• The Sleuth
  • Posts
  • Twitter Holds Crypto Back, Vitalik Loves Solana & More

Twitter Holds Crypto Back, Vitalik Loves Solana & More

Also: How to de-risk your NFT portfolio.

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

  • Twitter Troubles: Twitter reduces its usability over the weekend.

  • Ethereum Support: Vitalik voices his support for Solana.

  • New Paradigm: Soul Abstraction to enable richer NFT experiences.

So … this just dropped ⬇️

Remember the times when all of Solana was ridiculed, the community, NFTs — everything? I see this as a bullish take. Up next: David joining Vitalik in arguing that Solana has its merits.

Trust the process 🫡

Let’s get into it!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Twitter Troubles

Quick question: Would you build your family home on rented land? 

No, right?

That's because land lease agreements are restrictive and might be canceled on a whim, which would force you to leave said house.

The same logic applies to businesses.

When businesses operate on platforms such as Medium, Twitter, Bluesky, or Mastadon, they are building their house on rented land.

Why?

Because they don't own the traffic, i.e. attention, on these platforms as they don't own the underlying infrastructure, i.e. rails.

This puts businesses at the mercy of platforms’ decisions — which might tweak T&Cs to reduce the reach of their content. Or platforms might deplatform businesses, as was the case with MailChimp, Hetzner, and many more.

There's a reason Meta is so eager to make Oculus a success. Is it because they are true believers in AR/VR?

No!

It's because they need an infrastructure/hardware layer, i.e. rails, so they can surpass OEMs such as Samsung in general, and Apple in particular, who have dismantled their advertising business.

In April 2021, Apple enabled iPhone users to choose which apps could track their behaviour across other apps. The vast majority of iPhone users opted out — which might have cost Meta $10 billion in ad revenue in 2022.

Apple owns the rails, Meta doesn't.

Moreover, there's a reason Alphabet pays Apple $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine within Safari — it's all about distribution.

Apple owns the rails, Alphabet doesn't.

Let’s bring this closer to home: Twitter owns the rails, web3/crypto businesses don't.

The result?

Just look at last weekend: Twitter was an absolute dumpster fire which severely reduced the usability for all users — especially web3/crypto businesses, most of which exclusively operate on the platform.

This is why owning your own rails is so important.

It allows you to reach interested parties and users at all times, regardless whether a social media platform is up or not.

In this context, I helped Drift to build a multi-channel strategy based on a proprietary content hub.

Drift: Facts & Figures (12 months)

  • Growth Scaling: The organic website traffic 65x’d (unique visitors/month: from 40 to 2.600).

  • Value Increase: The monthly value of the organic website traffic grew from $0 to $1.700.

  • Traffic Diversification: Reduction of US organic traffic (from 90% to 50%) and increase of Indian (7%), Nigerian (5%), and German (3%) organic traffic.

  • Competitor Comparison: Initially, Drift's website had less organic traffic than the websites of Mango, Zeta, and Solend. Now, Drift boasts one of the largest organic traffic streams in the Solana ecosystem — surpassing all of these websites.

Drift’s organic website traffic over the last 12 months

Simply put: Drift now has a sustainably growing user acquisition and user retention flywheel — completely decoupled from Twitter and other platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon.

Going forward, Drift will continue to grow its user base on its own merits — free of any infringements and shenanigans.

This is how every business should operate.

If Elon’s recent chicanery has taught us anything, it's that it's high time for web3/crypto businesses to break free from Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastadon and chart their own path.

Avoid platform lock-ins. Own your own rails! 🦅

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Ethereum Support: Vitalik voiced his concern about the SEC's treatment of Solana, highlighting the need for decentralisation amidst the rise of a rapidly expanding centralised world.

NFT Turbulence: Both the Azuki and BAYC floor prices have seen a lot of volatility over the last couple of days and weeks. This has left the portfolios of many NFT traders exposed, as they lack a lever to hedge their risk, i.e. long positions. Sujiko, a NFT perpetual futures DEX, will launch on Mainnet in August and will enable NFT traders to de-risk their portfolios — which might be particularly helpful with respect to their Azuki and BAYC positions.

New Paradigm: Soul Abstraction, a new primitive from Backpack, will enable teams to airdrop code and instruction sets to NFT holders — ultimately bringing about richer NFT experiences.

Game Jam: Magicblock and Lamport DAO have partnered up to host Speedrun, a virtual game-building competition which will run from July 26th to July 30th. The aim is to build a playable game in 120h with $ 25.000 worth of prizes up for grabs.

➡️ Autism Capital: “Solana is Dead.”

➡️ Kel from Messari: “Hold my beer!”

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

If you'd like to reach me, respond to this newsletter or reach out to me on Twitter.

Talk soon!