Hi all — 👋

Ever wonder what it takes to start a new city or build a country? 

📘 Book

Balaji Srinivasan, Formerly CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at a16z, recently released a new book called “The Network State.” 

As Srinivasan highlights: 

“Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries? This book explains how to build the successor to the nation state, a concept we call the network state.”

You can read the book for free or buy it on Amazon. 

>> Watch: Check out Balaji Srinivasan’s interview with Tim Ferriss.

⚡Flash news

Did you know that Reddit launched a series of collectible avatars? Reddit’s limited-edition avatars will have a “glow-like effect” in the comments section. 

>> More: Read The Verge article about Reddit’s collective avatars. 

📝 Interesting articles

→ Social Tokens

I’ve recently discovered Social Tokens: The Economy of You, a must-read article by Mario Gabriele, the founder of The Generalist. 

Here are some of my highlights: 

>> Social tokens or creator tokens are assumed to be a fungible currency that relates to an individual. Think $RON coin for football player Ronaldinho.

>> As Mario Gabriele highlights, “Top creators often produce far more value for the platform on which they operate than they can capture.” Social tokens enable people or social media influencers to become full-fledged economies. 

>> Creators may want to tokenize their identity / name to: Raise money:

• From struggling artists to athletes without sponsorships or access to conventional financing, everyone can benefit from community support.
• Create an investor base: Skin in the game is what differentiates fans from investors. By introducing a financial component, creators can transform passive followers into active participants. 
• Attract attention
• Align incentives
• Capture value

Check out the article to learn how to build an economy around your personality / name. 

→ Trash Art

A Short History of NFT Trash Art is another article that caught my attention. Here are some things I’ve learned about this concept: 

• Trash Art is similar to a collage, as it uses existing media to create new artworks.
• There’s a big debate whether trash artists are stealing other people’s work or are creating something new. As Eric Paul Rhodes highlights, “Other artists have accused trash artists of stealing their original work, and these complaints led to the removal of NFTs from various marketplaces.”
• Regardless of what you think about Trash Art, this movement will continue pushing the boundaries, rejecting the gatekeeping of centralized platforms. 

Check out the article to learn more about the drama around Trash Art. 

📽 Quick video

Finally, during one of our NFT conversations via Discord, Mauricio Palacio, the co-founder of Magic Works sent me this short video. We don’t discuss it enough, but web3 and blockchain technology will also impact our hardware. Check out the video in case you want to learn about building phones for web3.  

That’s it from me today. 

Talk to you next week and stay awesome, 

Victoria 

🎁 P.S.: NFT.NYC just published most of the panel conversations. If you didn’t attend their latest event, check out the videos on YouTube.