⚡ TFC Newsletter: 12/22/2022

Web3 Social Explained, New Web3 Accelerators Launching, DeFi Analytics, Bitcoin Heaters, NFT Creator Tooling, and more!

December 22, 2022

Coinbase put out this thread + blogpost on decentralizing social media through this guide to the web3 social stack that’s worth reading.

The main takeaways:

  • Web3 social networks give users ownership and portability over their data, identity, and relationships, while enabling permissionless development.

  • The web3 social stack consists of four layers: hosting, social primitives, profile, and applications.

  • One example is Farcaster: a Twitter-like social app built on top of an open social graph reminiscent of the protocol that powers email (SMTP).

  • By separating the underlying protocols from the apps themselves, we may one day see social networks that accrue wealth and power in new and more distributed ways.

Want to build in Web3? Or find early projects that are worth investing/keeping up to date on?

NFT volume & twitter engagement may be down, but there’s more opportunities than ever to build in Web3.

And even if your’e not building: projects that come out of these are typically in early stage but have support & mentors, and are worth watching!

Polygon co-founder opened his Beacon accelerator today, submission form is in his thread:

AllianceDao just today opened their 10th cohort applications:

Outlier Ventures’s Zero-Knowledge accelerator is open and closes on Jan 10th:

  1. Utopia Group closed a €10M round led and advised by Asterius VC, for the launch of its first collection of NFTs, Utopia Avatar - Link

  2. Tonsnipe, a web3 startup building on The Open Network closed a $100,000 private funding round to develop a Ton blockchain-based native token and NFT aggregator - Link

  3. ML Tech, a non-custodial digital asset investment management platform raised over $1.9 million in a strategic round that included well-known investors such as Belvedere Strategic Capital, Hyperithm, and Nascent - Link

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If you’re a builder, investor, or crypto enthusiast, this will benefit you!

Note: Do you have a product or tool you’re building? Have one you’d suggest? DM us on twitter! We’re always happy to feature products from the TFC community.

Exponential DeFi

"Easily discover, assess and invest in liquidity pools across chains"

Type of Product: DeFi Analytics

Purpose of Tool: Exponential is a platform that simplifies the process of finding, evaluating, and investing in DeFi yield opportunities. Level up your DeFi knowledge as well when you visit their blog for expert takes on yield, risk, and more.

  • Rate My Wallet | Using information about the assets in your wallet, Exponential creates a personalized analysis of the risks associated with your current investments with a portfolio summary

  • Risk-Reward Pools | helps users find yield opportunities in the cryptocurrency market, assesses the risks associated with each opportunity, and identifies the source of the yield.

  • Explore the Best Projects | diversify your investment portfolio by accessing a range of yield farming opportunities across different protocols and projects.

Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Currently on Beta, Exponential, raised $14 million on October 2022 in a Paradigm-led seed round to build a new DeFi investment platform. Other contributors included Haun Ventures, FTX Ventures, Solana Ventures, Polygon, Circle Ventures, plus over 80 angel investors.

As of this writing, there are 100+ Protocols on the Exponential Defi platform, with 120+ Assets, 20 blockchains supported, and 1000+ Risk vectors.

Collectify

“The Essential Toolkit For NFT Creators"

Type of Product: NFT Creator Tool

Purpose of Tool: Collectify is a no-code operating system for NFT creators and organizations, offering tools for all NFT projects for building and deploying dapps. Collectify is an open OS that provides various tools for NFT marketing, creation, sales, and customer retention. It allows external dapps to build on it and create additional solutions.

Collectify's user-friendly interface for minting and giveaways enables anyone to easily create and sell NFTs:

  • Collect Wallet | Collect wallet addresses for a presale/giveaway/allowlist and manage the list in the control panel.

  • Analytics | Get insights into how many users view your page, how many people joined, and who referred them.

  • Website Widget | Users can join your allowlist directly on your website by adding a small piece of code.

  • Anti-Bot Prevention | Collectify Giveaway offers five measures to reduce the risk of fraud and attract high-quality users to giveaway events.

Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Collectify is a recently launched product from the minds behind the MathWallet team. Collectify also hosts giveaways on Twitter during their Twitter spaces and other Twitter events.

Heatbit

“The first heater that mines bitcoin"

Type of Product: Bitcoin Miner

Purpose of Tool: Heatbit is a heater that allows you to earn Bitcoin through mining and simultaneously heat your room. It can fully offset your electricity costs and all you have to do is plug it in. Priced at $1199, Heatbit can also be controlled through mobile apps available on App Store & Google Play. Heatbit is also powered by enhanced 169 ASIC chips with autotuning.

Have not seen anything like this before, so we had to include it!

Novel concept, not sure if we’d pick one up until they’re more established but a cool concept overall.

  • How do Heatbit’s BTC mining compare to normal BTC mining?

Heatbit devices are currently connected to the Nicehash mining pool, which is known for its stability, scalability, and fast processing speed. Unlike traditional Bitcoin mining, miners using NiceHashX are paid directly by the buyers of hash power rather than receiving block rewards.

Team / Funding / Backers Info / Transaction Amount: Heatbit officially released just a month ago on November 14th, 2022. In October 2022, the company began shipping its first mining heaters after successfully launching a Kickstarter campaign and obtaining necessary safety certifications in 2021. Heatbit is currently planning a fundraising campaign for ordinary users instead of VCs.

The company was founded in 2020 by Alex Busarov, a Philosophy graduate from the London School of Economics who has experience in energy strategy and entrepreneurship.

Cookie3

"We are your eyes in Web3"

Type of Product: Web3 Analytics

Purpose of Tool: Cookie3 is a data engine that collects, processes, and analyzes information about NFTs, smart contracts, and tokens on various blockchain networks in order to understand individual behavior. It is similar to Google Analytics, but for Web3.

  • Behavioral Scoring | allows new and existing projects to set specific criteria for determining the size of IDO allocations, claimable airdrops, or positions on NFT whitelists.

  • Targeted Advertising | Cookie3 uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data from NFTs, tokens, and smart contracts in order to understand individual user behavior in the Metaverses.

  • dApp Personalization | Integrating with Cookie3's behavioral analytics engine will enable dApps to offer a new level of personalization.

Team / Funding / Backers / Other Info: Last August 2022, Cookie3 raised $2.5 million in seed and strategic rounds led by Spartan Group, and Big Brain Holdings. Among other investment companies that joined seed and strategic rounds were LD Capital, Orange DAO, Jsquare, Block54, Damo Labs, Master Ventures and Gravity Team.

  • Wojtek Piechocinski | Co-Founder & CTO

  • Filip Wielanier | Co-Founder & CEO

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