gm.
waking up today, I realized that August is almost over.
you know what that means…
it’s almost #MergeMonth.
ALPHA ⚓️
Snoop Dogg and Eminem wowed the Web3 world last night at the VMAs as they took to the *stage* in the metaverse (specifically Yuga’s Otherside) to perform their song “From the D 2 the LBC”.
while it’s not *exactly* Tupac as a hologram at Coachella, it’s a noteworthy…if not completely mainstream…piece of news.
the VMAs (aka the MTV Video Music Awards) have certainly lost a lot of their cache over the years. they’re stale and ratings have been falling.
in order to inject some new life into them, MTV said, why not give the 14 viewers a glimpse into what the future of music videos *might* look like? so they threw Snoop and Eminem up there as their Bored Apes.
the response from the internet on the performance has been cold to outright hostile. people hate that veterans like Snoop and Eminem have “sold out” to NFTs and the metaverse.
but for all they know, this performance could be a standout moment for the VMAs in the 2020s…so long as a few things break our way. it’s the *first* performance of its kind and certainly the highest profile one not in Fortnite.
at the very least, hopefully, metaverse performances like this become more commonplace for artists who don’t want to leave their homes to go perform at the awards shows.
BETA ⚓️
is it better to rule through fear or love?
ENS domains have stayed hot…while the rest of the market has cooled down (to say the least). 3-digit ENS have a price floor of over 30 ETH and have sales every day.
this kind of momentum has not gone unnoticed by the Web2 world, with Microsoft recently calling blockchain domains “the next big threat”.
so I ask again…is it better to rule through fear or love? do we want people buying ENS domains because of FOMO, or because they understand the power of decentralized domains?
FOMO will, of course, drive price and speculation up.
however, as we’ve also learned within the NFT community, high prices can lead to even bigger FUD when the hype dies down.
it’s a tough balancing act and one that is impossible to control. time will tell if ENS domains will be loved or feared, but either way…they’re inevitable.
DELTA ⚓️
it would be negligent of me not to comment on beer x NFT news. Solana will be getting a signature shandy courtesy of barrelDAO. I would have pegged Solana as more of hard seltzers people, personally.
the space’s (no pun intended) most prolific flipper Franklin gets today’s community shout-out. that’s because not only is he one of the best NFT flippers in the game, but it turns out he’s apparently also a genius.
