Nike Launches .SWOOSH Web3 Platform

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Here is the breakdown of today's newsletter:

👟 Nike reveals new web3 platform

• Nike announces .Swoosh, their new Web3 shopping platform will be selling dope digital sneakers starting at around 50$. More on this below. (@ycxcRTFKT)

• Deepak.eth, the founder of the blockchain infrastructure Chain, listed their NFT collection for sale on OpenSea starting at 8,000 ETH after recent FTX collapse. It's being referred to as the holy grail. (CD)

• Steve Jobs' Birkenstock sandals recently sold for $320K and came with accompanying NFT. (ABC)

• A Japanese messaging app line has launched an NFT marketplace. (NP)

• Catch a glimpse of Adidas' Bored Ape in their commercial for the Fifa World Cup ad. (@adidas)

• Yuga Labs drop news of their recent acquisition of 10ktfshop by the legendary Wagmi-san. (@yugalabs)

• Word is that Sony is interested in implementing NFT tracking into their future games and consoles, hinted at by a recently published trademark. (Y!)

• Applied Primate (owners of 6 out of 12 revealed BAYC Mega Mutants) is dropping a dynamic NFT that'll be awarded to the first 2,000 people who play through this weeks onboarding puzzle via their Discord. The NFTs will provide exclusive access to additional games, contests and Mega Mutant merch (discord)

• BVDLabs, a BVDCAT SaaS development presents its official rollout and announces its SaaS offering. (@BVDLABS)

• Phantom shares they’ve added a number of incredible projects in the Solana community to their vault. (@Phantom)

Nike Unvails .SWOOSH 👟

The new swoosh has a dot before it… Nike has been proactive about engineering its position in the web3 ecosystem, ever since it purchased Rtkft. And now, Nike wants to directly offer virtual products to its existing customer base. They think it's time to present virtual products to folks not necessarily active in crypto because athletics are making their way into the digital frontier at a progressive rate.

💡 HERE IS THE BREAKDOWN:

• A big brief… before Nike starts moving any digital products, they are going to roll out a massive educational and accessibility campaign. This includes activities likes touring cities and handing out access codes to people directly.

• Level the playing field… Nike wants to encourage a social and co-creative community for dotswoosh. This includes things like democratizing color and design choices for products, as well as redistributing revenues to creators.

• Keeping it simple… like Reddit Nike doesn’t want to make things look complicated. People will be able to use standard payment tools and their wallet will be created automatically upon registration.

THE DROPThus far, Nike has surpassed all of the other sports brands’ attempts to build a reputation on web3. Now that they’ve punched in solid numbers, Nike is cashing in on the wealth of knowledge they have to bring forth digital products to the type of customer profile that would buy their physical products. Following the new year, we’ll get to see how Nike’s strategy plays out in the digital frontier.

FTX Unraveling: Keeps Getting Worse 💀

It’s been a few days since we talked about the FTX incident, and the actions of Sam Bankman-Fried. Over the course of the weekend, a lot of events transpired that raised eyebrows in the Crypto Twitter community. Here are just a few of those “isolated” events:

💡 HERE IS THE BREAKDOWN:

• FTX was “hacked” late Friday night and over $600 million in cryptocurrency were siphoned out. Most likely from a rouge insider at FTX who utilized a backdoor to suck out the funds. (Coindesk)

• SBF tweeted a set of posts that spell out “What. H. A. P. P. E. N.”. That is the only correspondence we have received from him, which also came in sections, for some reason. First, he tweeted “1) What” and “2) H”. The other letters have been tweeted over the last 24 hours to form the sentence that we can read now, which is still not finished. People in the Twitter community are fuming at SBF’s lack of transparency since the implosion. (@SBF_FTX)

• Crypto.com also suffered issues with withdrawals, and had to pause transactions for some time. After some digging, people noticed a transaction for 320k ETH that was sent to Gate.io. While 285k ETH was received back a few days later, and the rest a little time after that. Now, people are speculating that Crypto.com sent those reserves to Gate.io in order for them to easily prove their liquidity and reserves on hand. It’s like moving funds from my cookie jar over to another user, and then saying they are the possession of the new user. Subsequently, the original owner received them back a few days after the audit is performed. Literally fraud. That’s why a bank run commenced on Crypto.com, which is starting to cool down as of yesterday. (Twitter)

• People are talking about the notion of self-custody and the idea that “if it’s not your wallet, they’re not your coins.” That’s why people are moving out of CEX’s and into cold storage.

THE DROPThe effect of FTX’s implosion is still coming to light, but from what we’ve seen in the past week, we’re in for a long period of building. Remember, FTX was the world’s second largest crypto exchange, after Binance. This event is akin to a major US bank falling apart. Every other country’s central bank will also suffer as a result. What SBF presided over caused ripples in the industry, with other major centralized exchanges feeling the brunt of the damage after the fact. They’re having to find reserves to satisfy withdrawals. Scary times, but as always, hang in there. WAGMI.

Serum Compromised? 🚨

As a further follow-up to the FTX hack report over the weekend, it's worth mentioning that Serum, a decentralized market/exchange built on Solana, may have been compromised during the hack. According to reports, FTX had $8.9 billion in liabilities before it filed for bankruptcy, and $900 million in liquid assets, which included $2.2 billion of SRM (the utility and governance token of Serum. As a result of the hack, over $600 million (various tokens alongside Solana) left FTX's official wallets as they are being transferred to Decentralized exchanges. To prevent further damage, Solana developers suspected the hack may have also compromised Serum, and have initiated a relaunch.

Solana's founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, confirmed this when he replied in a tweet that Serum's virgin key is compromised, and developers are working on forking Serum's code. In addition, Mango Max, a pseudonymous developer also tweeted and announced Serum’s forking efforts while a Solana spokesperson confirmed to Benzinga that “the fork happened and the community is moving forward.”

Sponsored Content: There is no sponsored content in this newsletter.

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• Thugbirdz Are Community First

Disclaimer: The Drop DOES NOT provide financial advice. All content is for informational purposes only. The Drop is not a registered investment, legal, or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. Trading any crypto-related asset is extremely risky and could result in significant capital losses.

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Gannon Breslin, CryptoVonDoom, Naveed Lalani, Alex Reed, Naman Patel, Big Tuna

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