I know I already covered NFTs in March and September, but alas – this is where I spent this last month so here we go again!

In preparation for my PixelBeasts project, I sat down to play around with the Metamask (wallet) and OpenSea (marketplace) API to see if I could build some utility – the industry term for the various benefits of owning an NFT (like Beastopia). What I found was that it was incredibly simple to use, and within two night (~6 hours), I had Tango NFT working – a private chatroom for every NFT collection. More on the project here.

I then built Tango Draw, which is a private drawing app for every collection, and Tango Talk, which – while buggy – is a functioning messaging app between ETH wallets. I then open sourced this project on Github – got two contributors from the PixelBeasts community helping update it. Tango was then covered in the Not Boring newsletter (70k readers), and then a No-Code app called Bildr reached out to clone the project to showcase their new Metamask integration, see it here. As a result, PixelBeasts is now a community of VCs, founders, and developers interested in building for web3.

One amazing thing about Tango is that I store zero personal data, and the entire platform runs on one table with four columns, leveraging data publicly available on the chain. This opened my eyes to a future where we no longer give companies our data, but where we own and manage it – and provide access to apps and websites as needed for personalization. Imagine, if your browser knew your shirt size, every e-commerce website could show you availability only for your size, without the retailers ever seeing this data. An example startup in this space is Spruce, they provide a smart contract solution to manage access to off-chain data. One of my learned insights was that the blockchain (at least as of today) doesn’t seem like the best place to store private data at scale.

Some other relevant startups I came across in this process include Storj, a simple API for decentralized storage. Mintgate is a dev tool for creating token-gated content. Token-gated community tools like Agora, Guild.xyz, and CommonWealth include advanced features like governance. The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum and IFPS. Status is a web3 based messaging app, wallet, and browser. XP.network is a multi-chain bridge framework for building cross chain NFT dApps and more.

Let’s keep going! XMTP is a communication protocol and network for web3. RSS3 is an open protocol for social content on web3. Radicle is essentially a decentralized Github. Stardust is an API for easy integration of NFTs into games. Nametag is a chrome extension for showcasing your NFTs on Twitter – though relevantly Twitter is exploring Twitter verification for profile pictures (see the UI they teased here).

Some others that didn’t fit into the flow above include NFTfi for NFT collaterized loans and Rabbithole.gg which rewards you for testing decentralized apps. I mentioned Carnomaly last month building a decentralized CarFax, and came across Fabrica, which does real estate transactions with digitized titles represented by a token – built on top of Ethereum.

Data Tools for Web3 📊

One of the reasons I could build Tango NFT without storing any personal data is because all of it is publicly accessible on the chain. It’s a ridiculous amount of data. Let’s look at some startups in the space.

Messari is one of the big analytics firms/tools tracking crypto. Nansen is the top for Ethereum wallets and NFTs. Dune.xyz is another popular one in the NFT community. DeepDAO and DAOlist cover activity across DAOs. Token Terminal focuses on token activity. Icy.tools is used to track trending NFT collections, and wgmi.io tracks floor prices across this ecosystem, or specifically in your wallet. I’ve come across Zapper and NFTBank for portfolio management, and TokenTax, ZenLedger, and CoinTracker for cryptotaxes.

I recently covered NFTs in March, but given the activity this past month, I thought it was worth revisiting. To start off, the volume of transactions grew ~10x this month. Transactions on the OpenSea marketplace crossed $3.3B in transaction volume in August, up from $325M in July (source). CryptoPunks, the most expensive collection with 10,000 unique pieces, has a floor (lowest listing price) of $390k, and the highest price ever paid for a 24×24 pixel CryptoPunk is $7.5M! There are an increasing number of collections putting up not quite as high, but nonetheless impressive numbers. Check out rarity.tools for a sense of pricing/volume/metrics for various collections, but just to share a few…

• Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) – Floor: $81k (10k available)
• MeeBits – Floor: $24k (20k available)
• Cool Cats Gang – Floor: $24k (9999 available)
• Pudgy Penguins – $10k (8888 available)
• World of Women – Floor: $9k (10k available)
• Hashmasks – Floor: $4k (16,383 available)

What’s most fascinating to me about NFTs is how many industries the implications are relevant to. An NFT transaction is a legal contract that automatically and immediately transfers both the money (payments) and possession of purchased item (logistics), using a specified technology in the contract – all the data is tracked, reliable, and available (accounting). These collectible projects are often run by teams, collaborating remotely and leveraging influencers and social channels for marketing. The movement is driven by art, community, and wealth generating opportunities, with an eye on equality and justice – free from corporate and government interference. These communities are starting to spin up DAOs to make investments into startups and NFTs. The transparency in data provides a fascinating opportunity for further economic and psychological studies (example: Nansen). As we spend more time in the “metaverse”, this brings up philosophical/ethical discussions.

I’ll do my best to explain what’s happening in the “collectible” space right now. It’s a large and growing community, broken down into what I might call “camps” of sorts, which are the holders of a specific collection (eg. CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club), each with a set limited amount. You can buy into these camps, or sell your spot anytime – price goes up if the camp is popular. Being part of a camp, in many cases, has unique benefits, starting with simple ones such as access to private discord groups and events. The most popular tool for this is Collab.Land which does NFT ownership verification for Discord. There’s also MintGate, allowing people to easily spin up token-gated content, and Atlantis World for spinning up a token-gated digital world w video call capabilities. Beyond capital gain, the immediate mutual respect and camaraderie amongst strangers online seems like a strong driver (people who buy a Punk or Ape and update their avatar usually see an immediate uptick in followers). The buy in cost fo each of these camps always start low ranging from $0-$250 when they launch, and go up from there (if popular). The fascinating thing about these communities is that it includes random people who bought in early, as well as celebrities and corporations who bought in late. I was on a Twitter spaces listening to an art collector, an ex-con, a teenage girl, and a famous musicians sharing tips on their NFT collection strategy. Celebrities who own CrytoPunks include Jay-Z, Steve Aoki, 3Lau, and Visa. BAYC holders include Stephen Curry, Logal Paul, Chris Camillo, and LaMelo Ball.

It’s not just people buying jpegs, but the innovation surrounding it that you should pay attention to. For example, people who wanted exposure to the expensive collections, but couldn’t afford it, have purchased fractional shares of through fractional.art and PartyBid. Artists who collaborate on an artwork can get royalties split automatically as defined in the contract. There are countless experiments tying NFTs to the real world, such as commemorating events (proof of attendance), offering access/discounts to physical products, or finding ways to legally tie the ownership of an NFT to the ownership of a physical object (allowing you to transfer ownership instantly, across long distances).

While I’m not here to say your health records, MLS records, and diplomas will all be NFTs, it seems logical to believe that some learnings, lessons, and code can be applied to various industries. As one example, Carnomaly is building what’s essentially a decentralized CarFax, which makes sense to me.

The best way to learn is to do, because the soul of innovation isn’t in the facts and figures, but the emotions of those impacted by it. You have to experience this yourself. Which is why I’ve started to collect and mint NFTs.

If you’re interested in participating in this learning journey alongside me, or just curious to see what I’ll do, jump into the PixelBeasts discord channel here and follow @pixelbeastsnft on Twitter.

Traditionally, homes were owned by one entity and used by one family. With fractional ownership and shared usage, this isn’t true anymore. Here are some exciting or interesting startups in the space we’ve come across recently.

Starting with ways to buy a home for yourself, there’s ZeroDown to “try before you buy”, and Divvy which is a fancy new take on the rent to own. Better provides digital home financing services. Haus provides some unique product similar to mortgages. Atmos for custom building your dream home.

NexMe is for booking on demand real estate tours of homes near by. Knock is for self-touring apartments. Trusty is building a Rotten Tomatoes for real estate properties. Breadcrumb is Yelp for apartment rentals. Casa Blanca is building what looks like a Tinder for home hunting.

Looking to rent out? Hostfully is a property management tool for your listings across various sites. Belong if you want long-term residents. Loftium is a hands-off management service, where they’ll rent a portion to someone who manages the short-term rentals. Autohost is a guest screening tool.

Pacaso is for co-ownership of a second home you want to enjoy. Doorvest helps you purchase an investment home. Fintor is for fractional real estate investing, starting as low as $5. Honestly, you can do anything. You can buy residential loans (Peer Street), invest in illiquid commercial properties (Equity Multiple), and so on… find 30 real estate investing platforms on MoneyMade.

Other relevant startups… Nickson does furniture leasing. Starcity has communal co-living facilities throughout the US. Anyplace offers rentals that come with full video conference set up (including mic & green screen!). Silvernest has home sharing matching and support services. Culdesac is building a car-free neighborhood from scratch in the US.

The rise of hybrid/remote offices has resulted in a surge of collaboration tools. To start, there’s been a lot of “virtual offices”. For voice first offices, you have Lounge and Commons. See what people are working on and jump on quick calls with Tandem or Remotion. Some other virtual offices include TeamFlow, Spot, and Cosmos.

Build internal dashboard tools quickly w Retool, Index, Airplane.dev, Internal, or Glean. Use Comeet to run video first async meetings. Almanac is the fastest collaborative doc editor. Air is like a pretty Dropbox for creatives. Slite is similar to Notion but built specifically for remote teams. Ready is a collaborative calendar for teams. Process Street is a simple tool for managing recurring checklists and procedures.

Clew is a place to share, track, and comment on documents. Record and share the best parts of your video calls w Grain or Scribe. Instead of using Loom, build step-by-step instructions easily w Minerva or Scribe. If you need video, you could use Weet or Bubbles to comment and collaborate on your screen shares. RemoteHQ has a cloud based browser you can use together w coworkers. Use Whimsical for collaborative flowcharts online.

Use Okay to build custom productivity dashboards for engineering teams. Deepnote and Miksi are a collaborative notebook for data scientists. Coscreen is for collaborative screen sharing (control other ppl’s screen, copy/paste between two screens). Teamwork is for collaborating with clients.

Tonari is for life-size video calls to fully connect two rooms.

Back is a central employee knowledge and management platform. Gather is an HR automation and personalization platform. Workshop is for employee communication. Manage your hybrid workspace with Envoy. There’s a new HR/insurance/payroll-in-one platform called Decent. For recruiting, there’s SeekOut and Param.ai that uses AI to find and select candidates. Use Suitable to find candidates in your current team’s network. Byteboard is for engineering interviews. For managing the paperwork of remote workers, there’s Remote, Deel, Panther, Portal, and Omnipresent. Use Liquid for vendor and contractor management. Use Roleshare to manage shared roles. Use Accessify to automate employee onboarding. Bitwage let’s employees receive a portion of their wage in digital currencies.

For company retreat planning, there’s Flok. For upskilling your employees, there’s Degreed, an enterprise learning platform. Catch is savings and benefits for the self-employed. Opolis is a member-owned digital employment cooperative. For helping employees relocate, use Avvinue or PerchPeek. Frank is a place for employees to privately discuss culture and pay. Get company swag from SwagUp or Printfection. To build company culture, plan team activities with Onsite, play virtual games at RemoteSocial/CrowdParty/TeamLand, do culture building workshops at Seshie, or play The Hike: a virtual game for remote teams.

Offer stipends easily as a perk with Compt or Fringe. Offer health and wellness perks with Rise. Offer financial consulting as a perk with LearnLux, or offer interest-free rainy day funds as a perk with HoneyBee. Icon is a unified workplace savings, personal retirement, and portfolio management solution.

The Metaverse is a physically replicated digital world. In the future, we’re imagining a network of worlds where you can jump between with the same avatar, wearing NFTs, and playing games or even working. Crucible, for example, is building a portable digital identity platform for this. Let’s look at some startups building in this ecosystem.

For a light-weight non-expansive social experience as an intro, you have tools like Roomkey, Mibo, and Recroom. Spatial and Spot for a work-focused take on this.

Jumping into worlds where you can buy real estate and create on it, there’s Decentraland (the biggest), The SandBox, and Cryptovoxels. Upland looks a bit like Monopoly and MegaCryptoPolis looks like Sim City. Somnium Space and Dual Universe are expansive universes.

For Metaverse gaming, you have Axie Infinity and Illuvium for raising monsters. Gods Unchained for online trading cards. Big Time Studios has an RPG where you collect NFTs. Zed Run is for horse racing and F1DeltaTime is for car racing. Decentral Games runs casinos within Decentraland.

Use Genies to create your avatar and start collecting fashion. Fabricant designs photorealistic digital fashion. RTKFT does fashion drops in the digital world. Digitalax is building a fashion ecosystem. Find more digital fashion at DressX or The Dematerialized.

If this is a space you’re interested in, jump over to the Metaverse Tracker we just released that covers over 200+ projects and tools in this space.

This article is based on a Tweet thread from a month ago that received 1M impressions.

We’ve tracked ~1500 startups (seen 10x more) and talked to 100s of investors in the last year. Here are some of the exciting trends and startups we’ve noticed or come across. It’s a mix of early & late stuff.

⚙️No Code – This year was big! Airtable and Zapier are king, followed by Webflow & Bubble. Tools that sit on top include Memberstack & MemberSpace (memberships), Stacker (app), Obviously AI & Levity AI (AI/ML). Jump to Makerpad to learn more about this space.

🗃Productivity – Notion looms large. Coda and ClickUp have a bit more data capabiltities. Retool to go straight to your back-end. Raycast & Command E are like Superhuman UI for your mac. CommandDot for calendar. Motion for browser.

👩‍💻Remote Work – Expecting this to stick around to some degree. Firstbase for home office equipment. Hire remote w Pangian, manage remote employees w Remote, Deel, or Panther. Manage remote interns w Symba. There’s been a rise in collaboration tools like CoScreen, Mmhmm, and Loom.

👩‍🏫Education – Homeschooling with Prisma, Primer, and Galileo. Microschools w Prenda, Wonderschool, and Schoolhouse. Find childcare at Winnie. Virtual classes at Outschool. ClassDojo & Clever help schools digitize. Panorama provides data insights across the education system.

📚ISAs/Training – Seeing many LambdaSchool for Xs, many with income share agreements. Skilbank & Acadium for marketing. Reforge for growth. Product School for product management. Uvaro for sales. Insight Fellows for data science. Microverse for remote devs. Edith for mentorship.

🎈Online Events – Hopin was the breakout. Luma & Spore for managing online communities around events. Livestream with Reach.Live, OnJam, or Welcome. Find tables at Remo or Airmeet. Walk around w Gather. Book entertainment at Seshie.

🛍Video Commerce – Livestream shopping is hot in China and startups are following to bring is elsewhere. Some recent iterations of QVS include Popshop Live, ShopShops, NTWRK, TalkShopLive. Livescale helps brands run their own livestreams. Playback.ai is the same for wholesale. HERO is video chat for ecommerce sites.

🎧Audio – Driven by Clubhouse, this space has seen lots of action. Chalk is a more open version of CH. Cappiccino is a cute social app. Eternal is an audio driven metaverse. I assume Descript is doing really well (it’s a Podcast editing tool). And then there’s Yac for internal communications.

🖼NFTs – Dapper Labs crushed it w NBA Top Shop, excited to see more. Mint NFTs over at Rarible, Mintbase, Cargo, or Mintable. Sell/buy on OpenSea. Exclusive collections at SuperRare or Foundation. Game at Decentraland. Breed race horsed at Zed.

💸Investing – Big 4 are Robinhood, Coinbase, Republic, and AngelList. Social stock investing is happening at Public/Finary. Commonstock is similar with more focus on education. Gift stock w Stockpile. Grifin app buys stock where you shop. Alto IRA is for investing your IRA into alternatives. Off-Piste leverages blockchain to gives access to pre-IPO opportunities. MoneyMade is your one stop shop for all things alternative.

🌎Climate – Huge momentum here, lots of capital. Carbon sequestration like Opus 12 and Carbon Engineering. Enterprise APIs like Patch and Watershed. Eco-shopping w EcoCart. Sustianable Window AC w Windmill. Education and community at Terra.

🤖GPT3 – Pretty cool we’re seeing startups use this. Copy.ai does marketing copy. OthersideAI & Lavendar do email. Debuild writes code. ABTesting.ai auto A/B tests GPT-3 written web copy. Sapling personalizes messages for customer service.

🤱Fertility/FemTech – Thinx sells period underwear. Modern Fertility and Grip do at-home fertility testing. KindBody is where you freeze your eggs, Overture works on the science behind it. DadiKit and Legacy do sperm storage. Kiira is a women’s virtual clinic and Bastion is for men. PairTree is a new platform for adoptions.

👫Dating – New dating apps for a new world. Draw w dates on Monet. Play games with them on XO. Lolly is like Tik Tok for singles. Video dates over at The League or Filter Off. Match by personality at SoSyncd. Go to Clarity for advice.

🛠Data Tools – Seeing an increase in vertical data tools. Public Comps for SaaS benchmarking. Ilo for Twitter. Sentinic for measuring brand reputation. Forecastr, Summit, and Causal for financial planning. Metorik for eCommerce.

🛒Ecommerce – Airhouse for 3PL. Shippo/Easyship for shipping. RetentionX/Tradeswell for AI. TaxJar for tax compliance. Fast for one-click checkout. Post purchase offers w CartHook. Route for package tracking. Returnly & Returnmates tackled for managing returns. Porch Pod for accepting deliveries.

📋API Management – Airbyte syncs APIs w/ data warehouse. GraphQL API w Hasura. Canonic is a low-code back-end. Kong is for connecting everything. Autocode helps w API workflow. Bearer for monitoring API usage. Doppler for managing API keys and more.

🤝API Integration Tools – Seen a lot of “Plaid for X”s. Finch is for HR. Noyo for insurance. Terra for wellness apps and wearables. Impala for hotels. Duffel for flights. Rutter for eCommerce. Yonomi for smart home. API Deck/Paragon for SaaS APIs.

🧬Biosynth – Been seeing more biosynth startups in less regulated industries. Bolt Threads, Mycoworks, and Ecovative use mushrooms to make leather and more. Biomason grows cement the same way coral grows. Algiknit uses algae to make yarn. Jellatech grows gellatin. Then there’s Modern Meadow, Zymergen, and Geltor.

🧸DTC – Some fun DTC brands I’ve come across recently include Judy (emergency kits), Windmill (window AC), Raised Real (kids food), Bite (chewable toothpaste), Tushy (bidets), Bippy (TP), Away (luggage), and Solo Stove (firepits).

🎨Design – Some fun design tools I’ve come across include Lottie for adding 2d animation to your site, Spline for 3d design, and Blush for customizing illustrations.

There you go! It’s by no means a comprehensive list of all things exciting in startup land, but a glimpse into what we’re seeing.

Robinhood. WSB/GME. Crypto millionaires. $5M Republic campaigns. Personal wealth management is no longer just for the rich. First thing you notice is that talking about money is no longer gauche. Stock investing is social on Public.com, or Finary if you want to connect to your brokerage. Commonstock is similar, but more focused on following top investors over friends. Qoore is a mobile app to learn investing, with splashing colors and emojis.

Stockpile let’s you gift stock easily. Bumped rewards you with stock when you shop. Grifin automatically buys stocks where you shop. Overflow makes it easy for charities to receive stock gifts (tax benefits!).

Of course it’s not just about public markets. Alto IRA let’s you invest retirement dollars into alternative assets. Go to Sponsor Fund to invest in PE deals or HoneyComb Credit to loan money to local SMBs. Microacquire is a startup acquisition marketplace. Offpiste is a DeFi based market for pre-IPO futures in startups.

Use EarlyBird to start investing in your kid’s future. Harness Wealth and Compound offer financial advice and wealth management for founders and employees. TaxBit is tax software for crypto. MoneyMade is a place to find and compare alternative investment platforms, like Pacaso for fractional real estate investing or YieldStreet for fractional art and more.

I read somewhere that the average company uses 100+ SaaS apps. Regardless of the specific number, it’s a lot. Like water molecules traveling through trees, rivers, and animals, pieces of data flow through these SaaS apps, powered by integrations. As users, we’ve gotten use to these integrations, but they take time to build.

This is where integration aggregators like Plaid come in. If you’re building a fintech startup, connect with the Plaid API and “boom!” your users can connect with 1000 banks. Think about the downstream impact of this on the fintech ecosystem.

Finch is a universal API for payroll and HR. Noyo is for connecting with insurance APIs. Use the Wearable API to connect with 300+ fitness devices and apps. Impala‘s API to book hotel rooms and Duffel to sell flights in your app. Rutter is an API to connect with e-commerce platforms. Seam has an API to connect with 1000s of smart home/building apps and devices (for hotels & apartments). API Deck is a unified API for SaaS apps to launch integrations faster with each other. Paragon is a dev solution for integrating your product w third party SaaS apps.

Even with integrations, a user may want to run more complex automation flows. That’s when they’ll use Zapier (I ran 1557 tasks this last month), Tray (if you do lots of branching), or Parabola (if you run loops).

Beyond aggregators & automators, here’s a few more APIs that recently peak my interest. Check and Puzzl help devs integrated payroll into their platforms. Eligible is for integrated insurance billing into a health startup. Patch is an API for managing climate impact. Mesh is for verifying professional licenses. Appruve is an identity API for Africa.

If you’re like me, you were wondering why everyone’s talking about NFTs all of a sudden. TL;DR – it’s momentum and big sales. For me, it was this Daft Punk NFT that sold for ~$24,800 that clicked. This will forever be the first big Daft Punk NFT, and the owner has proof of this and can use it as a talking point if they display it in their home (or virtual home). There’s the LeBron NBA Top Shot that sold for over $200k, and this plot of virtual land which sold for $1.5M on the Axie Infinity game. The Cryptopunk collectible has now done over $35M in volume.

The infrastructure side took me a sec to understand. There are essentially collections, and tokens within them. They both have meta tags like name, description, media assets, etc. You can create collections and create, buy, or sell tokens. Doing any of these costs money, because all of it is recorded. Technically, there are two protocols. One allows collections to host duplicative tokens, where more than one (but a set amount) of the same item can exist and be owned by multiple people. The other protocol doesn’t allow this (every token is unique).

To participate, you first need a wallet, one of the biggest is Metamask, and there are newer ones like Rainbow. Worth noting for all of these here, there are many many alternatives. To create or mint a token, people are going to places like Rarible, Mintbase, Cargo, and Mintable which are four of the better known marketplaces to easily mint NFTs. When it comes to minting, the more technical you get, the more optionality opens up – for example you could in theory create a meta tag that changes over time – essentially “aging” your collectible. The biggest marketplace is OpenSea, because it acts as an aggregator. You then have more curated marketplaces like SuperRare and Foundation where your art has to get individually approved. Items can be listed on multiple marketplaces, but all sales are tracked on the same chain.You then have games/worlds like Axie I mentioned above and Decentraland that tap into this chain so you can show off your NFTs (land, apparel, items, art).

Based on my short deep dive into the space, here are a few areas I think are worth exploring, in case you meet anyone working on something similar:

• A Getty Images (media rights marketplace) that sits on top of the NFT chain. Publications can purchase rights to use images normally. Anyone can purchase ownership on the chain. Royalties on usage sales go to owner, royalties on ownership sales go to photographer.
• Estate planning service, but specifically focused on ensuring your crypto assets get passed on.
• Mobile app that let’s you mint NFTs. Could be generic, or vertically focused, like a crowdsourced NBA TopShot for amateur/college athletes.
• Accelerator/incubator for NFT artists/projects.
• API to easily enable games/sites to let users customize their profile/world w art they own on the chain.
• Plaid for crypto. One API for integrating w all major wallets (not chains) and crypto tools/marketplaces.
• Shopify (eComm) API allowing brands to automatically apply discounts to people who own tokens in a specific collection.
• Tool for managing royalty split between two or more parties.