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.
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