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FF DESK - EDITION 65

Welcome to the 65th Edition of the FF Newsletter

In this edition:

▹ Team updates
▹ Gitcoin Grants Round 12
▹ Cooopahtroopa w/ How to subDAO
▹ Jesse Walden on Web3 Product vs Protocol
▹ Messary 2022 Crypto Thesis
▹ Ross Ulbricht NFT Drop
▹ Adidas Metaverse x BAYC Collab
▹ ... more

Plus: What’s Poppin' / Market Pills / Trading Drops

Let’s get into it.

Gitcoin Grants Round 12 is Live. We're excited to announce that Forefront has officially committed $50k toward Gitcoin Grants Round 12, which is LIVE! Additionally, $25k is reserved for a Forefront Ecosystem Round. If you're working on a project supporting content, community, or tooling in the social crypto space, fill out this form ASAP to apply for a grant. APPLY 🗳

How to SubDAO by Cooopahtroopa. DAOs will not scale without a focus on subDAOs, but this class of organizations has been largely underexplored by the web3 community. Cooper does it again with an eye-opening piece on the importance of subDAOs, how to structure them, when you need them, and where they’re headed. MUST READ 🔥

Product vs. Protocol: Finding a Balance in Web3. Jesse Walden of Variant Fund knocks it out of the park with this essay on “commoditizing the complement.” Jesse argues that building and commoditizing a product on top of a protocol allows for maximum network growth while aligning stakeholder incentives. This points to the fundamentally disruptive business models that user-owned protocols create. POWERFUL PLAYBOOK 📚

Permissionless Brands by Fancy & Chu. In this essay, Fancy and Chu of Protein write about the future of brands and brand strategy given the rise of web3. Taking inspiration from Other Internet, the duo explains how web3 enables “permissionless brands” that allow for a whole new level of user ownership and loyalty. FRESH TAKE 🍃

What Happens When You’re the Investment. Rex Woodbury took his writing to The Atlantic for another exploration of social tokens. As in previous posts on his newsletter, he explores $ALEX, a hypothetical Taylor Swift token, and what it really means to tokenize yourself, the good and the ugly. He concludes with a powerful promise: "Popular culture will finally live up to its name." FF CO-SIGN 📜

Rara.social Announces The NFT RA!CE. The NFT RA!CE is Rara.social’s game for "discovering the best NFTs by making likes and hearts valuable." The "like-to-earn" competition is an attempt to determine what the "best" NFT of the race is by using fan sentiment rather than price. CHECK IT OUT 🚀

Messari Crypto Theses for 2022 Report. 165 pages packed with insights, Ryan and the Messari team do it yet again. From NFTs to Bitcoin to DeFi to DAOs (and so, so much more), the Messari Crypto Report is an absolute beast with everything you need to prepare for another year in the crypto market. Contributors include Balaji, Chris Dixon, Nic Carter, and dozens more. PACKED INDEED 🥞

A New Genre of Work by Station. The Station team is building at the frontier of DAO contributor management. In this essay, Tina and Katie explore how DAOs can take on a new generation of global problems that require fluid networks to tackle. To do so, they require contributor reputation interoperability, emergent authority, and portable experience. History often rhymes, but the future of work will require a whole new suite of models and tools. FANTASTIC TAKE 🔥

Social Tokens Index Fact Sheets - Index Coop Proposal

Jenil from Coinvise

We're excited to showcase Coinvise Wrapped -- statistics and review on how creators use the platform, popular categories and activity on Ethereum and Polygon.

David from MintGate

In this week's MintGate v2 development, we focused on:

- Introducing Subdomains. We've moved all of your NFTs and token gated links to username.mintgate.io.
- Minted NFTs can be hidden in MintGate's UI
- Link Analytics upgrade. Generate time-based graphs to analyze token gated link access.

FF Team

Forefront DAO is hiring for 5 core FT/PT roles: Community Manager, Editorial Lead, Product Lead, Full Stack Engineer, and Accountant. Check out this link for more details and come help us build the port of entry to web3!

As always a lot of developments happening in our in-house guilds, check out this weeks FF Wrapped for more.