Presented by CryptoLink.Tech

Volume 1 | Edition 13 | September 14, 2023

Opening Thoughts

What’s up, gang?

I hope everyone is having a stellar week thus far!

I’ve been thinking a lot about different media verticals and what we can explore in that field. I’m off to a good start but I also need suggestions from the people that will consume it.

If you want a daily morning show about crypto news, let me know.

If you want tech talk with devs, let me know.

If you are fiending to hear about the teams still in the space and their stories, let me know.

I want to build a media empire that produces content you want to consume. The media brand is going to be user-first just like CryptoLink. I don’t put things out to hear myself talk.

As we delve further down this road of media and content as a marketing strategy, I am all ears to any and all suggestions.

I’m really excited about what we are working on, on all fronts.

In other news Cletus is learning how to dev (verb).

Yes, you read that correctly. lol

He told me today that he is deploying his first smart contract tomorrow (today for you) as a proof-of-concept for cross-chain NFTs. 👀

He is learning these skills as a larger mission to be more “one with the devs” and be able to talk to other projects’ developers on a deeper level.

I’m not too sure what the concept NFT series is or if it’s simply on a contract level, but I guess we will have to wait and find out.

Let’s jump into some updates and news for the week!

Cryptolink Connect

Here, we delve into the latest and greatest in the CryptoLink ecosystem.

New Team, Old Faces: CryptoLink Welcomes New Sales Ambassadors

Some of you may have noticed an addition to the “Team” section of the Discord!

We have officially expanded our team to include sales and brought on two additional members of the CryptoLink community as team members in the sales department.

Everybody give a big shout out to Jake Salthouse and Lamp for showing initiative and drive to be a part of the CryptoLink team and vision. We are incredibly juiced up to have these guys aboard as they are both well-versed in the web3 space, great business minds, and most importantly they align with our brand goals and image.

It’s phenomenal to see the team growing once again, expanding our manpower and opportunities by a factor of 2.

Thanks again Jake and Lamp!

The Team is happier than ever to have you aboard.

Give these 2 a follow on X if you haven’t already, and give them a shout out there as well!

Integration Simplification: AnyToAny.io/integrate Goes Live

The Devs are always at it and bringing us the heat!

AnyToAny.io/integrate has been pushed LIVE, simplifying the integration process and allowing for a few customizations for those that are integrating.

Simple. To the point.

Anyone that wishes to deploy the widget and earn from it simply has to fill out the required fields, drop in a logo url, and click generate.

When they do this an iframe code snippet will be created for them and from there it is a simple copy and paste into your own site.

Really cool stuff from Druuu here, big shouts to that guy!

Be sure to tell your favorite project (other than us of course) about this!

INK Warp Updates: Gauss To End, ETH Begins

Gaussians this one is for you!

The INK warp to Gauss is going to close officially on Friday, September 15 (Tomorrow).

If you have any INK on other chains that you want to get to Gauss or you simply want to get some cheap INK at the last minute on another chain to bridge over, TODAY IS THE LAST DAY.

When the INK warp closes it will be closed for good, no more INK will ever get to live on Gauss.

On the other end of INK warps the warp to Ethereum is underway!

We don’t have a set-date for the end of the Ethereum warp just yet, but you should be sure to jump on it early if you intend to warp so you don’t forget!

REMINDER: Every 2 INK warped gives you 1 INK on the destination. This is a deflationary 2:1 warp.

Happy warping, ya degens. 😜

HUGE INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS

Plastic.

Munch on that.

See you next week.

🤫🤔

World Of Web3

This section covers major recent developments and trends in the crypto world.

FTX Ready to Sell: Judge Approves Sale of FTX Assets

Cointelegraph reports that a Delaware judge has approved the sale of FTX’s assets, in batches under pre-approved guidelines, other than BTC, ETH, and other “insider-assets” that require special handling.

I understand the initial reaction to expecting massive red candles in the near future but I would take a moment to understand how this is going to work.

FTX is only allowed to sell $50 million in assets in the first week with that number increasing to $100 million after that first week.

Remember this is excluding BTC and ETH, which are the coins that tend to really drive the health of the overall crypto markets.

With BTC and ETH requiring even more special handling than the guidelines for their other assets I would expect a bit less pain than you may initially think.

FTX holds about $833 million in BTC and ETH, according to Cointelegraph writer Derek Andersen. If that starts to get sold in small batches weekly it is unlikely to result in a large impact on the price of either coin.

Personally, I’d expect this to simply keep a ‘soft-cap’ on the price of both until those ETFs get approved.

Coincidental timing?

We will have to keep our eyes on this one but I expect little impact overall.

FTX is always finding ways back into the news, aren’t they?

Enterprise Adoption: PayPal Ramps into Crypto with New Stable Coin

PayPal has introduced a new on and off ramp feature for US users to be able to get in and out of blockchain with their funds along with launching its own stable coin, PYUSD or PayPal USD.

From the screenshot you can see that they boast the ability to buy and sell crypto such as bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, PYUSD and more.

Am I surprised that PayPal got into the on/off ramp game? No.

Am I surprised they launched their own stable coin instead of rolling with USDC and working with Circle? Yes.

I have heard through the rumor mill that Circle can be a pain in the A** to work with, PayPal seems to think they have it under control.

I have not used the service, nor have I downloaded the app to check it out so you are on your own there.

I am interested to see how well this goes and how accepted PYUSD is.

I read on Cointelegraph that the stable coin is on Ethereum and that Paxos confirmed that it is 100% backed by real-world assets.

I wonder if they want it to be cross-chain… 🤔

Who has the PayPal hook-up for the CryptoLink team? lol

Exodus Incoming? Ripple CEO Says US Is Not the Place to Start a Web3 Company

At the Token 2049 conference in Singapore Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse gave the crowd some insight into the places you should and shouldn’t build a crypto company right now.

Garlinghouse said that the UK, UAE, Singapore, and Switzerland are countries with legislation in place that enables business to build and create.

On the other hand, Garlinghouse said the one place that a crypto founder shouldn’t start is the United States.

This comes on the back of his company’s big win in court over the SEC’s ruling that XRP was a security.

Garlinghouse was, however, optimistic that the win for XRP and Greyscale over the SEC was a step in the right direction and possibly a hint towards a changing tide in the courts.

The CEO mentioned that they are focusing their efforts on progressing blockchain technology and adoption in places that will appreciate it more than the US at the moment.

Interchain Intel

Updates and insights from across different blockchain networks.

Such a drag for chain-specific news this week.

MetaMask Expands Non-EVM: Solana on The Menu

This could have been in tech trends for the week but I’ll probably do a deep dive into the tech next week instead.

MetaMask Snaps, a new development feature that MM has released which is essentially being described as the dApp store for MM is now integrated with Solana wallet SolFlare to allow some cross-pollination.

I’m not 100% on the specifics of how this works on the back-end but users can now interact with certain dApps on the Solana blockchain through their MetaMask wallet simply by connecting now.

It’s a bit unclear to me still after my digging on whether or not you still need a SolFlare wallet initially to hold SOL and then you can interact with it after the fact on MetaMask or if you can do it all straight from MetaMask.

Either way this is pretty cool and our friends at The EgoVerse have some stuff over on Solana, so maybe I’ll try it out on their dApp.

If you know anything about this let me know!

Captain Binance To Save The Day: Blockchain Giant Pledges $3 Million to Victims of Morocco Earthquake

As many of you know, Morocco was rocked by a magnitude 7 earthquake on Sept. 8 that caused over 2,000 fatalities and an immense amount of destruction.

As many of you also know, CZ is always playing the good-guy and building his brand of crypto everywhere outside of the United States.

I have to hand it to him; it is good work here.

Binance has pledged $3 Million to the victims of the earthquake pending proof of location.

Victims will be airdropped up to $100 USD worth of BNB

Tech Trends

Here, we explore the latest technological advancements and innovations in the blockchain space.

Buy Your Groceries with Crypto: Ultimo Pay Launching Crypto Debit Card

This is a pretty nifty company I came across recently and I figured they were more than worthy of being in Tech Talk this week!

Ultimo Pay is essentially following a similar mission to CryptoLink, making crypto more accessible, but they are doing it in a different way.

Ultimo is a company that has partnered with Joint Development Bank (JDB) in Laos to create the ‘ultimate’ web2.5 crypto/banking dashboard that is all above board on the back-end through an off-shore bank that has a proven track record.

Not only do they provide a dashboard where you can convert fiat to crypto through your bank account with JDB, but they also issue a debit card for a fee that allows the user to spend with that crypto/bank account hybrid in everyday life.

The up-front fee for getting a debit card is $600, where $150 of that goes onto the card as your initial balance and the other $450 is an issuance fee.

They say they are available in most countries, including the United States which I can confirm because I personally know someone that has one of these debit cards!

All-in-all they seem to be pretty cool web2.5 bridge in and out of crypto and I’m interested in exploring them myself.

Being able to convert your crypto on the fly to purchase something in fiat is absolutely a feature that will be required for any sort of enterprise level adoption in the space.

People need to be able to spend their crypto on real things, even if it’s simply converting the crypto in the moment.

Excited to see this grow, they seem to be small now but the marketing hasn’t begun from what I have been told.

We might be early to something cool!

Blockchain Banter

New segment time.

I read an article about this topic and it coincided with something that E from the W3RKS team and I have talked about on two separate occasions this week.

Enjoy a small opinion piece instead of Decoded this week.

This is OPINION.

From Wally.

My opinions in this section do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my colleagues or anyone else I work with or for.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

When DAOs Design Horses: The Emergence of the Proverbial Camel

DAOs, “community-owned” projects, and the over-democratization of on-chain finance has led to nothing productive.

There it is. There is the opinion.

“Community-Owned” can’t work because over-democratization can’t work.

Let’s start with the problem described in the title.

What does that mean?

It means that by over-democratizing something that didn’t need to be democratized in the first place can result in something much uglier and less functional than the original product.

Have you ever heard the old “too many cooks in the kitchen” quote?

It’s very applicable here. If everyone has a say, who makes the decisions?

A company cannot grow and make the necessary pivots to survive if it has 100s or 1000s of voices it needs to change for at every turn.

On our team we say that if everyone owns a task or initiative then no one owns it.

There need to be people in charge of certain aspects of a company, those people have to have the ability to maneuver in a way they sit fit to accomplish the end goal.

We hear the community, we listen to the community, but we wouldn’t be where we are at if the community dictated every decision.

The dream of the completely autonomous organization that builds cohesive products and services is just that… a dream.

When it comes to being “community-owned” you face a plethora of roadblocks to getting anything productive done.

First you have to tackle voter apathy.

How do you incentivize people to continue to actively vote in your ecosystem when the general health of the crypto markets and population is at a local low?

Some DAOs are apparently running giveaways for voting which I personally think is a completely unhealthy process of incentivizing voting and not sustainable in the long-run.

Imagine what the teams could do with the money they are spending getting people to tell them what to do if they just did what they felt needed to be done…

Some DAOs are doing Delegate Voting which we have seen in practice in the United States with representatives and the Electoral College.

Not a good system.

Then you have the issue of things actually getting done.

Who does it? The “elected officials” right?

So, You still elect people to get stuff done, people you trust and believe in.

Don’t you think those bright minds that you believed in so much that you voted into official status would be better suited to… I don’t know maybe use those bright minds?

At every corner there’s another roadblock that stops innovation and productivity when it comes to “community-owned”.

Every great product and service was developed by a team in a structure. People had roles and duties. There are people in charge of departments and people that work under them.

And every team is led by a founder that calls the shots and thinks big.

Imagine the Apple executive team took every call from every Apple user and implemented every single change that every single person ever requested.

The iPhone 1 wouldn’t have even dropped yet.

Trust in founders and teams to build it right, I promise it’s a hell of a lot harder than most people think.

Life from the W3RKs team said it best.

“If you want to get rich in crypto, don’t become a founder!” lol

Rant over.

Final Byte: Wally’s Wisdom

Rounding out another fantastic Chain Reaction feels great.

I hope the coffee tastes extra perfect on this Thursday morning.

I have a few parting thoughts to leave you with…

We are going to freaking ETHEREUM VERY SOON.

If you are interested in being a validator, hit up the CryptoLink team. If you know someone or a project that may be interested, please bring them to the team.

A rising tide raises all ships. If you are involved in the CryptoLink ecosystem then you benefit from more validators and more chains just as much as the next guy or gal!

Tell your friends and your friends’ friends. Tell your ferret. Tell everyone.

Also, stick around every day. I know this stuff gets tough and sometimes it seems like there isn’t a ton of good news in the crypto macro, but if you stick around long enough, you’ll find some serious gems out there.

Take note of who we are working with these days, it matters.

The CryptoLink team has been around for well over a year now in web3 and we know how to spot the good ones, the ones building for the future.

If we are working with them, they are a solid team building a solid product. I urge you to get involved in other ecosystems that we as a project are interacting with.

We have a real fun one to announce here soon I think, stay tuned…

I love you all.

Enjoy your Thursday. Chat soon!

Best,

Wally
Marketing/Branding/Media
CryptoLink.Tech

ZEALY CODE: LOL leaving as a relic at this point