What Are Soulbound Tokens?

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This newsletter is powered by Metaversity: The College of Web3, Metaversity is a community-based education platform focused on empowering individuals with the skills and knowledge necessary to make income in Web3.

They recently launched courses on NFT Trading and Staking & Lending Crypto which provides fundamental knowledge to get started making income in these areas. Check out their courses to learn more HERE.

What's Dropping ⚡️

• Magic Eden just crossed 25,000,000 in total SOL volume on their NFT marketplace.

• Dust Labs project y00ts yields over $6M in secondary sales in less than 24 hours after launch. (Decrypt)

• Reddit hits the mark with their NFT avatars, generating tons of secondary sales on polygon ETH. (Cointelegraph)

• David Bowie's legacy surrounding his interest in futurism lives on with a collective project featuring artists such as FEWOCiOUS. (@JonathanWWolfe)

• The U.S. states of Washington and Pennsylvania recently became the first to make NFTs taxable. (mossadams)

• Binance ends support of rival stablecoins on their platform. (reuters)

• The co-owner of the NBA team Golden State Warriors is creating an original NFT-driven sports fantasy game. Hellebore NFTs are available to mint for 0.03ETH. (playhellebore)

• An amazing NFT art exhibit called Art Innovation Gallery is taking over Times Square this week. (@ArtInnovationG)

• Polygon blockchain becomes #2 for NFT sales, competing with Solana for the spot. (raritysniper)

• Aurory project teams up with Rafikey to bring a tutorial series on Aurory tactics that will help scale the competitiveness of the game. (@Auroryproject)

• Magic Eden shows off their newest Pro Trade feature as they hit 25,000,000+ SOL in total volume. (@MagicEden)

Soulbound Tokens Could Change NFTs Forever 👀

When it comes to NFTs, one type of utility that might actually “live” WITH you might be in the form of Soulbound Tokens (SBT).

💡 What is a Soulbound Token?

SBTs are the same as NFTs except for the fact that they cannot be transferred. They become your blockchain “Soul”. This Soul can contain anything from identification information to education accolades, all the way to criminal history. Think of it as your “blockchain identity card”. Except it can carry way more information than just your address and physical features.

According to a whitepaper by Vitalik and others, “the true power of this mechanism emerges when SBTs held by one Soul can be issued—or attested—by other Souls, who are counterparties to these relationships". These counterparty Souls could be individuals, companies, or institutions. For example… A university could be a Soul that issues SBTs to graduates. A stadium could be a Soul that issues SBTs to longtime Dodgers fans.”

Another thing to remember is that you would not be able to transfer your Soul. It would remain in your wallet. But what if you fell victim to one of the endless scams in the crypto space and were to lose access to your wallet? The whitepaper states, “A more robust solution is to tie Soul recovery to a Soul’s memberships across communities, not curating but instead drawing on a maximally broad set of real-time relationships for security… In a community recovery model, recovering a Soul’s private keys would require a member from a qualified majority of a (random subset of) Soul’s communities to consent.”

While all of this is very technical in nature, the idea is still necessary for true decentralization. Imagine walking up to TSA and scanning your Soul to validate your identification. Of course, there are caveats to this concept. But, the true vision is a necessary one. WAGMI.

Metaversity: The College Of Web3 🎓

Metaversity is officially launching its first two courses to the public - 1) NFT Trading and 2) Crypto Staking & Lending! If you’re reading the Drop here, you’re likely into NFTs… but do you know all the ins and outs of how to trade efficiently and make an income? Or maybe you’re an NFT guru but do you understand the specifics of staking and lending crypto? These courses are LIVE NOW and you can learn more about them here. 

But guys, why are these courses any better than the usual? Glad you asked, the Metaversity team uses an innovative combination of subject matter experts and educational theory (called pedagogy) to build meaningful, engaging, and valuable content. See for yourself here! The Metaversity community helps guide the direction of these courses and beta tests them to ensure they’re actually taking valuable information away from them.

LG's New Art Lab Platform 📺

If there is one trend that characterizes NFTs this summer it is that they are being leveraged for mass adoption in more ways than we have witnessed previously. 💡 Most recently we’ve seen that they are being used as: - The center of an upcoming animated series by FOX- Collections themselves and artists are being signed to talent agencies - Groups of NFT avatars are forming virtual bands and also getting signed to music labels- Legacy candy companies are partnering with major NFT collections- Ticketmaster is creating a system to issue accessory NFTs with tickets purchases

The latest way that NFTs are being put into a position for mass adoption is with LG’s new Art Lab platform.

Just as Ticketmaster chose to go with the Flow blockchain for environmental reasons LG has chosen the Hedera network for its energy efficiency and low transaction costs. The Art Lab platform will allow enthusiasts to buy, sell, and trade NFTs on their LG smart TVs. LG is not only trying to facilitate people’s ability to interact with NFTs but they are also developing technology to become the means by which people own NFTs. They’ve been working on the Wallypto app since 2021 and it is what traders will use to purchase NFTs when engaging with the LG NFT interface. LG’s senior vice president has explicitly stated that their intention with Art Lab is to allow easy millions of U.S. users to access the world of NFTs in a very simple format. Don’t believe the FUD, crypto winter is fleeting.

NFT Ranking Chart 📈

Damn, remember how hyped Invisible Friends' mint was?

GenesysGo Shuts Down RPCs ❌

GenesysGo recently announced they've brought the free RPC (Remote Procedural Call) network to a close. By now you should know that RPC servers are the backbone of the Solana blockchain. They are the traffic controllers of the Solana validator network and every single project building on Solana uses them. GenesysGO is a leading provider of Remote Procedural Call servers (RPCs).

GenesysGo has been building and providing secure infrastructure to the Solana community since April 2021 and as reported, the team has been working tirelessly to ensure that the ecosystem has a performant and free RPC network that they can rely on- The network was paid for via the royalties from the Shadowy Super Coder NFT.

💡 The free public RPC network was shut down due to a few reasons:

1. The network was becoming a huge time sink due to the incredibly high amount of developers with no regard for the fact that it is a public and shared resource

2. The significant decline in NFT royalties since the arrival of Yawww marketplace.

On this note, the paid Shadow RPC network was announced and the public network will be decommissioned in the next couple of weeks as they will be focusing on creating a better experience for Shadow Operators.

The Shadow Protocol is the expansion of GenesysGo's plan to build a fully decentralized RPC network for Solana. It is a broad sweeping term that includes all things related to the $SHDW token, decentralized RPC, decentralized storage, and the community that contributes compute to earn rewards.

Meme Drop 💧

Sponsored Content: Content containing Metaversity in this newsletter is sponsored content.

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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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