Weekend Recommended Reading | 9 Articles to Review Hot Topics such as Sequoia Capital and the NFT Chaos
A summary of this week's精彩文章.整理：Richard Lee、胡韬
I. Capital Trends
1. “Sequoia Capital Partner Maguire: Crypto Will Be the Biggest Trend in the Next 30 Years”
Sequoia Capital announced the launch of a cryptocurrency investment fund with a scale of $500-600 million, marking the most significant event of the week. Sequoia Capital partner Maguire stated in an interview that cryptocurrency will become the biggest trend in the next 20-30 years. This article details Sequoia's project layout and investment history in the crypto space, while also reviewing the entry of other traditional venture capital firms such as Tiger Global, Accel, Insight Partners, Goldman Sachs, Coatue, a16z, and USV.
2. “Decoding Sequoia Capital's Crypto Strategy: Michelle Bailhe Goes ALL IN”
Why did Sequoia Capital make a significant leap from a traditional top-tier dollar fund to lead Web3 investments? This article decodes the story and investment philosophy of the Sequoia team leader. To some extent, she has changed Sequoia Capital.
3. “The New Crypto Venture Star KRH Partners: Katie Haun's Solo Plan After Leaving a16z”
In December last year, Silicon Valley crypto investment star and former a16z general partner Katie Haun announced her departure from a16z to establish her own crypto and Web3 investment fund. This article presents a comprehensive overview of Katie Haun's past experiences and the development status of the fund.
II. NFT Chaos and Leaders
4. “Web3 Scam Prevention Guide: Essential Security Skills for Discord Users”
With the rapid growth of the NFT market, various chaotic phenomena have emerged recently, represented by this week's LooksRare team "cash-out" controversy, the technical flaws of the Ali NFT project, and the attack on the AOTAVERSE project's Discord group. Various opportunistic projects are taking advantage of inexperienced crypto newcomers, providing some useful security guidelines is the impetus for this article.
5. “Interview with OpenSea Co-founder Alex: Our Biggest Competitive Advantage is 'Selectivity'”
In a recent interview, Alex Atallah discussed OpenSea's early journey, recent strategic thoughts, the pyramid of Web3 security, and the competitive landscape, stating that OpenSea's biggest competitive advantage is "selectivity," and they are striving to become a broader market covering every major NFT blockchain, every type of metadata, every type of image, and every type of NFT attachment.
6. “How NFTs Transformed a Small Mobile Game Company into a Billion-Dollar Giant”
Animoca Brands is one of the biggest winners in the NFT space explosion, recently valued at over $5 billion, with many savvy investment institutions viewing its success or failure as a litmus test for the viability of blockchain gaming. This Forbes report provides a comprehensive presentation of Animoca Brands' rise.
7. “The Decline of NFTs: Can't Keep Up, Can't Compete”
NFTs are a promising early market with many conscientious projects and quality teams, but they are also filled with countless chaos and scams. The whitelist system and the chaos it has caused are becoming increasingly exaggerated, and it is time for the project issuance system and platforms to further protect retail investors.
III. Project Overview
Among the new forces in the Polkadot ecosystem, Gear is one of the relatively underrated projects. As a Polkadot smart contract platform, Gear claims to support parallel execution of different transaction events and asynchronous programming and execution of smart contracts, which can significantly accelerate program running speed. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the Gear project from the perspectives of application scenarios, team members, technical solutions, competitive analysis, and strengths and weaknesses.
9. “Twitter's Decentralized Social Media Protocol Bluesky: Concepts and Architectural Outlook”
Twitter announced the launch of the decentralized social media protocol Bluesky at the end of 2019. Recently, Bluesky disclosed its technical architecture through an announcement—combining "self-certifying protocols" with a federated delegated custody mechanism. This article compiles Bluesky's project announcement and an analysis article by Bluesky leader Jay Graber on Web 3 and decentralized social networks. In the article, Jay Graber proposed that the fundamental technical characteristic of Web 3 is the self-certifying protocol and dispelled the myth that "blockchain and crypto = Web 3," emphasizing that Bluesky is not a blockchain network and that the adoption of social network protocols should be independent of any single blockchain.
