The Merge is actually around the corner! Now that Ethereum has passed all its tests, the Merge is expected to come around September 15 👀
Why are we excited about this? The Merge will easily be one of the biggest events in crypto history. Moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, Ethereum will use 99.9% less energy and the annual emission of new ETH will drop from 4.3% to 0.4%. On the end user side, we will see much faster interactions and cheaper gas fees on Ethereum, making the barrier to entry a lot lower!
Lots to unfold in this issue, this is Social Token Times #31!
Web3 closer to the mainstream🔥
1️⃣ Latin Americas Amazon, MercadoLibre dropped a token MercadoCoin (ERC-20) to boost their loyalty program and drive more users to their crypto wallet, Mercado Pago. It will be used primarily for cashback rewards and purchases inside MercadoLibre’s platform.
Mercado Libre has already helped onboard 1m+ users into crypto. Sounds like a lot, but we’ve merely scratched the surface. There will be more and more brands venturing into the token space to start or boost their loyalty programs with a token strategy.
2️⃣ Coinbase just dropped cbETH. Coinbase announced a new token - cbETH, a liquid staking token. When you stake ETH with Coinbase, you’ll get cbETH back. You can sell it, transfer it, or use it anywhere else in DeFi. For example, you can stake cbETH to get even more rewards.
Coinbase is now on par with all of the other big players that allow users to get liquid ETH while you stake. A well known example is stETH with Lido. Similarly, cbETH gives users liquidity and lets them earn rewards while their ETH is staked and locked.
3️⃣ According to Blockdata, 40 of the top 100 public companies have invested ~$6b into web3 companies between September 2021 and June 2022. Google came in top in total funding (~$1.5b). Samsung made the most investments totaling ~$1b with 13 investments.
$100 Billion Creator Economy 🦄
Recently, Antler’s Ollie Forsyth published a report titled “Investing in the $100 Billion Creator Economy” offering guidance to founders on what to expect when they start, grow, and scale their creator economy startups. A couple learnings we want to highlight are:
Modern creator economy platforms need to build for scale. To achieve that, you need to consider features such as:
Global accessibility
Creator collabs and content bundles
Limited take rates
Ownership of a creator’s community data
Additional revenue streams (community tokens, live commerce, etc.)
The top 1% of creators currently earn most of the revenue, but the creator middle class is catching up. Thus, platforms should support creators by helping them find their 100 true fans, enabling them to connect with those fans, providing compensation for referred creators, and personally engaging with the creators.
This is where we come in — Web3 functionalities allow creators to better scale their growth and monetize their 100 true fans, as we see with Roll Memberships.