Sup, nerds!

Here’s what you’re getting in today’s edition:

• 💅 This is cool: A temperature check on the metaverse

• 🔎 This seems important: Prices just fell off a cliff. Here's why...

• 🤝 Partner: We're up 1082 Big Macs right now 🫃🍔​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: ERC-404 just got dethroned

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ​ask Web(GPT)3!​):
Metaverse, Web3, NFT.

💅 This is cool:

A Temperature Check on the Metaverse — Has the Vision Pro Moved the Needle in Any Way?

In one sentence: Some Vision Pro apps are posting impressive install numbers - though the apps themselves aren’t exactly ground breaking (the ‘killer app’ is still yet to be discovered).

In the two years we’ve been writing about the metaverse, this is the first time the concept actually feels both viable and desirable.

Why?

Cause ever since the Apple Vision Pro came out, our YouTube feeds have been inundated with content surrounding Vision Pro and its alternatives, like the Quest 3, Bigscreen Beyond, and Immersed Visor.

But here’s our worry:

What if we’re stuck in an algorithmically fenced echo chamber? (Because of course we’re getting fed VR content — we’ve been following it for years!)

In an attempt to calm those fears, we’re going to dig into some numbers around the Vision Pro and see:

1. How many units have shipped

2. How many Vision Pro native apps are available

3. How many of those apps are actually being used

(Cause if Apple wins here, the rest of the industry will be able to ride its coattails).

Ok, so answers 1 & 2: an estimated 200,00+ units have sold, and the headset launched with 600 Vision Pro native apps (along with 1M+ iPad app ports).

We’re looking at native apps because they take advantage of the Vision Pro’s ‘spatial computing’ abilities (which is a baseline hardware requirement for the metaverse, aka ‘the 3D virtual internet’).

Now for the burning question — how many of those apps are actually being used?

First, a pallet cleanse…

Remember, hundreds/thousands of downloads per day ain’t much for an app on iPhone (which has 1B+ users), but on Vision Pro’s 200k install base, they’re damn near industry leading.

Here’re some notable stats we gleamed from The Immersive Wire:

• JigSpace (view/deconstruct 3D objects) saw 14k installs in week 1!

• News Ticker (a paid news app) is receiving 300+ downloads a day

• Juno (a Vision Pro native YouTube player) broke into the (overall) top 10 in the Photo & Video category shortly after the device’s launch.

The takeaway:

Those numbers are impressive (relative to the number of total Vision Pro’s out there)! The apps themselves? Not so much.

That ‘killer app’ for the Vision Pro — the one that’s going to convince everyday people to fork out $3,500 for a headset? It’s still yet to be discovered.

Patience is a virtue 🧘

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $50,000 (Prices Just Fell off a Cliff. Here’s Why...)

In one sentence: After BTC broke $50k on Mon, it retraced back down to $48,550 after a higher than expected CPI print (3.1% vs. 2.9%), sparking fears of further rate hikes.

“I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that meddling inflation data.”

— Bitcoin’s price (if it somehow became sentient and started making comments to crypto news publications in the style of a Scooby Doo villain).

Confused? You should be. Here’s what’s going on…

After Bitcoin’s run up to $50k on Monday, it quickly retraced back down to $48,550 (the golden fib level) yesterday morning, and it was all thanks to some extra spicy Consumer Price Index (CPI) data — aka “the average cost of everyday items” data.

Can you guess when the CPI data was released? 👇

Want more details?

“Details? Those are where the devil lives, no thanks.”
— you, probably.

Well, you’re getting them anyway:

The CPI was expected to increase 2.9% year-on-year, but instead came in higher, at 3.1% — which doesn’t sound like much, but +0.2% is enough to make the wrong people nervous (i.e. Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell).

The market now fears the following playing out:

J-Powell freaks out about inflation increasing → instead of lowering interest rates as previously planned (making everyone’s loan/credit repayments cheaper, and leaving us all with more disposable income), JP increases them.

The idea being that an increase would leave society as a whole with less money to spend, which should lower prices and fight inflation, so:

On the retail side of things — businesses would have to lower their prices to entice shoppers.

As for financial markets — lowered prices will lead to lowered earnings, will lead to lowered investment, will lead to lowered crypto/stock/housing prices.

Alright, now you know!

🤝 Partner:

We're Up 1082 Big Macs Right Now 🫃🍔

Remember when we said we wanted to see if we could turn $5k into $10k by investing in crypto projects?

We invested an average of $100 per week, over 12 months - and documented it all.

What tokens/DAOs we were buying, why we were buying them, and the tools/platforms we used to do so.

All written in plain, easy to digest, English (that’s kind of our ‘thing’).

Fair warning: this isn’t some shiny crypto masterclass, featuring pros that have millions of dollars to play with.

It’s a rough and ready learning experience, played out in public - where we've taken the financial risks, so you don’t have to.

If you want to read through all 25 crypto project deep dives, hit the big red button below.

Oh, and now you can get 20% off the full set of reports too 👇

🔪 Let's dissect this:

Blink and You’ll Miss It, ERC-404 Just Got Dethroned…

In one sentence: ERC-404’s fractionalized NFTs impacted ETH’s network fees, so the ‘DN-404’ standard was built, and apparently touts a ~20% reduction in fee impacts.

Innovation moves FAST in new industries. 

And that’s especially true in Web3 - an industry full of nerds, all \ creating alongside each other, building bigger and better projects. 

What's wild is, we get to watch it all unfold in real time. 

For example, on Monday, we wrote about the ERC-404 standard — but since then, a new rival implementation has already been developed called DN-404. 

Here’s why:

ERC-404 was built so that multiple people could own a fractional share of a single NFT (kinda like breaking one NFT up into multiple puzzle pieces and sharing them around).

The big problem was that these fractionalized NFTs impacted Ethereum’s network fees, big time. 

So in response, the rival DN-404 standard was built, and apparently touts a ~20% reduction in fee impacts.

Now here’s the strange part…

The people responsible for creating the DN-404 alternative see this whole thing as a gimmick:

"I want to be clear - while I had a ton of fun building this, I still see 404 as more of a gimmick than anything else.

However, the space has shown a desire to continue using it, and so we decided it was worth making an implementation that was efficient and safe to use."

— Quit, one of the pseudonymous devs behind the project.

(Bizarre).

ERC Tokens, Explained.