🐻 Has Twitter met its decentralized rival? 👀

Happy February friends 🙌. We’re only a month into the new year and things are already looking up for us. FED Chair Jerome Powell just announced a moderate interest rate hike of 25 bps, giving Bitcoin a little bullish boost as we head towards disinflation 👀.

Guess Jim Cramer finally got one right when he told us to buy the dip 🤔.

👋 New here? 📧 Subscribe to receive our newsletter 2x / week + exclusive content | 👍️ Follow us on Twitter, Instagram & Youtube

In this issue:

📣The big story of the week. Has Twitter met its decentralized rival?

🚀The good. The Ethereum Shanghai update is scheduled to launch in March and Bitcoin gets healthy debate around its NFT use case.

🐻The big, bad FUD. Celsius Examiner’s Report reveals new details about the bankrupt company.

📣The big story of the week

Has Twitter met its decentralized rival?

Move over Elon, there may be a new Chief of Twit in the house. Who? Well, the answer is technically no one 🤔.

Just launched on the Apple App Store, Damus is a decentralized social media app that’s free from big tech control and a centralized CEO figure (ahem, the Musks and Zucks 👀). But what’s so special about Damus though? There are plenty of decentralized social protocols that have emerged in the past year to rival Twitter, like DeSo and Lens Protocol.

The challenge with web3 social apps has always been user adoption. It’s hard to get users to turn away from platforms where all the action is happening. But Damus has a secret weapon.

No, it’s not the backing of VC-investors (we’re over that). Instead, it has the support of people like Dorsey, Snowden and Vitalik.

So, what exactly is Damus?

Last year, Dorsey donated 14 Bitcoin, worth roughly $245,000 at the time, to fund the development of Nostr, short for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay (try saying that 10x 🤪).

Nostr is an open-source protocol that aims to solve the issues of central authority and censorship that have plagued social media platforms. There is no CEO, no board, and no VC-backed funding. While several projects have emerged from Nostr, including Anigma, a Telegram-like chat; and Branle, another Twitter-like app, Damus has been notably the most popular by far.

Thanks to Dorsey, Snowden and Vitalik’s support, Damus is the first Nostr app to be listed on the App Store and has already reached the top 10 spot for social app downloads.

Some other features that make it unique:

• ⛔️ No server or technical knowledge is required - the app is meant to feel and look exactly like your traditional web2 app.

• ⛔️ No data is collected.

• 👍️ Your public key allows you to own, share and port your account from one platform to another. Imagine being able to seamlessly transfer your Twitter followers to Instagram because you actually own your account follows and content!

• 👍️ You can tip your favorite content creators with Bitcoin tipping.

Why decentralized social media is important

There is no better time for a decentralized social media platform. The recent release of Musk’s Twitter Files series has shown evidence of the social giant’s history of media censorship, political manipulation and deep-state collusion.

More imporantly, Damus has also reached China, where free speech and censorship runs the country. After reaching #2 in China’s App Store, Damus has quickly been removed and banned by the state. Sometimes, active silencing means that you must be doing something right 👀.

A censorship-resistant publishing app is still in its early days of innovation. The good news is that Musk has already expressed interest in decentralizing Twitter. The question is how will we get there? Will the launch of Damus push Musk to innovate quicker for web3, or will we see some sort of integration/collaboration between Musk and Dorsey?

Either way, we are keen on both possibilities!

🚀The good

Good news for ETH lovers. The Ethereum Shanghai update is set to launch in March. This means that nearly $26 billion worth of staked ETH gaining interest since 2020 will finally be accessible to the hodlers. Fingers crossed for no delays, but we know how these things go!

Ordinals, an NFT protocol has launched on the Bitcoin mainnet. Some say this is good to drive adoption, while other Bitcoin purists think that this golden blockchain should remain for financial transactions only. Either way, we think that this is a good, healthy debate to have.

What do you think - Bitcoin NFTs yay or nay? We’ll reveal the top answers and comments next issue!

🐻The big, bad FUD

Can someone tell us who these “influential” crypto people are? If this is what the crypto industry is, we don’t want it 🙅‍♂️.

The Celsius Examiner’s Report has dropped and reveals many new incriminating details about the bankrupt crypto company.

📣 Got something interesting to share?

Do you have a web3 product or service that you want to share? Get in touch with us by filling out this form and let's work together!