Quick announcement! Monday is Memorial Day here in the US, and the W3D team is going to take it off in honor of everyone who has served.

We'll be back in your inbox on Wednesday next week.

In today’s edition:

A Government Backed Metaverse - Who’s In? Anyone? No? Ok.
“Ok, So It’s a Video Call - But You Need an NFT To Join.”
RESOURCE: The Metaverse Explained (in 6:30)
Want Us to Write Content Specifically for You? Tell Us What You’re in To!
Tourists Are Turning Into Slaves at 'Pig Butchering' Compounds

Terms used (click for translation):
Decentralization, Metaverse, Blockchain, Web3, NFTs.

Want a simple explanation of other Web3 terms/concepts?
Ask Web(GPT)3!

A Government Backed Metaverse - Who’s In? Anyone? No? Ok.

We've all learned some hard lessons through scary experiences (it's a part of the human experience).

It could be the reason you:

Learned to knock before entering your parents bedroom.
Learned the IRS doesn't accept iTunes gift cards as payment.
Learned to check the interest rate on a credit card, before flying to Cancun and treating the entire bar to shots (three nights in a row).

And that's the model we're using today: we're taking a scary concept and using it to learn - specifically, about the benefits of decentralization.

Enter: China's government backed metaverse.

The Chinese gov. has enlisted the help of Nanjing University of Information and Science Technology (NUIST), along with a handful of other academic institutions in order to develop it's own, custom built metaverse.

I.e. a government backed tech product that will track users' eye movements and immediate surroundings at all times.

Yikes!

Ok...but, isn't every other country in the world adopting a similar technology?

Fair point! And, yeah, kinda.

Although, the 'metaverse' that the rest of the world is playing with has one thing on its side:

It's a complete mess!

Right now, these early metaverse concepts are a tangled web of siloed experiences, coming from a bunch of different/competing companies - each with a wide/varying range of data security measures in place.

This hodgepodge of technology sucks when trying to create a smooth/unified user experience...but it makes blatant and broad reaching government surveillance just a little harder to pull off.

If we were betting folk, we'd wager that a CCP backed metaverse would have a bunch of surveillance specific backdoors built in to it.

(Ok. Ready for the call-back to decentralization? Here it comes...)

...and that's why folks in the blockchain/Web3 space are so bull-headed when it comes to building on decentralized systems.

Decentralized systems don't require trust in any central authority, whether a nation state or private entity.

Very cool!

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“Ok, so It’s a Video Call - But You Need an NFT To Join.”

Web3 is still waiting for its 'killer application' - that 'thing' that'll bring millions/billions of new users into the space.

...and this NFT gated video call feature on Brave browser...well, it isn't that application.

BUT! It is a neat re-imagining of an already proven use case for NFTs: community access.

Right now, most gated online Web3 communities use NFTs to give holders access to a Discord channel.

There's only one problem: Discord SUCKS.

Chatting on the platform is an in-cohesive mishmash of lost notifications and broken threads.

Point is: when we think of 'intimate online communities,' we don't think of Discord.

(Or maybe we're just in the wrong communities, who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Either way - small, closed circle video chats are always going to be more intimate than large-audience, text based interactions.

And that appears to be what Brave's 'Brave Talk' NFT gated video chats look to achieve: intimate NFT gated video interactions.

Revolutionary? No.

Welcomed? Yes.

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Resource of the day

The Metaverse Explained

(in 6:30)

CHECK IT OUT

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Tourists Are Turning Into Slaves at 'Pig Butchering' Compounds

Pretty intense title, we know….

We’ve written about the ‘Pig Butchering’ scam before.

To recap: Scammers find vulnerable people, usually on dating apps, build trust with them (known as ‘fattening them up’) and then get them to invest in crypto.

Problem is, instead of investing in legitimate crypto projects, they’re actually sending their money straight to the scammer.

When the scammer feels that they can no longer get anything more out of them, they’ll disappear off the face of the Earth.

It’s a pretty brazen type of scam, but the FBI (!!) has just released a Public Service Announcement about something that takes ‘Pig Butchering’ to a whole new level.

Where in the past, all communication has been virtual, there’s been a recent spike in luring vulnerable people to in-person jobs.

They’ll tempt potential employees with flights and accommodation (usually to South East Asian countries) for well-payed, ‘customer service’ jobs.

Once they arrive, they stay in 'compounds' with the other victims and the newly employed are forced to make payments into various crypto projects.

(Not real projects, but scams).

Why are we telling you this?

For one, we can’t believe just quite how crazy this is.

More importantly though, when the FBI puts out a Public Service Announcement about off-shore crypto scams, its worth sharing.

Now you know!

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Alright, that’s it for today!
Love to the family,

Chevy & Seb

P.S. Want to learn how to research and value cryptocurrencies? We have a bi-weekly publication that does just that.

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