021 peak per Google Trends — and plummeting returns for a16z’s web3 offerings suggests otherwise. A live tracker of web3 grifts totals $12 billion lost to scammers so far.

A prime example would be a16z’s flagship offering for decentralized social media, BitClout, which used a bonding curve to guarantee early insider enrichment. Now rebranded to DeSo because BitClout’s name was so despised, its token now languishes 94% below all-time highs.

Consider also a16z’s metaverse. Despite a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion in October 2022, fewer than 8,000 people used the largest web3 metaverse on an average day. Indeed, the majority of web3 land is never visited by anyone other than its creator.

Similarly, a16z was championing the idea of ‘play-to-earn’ games, heralding Axie Infinity’s 60,000-strong Filipino workforce as a shining example of a new era of web3 gaming. It also invested in Yield Guild Games and many other web3 projects.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of those Filipino workers lost their jobs months ago. Many are still indebted. Almost without exception, play-to-earn gaming tokens have lost most of their value.

Web3 as marketing buzzword

Some even question the existence of web3 as anything more than a marketing concept.

“There is zero proof that ‘web3’ exists, let alone that it would be some kind of new and better version of the internet,” Cory Klippsten, CEO of financial firm Swan Bitcoin, told Protos.

He added, “All we‘ve seen from a16z and their co-conspirators over the past five years are scheme after scheme to market useless tokens and sell them without ever achieving any kind of product-market fit for the associated project. They can make all the science-y sounding slides they like, but it doesn‘t change the fact that this once-venerable firm is all-in on the pump-and-dump business.”

Read more: The Metaverse and ‘Web 3’ aren’t even here and they’re already cringe

More failed promises from a16z’s web3 portfolio

Other supposedly decentralized properties in a16z’s portfolio also lost money to failures of centralized leadership. MakerDAO lost $7 million to an August 2021 hack. MakerDAO is also abandoning its original purpose of decentralizing a $1 stablecoin. Its founder wants to abandon the peg altogether and half of its core developers are quitting.

More recently, Mark Zuckerberg quietly abandoned most of Meta’s web3 initiatives after losing $24 billion on various product flops, including Horizon Worlds.

A16z promised a return to the community-driven approach with extra functionality. However, even if web3 were to return power to the people, it can backfire on its contributors. The Ethereum Name Service just booted its director of operations, Brantly Millegan, for controversial tweets from seven years ago. Millegan’s defenders failed to convince three of the four voters not to remove him from his position.

As the supply of a16z-backed tokens increases by the month, it becomes increasingly difficult to take a16z’s claims about web3 seriously. Certainly, web3 has been exit liquidity for its LPs in the past.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Google News or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Quotes in bold are our emphasis.

The post Web3 is the future of the internet — and a16z’s exit liquidity appeared first on Protos.

In 1890 the United States census bureau announced the closing of the frontier. For its entire history up to that point, the area west of European settlement was seen in the US as a place of opportunity and freedom. But it also represented a social escape valve; a place where people who were unsatisfied with the direction of society could strike out and start their own. 

While American anxieties about the conclusion of westward expansion fueled investment in military and empire, people from around the world arrived by ship to its cities, driven by the same principle that drew wagon trains over the horizon.

The choice to exit a society, to leave and begin anew with the hope of finding greater prosperity elsewhere, was in many ways the quintessential feature of democracy and republicanism in the US for over a century.

In Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book The Network State, this principle of democracy-as-exit becomes the basis of a new society rooted in the values of decentralized finance, cryptocurrency, and web3. 

Srinivasan is described as an “angel investor.” He’s also the former chief technology officer for Coinbase and, since starting a biotech firm in 2007, has played a part in tech and crypto startups ranging from Cameo to Ethereum. 

The Network State relates Srinivasan’s plan for how and why people committed to the principles of infinite frontier and immutable money should start a country on the internet. 

Traditionally nation-states attempt to draw a coherent society under the control of a state by emphasizing shared language, belief, or cultural practice. The network state is slightly different.  

The network state is a social network with:

• a sense of national consciousness,
• a recognized founder,
• a capacity for collective action,
• an in-person level of civility,
• an integrated cryptocurrency.

Other hallmarks include, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.

This is not uncharted territory in the web3 space. The “smart city,” or the “blockchain city” are concepts that should seem familiar. Even traditional nation states have a history of founding new capitals or high-tech utopias in the desert, which are meant to transform society and the way individuals live their lives.

What distinguishes the network state is Srinivasan’s willingness to offer an ideology of transformative change, one that presents anarchism to the statist and imagines a state for the anarchists. 

But the book is not the policy manual of a technocrat. It’s a political treatise that attempts to chart a middle way between the totalizing leviathan of the modern state and the myopia of its competitors.

In fact, nearly half of the book is devoted to its second chapter, which sets out to teach a crash course in interpretive historical methods. Notably, neither history nor political theory is portrayed here as the domain of objective fact. Instead, the founders of a network state must endeavor to hone their interpretation of subjective historical perspectives. 

These new founders must have, first and foremost, an interpretation of history that locates the society and its people as successors to the existing order. That’s because new “startup societies” cannot be solely driven by technological genius but instead by what Srinivasan describes as moral innovations, which are only possible if the founders of a nation-state have understood their place in a historical trajectory:

“Without a genuine moral critique of the establishment, without an ideological root network supported by history, your new society is at best a fancy Starbucks lounge, a gated community that differs only in its amenities, a snack to be eaten by the establishment at its leisure, a soulless nullity with no direction save consumerism.”

Storing history on the blockchain

Though critical of rising millenarianism around climate change and economic crisis, there’s a sense throughout the middle three chapters that the current order of sovereign nation-states is morally and fatally flawed. Therefore, the need to create a new state and a new understanding of history is made incredibly urgent.

To that end, one capacity of a theoretical network state would be to construct a blockchain ledger to track and maintain a cryptohistory. By associating historical documents with metadata stored on the blockchain, it would be possible to authenticate or reject historical arguments. Such an archive, Srinivasan suggests, could form the basis of a mathematical theory of history. 

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series he imagined a method of modeling the future actions of large populations, a science he called “psychohistory.” The story follows the rippling effects of Hari Seldon’s prediction that Asimov’s fictional empire would eventually fall, giving way to thirty millennia of dark age. 

The similarity to this science fiction concept is not lost on Srinivasan. In fact, he writes that with such a ledger, “…we may be able to develop Asimovian psychohistory from all the data recorded in the ledger of record, namely a way to predict the macroscopic behavior of humans in certain situations without knowing every microscopic detail.”

From this perspective, the gaps in our understanding of history (and of the future) are comparable to those gaps already filled in by modern science. Quantum computing and cryptographically maintained historiography will lend the network state the ability to steer away from the historical limitations of its forerunners. 

For four centuries the Westphalian nation-state has dominated history. The rise of centralized banking and fiat currency has greased the tracks for social, political, and economic development. To imagine the collapse of these systems is to imagine one of the most significant transformations to ever befall human society. Therefore, the viability of a new type of state must be predicated upon some sort of upheaval or transformation of the conditions that prop up the traditional state and its legacy capital. 

Srinivasan foresees a coming conflict between three sides, what he calls the “tripolar moment.” On one side of this tripartite is the statist ideology of the US establishment, the liberals who Srinivasan calls “woke capital.”  Next to them there’s “communist capital,” embodied in the totalizing state of the Chinese Communist Party. Finally, there’s “crypto capital,” otherwise referred to as “the people of the network.” 

In Srinivasan’s teleology of collapse, woke capital will increasingly struggle against economic and political crisis. As the world led by the US establishment encounters the realities of this future, nation-states will have to decide whether to descend into anarchy or embrace the authoritarian tactics of the CCP. 

Ultimately, the tripolarity of the moment is actually a contest between the nation-state with increasingly Chinese characteristics, impending anarchy in the West, and a middle way embodied by the network state. 

A network state for all

A good startup pitch presents a compelling problem and a solution that’s possible but, without required investment, currently out of reach. But often in these pitches, the relationship between the compelling problem and the proposed solution is tenuous. 

For instance, we might consider a question like, “how do we measure the consent of the governed?” Or, “what is the social contract,” and, “what do elite institutions owe to every citizen (or user)?”  These are the questions that might come up in the pitch of a startup society and they’re therefore anticipated in The Network State. 

Signing a “social smart contract” could be used to signal a user’s consent to be governed. This act of signing means giving some degree of control over to administrators, who in turn exert authority over a user’s adherence to laws and social norms.

This might be sufficient for moderating a purely online community. But Srinivasan writes that there is an assumption that the network state would become increasingly terrestrial. The book is vague on how a startup society governs an increasingly physical network state. Srinivasan writes:

“The short answer is that for a long time, it doesn’t — it leaves that to the surrounding legacy society, much like a centralized crypto exchange collaborates with traditional offline law enforcement. Eventually, if and when that startup society becomes a network state — in the sense of achieving diplomatic recognition from a legacy sovereign — then it can potentially take on physical law enforcement duties.”

Equally vague is how decisions will be made in the network state. Srinivasan’s description of how users log in and consent to be governed with a smart contract, giving up certain authorities to “administrators,” is actually one of the few moments in the book where detail is offered on the power structure and decision-making aspects of the network state. 

As with a startup pitch that struggles to explain how the product solves a compelling problem, Srinivasan struggles to explain how rules are enforced and decisions are made. In The Network State and in his public persona, Srinivasan is openly skeptical about the connotations of democracy. He warns in the book against interpretations of history “where political power is used to defeat technological truth.”

In fact, democracy is not mentioned often in the book and, when it does come up, it’s often in derisive quotation marks. “Democracy,” for Srinivasan is a term used by the people of the state to justify the types of policies that have created legacy financial systems, the hegemony of fiat currency, and the type of redistribution of wealth and power that’s prevented the petite bourgeoisie from joining the ranks of the ultra-wealthy.

In the tripolar struggle between the US establishment, the CCP, and the people of the network, democratic voice in political affairs is the distinguishing characteristic between statists in China and statists in the West. But for Srinivasan “voice” through “democracy” is ultimately an illusion.  

The democratic choice that matters most in the network state is contained in the decision to “opt-in” or “opt-out” of a society. If the barrier to entry or exit is sufficiently low, then people will be able to vote “with their feet,” as it were. 

If one were to read The Network State without any first-hand knowledge about human society, then they might be forgiven for assuming that there are no social problems to be solved aside from those presented by state surveillance, legacy financial institutions, vague social contracts, and the media outlets that obfuscate and manipulate the truth about all the above. 

It would be a lucky thing if that were the case, because Srinivasan’s book largely punts on the question of who holds power and on what basis. Besides, if one has an issue with how things are run in one network state, then they can freely leave and go to another or start their own altogether.  

But the hard questions about power tend to follow people over the edge of the frontier and beyond. Those who descend from immigrants, as most do in the US, should be familiar with this reality. People who left the old world for the new or left settled society in the eastern US for the opportunities in an unsettled west were not free of power or its attendant challenges.  

Experimental societies that resulted from exiting settled life in the US tended to reproduce intensified versions of whatever systems of power had dominated them before. Religious orders seeking a society governed by godly doctrines became insular and dominated by a worldy class of “elect.”  Communal societies eventually surrendered to the demands of profit and the market. Even the United States itself, founded in a revolution against the British model of state and economy, adopted both within half a century of the founding. 

The Network State is a thoughtful and necessary work in a web3 space otherwise defined by deeply flawed and unserious claims of social transformation. But more work is required to explain how and for whom this future will exist. 

For the minority with something to save and something to invest in the future, maybe the hard questions about power are actually resolved as subjects of the network state. It is, of course, they who should hold power. It is, of course, they who should wield it. But for the vast majority of people in the world who lack the benefit of that material position, they may reasonably ask what role they will play in Srinivasan’s network state.

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Book Review: The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan appeared first on Protos.

Tech billionaire Marc Andreessen is tipped to follow PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel in leaving Meta’s board of directors after investing billions in rival web3 projects.

Business Insider relayed sentiment of sources close to the company who say Andreessen’s tenure could be under threat due to the work of his venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Andreessen is currently the longest-serving Meta (formerly Facebook) board member, having been appointed in 2008.

Over the past year, a16z has plowed a fortune into virtually every kind of web3 project, including Bored Apes’ Yuga Labs, Sam Altman’s dystopian Worldcoin, and “climate neutral” blockchain project NEAR Protocol.

A16z finished raising $2.2 billion for its third crypto fund last July and plans to amass $4.5 billion for its next vehicle expected to debut in the next few months. If it succeeds, it would be the biggest crypto venture fund to date.

Meta has plans for its own web3 projects and Andreessen’s continued investment in potential competitors is supposedly not a good look.

The Zuckerberg-led tech giant announced last month that Thiel would give up his place on the company’s board later this year to “devote his time to other interests.”

As Business Insider noted, Thiel’s time at Meta was marked by a number of controversies, including his vocal support for former US President Donald Trump.

He also raised eyebrows with his suggestion that Meta should carry on with its policy of not fact-checking ads from politicians in 2019.

Meta’s nine-member board is up for re-election in May.

Meta braindrains to a16z startups

Conflicts of interest between companies and their board members’ other projects aren’t uncommon. But according to cited sources, Andreessen’s other investments are becoming thorns in Meta’s side.

Last October, two of Facebook’s top tech brains jumped ship to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto team.

In December, the company led a $36 million funding round in support of Mysten Labs, a blockchain infrastructure startup founded by four former Facebook engineers.

Andreessen Horowitz insiders have even thrown shade at Meta for its metaverse and web3 ambitions. Speaking this week after a16z led a $450-million funding round in Yuga Labs, a16z’s crypto head Chris Dixon told The Verge:

“To me, Yuga Labs, combined with these other emerging web3 companies, are an important counterweight to companies like Meta.”

Read more: [Web3 crypto startups poach top execs from Facebook, YouTube, Amazon]

“There’s a dystopian future where Meta is this kind of dominant digital experience provider, and all of the money and control goes to that company,” added Dixon.

For the record, a16z says there’s nothing in the rumors of Andreessen leaving Meta, telling Business Insider: “If he were to step down, he doesn’t know about it. So no, it’s not happening. At least not now.”

Follow us on Twitter for more informed news.

Out now: the first four episodes of our ongoing investigative podcast series Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Meta board could oust Marc Andreessen over web3 investments, sources appeared first on Protos.

Web3 is on track to boast its own Rebecca Black: Mark Zuckerberg’s older sister Randi, who’s debuted a crypto parody of a Twisted Sister classic to widespread ridicule.

Zuckerberg has bastardized the eighties smash hard rock hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” which she sang in a 2014 run of jukebox musical Rock of Ages.

On Monday, Zuckerberg called the song’s release a “rallying cry” for “women of web3.” In the video, she wears a black tee emblazoned with an NFT whale.

But while the Twisted Sister track is a certified protest anthem, Zuckerberg’s crypto rendition replaces the catchy hook with “we’re gonna make it.”

Crypto fans and blockchain marketeers commonly shorten the phrase to “WAGMI.”

The acronym is meant to inspire others to hold their cryptocurrencies no matter what, as high prices and fortunes will eventually come.

“A decade ago, I sang this song on Broadway. Today I sing this song, surrounded by new friends, as a rallying cry for the women of web3. Together, we can accomplish anything. And have fun doing it! #WAGMI,” tweeted Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s web3 release — complete with a painfully corporate music video — came one day after Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider endorsed Ukrainians singing the track in defiance of Russian invasion.

‘Thanks to all the crypto bros hating on my music video’

Zuckerberg’s precocious enthusiasm has led Twitter to skewer the former Facebook exec. She ultimately played the criticism off as more examples of sexist crypto culture.

“Sending my entire Ether holdings to volodymyr.eth [Ukrainian president] to protest the Randi Zuckerberg music video,” quipped one user.

“A special thanks to all the crypto bros hating on my music video by retweeting and sharing it more broadly,” retorted Zuckerberg.

“Couldn’t have asked for a better guerilla, I mean gorilla, marketing department!”

Yep, that was a reference the popular NFT collection Bored Apes (apes, guerrilla, gorilla, get it?)

Although, one Twitter user stepped in to correct that narrative, at least from their end.

“Proof this industry is sexist: no-one ever recognizes crypto sis hating, only the crypto bros hating. One day we will be seen,” wrote @cryptobulma, our emphasis.

Another onlooker was shocked to find this wasn’t Zuckerberg’s first criminally cringe musical offence.

A few weeks ago, Zuckerberg shared a re-working of Adele’s “Hello.” The post received much warmer responses.

Sitting at just over 80,000 views, the video is less viral than her latest, which is close to 500,000.

However, the kinder comments were probably more welcome.

Read more: [Razzlekhan: These are ‘Bitcoin launderer’ Heather Morgan’s greatest hits]

Not everybody roasted Zuckerberg over web3 song

It’s worth noting that not everyone is a hater. There are people who appreciate Zuckerberg’s latest video.

The song is intended as a musical collection of crypto terms to help newbies understand the lingo.

“I’ve been thinking about a fun way to explain crypto jargon to newcomers,” explained Zuckerberg on Twitter.

“All the acronyms/phrases can feel super intimidating at first. Hope this video is a fun 2-min crypto lingo 101 lesson that speaks to the spirit of women in web3.”

Zuckerberg then added that the artist of the parody is “Twisted Sister 3.0,” another forced delightful pun.

“Thank you for thinking about us newcomers! You have such an infectious bright energy that makes this whole world so much more accessible to all. Happy Birthday!” replied one fan, who describes themselves as a “female data scientist taking baby steps on the blockchain.”

Zuckerberg is clearly excited about crypto-powered web stacks. In fact, having left Facebook in 2011, she’s pivoted to web3 in a big way. Her Twitter bio is now littered with creator-centric projects she’s backing.

Indeed, Randi seems to genuinely believe in the power of her message.

That message essentially promotes financial empowerment for all, albeit under the guise of speculative, illiquid, and volatile pseudo-investments.

Read more: [The Metaverse and ‘Web 3’ aren’t even here and they’re already cringe]

But considering the Ukrainian resistance’s adoption of the exact same Twisted Sister track — for much more important reasons — at exactly the same time means Zuckerberg’s latest musical efforts are tacky and tone-deaf.

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Out now: the first three episodes of our new investigative podcast series Innovated: Blockchain City.

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Blockchain brands are flexing finances to lure top execs from tech giants like Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon to build the crypto-centric internet ecosystem known as “web3,” reports CNBC.

Ambitious tech folk are hoovering up massive salaries and mouth-watering share packages offered by crypto companies like Polygon, Circle, and Coinbase.

Coinbase, the top US crypto exchange, has offered software engineering roles that earn up to $900,000 per year, according to social network Blind.

“As more crypto and web3 companies emerge, we expect the market for tech talent across all levels to become even more competitive,” said James Hallahan, director of UK and Ireland for Hays’ tech division (via CNBC).

The outlet noted that blockchain startups raised more than $25 billion in venture capital in 2021, giving them plenty of cash to attract top talent.

Talent follows (web3) innovation

Checkbooks aside, crypto companies are relying on targets being unable to resist web3’s allure.

The term is mostly amorphous, but it generally relates to the budding blockchain-powered tech stack envisioned to one day democratize our internet experience away from legacy tech corporations.

“Naturally, people will want to work on what they view as the most exciting and innovative developments in the technology space, and currently, that is crypto and web3,” said payroll software firm Deel’s chief Alex Bouaziz.

“Many are seeing it as the future of the tech industry, in the same way that Facebook and Amazon were attractive in the past.”

Certainly, this looks to be the case. Established tech giants are indeed haemorrhaging top talent to their blockchain rivals.

Last month, Novi’s chief marketing officer (Facebook’s crypto and payments unit) Sherice Torres was poached by payments portal Circle. A move likely in part inspired by Diem’s untimely demise.

Circle is currently looking to public via a SPAC deal that will see it reportedly valued at $9 billion.

Also in January, Amazon’s general manager of edge services, Pravjit Tiwana, joined Winklevoss-backed crypto exchange Gemini as its new chief technology officer.

Read more: [Cancel culture or DAOism? Web3 hits fever pitch over religious tweets]

Not to mention Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s senior managing director and global head of gaming who left to head up a new studio at Ethereum scaling solution Polygon.

Speaking about the new web3 opportunity, Wyatt told CNBC:

“When I started at YouTube Gaming almost eight years ago, I was the first person there. We didn’t have a team. People were really starting to show interest in gaming video.”

“I look at this opportunity very much the same way.”

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The Ethereum ecosystem has just faced one of its most divisive social tests: voting to boot a leading web3 figure for doubling down on some confronting tweets from 2016.

The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) managing Ethereum domain naming service ENS removed its director of operations Brantly Millegan on Sunday, having reached 75% majority.

Millegan, who doubled as one of Ethereum Name Service’s community stewards, had drawn ire from web3 progressives.

Posts had resurfaced displaying Millegan bluntly sharing his religious beliefs, which more-or-less reflect the ‘fire and brimstone’ Catholic church messaging of the ’70s and ’80s.

“Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn,” Millegan tweeted.

The post has since been removed for violating Twitter’s community guidelines. “Catholic” has historically been the first word of Millegan’s bio.

• ENS allows the creation of ‘web3’ domains, which consolidates a user’s presence across the Ethereum space.
• Echoing the internet’s Domain Name Service, ENS offers the ability to assign characters and phrases to wallets.
• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has “vitalik.eth,” for example, which can be substituted for his Ether address to initiate transfers.

ENS became a DAO last November when it switched from a “four-seven multi-sig” key management structure to a community-led venture.

ENS tokens (used for voting on changes to the protocol) were distributed to members in an airdrop. Balances were scaled to the length of time they’d held a domain (which are leased on yearly contracts).

The price of ENS has more than halved since the airdrop. Still, token holders can delegate their votes to other ENS participants.

Millegan was the elected delegate with the largest voting power before the controversy hit, which meant he held considerable voting power over the project.

However, it was a slightly different vote between community stewards that axed Millegan.

‘Mainstream traditional Catholicism’

Several Millegan tweets that resurfaced contained homophobic views and denounced other religions, such as Islam.

Millegan, who said he’d converted to Catholicism at 22, addressed the controversy in a Twitter Spaces session. Now on the cusp of his mid-thirties, he chose to double down on the opinions in front of his peers.

“These are controversial positions that the Catholic church has, I’m aware that this is controversial,” he told DAO members.

“I guess what I have to say is I do believe all that, this is mainstream traditional Catholicism,” he added.

Although, the current Pope preaches a less extreme version than Millegan.

“If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” said Pope Francis about gay priests in 2013 (via Human Rights Campaign).

“They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency for [same-sex attraction] is not the problem. They’re our brothers.”

But the Pope’s views on the matter were complicated somewhat after a 2021 Vatican ruling prevented priests from blessing same-sex unions.

In his Twitter Spaces, Millegan expressed concern that his removal from one of web3’s most prominent projects due to “adherence to the world’s largest religion” was an “extreme position.”

Woke culture coup or DAOs working as intended?

Millegan said he believes web3 is for everyone and he’s willing to work with anyone regardless of their beliefs, despite what his tweets may suggest.

Crypto commentator Maya Zehavi noted she’d listened to community members who felt Millegan had “made them feel excluded in an identity-based community that’s supposed to be about inclusivity and openness.”

Nevertheless, while Millegan offered to compromise his views for collaboration, ENS DAO members ultimately did not.

In the fallout, ENS DAO members have wrestled with the implications of the decision, which raises further questions about so-called “DAOism” and the democracy of web3 itself.

“[Millegan] contributed to ENS success and deserves to be here. Woke and cancel people are more toxic than [Millegan] ever could be, pure herd mentality at work,” wrote one ENS DAO delegate.

“Ironically, the entire space sounded like a church sermon. People were calling to de-platform [Millegan] from web3 for what he said on a web2 website, and had nothing to do with his merit,” said another, who also called for Millegan’s Twitter Spaces host to step down themselves.

Web3 must be a bastion of free speech

It should be stressed that the vote to remove Millegan doesn’t impact his ability to use the ENS service at all. He just won’t be working on the protocol anymore.

In any case, the whole fiasco shows that Ethereum’s social layer — its community — is at a crossroads.

On one hand, Ethereum promises to supply web3 with a decentralized backbone on which to build out a truly censorship-resistant internet ecosystem.

Read more: [The Metaverse and ‘Web 3’ aren’t even here and they’re already cringe]

But if those networks are worth their salt, anyone of any creed and cartoon fetish could carve their cryptographically-verified niche that nobody could ever seize or censor.

Indeed, Millegan’s ousting suggests web3’s future could feel more like the heavily moderated web2 experience than many proponents expect.

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Alphabet chief exec Sundar Pichai revealed the internet giant is “looking at” web3 and blockchain earlier this week.

On a Tuesday earnings call, Pichai stated Alphabet is keen to add value to the development of blockchain wherever it can.

As reported by Bloomberg, Pichai’s comments — however vague — were the first real hint that he sees blockchain playing a potential role in the Google parent’s future.

“Any time there is innovation, I find it exciting,” said Pichai. “I think it’s something we want to support the best we can.”

Just days prior, Google announced the formation of a group dedicated to blockchain applications for Google Cloud, such as data storage and hosting blockchain networks on behalf of third parties.

Dapper Labs, the startup behind NFT projects CryptoKitties and TopShot, is already a Google Cloud customer. So too is EOS issuer Block.one and a number of cryptocurrency exchanges, noted CNBC.

Alphabet embodies what’s come to be known as ‘web2.’ These companies generally exploit user-generated content and data to provide free services, like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like.

That’s opposed to what’s promised in Silicon Valley’s version of ‘web3,’ a purportedly egalitarian internet experience in which users themselves — not just internet giants — can exploit their data for profit.

So, outside of providing cloud services to crypto startups, Alphabet and Google have been relatively quiet on anything web3, particularly where cryptocurrency and NFTs are concerned.

Alphabet slower than other ‘web2’ giants to adopt blockchain

Some reports indicate Google Cloud could one day accept cryptocurrency, but Pichai kept tight-lipped on Alphabet’s specific stance during this week’s earnings call.

Google still doesn’t accept crypto for its ads and its payment app Google Pay doesn’t either — not even blue chips like Bitcoin or Ether.

Alphabet’s stance starkly contrasts that of Twitter, Block (formerly Square), and Meta (formerly Facebook).

The former two have already integrated crypto directly into their primary offerings (Twitter supports NFTs and Bitcoin tips while Block’s Cash App adopted Bitcoin long ago).

Meta plans to support NFTs in a variety of ways across its platforms Facebook and Instagram in the near future.

Read more: [You can now send Bitcoin for free on Cash App, thanks to Lightning]

According to those in the know, this ‘suck it and see’ approach to web3 could all be part of Alphabet’s master plan; the tech behemoth may be waiting for the right time to shoot its shot.

Speaking to Bloomberg back in December, former Google marketeer Kushagra Shrivastava said about his former employer playing coy with decentralized web fans: “I am confident they have a strong opinion on it already.”

Shrivastava went on to suggest that Alphabet will continue making “calculated bets” on web3 while it waits for regulation to firm up and for mainstream adoption to rise.

Then Alphabet will “come in heavy,” he reckoned.

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