Crypto Fundamentals #038

🌞 Worldcoin launches the World ID SDK and plans to scale Orb operations globally

Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s blockchain project, launched in more than 35 cities this past Monday with its core World ID offering. The release of the World ID SDK after 3 years of development coincides with plans to scale Orb operations to “35+ cities across 20+ countries around the world” (Worldcoin.org). As a refresher, the Worldcoin project is intended to be the world “largest, must inclusive identity and financial public utility, owned by everyone” (Worldcoin). Worldcoin’s blog states that there are more than 4 billion people worldwide that lack a legal, digitally-verifiable identity which limits participation in the global economy as well as access to “critical services like healthcare, government aid and financial services,” which it plans to address with its suite of products. Additionally, Worldcoin envisions a future where AI and humans are indistinguishable in digitally native environments, and intends to use its product to scale a “reliable and privacy preserving way to ditinguish humans from AI online.”

How is Worldcoin working towards these ambitious, aforementioned goals today? By launching ~1500 Orbs throughout the summer and fall to more than 35 cities across the world.

The Orb is a biometric imaging device built for the Worldcoin project to verify humanness in a secure and privacy preserving way. When you scan your eyeballs in this device that is roughly the size of a bowling ball, it generates a unique World ID that proves the user is a real human being. In the future, this unique identification could be used to interact in global, digital environment and in the minds of the Tools for Humanity team, potentially serve as a path to “AI-funded universal basic income (UBI).”

Today, Worldcoin appears to have picked up traction with a new human creating their World ID every 7.6 seconds (do note there is a ~$60 incentive they’re throwing in there to get people to scan their eyeballs) and a total of 2.2mm+ World IDs have been created. While the project is still in very early stages, it is definitely one to watch as additional features are rolled out over time.

💫 Amazon Expands into Web3 Space With Cloud Tooling

This week, Amazon announced new tooling for Amazon Web Services that would assist developers building blockchain-based Web3 software. Coindesk reports that during a two-day AWS Summit, web3 developer tools called “Access” and “Query” were added to Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) that allow users to build blockchain applications faster.

The improved AMB functions will allow developers to use standard remote procedure calls to interact with digital assets and distributed applications across multiple blockchains without specialized infrastructure. Amazon has pointed to
"custodial and wallet crypto applications and Web3 consumer engagement campaigns that utilize NFTs” as potential use cases / customers for this service.

The feature will initially provide developers with access to blockchain data on Ethereum and Bitcoin, with further chains to come.

‍

🤝 Trends to Look out for on the Artemis Blockchain Activity Monitor: Unibot

Unibot is a trading bot that allows users to conduct transactions directly on Uniswap (decentralized exchange on Ethereum) via text commands on Telegram. The platform has seen massive user growth since launching earlier in May and has seen price appreciation of ~300%+ since the beginning of July. The protocol is trading at a ~$150mm market cap as of Friday.

Unibot allows users to connect their wallets to Uniswap and instantly swap tokens by sending commands to a bot via messaging-application Telegram. Per a Dune Dashboard by Whale_Hunter, the project has conducted ~$105mm in lifetime volume and accrued ~537 ETH in lifetime fees.

At this time, the vast majority of activity appears to be purchases of the actual UNIBOT token (~$16mm in total volume is in the UNIBOT-WETH pair) but future plans for the protocol include additional DeFi integrations and improving its best-in-class UI.

For a fundamental lens on how to evaluate value accrual for the protocol, check out this thoughtful thread by Felipe at Theia Research (which was written at an entry price of ~$45 🙂)

Detailed L1 dashboard for people who love more numbers in smaller font:

Note: Revenue represents fees that go to the protocol’s treasury or are returned to tokenholders via a burn mechanism (source: Token Terminal). Weekly commits and weekly dev activity as of 6/21/23.

The content is for informational purposes. None of the content is meant to be investment advice. Use your own discretion and independent decision regarding investments.