☕️ Starbucks, Tiffany & Co. & Meta making waves, 🚨 Ethereum Merge & "Triple Halvening", 🦹‍♂️ Solana Hack Explained

Welcome to Digital Twin, we help you get a little smarter about the NFT market and its impact on the future of fashion, commerce, and culture.

In This Week's Roundup:

• ☕️ Starbucks, Tiffany & Co. & Meta are all making themselves known in web3

• 🚨 Ethereum merge... where do we stand right now?

• ❓What is Ethereum's "Triple Halvening"?

• 🦹‍♂️ Solana wallet hack... what happened?

Companies are continuing to make waves in web3... here's what you need to know:

• ☕️ Starbucks to unveil its web3-based rewards program next month

  • Starbucks is rolling out an NFT loyalty program... they view the technology as an extension of their existing customer rewards system

  • Mobile order & pay has been one of Starbucks' biggest successes - the company is one of the first to introduce the concept of a digital wallet... even before Apple Pay became mainstream

  • In the past quarter - Starbucks mobile orders, delivery and drive-through drove 72% of U.S. revenue

  • Starbucks is clearly expanding upon its existing digital rewards ecosystem in an organic attempt to enter web3 by emotionally engaging customers and offering a broader set of rewards, including one-of-a-kind experiences that you can't get anywhere else

• ❓ Why is this so important?

  • A Starbucks NFT loyalty program will revolutionize the current pace of web3 onboarding... this program could educate millions of customers & build community in a new way

  • A major challenge in today's web3 environment are high costs and fees which serve as significant barriers to entry... this web3 rewards system can give consumers a reason to familiarize themselves with this new technology in an existing and lower cost environment

• 💎 Tiffany & Co. NFT drop raised $12.5 Million after its immediate sale

  • Priced at 30 ETH (~$50,000) the 250 pieces sold out in about 20 minutes

  • A presale opened up for 100 holders who had been white-listed by the brand two days ahead of the public sale

  • The "NFTiffs" are digital passes that CryptoPunk NFT holders can redeem for digital artwork based on their original punk... each piece of digital art will be accompanied by luxury pendants in the same design

  • The pendants will be made of gold and precious stones, carefully selected to suit each of the different traits of the CryptoPunks. They are expected to ship in early 2023 and must be redeemed by August 12th.

• 🚀 Meta is expanding NFT support on instagram to 100 countries

  • Zuckerberg announced that the company is beginning its international expansion of NFT support on Instagram. The expansion follows the initial NFT test launch in May. With this expansion, users and businesses in more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas will be able to share their NFTs on instagram

  • Instagram’s NFT functionality allows users to connect a digital wallet, share NFTs and automatically tag both a creator and collector for attribution. You can share NFTs in your main Instagram Feed, Stories or in messages.

  • As of today, Instagram supports connections with third-party wallets including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet.

  • Meta says the expansion reflects its work to expand access to web3 technology through NFTs, and support creators who want to monetize their work and build community with their fans and collectors.

 🚨Ethereum's Merge... Where are we?

• The Goerli testnet merge is happening this week...this is the final test before the ETH merge on the mainnet

• What is the Goerli testnet?

  • Goerli is one of the largest testnets for Ethereum, with a ton of activity already on it

  • This final testnet will give developers data on many fronts, and its merge and code will mimic the real performance of Ethereum's mainnet as closely as possible

  • The Goerli is expected to transition to a Proof of Stake between August 6th and August 12th

  • Assuming that no issues arise during the Goerli testnet merge, we can expect the announcement for the mainnet merge to come out soon

 🚨What is Ethereum's triple halvening?

• Halvening is a concept in the Bitcoin algorithm that automatically reduces the amt. of bitcoin rewarded to miners by half every few years - this reduces the issuance of BTC over time and creates deflationary pressure

  • As a result this causes the price of BTC to increase as there becomes less supply on the market - these halvening events have historically correlated directly with the start of crypto bull cycles

• You may have also heard of a term called "Staking" ETH

  • This means that you are providing your ETH to a validator to help secure the future post-merge network

  • As a reward for staking your ETH with a validator you are given block rewards - the current projected income rate is around ~4% APY

The "Triple Halvening" will make Ethereum an exceptionally more scarce asset to hold, post merge.

🦹‍♂️ Solana Wallet Hack... what happened?

A malicious attacker or attackers drained 9,231 wallets of approximately $4.1 million worth of assets. On-chain transactions show that private keys for the affected wallets had been leaked or compromised and were used to sign malicious transactions.

Solana's response:

To all our readers, we highly recommend you move your assets to hardware wallets to ensure security against malicious attacks. See below for a resource on how to do it:

Those that are here now will benefit greatly for being early as long as they have strong conviction plays. If you are a brand and want to start building click the connect button below. We are looking to support forward thinking brands at the intersection of fashion and Web3!

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