📝 Field Notes #51: NFTs in Your Closet
NFTs enter 1,149 ZARA stores. Louis Vuitton drops phygital. Brazil's biggest Web3 loyalty program. Bored Apes hits Roblox. Crypto funding on six-month high. Amazon launches ChatGPT competitor & more.
Hey, it’s Marc. Welcome to my weekly, obsessively curated field notes on crypto & Web3 to help you filter out the noise. ✌️ Follow me on LinkedIn.
⏱️ Reading time: 4 min
With hundreds of Web3 wallets available, how does a brand select the right one?
Brands can choose from hundreds of Web3 wallet solutions. How do they pick the right one? Magic stands out as a market leader with over 25 million wallets created for brands like Macy’s, Mattel or 7-Eleven. They have prepared a free, in-depth buyer’s guide with a complete evaluation checklist. Highly recommended for anyone building in Web3.
Be inspired✨
“I want to build a legacy brand, the likes of a Hello Kitty, a Star Wars and a Pokemon.” — Luca Netz, CEO Pudgy Penguins
📚 Top 4 Reads
How I evaluate "crypto" consumer businesses. By Gaby Goldberg. Link
Go-to-Market in Web3: New Mindsets, Tactics, Metrics. By a16z. Link
Turn Your Customers into Your Community. By HBR. Link
My techno-optimism. By Vitalik Buterin. Link
🚨 Top Stories That Caught My Eye
✨ Web3 + NFTs
NFTs go mainstream👚
- ZARA teamed up with Okay Bears, a top NFT collections on the Solana blockchain, to create four shirts with two different NFT motives (bears).
- The shirts will be available in 1,149 stores across 74 countries.
- NFT holders will receive 50% of the licensing fee and 50% of the royalties from the pieces sold.
Mainstream culture.
- “Blue chip” NFT collections aim to become stand-alone mainstream brands by licensing their IP. This year, we’ve seen similar moves with Doodles x Crocs, Pudgy Penguins x Walmart x Retail Monster this year.
- Earlier this year, Nike launched a sneaker-design challenge and transformed the winners' ideas into virtual products, for which the winners received royalties.
Community-led brands. NFTs empower consumers to “own” a part of a brand digitally. They become IP holders and evangelists. NFTs become digital, cultural artefacts. These brands will be built by and owned by the community. Branding shifts from linear, top-down to circular, bottom-up.
Zooming out: This launch is a big deal. It’s showing us what's possible with Web3 and IP licensing. In the future, clothing pieces will be linked to NFTs and royalty fees will be paid on-chain.
MINTangible is my partner for protecting IP rights for NFTs. Grab their free NFT IP cheat sheet here.
Louis V goes Web3 👜
- Louis Vuitton has dropped another “phygital”, called “VIA Tile Trunk”.
- Extremely limited (200 pieces) and priced at 6,000 EUR, it's available exclusively to LV’s group of Treasure Trunk NFT holders.
- The physical trunk will be available in February 2024.
LV’s Web3 journey. Louis Vuitton began its Web3 journey with the $39,000 limited sale of the VIA Treasure Trunks in June this year. Holders of these "soulbound" NFTs, which are non-resellable (similar to Nike’s .SWOOSH IDs), gain access to exclusive digital creations, such as the VIA Tile Trunk.
Phygitals. Phygitals are booming. They enable brands to create blockchain-secured limited editions, authenticate products, engage in post-purchase marketing (like owning a physical item to access a digital experience), and gather more data. Learn more here.
Zooming out: As phygitals become more popular, protocols like Boson facilitate on-chain trading without intermediaries.1 This is Web3 commerce.2 Once on-chain, the possibilities are endless.
More from Web3:
- Moonbeam, a Polkadot parachain, partners with Grupo RÃO to launch Brazil’s largest Web3 loyalty program. Link
- Bored Apes hits Roblox. Link
🌎 Crypto & Macro
Funding’s Comeback💸
- Crypto venture funding surged 96% month-over-month and hits a six-month high.
- The biggest raises came from Blockchain.com (110$m series E) and Wormhole ($225m), a Web3 messaging platform.
Punchline: While this could indicate a trend reversal, November likely benefited from the two positive outliers mentioned above.
More from crypto:
Bitcoin is one of this year’s best-performing assets. Link
MicroStrategy has bought $600m of BTC in November, increasing holdings by 10% to $6bn. Link
🧠AI
- Amazon launches a workplace-focused AI assistant. Link
- The US, the UK, and more than a dozen other countries release joint guidelines for AI. Link
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💰 Money Moves
- Wormhole: The Web3 messaging protocol raised $225m.
- Matr1x: The NFT gaming company based in Singapore, has raised $10m in an extended series A.
- Gomdori: The Asian Web3-enabled e-commerce player raised $12.5m in a series B.
That’s all for now, folks. Thank you for being part of the journey.
Talk soon,
– Marc
📈 Top 2 Charts to Share with Friends
Artwork: Refik Anadol, Quantum Memories
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Boson Protocol is a partner of Dematerialzd.xyz. ↩
This vision is also called “computable economy”. ↩
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