ENS Domains Selling Out

Vitalik's Souldbound Tokens

May 27, 2022

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What's Dropping ⚡️

  • Twitter is becoming more dangerous in regards to scams, with many incredibly legit-looking accounts bouncing around. From falsely verified "Devs" to fake mint links, we urge you to be incredibly cautious in current times. Do your research, enter the community, ask around discord, and feel things out before making decisions.

  • How interesting it would be to have a living and ever-changing NFT avatar to represent your web 3 journey. Zerion is doing just that with their DNA NFTs. Free to mint for those who download the wallet, these avatars reflect gas spent, NFTs you hold, and even what blockchain you prefer.

  • Zooming into the metaverse at neck-breaking speeds, the INDY 500 drops Mystery Driver Containers through Autograph. Holders will pull digital cards, with the chance to win a physical piece of carbon fiber from a raced vehicle.

  • NFTs and digital representation of our social and personal lives is evolving beyond our wildest imaginations. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently spoke about the future of Ethereum and what he calls a "Soulbound Token". NFTs could one day be representative of personal items such as birth certificates. (more on this below)

  • JRPGS (Japanese Role Playing Games) have been a staple in gaming for over a quarter of a century. Fans of more recent games may be familiar with Ni no Kuni, a game written and visually produced by Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki. This ongoing franchise holds a dear place in my players' hearts, and the newest edition in the series will have NFTs. While some are sour at the news, many of us have been waiting for something just like this.

  • Adorable project Boki released recently to great success, with lovely and clean art, and a kind community. We project this project to be among the few that stand out and thrive in this market.

  • The founder of Twitch Kevin Lin has moved on to bigger and better things, as his interest in web 3 gaming and entertainment pulled his intuitions towards a new endeavor. His new company Metatheory has recently raised nearly 24 million in funding and claims to have huge plans regarding streaming and gaming entertainment soon. Follow them up on Twitter to stay up to date.

ENS Domains Are Here To Stay 🔑

If you spend enough time in the NFT space, you’ll come to the realization that there is a broad definition when it comes to what an NFT actually consists of. Some may define it as a piece of art, others may call it a digital and programable piece of utility. With that said, what most people don’t conjure up in their brain when the word NFT comes up are domains.

Throughout CryptoTwitter and OpenSea, you’ll come across normal wallet addresses that are “42-character hexadecimal address derived from the last 20 bytes of the public key controlling the account with 0x appended in front.” But, you’ll also see actual names or phrases with the ending “.eth”. This is what we deem as a domain. Think of a domain as a “.com” URL. It’s a unique set of data, and leads to 1 output. Currently, the most prominent use case for a domain is merely for visual purposes. But some people are realizing the true potential value of specific domains.

This new realization comes with some pretty astonishing figures. 3-digit domains have been selling like hotcakes, such as “555.eth” which sold for 55.5 ETH just a month ago. Letter combinations, such as “ttt.eth”, have sold for upwards of 25 ETH. You would think it just be a menial thing in order to change the name of your wallet, but the reason for these mind-boggling numbers is more simple than you think. There are only a total of 1,000 possible 3-number combinations. And with the 3-letter, it’s higher at 17,576 total combinations. But, there are only 26 3-letter combinations that have the same letter repeating. It boils down to the scarcity of the domain that you acquire.

Fun fact: The longest registration is shytoshikusama.eth at 2249 years. Other 1000 year clubbers are inthecrowd.eth and inshallah.eth

With ENS domains, you have to be clever. Names. Phrases. Acronyms. Dates. Schools. The list is endless. As domains are being registered at a rapid pace, the availability of “good” ENS domains become increasingly slim. But, thinking outside the box might lead you to a domain that will be fruitful in the future. WAGMI.

 Vitalik Soulbound Tokens 👀

Things on the blockchain are easily transferable, in fact, the blockchain has been designed around maximum transferability. A limitation that the total transferability of digital assets poses is that there is no way to recognize a digital person for attributes of their own. In other words, an individual is not distinguishable for their particular choices and actions outside of choices and actions made possible by capital. If a person receives a token for attending an event, that person can sell that token to a bidder, and then from there the token no longer represents said attendance. Without mechanisms to restrict transferability, it would be difficult to identify and represent ones self in ways separate from financial abilities. In other words, the blockchain protocol facilitates the transfer of ownership but lacks systems to preserve natural identification markers. 

If you are confused we highly recommend reading this explainer thread below...

Vitalik Buterin, the designer of the Ethereum Blockchain, has proposed a schema for this type of system. Using the idea of soulbound from World of Warcraft; a binding mechanic that designates an item to a particular account, Vitalik envisions a soul wallet that stores soul-bound tokens. This type of system gives people the opportunity to organize around qualities and properties that are independent of money. For example, digital societies that want to organize around the verifiably true attributes of an individual’s athletic abilities don't currently possess that capability, because anybody could ostensibly buy any token. But if the NBA conferred SoulBound-Tokens to the Soul wallets of NBA players, then there would be no way to falsify those attributes. This system will open new functionalities for the blockchain including decentralized national societies, soul wallets could be out as early as the end of 2022. 

Meme Drop 💧

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