Someone Minted an NFT of Ethereum's Last PoW Block

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gm, it's the merge has finally happened. What an incredible day for the entire space. 

• Coinbase tests a new feature that shows which politicians support crypto. (@brian_armstrong)

• Epic Games Marketplace lists a blockchain-based NFT-driven game called Blankos Block Party. (coindesk)

• According to etherscan, someone managed to mint an NFT on the very last proof of work Ethereum block! (decrypt)

• The holder of BAYC#634 is creating a real-life yacht rental company, utilizing their ape. (decrypt)

• Steve Aoki joins Draft Kings as brand ambassador. (draftkings)

• President of FTX Brett Harrison speaks with Bloomberg to discuss the positive impact of the Ethereum merge. (bloomgerg).

• Despite Nagging issues, NFT mints on Solana set a new all-time high record. (zycrypto)

• GMers the 50k collections of stick figures on Solana announces GMers Hub as their strive to be the world’s biggest DA0 continues. (@GMersNFT)

Someone Minted an NFT of Ethereum's Last PoW Block

Despite the neutral price action of Ethereum, what we did see, right before the Merge, was the minting of an entire block as an NFT. To preface, a blockchain is a linear set of blocks that contain a set of transactions to approve. This means that you can have multiple transactions inside of a block, but the way that this project was executed took up the ENTIRE block. The last block mined before the Merge only contained 1 transaction, and that was to mint this, said, NFT. Think about that. The only transaction in the entire #15537393 block was this NFT mint. That means that if you own this NFT, you essentially “own” the last block before Ethereum merged. That’s bonkers.

Even after spending around 32ETH to F2Pool to mint the entire block into an NFT and getting notoriety for doing so, the current highest bid for the NFT is 10ETH. That being said, later in the future, this NFT will serve as a memento of the times before the Merge, and the beginning of something revolutionary. This NFT, in a way, fossilizes the exact time that the Ethereum blockchain technology changed, for the better. WAGMI, to those who thought of this. Very creative idea, in our opinion. Expensive, but impactful.

Post Of The Day 📸

We are in a builders market.

FaZe World 🌎

 More money has poured into the world of Web3 gaming by venture capitalists this year than any year prior, and the big bucks are betting on engagement systems that bring fans closer to the competitive stars that they love the most. After going public in the summer, the competitive e-sports organization FaZe Clan has announced that they will be pursuing the Sandbox to construct a metaverse experience known as FaZe World. We can expect to see plenty of digital goods associated with the brand being distributed considering the magnitude of their physical merchandise options. In addition to this, they may leverage the virtual space to bring fans together to experience tournaments and other live experiences.

Lee Trink, the CEO of Faze Clan has explained that he was drawn to Sandbox in large part because its marketplace directs 95% of NFT sales to the creator, and he is big on creator friendly environments. FaZe World will allow fans not only to immerse themselves in Faze Clan’s worlds through engaging experiences but also allow fans to purchase real estate in close proximity to FaZe World so that they can ‘live’ next to the e-sport phenomena. FaZe’s roster is filled with notable names including Snoop Dogg who joined the organization in March and given his experience in the metaverse FaZe World’s debut should be an interesting one to witness when it goes lives next year. 

B+J Studios Building 🏗

There's a popular adage in Crypto Twitter that describes “Builders” as products of market chaos and bloodbath and without a doubt, B+J studios is one of the many to fall in that category. Founded by 2 software engineers from Solana Labs and Citadel with a vision to deliver a frictionless web3 experience to web2 users, B+J Studios is a 0 to 1 builder studio developing world-class blockchain-based solutions for mainstream consumer and institutional-grade use cases.

Through a blog post on PRNewswire, B+J announced they've closed a $10M Series A funding round. This seed raise had investors like Big Brain Holdings, Foundation Capital, Republic Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, and other crypto-native investors participating for the great cause of bringing digital asset technologies to billions of mainstream users. Building solutions for businesses that are seeking to onboard new users into crypto sits on top of the list of the studio’s objectives and currently, they have launched two projects (Cupcake and Raindrops) which of course continue to steer the ecosystem towards these objectives. The Cupcake protocol is a frictionless solution geared to onboarding Web2 businesses into Web3 closing the gap between the digital and physical worlds while the  Raindrops Protocol is a series of five a la carte contracts that govern on-chain or proof-on-chain data specifically for games, allowing any player or item to be interchangeable with any game client that can process them.

By providing new solutions that prioritize seamless user and customer experience, B+J studios hope to get these blockchain technologies into the hands of billions of people in ways that haven't been possible before.

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

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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, Kayla Kilbride, CryptoVonDoom, Naveed Lalani, Alex Reed, Naman Patel, Big Tuna

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