The digital frontier continues to expand, with web3 startups at the helm of this transformation. To ensure these pioneers have the resources they need, Otaris is proud to announce its strategic partnership with AWS, the world’s leading cloud services provider.

Why AWS?

AWS has long been an ally to startups, providing an expansive suite of services to cater to varying needs — from cloud computing and storage solutions to AI and machine learning capabilities. This partnership ensures that startups supported by Otaris have access to AWS’s premium range of services.

Exclusive Grants for Otaris-Supported Startups

While solutions are tailored to your project, it’s essential to know that this collaboration comes with exclusive AWS grants tailored for Otaris-backed ventures. These grants serve as a testament to AWS’s commitment to foster innovation in the web3 space, ensuring startups can seamlessly scale their operations without any financial hitches.

Dive Deeper with AWS

The grants can be applied across a broad spectrum of AWS services. Whether you’re looking to optimize your infrastructure, glean insights from data, or harness the power of AI, AWS has got you covered.

As web3 continues to evolve, partnerships like these underscore Otaris’s commitment to providing startups with the best resources. Stay tuned for more updates on how we, together with AWS, are reshaping the digital landscape!

Navigating the dynamic landscape of web3, strategic partnerships define the successful trajectory of innovative startups. One such promising alliance is the recent collaboration between Faculty Group’s Otaris and the pioneering blockchain platform, Cardano.

Cardano has earned global admiration for its scientific-driven approach to blockchain development. Its commitment to sustainability, scalability, and transparency makes it an attractive platform for many developers and enterprises. With decentralisation at its core and a firm dedication to empowering societies with financial inclusion, Cardano stands out as a beacon in the blockchain world.

Enter Otaris

Built by the Faculty Group, Otaris is designed to revolutionise the industry with its full suite of services. Beyond being an accelerator, Otaris provides a dedicated B2B portal, post-acceleration support, and tailored advisory, ensuring start-ups have the comprehensive resources to effectively build, raise, and scale. Faculty Group’s sponsorship reaffirms this intention.

Otaris’ contribution to the ‘Battle of the Builders’ goes beyond just sponsorship. The top three startups will be granted automatic acceptance into Faculty’s accelerator program, a defining moment that could empower their entrepreneurial path.

Moreover, Otaris will play a pivotal role in shaping the contest, with Michal Uhliarik, Faculty Group’s CTO, judging the Battle of the Builders during the Networking Soirée, ensuring a confluence of innovation, creativity, and impact. Michal had this to say about being a judge:

“We are proud to not only sponsor but participate in this event as a partner and to share our expertise with next-level projects building in the Cardano ecosystem.”

Why Cardano?

The alliance is not just strategic — it’s symbiotic. Cardano offers a robust platform for developing secure and scalable decentralised applications, and Otaris provides the necessary mentorship, resources, and support to start-ups building on Cardano. This collaboration promises to be beneficial for everyone: while Cardano gets the innovative solutions and applications start-ups bring, the projects receive unparalleled support and guidance from Faculty Group and Otaris.

Faculty Group’s mission is to build, fuel and guide the web3 game changers of tomorrow. The top three projects from the Battle of the Builders will also receive these additional ‘prizes’ as part of our sponsorship of Cardano Summit 2023:

• A place in Otaris’ upcoming Cardano-focused cohort of their accelerator programme, launching later this year.
• 1 month’s free Market Making by Artis, Faculty’s proprietary Market Maker. Our standard service level includes: Algorithmic Market Making, Liquidity support, DEX and CEX support for up to two pairs, and, most importantly, Treasury Management to ensure the long-term viability and liquidity of projects as they grow.
• 1 month’s free “Marketing Department as a service” for the overall winner from our marketing company X8C, which includes CMO, Assets and Branding as well as community management to set projects up for success when it comes to marketing strategy, sales and business development.

The 3 winning builders will also be fast-tracked by our Due Diligence team to receive potential investment from Faculty Capital, the venture capital arm of Faculty Group. Their unique approach to investment blends venture capital funding with deep expertise gained through working with web3 start-ups across many different sectors, including DeFi, gaming, entertainment and infrastructure.

To the Cardano community, our partners and clients, it demonstrates our commitment to harnessing the best of blockchain and creating bridges into ecosystems across the space. Together with Cardano, Faculty Group and Otaris are poised to drive a new era of blockchain innovation. Let’s build the future today.

In the traditional business landscape, business modeling signifies how a company generates value and revenue. This involves grasping the target market, pinpointing a unique selling proposition, and devising a plan for monetization. Yet, as we plunge deeper into the web3 era, business modeling evolves, converging intimately with token economics.

A pivotal element in this evolution is the digital asset known as a token. These tokens, representing ownership or specific rights within decentralized networks, can encapsulate a myriad of representations: from granting access to particular services to signifying ownership of tangible assets.

Unlike conventional business modeling, web3 token economics is built upon the foundation of blockchain. This empowers the inception of decentralized business models, enabling tokens to streamline transactions and value exchanges without the constraints of a central entity.

Consider the rise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Here, tokens symbolize ownership of specific assets or the right to a particular financial service. Their value, driven by supply and demand dynamics, is traded openly in the marketplace. Similarly, in the world of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), tokens embody ownership and bestow voting privileges. Engaging in such organizations, token holders can directly influence decisions and gain rewards for their contributions.

Clearly, the intrinsic value of these tokens is inexorably linked to the network or organization’s success. Consequently, the strategic design of the token economy emerges as a linchpin to the overarching business model.

Otaris: Pioneering Comprehensive Token Design & Testing

Here’s where Otaris, built by Faculty Group, demonstrates its prowess. Recognizing the paramount importance of token economics in Web3, Otaris offers comprehensive token design and testing services. We delve deep into understanding the nuances driving token demand — be it the token’s utility, distribution dynamics, or holding incentives. Concurrently, we shed light on the supply facet, exploring token quantities, release rates, and adaptive supply mechanisms.

Our holistic approach ensures that every token is meticulously crafted, aligning seamlessly with the envisioned business model while ensuring network sustainability and growth.

The Road Ahead

As the boundaries blur between business modeling and token economics in web3, it’s evident that the two are symbiotic. With tokens enabling decentralized business paradigms, their economy’s design becomes instrumental to a network’s prosperity. As we navigate this promising domain, Otaris stands at the forefront, driving innovation and fueling the web3 revolution through its unparalleled expertise in token design and testing.

Find out more at Otaris Discover

When most people think of branding, they typically only consider the visual aspect — a logo, color scheme, and font choice. However, branding is so much more than just a logo mark. It’s the foundation of a whole company, encompassing everything from vision and visual identity to business structure and target audience.

First and foremost, branding is about defining the vision and purpose of a company. It’s about identifying the values that drive the business and communicating them to the world. This includes the company’s mission statement and core values, as well as the products or services it offers and the problems it aims to solve.

Branding also encompasses the visual identity of a company, including its logo, color scheme, and font choices. These elements should be carefully considered and used consistently across all marketing materials to create a cohesive and memorable brand image.

But branding doesn’t stop at the visual elements — it also includes the “feel” of a company. This includes the customer experience, from the way a company interacts with its audience on social media to the tone of its website copy and the overall atmosphere of its physical storefront or office.

Finally, branding includes the business structure and target audience of a company. This includes identifying the target market and creating a marketing strategy that speaks to them effectively. It also involves creating a clear brand positioning statement and messaging hierarchy to ensure that all marketing efforts are aligned and on-brand.

In short, branding goes beyond just a logo mark. It’s the foundation of a whole company and involves everything from vision and visual identity to business structure and target audience. By considering all these elements, a company can create a strong, cohesive brand that truly resonates with its audience.

At Otaris we understand the power of branding and have partnered with the market leaders in design and brand positioning. Discover your branding partner using our B2B portal Otaris Discover at no cost to your project.

Building in the world of web3, you’ll find the journey from idea to creation fraught with challenges. Each step might seem daunting, filled with pivotal decisions. It’s exactly for moments like these that Faculty Group has forged a new path — introducing Otaris Discover.

A Genesis Rooted in Experience

Our journey at Faculty Group spans years of incubation, acceleration, and venture capital. We’ve met and collaborated with market vanguards and trailblazing service providers. These aren’t mere professional associations. They’re our lessons, our partnerships — bridges we’ve built to innovation.

Otaris Discover: More Than a Service, It’s Your Web3 Concierge

Drawing from our deep knowledge, experience and expertise, we’ve crafted Otaris Discover for you. It’s not just a B2B portal; it’s a gateway, simplifying web3’s complexity, ensuring you connect with the right service at precisely the right time.

Here’s what awaits you at Otaris Discover:

• Curated Expertise: We’ve handpicked service providers who consistently surpass expectations.
• Breadth Meets Depth: Whether you need insights on legal matters, marketing, technical aspects, or financials, with 10+ service categories, rest assured we’ve got your back.
• Precision Tailored for You: With 65+ partners and 60+ service offerings, we offer a perfect match for your startup’s unique requirements.

Your Future with Otaris Discover

Otaris Discover symbolizes Faculty Group’s unwavering commitment to fueling web3 innovation, and it’s just our first step. We’re painting a future where you, and startups like yours, embark on your web3 ventures armed with clarity, fortified by confidence, and paired with the perfect partners.

To you, the visionary, the pioneer: With Otaris Discover, you’ll never walk alone. You’ve got a partner, an ally, a mentor in us. Together, let’s shape your future.

Explore our B2B portal at no cost. Dive into Otaris Discover.

In brief:

• The 2014 vision for ETH.
• How does the Merge impact ETH?
• ETH hard fork?
• The impact on developers.
• ETH turning deflationary.
• What to do ahead of the Merge.

In an article from 2014, Vitalik Buterin outlines his vision of what Ethereum could mean to humanity.

It was written just before the next week’s blog post that announced Ethereum is going public.

Just 1 Bitcoin back then bought you 1000–2000 Ether.

From the beginning, Vitalik and his team were not happy they had to go the Proof Of Work route, a process that inefficiently converts electricity into heat, further warming our planet. And if Ethereum were to be the computer changing humanity for the better, it’ll need a solution that helps keep it decentralized, secure and allow for immense, even exponential scalability.

That challenge still stands and is not over by any means. Until we have a successful Merge event, it stands tall, staring Vitalik right in the eyes.

It is fascinating how blog posts from 2015, mere months after ETH went public, were already predicting solutions to the problems they would be encountering.

How will The Merge impact ETH?

Sharding was the top priority almost half a decade ago since it was meant to address the troubling surge in gas prices that ETH was experiencing.

However, because layer 2 technologies are now widely used to accelerate transaction execution, sharding plans have changed to focus on determining the best approach to split the workload of storing compressed calldata from rollup contracts, enabling a rapid increase in network capacity. Without switching to proof-of-stake first, this would not be viable.

What precisely is merging, then?
The Beacon Chain, a distinct blockchain established in 2020 and now operating in parallel with Ethereum, will be incorporated into the Ethereum mainnet (blockchain) as part of the update.

The Beacon Chain will provide proof-of-stake consensus to Ethereum, which is 99.95% less energy-intensive than proof-of-work (PoW).
That is a result of PoS not requiring network nodes to perform intricate calculations. Instead, it secures the network by asking users to stake some of their Ethereum in the event that the system picks them at random to be a block validator.

In addition to lowering the barrier to entry for anyone who wishes to be a part of the staking community, transitioning to proof of stake has massive environmental benefits.

Staking doesn’t entail any expensive equipment, whereas crypto mining uses it to solve problems with a cryptographic foundation. Any laptop does the job. This could increase the number of validators for Ethereum, increasing its decentralization.

Fears of ETH hard fork

Watcher.Guru on Twitter: "JUST IN: #Ethereum miners generated $733 million in revenue in August 2022. / Twitter"

JUST IN: #Ethereum miners generated $733 million in revenue in August 2022.

The network might split if those angry Ethereum miners are able to garner enough support to maintain a proof-of-work version of Ethereum.
A blockchain fork is simply a network split where the two chains have the same ledger history before the break but continue in separate directions afterward.

ETH miners have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into computing equipment dedicated to PoW, who will soon either be out of work or need to shift to other blockchains in order to make money.

If the ETH fork occurs, the Merge is expected to displace more than $5 billion in Ethereum mining equipment in the form of graphics cards and application-specific integrated circuits or ASIC mining rigs, the most of which belong to Chinese miners.

One ETH fork has already happened, so is the possibility of another one occurring that far-fetched?

If a hard fork does happen, we could see duplication of assets on the copied blockchain. This could also be a taxable event which could garner more sell pressure in the markets.

The future for developers and dApps

The most important message for developers is that the Merge will have almost no immediate impact on them.
Their apps will continue to function exactly as before.
One thing it will do is lay the groundwork for future network enhancements that will reduce congestion and increase scalability.

“The exciting thing for developers working on Ethereum apps is that it’s a ‘no-op.’ We’re able to develop in a way that doesn’t require any upgrades or any thinking about what they’re doing to change.”

- Rob Dawson, CTO ConsenSys

The Ethereum foundation ensures there’s been a lot of testing over the past couple of years, every edge case has been hammered out, and it should just be like flipping a switch. This should also be the experience for developers.

So it should be a seamless experience for everyone involved.

The big deal will be the foundation that the Merge leaves for future development. This foundation will enable for protocol-level improvements to boost Ethereum capacity.
As a result, it will be able to sustain more transactions, lowering network fees and increasing throughput.

Just to be clear, the Merge to PoS won’t directly impact gas fees. They will essentially stay the same but it’s something that will be fixed through time with additional incremental updates.

In the future, the previously described Layer-2 technologies will be able to have core protocol layer solutions with Sharding — a process of partitioning a database horizontally to share the load — that will function in tandem with them. It will aid in distributing the burden generated by massive volumes of data required by Layer-2 networks running on Ethereum.

Sharding becomes possible following the Merge and is projected to be available in 2023.

ETH becoming deflationary

There’s one thing Bitcoin has as an advantage over Ethereum, and that’s the maximum supply of 21 million. Its circulating supply is growing at a steady rate of 1.5 percent per year.

Nothing can ever change Bitcoin’s max supply.
Ethereum, on the other hand, has had technically infinite supply this whole time and has been growing at a steady rate of roughly 5 percent a year.

From the perspective of technology and what its implications bring to the table, Ethereum was always ahead, but for the degens who aren’t in it for the tech, Bitcoin has always been a safer bet in terms of price appreciation.

This could all change with PoS.

Not only does PoS make ETH more safe, reliable, and decentralized, but it also turns Ether into the world’s most powerful computer as well as the cryptocurrency with the most robust battle-tested utility.

In addition to all that, the staking APR will increase post-merge.

The up-to-date estimations from the Ethereum foundation predict a 50% increase in APR post-merge.

What now?

For the majority, it’ll be like going to bed and waking up, only feeling a subtle change in the air as the sun rises.

You don’t have to do anything with your Ether to capitalize on the Merge. And the developers do not have to upgrade anything in the code for their dApps to work properly.

It’s almost ironic that the greatest and most anticipated blockchain event in history must pass quietly in order to be successful.

With the Merge scheduled for mid-September, all we have to do is wait patiently and pray that nothing goes wrong.

In conclusion, gas fees will stay the same for the time being, but Ether will become deflationary.

And all future improvements to the protocols we know and love will use PoS, transforming Ethereum, the computer that will alter humanity for the better, into a safer, more dependable, and exponentially more decentralized currency.

If you’ve ever listened to any podcasts on technology, blockchain, or hacking, it’s likely that you’ve encountered the subject of domains in some of the stories discussed there.

The largest businesses, organizations, institutions, and people continue to fly their flags from domain names, which are still an essential component of the internet.

One story, in particular, is found in a podcast that goes by the name ‘Darknet Diaries’. It’s about a Twitter user who managed to snag the handle ‘jw’ some five months after Twitter launched.

Back then, Twitter had a tiny 140-character limit to all the tweets, minus your username length. Nowadays, that is not the case, but at the start, it was important and kind of cool to have a username that is short.

Short usernames are extremely rare today. JW’s biggest offer was $5,000, and this was back in 2010, the early days of social media.

Some people pay big bucks to have that kind of clout. And they take it seriously.

Some even take it too seriously.

The rise of ENS

Conventional DNS flipping and modern .eth domain trading share many similarities that are difficult to overlook.

ENS is a blockchain naming protocol that enables users to transfer and receive cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens as well as save avatars and profile pictures for usage across devices (NFTs). Users would first need to link their wallet and register an address at manager.ens.domains before listing a.eth domain for sale on OpenSea.

While many cryptocurrency fans choose unique or imaginative names for the ENS service, others have started domain-flipping. This entails registering ENS domains in advance that contain the names of well-known organizations and then later charging a premium fee for the domain in the event that the organization in question decides to enter the Web3 arena.

In the industry, this is called ‘Domain squatting’.
But similar to how some programmers like to say their bugs are actually just features, Nick tried to form the company around this problem as it is unavoidable in human nature to value scarcity.

“Any time there is a scarce resource, people will look for ways to capitalize on it, and namespaces are no different. Certainly we were aware from day one that this would likely happen, and we tried to structure the service to prioritize end-users over speculators.”

— Nick Johnson, founder and lead developer of ENS

Why does crypto need ENS?

In the early 1990s, entering numbers into a computer browser was required in order to visit a certain website. An IP address, as we understand it today, is made up of these digits. Blockchain addresses are used in cryptocurrencies in a similar way to how IP addresses were in the past. Today’s crypto users read extremely unintuitive lengthy sequences of randomly generated characters, which might result in a lot of human mistakes.

This is where ENS takes shape, using a special mechanism designed to give users short, approachable names rather than lengthy addresses.

Simply said, ENS is a decentralized application (dApp) built on the Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts. Users of the dApp may register a domain name for their wallet address, making money transfers simpler. The obvious conclusion is that, rather than using an address, anybody can send money to the registered name.

Being based on the Ethereum blockchain and employing smart contracts, ENS is secure and completely decentralized. The open protocols used by the non-profit organization that developed ENS place a strong emphasis on decentralization and community decision-making.

The future ENS imagines and why decentralization is important

The fact that ENS is programmed into smart contracts means that it does not provide any type of trademark or ownership verification. In contrast to DNS, signing up for an Ethereum Name Service is fully automated. Users of ENS are only provided with data that domain owners have already put on the Ethereum blockchain, with no ability to modify it.

The trust aspect of employing ENS is a considerable advantage. Because DNS is built on a trusted network, each hierarchical level must have faith in the one above it. The domain owner has no control over the situation if there is a breach of such confidence for whatever reason.

Since ENS lacks a hierarchical structure and is based on the blockchain, there is no possibility of blacklisting, which is not the case with other systems.

So long as a user has his domain registered in ENS, there is no risk of data blocking when information is directly accessed.

Imagine having something like a phonebook with names ending in ‘.eth’, and all your friends have a registered name. That’s pretty cool.

By April 2022, there were one million ENS names registered worldwide.
The most recent figures show that 162,978 names were registered in April 2022, compared to only 85,272 in March 2022.

The impact ENS will continue to have is massive

Every company understands how important it is to have their name properly registered on their website URL.

Crypto users who want to give their address a brief, memorable name now have an edge thanks to the Ethereum Name Service.

The fact that these URLs act as a one-stop shop for all Web3.0 criteria makes them worthwhile. The domains allow for the sending and receiving of cryptocurrencies as well as the creation of subdomains that can be used as NFTs.

This allows users to purchase, sell, or lease the domain.

Internet culture, domain names, crypto culture

After social media became popular, JW started receiving offers from people, organizations and companies wanting his username. JW never was interested, but soon these messages became more aggressive.

His friend, who had a short Instagram username, was the victim of an attempted SIM-swap. Basically, someone tried hacking him for his username.

This is all unsettling, but it gets weirder.

JW’s mom, who lives in a different state, gets a pizza delivered to her door. She asks why he sent her a pizza, but he denies sending it and cautions his mother not to give anyone their personal information.

JW isn’t new to this, he understands that in tech, there’s always a scam being run somewhere. Later, in another state, his grandfather gets a pizza delivered the same way.

JW is not alone, he lives with his wife and kids. A couple of days later, his daughter receives a call, and she bolts out the front door. Five minutes later, JW goes to investigate, only to be greeted by 40 officers shining a flashlight at him in the middle of the night.

He was being swatted.
The police were told in a 911 call that JW killed his family and would kill the cops next. — But this obviously wasn’t the case.

Thankfully, everyone stayed calm, and the situation was diffused with ease.

“At the top of my messages, there was a message from an individual with the username SIMswapper that said if you don’t give me your username, I know where you live and I’m going to continue to harass you and your wife and your children, and they left my address.

At this point I showed it to the police officer and my wife opened up her Instagram. She herself had a message from the same individual, and her message said here’s your address, and if you don’t convince your husband to give me his username, JW, I’m gonna continue to harass you and your kids. “

— JW

Even if it’s an extreme example, it shows how essential domain names are to internet culture. Now with ENS, their significance will grow in the crypto culture as well.

In brief:

• How it all started.
• The pitch that led to Metamask.
• Consensys and Metamask.
• How revenue is generated.
• Problems that are yet to be solved.
• The future of DeFi and Metamask.

It did not begin in a single place nor at a single period in time

Long before the debut of Ethereum, the first builders and co-founders met in late November 2014 in Berlin to describe their work and plans for the future of Ethereum at a meetup called Devcon 0.

By this point, approximately a year after Buterin wrote the original Ethereum whitepaper, The Ethereum team had reached a fundamental decision: it would be a non-profit venture.

That decision, led by Buterin, had splintered the leadership team and sent many members off to look for opportunities abroad.
Despite remaining close to Buterin, Joseph Lubin was among many who began to look beyond the initiative and onto larger economic opportunities.

Joseph Lubin, Vitalik Buterin, Anthony Di Iorio, and two other developers, Gavin Wood and Charles Hoskinson, met 11 months ago at a beach house in Miami.
They were there to attend the North American Bitcoin Conference and discuss Ethereum.

During that stay in Miami, Lubin secured his presence at the vanguard of the Ethereum revolution and established himself as the commercially-minded counterbalance to Buterin’s humanitarian and emotional core.

This will prove crucial as around the time of Devcon 0. He had launched a new company called ConsenSys.
The firm was created to find and fund Ethereum-based businesses, assisting in the network’s adoption and delivering its benefits to large numbers of inexperienced customers and businesses.

The conference room pitch, MetaMask origins

Unbeknownst to Lubin, in one of the conferences side rooms, Joel Dietz sat down with Buterin and pitched a precursor to Metamask.

Dietz argued he should receive one of the recently announced Ethereum Developer Grants and create a JavaScript-based crypto browser.

Buterin did not require much persuasion because Dietz had already established a notable presence in the ecosystem. Buterin even suggested a name for it: Vapor.

Fortunately for Dietz, finding developers to build projects with was not difficult because the only users of Ethereum at this point were, well, other developers. Not long after the talk with Buterin, a team forms with Joel Dietz, Aaron “Kumavis” Davis and Martin Becze.

The group quickly made an effort to get entry into Y Combinator, the organization that has supported so many unicorns, to raise money.

You can watch Becze, Dietz, and Kumavis describe exactly what they are attempting to construct in an application video that is still available on YouTube.

“Unfortunately, we’ve decided not to fund Vapor.

We were impressed by the three of you and the demo we saw, but we weren’t convinced that this would grow large among mainstream users.”

— Trevor Blackwell, partner at YCombinator

Although hindsight is always 20/20, YCombinators’ choice at the time was not unusual. Only a handful that dared to put themselves through the horrific user experience that was cryptocurrency back then saw its massive potential.

ConsenSys and Metamask

Eventually, Vapor died.

Kumavis left the project, citing his co-founders’ lack of effort as the reason. He removed them from Vapor’s Github, Slack and eventually renamed the repositories to “MetaMask”.

Dietz allegedly never received the Ethereum Developer Grants to build Vapor, but Kumavis applied for another grant at the Ethereum Foundation to build Metamask and received $30,000 to support his work.

For a period of time, Kumavis worked alone until he decided to take the project to ConsenSys. There, MetaMask emerged with its future defined by Kumavis, Dan Finlay, and Joe Lubin.

MetaMask became the baby of ConsenSys, a never-ending project built by developers for developers. Understanding the context, it makes sense why MetaMask is a scary tool for new users.

To fast forward, ConsenSys was hit pretty badly after the euphoric rise in prices back in 2017, and they had to fire many of their staff to survive.

Ethereum dropped from roughly $1,400 to $84, yet MetaMask survived the entire turmoil, demonstrating that it had already established itself as a key element of infrastructure.

ConsenSys eventually narrowed its focus, and “ConsenSys Software” would compile the organization’s top technology resources into a more understandable product.

With this newly discovered clarity, MetaMask will become a true priority when its traction surges in 2021, elevating it to the position of one of the most widely used blockchain applications worldwide.

Monetization

As consumers of social media, we use free applications on a daily basis. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all work because their primary source of revenue is ad money. When you stop and think about it, the entire world of traditional Fintech runs on ad money.

In DeFi something like this is not possible. So how does a free wallet in the form of a web browser extension produce revenue?

The “Swaps” feature was introduced by the team in October of 2020.

Users can exchange currencies through swaps, and MetaMask will carry out the transaction on a different exchange. The average CEX would charge you in the range of 0.05–0.1 percent for this type of exchange, yet MetaMask charges a massive 0.875 percent fee for this service.

Despite the significant variation in costs, the success in monetizing swaps has been of comparable size.

As DeFi exploded in 2021, Metamask reported revenue of $200 million in the same year. In comparison, DeFi staples like Sushi only made $70 million within the same time span.

It’s important to note that MetaMask’s customer acquisition cost is basically null. Zero. Since Metamask has no token incentives or emissions, their revenue is essentially cost-free. Their profit margins are very near 100%.

Overall, MetaMask deserves a lot of praise for managing to survive and profit from the hyper-drive of 2021. But to maintain its position as the leader, it must change to meet new obstacles.

Obstacles and challenges of the future

Imagine being delivered a box of LEGOs. You have to open up the box and assemble your own LEGO piece before you can have some fun and really understand what’s going on.
The same goes for your first time using MetaMask, it takes time to use the application with some confidence and ease.

For some of us at Faculty, it took weeks or months before we became confident in using decentralized wallets. Even today, new chains pop up where you have to learn which bridge to use at what chain so you don’t lose your funds.

Blockchain, DeFi and MetaMask use a ton of terminologies many are still not used to. Terms like tokens, approvals, staking, networks, chain, multi-chain, gas, DEX, CEX etc.

Are you able to explain to your parents what the difference is between a network, account and a wallet in DeFi? Probably not.

Every day, someone new falls victim to paying hundreds of dollars on a TX fee simply because they chose the wrong time to send some tokens across Ethereum.

Not to mention all the wallets being drained simply because approval has been left open on some code on some app that has not been audited. This makes DeFi and extension, MetaMask, feel like the wilder west of the wild west that is crypto itself.

In conclusion, MetaMask’s greatest weakness is that it isn’t user-friendly, and it does not offer an intuitive experience. But then again, it’s not its fault, that’s just how DeFi in its current state is.

Onboarding the next 100 million users

MetaMask historically focused on developers. ConsenSys’ strategy for attracting users is to help developers build more dApps, attracting more users along with a handful of new developers.

This process then repeats with the new wave of developers.

Bearing this context in mind, and because of how MetaMask hasn’t changed in five years, makes it a good thing for the conservative mindset most institutions are in. This makes them much better positioned when it comes to forming regulatory compliance between TradFi and DeFi.

“I’m a believer in Metamask as a developer tool.”

— Mike Demarais

MetaMask doesn’t care, nor does it have the need to catch new waves coming into crypto. It has already established itself as the most popular option.

Users don’t download MetaMask to use MetaMask, they download it to use dApps that are integrated with it. Indirectly making the wallet even more popular.
In this logic, any future wallet that manages to onboard the next 100 million users with a user-friendly and intuitive interface will have to be integrated with MetaMask and any technology ConsenSys has to offer.

MetaMask isn’t beautiful, but it works.

Although MetaMask might not be able to snag every fresh wave of users entering the crypto space, it has positioned itself so that it won’t necessarily have to.

In a future with increased competition, adoption, demand across networks, and use cases, MetaMask is here to stay.

In Brief:

• Bitcoin and government money
• The role of Bitcoin in developing worlds
• How exactly blockchain helps developing worlds
• El Salvador Bitcoin experiment

“The inevitable failures of fiat currency create the success of bitcoin.” — Unknown

Bitcoin and government money

Until the advent of Bitcoin in 2009, there was no credible alternative to the currencies that governments forced people to use.

They have had a virtual monopoly on money, and this age of human history could potentially be coming to an end in the coming decades. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies offer the world the possibility of separating state and money in the same manner that church and state were.

When a good is in high demand and has only one supply, the market can be manipulated in just about any manner. The supplier can raise prices because consumers will have no other less expensive option, and they can diminish the value of their goods because there is no competition who can supply a higher quality alternative.

The same holds true with money. It is no different from any other in-demand good or commodity. Consumer satisfaction rises as a result of supplier competition. Until bitcoin, there has been no competition to government money.

Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina are only a few examples of countries dealing with the problem of hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation effectively brings a country’s entire economy to a standstill. It demonstrates how critical the soundness of a country’s currency needs to be.

The Swift Adoption of Bitcoin in Developing Worlds

Most people in developing nations regard Bitcoin as a powerful development instrument. This is because virtual currency functions as digital money via which users may deal over the internet. While many individuals in the developing countries are impoverished, they can access and utilize the internet. As a result, they may use their smartphones to connect to the Bitcoin network.

Exchanging money through cryptocurrency exchanges is also less expensive and more accessible for people in underdeveloped nations. This helps to explain the high rate of Bitcoin acceptance in certain areas.
Most people with middle-class incomes can afford to trade Bitcoin in undeveloped countries.

Argentina has the world’s sixth highest rate of cryptocurrency adoption. According to estimates, by 2021, 21% of Argentines will have used or owned cryptocurrency.

“There are 2 types of people, those who know they need bitcoin, and those who don’t know it yet”. — Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance

Most developing countries have been subjected to decades of restrictive banking laws and poor infrastructure.

Argentina, for example, limits foreign exchange to $200 per month, which magnifies hyperinflation and drives up crypto use.

Some people and small businesses in underdeveloped countries lack convenient access to bank accounts.
Inaccessibility to banking services has also prevented them from participating in e-commerce.

“The local environment is pushing people to protect their capital in cryptocurrencies and so we see growth speeding up, throughout Latin America the growth potential is enormous, it is an avalanche that won’t be stopped.” — Mauro Liberman, 39

To summarize, cryptocurrencies quickly address some concerns that frequently impact national currencies, such as:

• Fast-moving exchange rates
• Hyperinflation
• Inefficient, inaccessible and expensive banking systems
• Strict regulation and financial restrictions

Blockchain serves to bank the unbanked, fight inflation and corruption.

Without a doubt, Bitcoin offers a variety of real-world applications. However, the bulk of enterprises and people in underdeveloped countries utilize it as a form of payment and a store of wealth.
Numerous shops now accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment for goods and services in their stores.

The advantages of immutability and decentralization have been felt in developed countries. These benefits, however, are significantly exaggerated and more visible in developing countries, particularly those where annual inflation rates of 60–70 percent are becoming more prevalent.

The limitations of traditional banking institutions in underdeveloped countries make them ideal for Bitcoin adoption.

But not all stories shine such a bright light on Bitcoin and crypto adoption.

El Salvador Bitcoin Experiment

El Salvador declared Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021.
Many people were excited to check out the technology since they heard it would cut costs and speed up payments.
After a few days of resolving technical difficulties, small business owners were up and running, receiving Bitcoin payments from clients.

But their list of Bitcoin complaints grew long: the only Bitcoin ATM was too far away, the government helpline was slow, and the price was too volatile.

El Salvador’s national Bitcoin wallet, known as Chivo, was developed to encourage this massive change, but 6 months later, the majority of users have already abandoned it.

Chivo’s initial release was tarnished by functional and security flaws.
Though approximately half of the Salvadorans polled have downloaded Chivo to date, with 40% of those downloads occurring in September 2021, the National Bureau of Economic Research discovered that approximately 61 percent of those had abandoned it once the $30 sign-up incentive was withdrawn.

According to El Salvador’s Central Bank, only 1.6 percent of total remittances were received in bitcoins via digital wallets in February 2022.

Few of Chivo’s transactions involve commercial or critical use cases. The average user saw no reason to continue using Bitcoin instead of dollars.

However, even having dollars in Chivo may not be as safe as it appears. On April 27, local media publication El Faro revealed that customers’ Chivo wallets do not contain US dollars, but rather stable-dollar coins backed by either the Salvadoran government or a private enterprise.

Conclusion

The majority of the world’s most powerful countries, 44 in total, tied the value of their currency to the US dollar as a result of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. This established the United States as the world’s main financial power.

The US dollar was safe and held its value at this time because it was backed by and redeemed for gold. When this occurred, foreign central banks were able to redeem one ounce of gold for $35 USD at a set rate. As of this writing, a single ounce of gold is worth $1,783.

By withdrawing the US dollar’s gold backing in 1971, President Nixon compelled the bulk of the world’s population to use currencies that were then backed by nothing. The world is currently in around $255 trillion dollars of debt.

Over the decades following, developing nations will be the main testing ground for Bitcoins adoption.

It might only be a matter of time before this global system implodes. If that happens, more people will use Bitcoin, and it will be of enormous value to humanity.

Bitcoin is projected to withstand all recessions, especially given that it was built on the heels of one.

In brief:

• How the Web started out.
• The evolution to Web2.
• The first mentions of Web3.
• The vision and the issues of Web3.
• The future.

Web1

Imagine this; it’s the 2000’s and you’re booting up your ‘PC’, your very own Personal Computer.
A nifty device, you even got one of the more powerful versions with high-end specifications, even your friends are jealous. Sporting a lightning fast page load of mere 3 minutes to open “www.Pets.com”.

Jokes aside, despite its crude nature, Web1 was an era defined by decentralized, open protocols. The earliest platforms ran on the internet were powered by open-source code, shared through forums, bulletin board systems and early versions of instant messengers. Most of it was unpatented and free.

“The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come.” — Darcy DiNucci

In her article “Fragmented Future” published in 1999, the first vision of Web2 was being created.
Darcy mentioned how in the future, you would be able to use the internet on multiple devices. They will sync up, talk to each other, appear on your computer screen and TV at the same time etc.

Web1 was immobile, static, read-only with little to no user interaction, utility or adaptability.

Web2

Unfortunately, in the wake of the dot-com crash (circa 2000), Pets.com filed for bankruptcy as they burned through $82.5 million in funding mere 9 months after IPO. With this monumental event behind us, a new breed of online services emerged.

Together with the rise of internet speeds, streaming sites like YouTube and Netflix started to become more prominent. Alongside this, social media came into being and soon, the ability to link experiences to media via sharing videos or livestreaming became commonplace. This era also saw the rise of the mobile internet, granting even more access to these platforms thanks to cell phones and tablets.

Web2 transformed the Internet from a read-only to a read/write environment. Users were suddenly able to submit a variety of information into web forms and transmit it back to the servers, allowing them to connect with hosting servers in real-time.

However, these new platforms emerged from businesses and corporations. And the once open-source code and platforms that defined Web1 turned proprietary. Nobody could copy and modify these models without anticipating serious legal ramifications. Additionally, the emergence of such platforms corralled users into centralized hubs, ultimately controlled by big tech firms such as Facebook and Google. Before long, collecting user data became standard practice — often veiled behind ostensibly “free” services.

This is, unfortunately, the foundational landscape of Web2.

Web3

Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum cryptocurrency, proposed the phrase Web3 in 2014. Since then, it’s become a catch-all phrase for everything relating to the future generation of the internet being a decentralized digital infrastructure.

Web3 is a concept that is still in the works.

• Web1 hosted mainly content created by commercial businesses, interaction was minimal.
• Web2 introduced and expanded upon social media, gave the average person the ability to create and profit from their content on the web. Although any such plans still required the involvement of a Big Tech company such as YouTube (owned by Google), Facebook, Twitter, or any of the major social networks that influencers — and individuals — rely on to reach their audiences.

Web3 proponents argue that by entirely decentralizing the web, they can cut out the Big Tech intermediaries, just as bitcoin is aiming to seize control of global money from huge financial organizations and governments.

The shortcomings of Web3’s vision

Despite the overwhelming array of possible use cases, there are still some major issues holding back this vision of Web3. For one, many self-described decentralized apps are far from being genuinely decentralized. It is not uncommon for the front end of these services to be running on cloud servers, meaning that access to them is still dependent on legacy infrastructure, and the blockchain is only occasionally tapped to send or receive data.

Even blockchain networks themselves, designed to be decentralized, lose that distinction if the majority of them run on Amazon Web Services or similar centralized corporate clouds. This is increasingly the case, even in the instance of Ethereum.

34% of all Ethereum nodes are hosted in the United States because cloud computing providers have concentrated their infrastructure in the country. They include AWS, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, and Hetzner.

Such centralization, as with AWS dominance in the running ETH nodes, highlights a need for Data Center Diversity. A lack of which can cripple the Ethereum network due to outages as witnessed on December 8th, 2021. The additional centralization of cloud service providers located mainly in the United States highlights another concern for Geographic diversity.

Many basic issues still plague Web3

Today, a great deal of learning and experimentation is a necessary part of the average user’s Web3 journey. The lack of user-friendly design doesn’t do us any favors and makes the journey arduous and the learning curve long. In truth, it is a significant barrier to entry for most.

However, when code exploits and downtime are at the forefront of every developer’s mind, as they very much are today, user experience is far from a top priority.
It does make many Web3 platforms finicky and very tough to use, but that’s only because things are so new that most developers are still focused on the underlying technologies.

That said, there are more serious concerns with Web3.

To start off, with significant changes comes significant risk. One of the best parts about Web3 is having full ownership of your data. It’s also the worst part as losing funds on your wallet is met with no customer support and no chance of retrieval.
This means there is never a possibility of letting your guard down and feeling true safety.

The Web3 space is still very much a Wild West, filled with bad actors. Without reliance on a centralized authority, you are fully responsible for keeping your data and currency safe. Even the most trusted Web3 protocols and platforms have been hacked and exposed, so it’s crucial always to have your guard up.

In short, trustlessness isn’t a universal truth in Web3. You need to trust yourself.

How we’ll get there

Everything considered, it would be premature to say we’ve made it to Web3 just yet. But that doesn’t mean the groundwork isn’t being laid.

For the vision of Web3 to come to reality it demands every part of an online service, from front end to back end, to be hosted on-chain. There is no need for legacy infrastructure, meaning no gatekeepers and minimum downtime. This will make for 100% authentic Web3 experiences all while providing noticeably better performance.

One of the most essential elements of this new technological epoch however, is that it is built correctly from the ground up.

Web3 is not a direct upgrade to Web2. It’s a chance to reimagine the internet and what’s important is to make sure that it is done in the interests of end-users rather than corporations.