EVM-compatible L1 blockchain Lamina1 has released the first version of its whitepaper, although you’ll have to join its Discord to get it direct.
(But feel free to drop me a line if you want it emailed over!)
At 32 pages-long, it feels more like a litepaper: it doesn’t go into a lot of detail but does paint some broad (and also some detailed) strokes about how Lamina1 hopes to be different.
In particular, co-founder Peter Vessenes is clear that while Lamina1 will require “next-generation technology design” — it’s actually based on the Avalanche blockchain — it’s much more than being just another tech-focused L1.
Instead, he says “social and economic goals” are equally important, requiring “strong people of strong principles focused on building and enriching a worldwide community”.
And this is where fellow co-founder Neal Stephenson comes into play. As well as inventing the term ‘Metaverse’, and co-founding Lamina1, he’s also building THEEE METAVERSE — a narrative-driven virtual world — which will be the first and signature project on Lamina1.
Other interesting snippets include a design that will ensure Lamina1 has at least a zero carbon footprint by coding this into node operation via tokenized on-chain carbon credits.
It also looks like Lamina1 won’t be using seed phrases for wallets.
There will be SDKs for Unity and Unreal Engine integration, and Lamina1 hopes to leverage WebGL and WebGPU to enable high performance metaverse-enabled browsers too. And there’s a bunch of stuff about the different layers of digital identity.
But the main area of interest will be how Lamina1 puts the flesh on the bones of its desire to offer a metaverse-as-a-service tech stack, including storage, world state, cloud rendering etc.
There’s also a strong encouragement for people to fork Lamina1, which will be designed to be “easily forkable and come with batteries included for cross-chain data and value transfer to a large number of existing Layer 1 chains.”
Of course, this sort of stuff is early positioning, but Lamina1 hopes to move quickly with its testnet going live in November and various SDK and the wallet alpha live in October, although the mainnet isn’t planned to go live until Q2/Q3 2023.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital:
Burn, Baby, Burn news
It’s been a busy weekend for DigiDaigaku NFT holders as the next stage of the free-to-own game’s marketing campaign has gone live.
Without getting too deeply into the game theory, holders of DigiDaigaku Spirit NFTs now have the option to burn their NFT to create a new Hero NFT.
Depending on how you burn your Spirit — a process that takes 24 hours — you can create a Rogue, a Warrior or a Royal Hero, with Royal Heroes being the most valuable.
Significantly, however, Royal Heroes currently also make up the vast majority of the new NFTs created; 98% to-date.
Of the 943 Spirits burnt, only three Rogues and 20 Warriors have been created. You can see the data here.
Incidentally, the onchain Ethereum process was remarkably smooth: you can check out my video explaining it all below.
However, 42% of the 2,022 available Spirits have not yet been burnt so the interesting thing to see will be how economics and game theory play out as the number of available Spirits starts to decline.
Currently the floor pricing is as follows:
DigiDaigaku Genesis — 12 ETH
DigiDaigaku Spirit — 7 ETH
DigiDaigaku Heroes Royal — 10 ETH
DigiDaigaku Heroes Warrior — N/A
DigiDaigaku Heroes Rogue — N/A
It’s also worth noting that there’s no time constraint on the burning process so clearly some people are waiting to see how the process works and the impact on pricing.
In addition, the collection only has 36% unique owners so lots of people own multiple NFTs, which means they’ve likely burned one of their Spirits but are likely in no hurry to reduce their optionality any further.
Champions Arise news
I think in the case of Jam City’s Champions Ascension opening up its Slice of Massina first playable (although not of gameplay) to all NFT holders this week is an example of causation, not just correlation.
Previously tested by a small subset of the 2,178-owning wallets — including Snoop Dogg and son — Slice of Massina is a 3D interactive hub containing mini-games, a dance floor and various other community features.
Bizarrely, however, given that you have download a Windows client to access it, you’re required to connect your wallet using a QR code that’s designed for mobile wallets.
Nevertheless, as for causation, the floor price for the NFTs is now up to an all-time-high of 0.49 ETH from a low of 0.26 ETH back in late July.
The collection had a mint price of 0.3 ETH in February, although the price of ETH was obviously much higher then.
CFTC Banning DAOs news?
One sharp edge of the US growing regulatory hardening to crypto has been the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s case against DeFi app bZx.
It’s fined the two founders of bZeroX — the company behind bZx — $250,000 apiece for illegally offering leveraged retail commodity transactions and not compiling with KYC, but then also filed a lawsuit against the Ooki DAO, through which the CFTC claims the founders were attempting to decentralize control.
Significantly, though, one CFTC commissioner has issued an dissenting statement saying the CFTC is using old legislation — the particular act became law in 1974 — in an arbitrary manner, effectively creating regulation by enforcement even as federal policy is developing.
No doubt, there’s going to plenty more of such tangles as this particular US administration looks like it actively wants to struggle to bring crypto into current law, but it’s also interesting to get an idea of just how complex it’s going to be for any legacy legal system to define exactly how such projects are illegal.
Of course, ongoing rumblings from SEC chair Gary Gensler about the status of post-merge Ethereum — security or commodity — remain the key concern.
Cats Get Mechs news
Cat-themed and Solana-based battle royale title Nyan Heroes has announced its Genesis Guardian mech drop will occur at 1pm UTC on Friday 7th October.
People who already hold one of the Genesis Nyan NFTs — or who acquire one prior to 4th October — will receive a free mech. The floor for Genesis Nyans is currently 7 SOL ($240).
Nyan Heroes is currently being developed by a 40-strong team at Rude Robot Studios, which is based in Singapore and has raised around $10 million from various degen investors.
Old App Store NFT news?
Once again I’m pretty confused about some news. There’s an article at The Information — behind a paywall— that stated Apple was bringing out new rules that if an app sells NFTs, Apple has to get 30% of the transaction.
But I thought that’s exactly what the rules have always been, that why the OpenSea app doesn’t allow trading, just viewing.
Indeed, some games have been applying this for years. Upland’s in-game UPX cryptocurrency is only available via IAP, while Reality Clash had a similar IAP mechanic if you wanted to move your NFT guns into the game.
I guess it would be news if Apple was formalizing what were previously adhoc best practises into its official T&Cs.
In particular, Gabe Leydon has gotten very excited as his model is to give away NFTs for free so such a rule change would legalize that business model.
But I’m really not sure that’s what Apple is actually doing.