This report discusses different crypto startup ideas for potential founders. It highlights potential use cases in developing countries for financial applications, like stablecoin payments and crypto-focused neobanks. The report also explores other sectors ripe for blockchain integration, including anonymous social network creation, scientific crowdfunding, and combating 'deepfake' AI technology. It touches on the development of Bitcoin L2 solutions and improving Solana's infrastructure.
The “building on bitcoin” narrative has been gaining momentum. This thread attempts to break down the Bitcoin L2 landscape. Bitcoin L2s can enable programmability while preserving some links to the Bitcoin L1. Teams like Chainway, Botanix Labs, Bison Labs, Stacks, and Bob are contributing to a thriving Bitcoin L2 ecosystem via security innovations, bridging mechanisms, and Ethereum rollups aligned with Bitcoin, offering opportunities for businesses and startups.
This author explains why he’s excited about the emergence of namespaces as a service, which includes unique digital identifiers like domain extensions, social media usernames, or phone numbers. The model has been previously used by Ethereum Name Service with .eth usernames. Subsequently, the emergence of a cross-chain interoperability protocol has further encouraged the creation of new namespaces, which has opened the door to new business models. Crypto consumer apps could potentially create native namespaces, offering lucrative opportunities and greater protocol flexibility.
This article discusses the evolution of gamification and its impact on business strategies, focusing on the implementation of point systems on and off blockchain platforms. The author provides some valuable insights into the future of decentralized, user-owned networks by highlighting the differences between tokens and points and exploring the unique benefits and challenges of on-chain points. They present an in-depth explanation of how on-chain points can potentially enhance user engagement and retention in a more flexible and adaptable way than tokens.
2024.01.26·archetype.mirror.xyz·12 min read·TLDR Crypto The sell-off of GBTC after the Bitcoin ETF launches has been easing and is most likely coming to a close.
The entire crypto user base grew by 62 million in 2023. Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin led, with Solana gaining 5.6 million users, despite challenges in measuring exact user counts.
Worldcoin's CEO announced a friendlier Apple-like redesign for its Orb device amid expansion and controversy over the device's use in developing economies.
Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade has been activated on the Goerli testnet. Sepolia and Holesky will upgrade over the next two weeks. The Dencun upgrade introduces data blobs to reduce fees. Mainnet scheduling is dependent on test outcomes.
Figma's Dev Mode has introduced annotations, enhanced change comparisons, plugins, and a VS Code extension update. The service is transitioning from a free beta to a paid service on January 31. These updates aim to improve collaboration between designers and developers by streamlining handoff processes, providing live updates, and allowing customization with plugins.
mmm.page is a unique online platform described as a blend of Tumblr, Animal Crossing, and Mii Plaza. It allows users to create and design free websites, fostering a creative and individualistic space on the internet. The platform's anonymous founder aims to maintain independence and freedom, rejecting the corporate pressures that dominate other online spaces.
Google has launched Art Selfie 2, an improved image generator that uses AI to transform selfies into a historical artwork style with custom costumes and backgrounds. It makes artwork in over 25 unique styles, offering an educational experience with pop-up information about the chosen theme while you wait for the transformation.
The team behind many branding and graphic design works at Smith & Diction shares their process in this article. They start with introductions, proceed to the proposal, take care of the contract and deposit, do the discovery work, use mood boards, start work on identity design and brand work, present their work, ask for feedback, and roll it out.
Designing with seniors in mind is becoming more critical than ever, considering that 20% of the U.S. population will be 60 or older by 2029. Unlike previous retirees, this new generation is more comfortable adopting technology. As designers, we have the opportunity to empower and make a difference to so many of these users, who are often unknowingly or intentionally overlooked as marginal cases or outliers.
A close examination of Paul Rand’s UPS logo uncovers that it uses the golden ratio to make the logo beautifully proportional. Designers who want to improve their logo design skills should redraw those they like, analyze them, and find out if there’s an underlying grid.
This incredible library of hundreds of 3D objects includes three styles for every artifact.
Based on experiments and extensive research, this free eBook is a prime resource on typographic legibility and designing documents that are easier to read.
This collection features book recommendations from some of the industry's best designers.
Those who buy Macs spend the money because they plan to use them, often for many years. The reuptake of ports on computers aimed at professionals, keyboards that don’t seem to break from using them, and three revisions of the Mac Pro in five years leave the impression that Apple is again willing to meet its users a little closer to where they are.
The CW recently removed the “The” from its logo. Now, we see the broader branding concept where the CW logo extends into a “stage” shape. The new typeface, a sans-serif F37 Bolton, complements the branding nicely and achieves the premium and deadpan aesthetic that DixonBaxi was after.
Design systems prevent a host of potential problems down the road. Despite our understanding of the intrinsic benefits of a consistent user interface over one-off solutions and maintenance nightmares, convincing management that it is the right course can take time, especially given the time and resources required.
Changing styles isn’t only desirable for illustrators, but it’s an important part of commercial illustration as they must adapt to clients asking for a specific style.
An interesting video by a digital creator imagines how different fonts interact. The cool guy is Helvetica, the old gent is Courier, and Papyrus is just trying to get an invite to hang out.
Geologic data is another material Sarah Nance uses to guide her interactions with other materials, such as Mylar film and knitting patterns. Data functions expressively and abstractly in her work, offering new ways for people to relate to geologic time personally.
Incremental changes happen all the time around us. They seem inconsequential, but they eventually compound and cascade into giant leaps in the world's operating model. This article explores some areas of innovation that seem so obvious when you think about them now, but even a few short years ago would have seemed like sci-fi.
A collection of lessons from Jam’s CEO on how the company inched its way to 1m users. A lot of this goes against conventional wisdom, like dogfooding, shipping fast, and iterating. Its team focused on rigorously testing its product and building something of high quality before they put it in a user’s hands.
Here’s a succinct pulse-check on what’s forecasted for 2024. More IPOs and M&A, venture’s power balance will shift to LPs, a tough market for founders, and the buzz of generative AI will likely start to wear off a little.
Raising debt seems like a no-brainer in an environment where you can raise venture dollars alongside it and double down on growth – either the venture money or the debt will surely spark growth. The reality is that the borrowed money better lead to revenue growth or it’s going to really impact your startup. Here’s a framework that covers what you should think about if you’re considering debt - like your runway requirements and approach to negotiating terms.
A hiring mistake can have a huge impact on your company if you’re a bootstrapped startup. You simply don’t have the venture dollars to cushion the blow. Here’s a fairly comprehensive guide that breaks down the do’s and don’ts.
Are you a pre-seed founder who’s ever been asked for a 3-year forecast from a VC? A financial model at the very earliest stages is akin to poetry. It can act as a forcing function for you to really think about how your company is going to make money. The thought process is where the value is at, not in the financial model that comes from it.
Find potential clients' accurate contact data with AI.
Search all your apps at once.
The changelog your users will actually read.
This article explores some common misconceptions about the role of a PM, with a focus on defining the differences between a Project Manager and a Product Manager. In essence, the role of the Product Manager is to deeply understand the market and your business objectives and use technology as a way to align the two.
In this podcast, Kai Roemmelt, CEO of the online learning platform Udacity, and Lisa Gevelber, a key figure at Google responsible for building the Grow with Google program, unpack the seismic changes reshaping the tech and education realms. Useful for future-looking founders curious about hiring or building in the space.
This is a long and very comprehensive read on the state of gaming throughout 2023 and looking forward to 2024. It covers layoffs from big players like Amazon, Epic Games, and Niantic, as well as the developments in tech like chip-making capabilities and AI. Useful for any founders building in this space.
Finding a mission and honoring it with real purpose, that’s the trick.
Engineering and product are incentivised to stay longer term, marketing and sales are often pushed out after the transition period.
Ideas are never perfect, what counts is how you iterate on them.
HP Enterprise reported to the SEC that its cloud-based email system was breached and emails belonging to employees were accessed. The attackers are believed to be Russia’s Cozy Bear/Midnight Blizzard, which was also responsible for the recent Microsoft breach. HPE is still investigating the scope of the breach but reported that no operations were interrupted.
A massive data leak, known as the Mother of all Breaches (MOAB), has exposed over 26 billion records from numerous previous breaches. It has data from platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Weibo, and Tencent. The leaked dataset contains a staggering 12 terabytes of information and is likely the largest ever discovered. While it mainly consists of information from past data breaches, it is believed to also contain new data that has not been published before.
A financially motivated threat actor is targeting Mexican banks and cryptocurrency trading entities with a modified version of the AllaKore RAT. The RAT payload allows the threat actors to send stolen banking credentials and authentication information to a command-and-control server for financial fraud. Based on the large number of Mexico Starlink IPs used in the campaign and the addition of Spanish-language instructions to the modified RAT payload, the threat actor is believed to be based in Latin America.
Orca has discovered a new vulnerability, dubbed Sys:All, which impacts an estimated 250,000 GKE clusters. Orca researchers said that the vulnerability stems from a misunderstanding whereby users believe that the system:authenticated group in GKE includes only verified and deterministic identities as opposed to any Google authenticated account. This means that any Google user can obtain an OAuth bearer token and utilize it to authenticate to the GKE cluster and obtain any overly permissive permissions granted to the system:authenticated group.
Microsoft has released more information about the nation-state attack on its corporate infrastructure as well as guidance on how to respond to such attacks. The threat actor employed techniques such as password spray attacks, malicious use of OAuth applications, collection via Exchange Web Services, and the use of residential proxy infrastructure to obfuscate their activity. Microsoft also offers detection and hunting guidance for identifying similar attack tactics and techniques.
Arctic Wolf Labs has discovered a new loader called "CherryLoader" that is written in Go and has been used in recent intrusions. This loader allows threat actors to swap exploits without recompiling code. Arctic Wolf has provided technical analysis and indicators of compromise related to CherryLoader.
Galah is an LLM-powered web honeypot that is able to mimic various applications and respond to HTTP requests. It is compatible with OpenAI and utilizes a cache to reduce API costs.
pfuzz is a web fuzzer that outputs requests to stdout in the httpipe format instead of sending them. It is inspired by tools such as ffuf.
SSH-Snake is a tool designed to perform automatic network traversal using SSH private keys found on a system. SSH-Snake is self-replicating, self-propagating, and fileless. The repository links to a blog post that provides further details on how the tool works.