#31 The Best Blockchain Bang For Your Buck? (Click here to find out...)

Welcome to Edition #31 of 'This Week in Web3' - an all-in-one source for the most interesting Blockchain, Web3 and Metaverse content on LinkedIn, as curated by me! If you didn't catch these awesome posts, here's a quick recap...

💥 Best Blockchain Marketing Tactics on a Budget

You’ve got a tight budget, but need to grow your community. What is the best Blockchain bang for your buck? This week's Friday Poll focuses on one of Web3's most sought-after skills: Growth Hacking…

When you’re a start-up, or are in the early stages of growth, marketing spend is often seen as a ‘luxury’. But there are lots of options to help you get the message out about your amazing tech. Sometimes it’s about prioritising.

Interesting to see how close the voting was between developer relations activities (enabler the builders, use them as evidence and peer marketing to attract others) and some good old fashioned sh!tposting on Twitter (low cost, but of varying degrees of integrity and efficacy).

Check out the full post and community comments and experience here.

🤯 The Biggest Post of The Year: A Simple Guide to ZK

Nearly 200k of your tuned in to see Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn explain zero-knowledge technology in possibly the simplest and easiest-to-understand way I've ever seen. If you haven't see this 2min video, do yourself a favour and check it out...

If you're not already excited at the prospect of ZK technology, you should be. Here's why:

'Send proofs, not data'

We can create robust, global, automated networks to run apps and payments (Blockchain) but use unique cryptography to keep sensitive data:

1. Away from the public record (unless required)

2. Of third parties systems (reducing their data governance burden)

3. In the hands of their 'owner' (whether B2B, B2C, B2G, etc.)

The challenge with ZK tech is the same we faced with Blockchain in the early days: all the narrative was around how the tech worked, with very little around how the tech can be used to drive change.

So hopefully this small video will help make ZK a little less scary for you, and bring more eyes on the possibility of Dapp that use ZK. And, of course, if you're looking for a Blockchain that has ZK, smart contracts, and can be programmed with Typescript... Try Midnight...

Check out this awesome video here.

👨🏽🍳 12 Crypto Uses Cases For All The Haters

Who wants 12 use cases where Blockchain and Crypto are being used by millions of people in the 'real world'?...

'But Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem'

This phrase is one of my favourite (and most frustrating) intellectual shortcuts when it comes to Web3. At the end of the day, it just shows that some people should spend a little more time doing their research...... like this!

The good people at Bitwise Inc have prepared 12 use cases for you that can help you point the naysayers in the right direction, including:

- Ticketmaster (Tickets, obviously)

- Coinbase (Crypto wallets)

- Farcaster (Alternative social media)

- Render (Marketplace for Compute)

- Nouns DAO (Treasury Management)

- Ondo Finance (Real World Assets)

- Helium (Decentralised Mobile Network)

And much more... So if you feel like you need a little refresher on some great use cases, or are just at the beginning of your Web3 journey, get stuck in!

Full post and community comments can be found here.

🏎️ What Do Racing Drivers And DAOs Have In Common?

Want to see an Indy500 driver talk Blockchain, DAOs and on-chain governance? You HAVE to watch this...

The Polkadot treasury just crowdfunded the sponsorship of an Indy500 car, voted for entirely by DOT holders, using 100% on-chain crypto funds!

If this isn't the manifestation of decentralised governance for 'non Web3' activities, show me what is? The driver (Conor Daly) and his team made a proposal to the DOT treasury for funding, in exchange for having their logo and colour scheme on the car.

'But exchanges and L1s have been sponsoring F1 for years' you may say... And you'd be correct... Only those deals were coordinated and managed by business development teams, connecting with major promotional agencies. This time it's different, because the deal and the funding approval were all managed by the community of token holders through a democratic on-chain vote.

And a special mention goes to Conor Daly (the driver) who's main job is to drive a race car really really fast... He concisely and articulately describes Polkadot and the process of on-chain treasury management in just a couple of sentences on live TV. Salute to you sir...

Check out the full video here.

🗺️ All Of Blockchain On One Page (Sort Of)

Binance have produced a 1-pager that covers 'EVERYTHING' related to Blockchain, Crypto and Web3. Or have they?...

The map of Web3 has only been growing in the last few years, as infrastructure, new layers, and new domains emerge for Messari and others to report on.

There is even the helpful category of 'Other' for us to ponder over... (if you have to call it 'Other' have you really created MECE categories?)

So you'll find:

- Layer 1

- Layer 2

- Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

- Gaming & Metaverse (should not be '/' but I digress)

- Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs)

- Social

- Data Usage and Tooling

- Security and Privacy (albeit, I'd love to see more ZK here)

- Connectivity

- Automation and Storage

And of course, 'Other' appears twice... The community had a fair bit to say on the projects and categories that didn't make this list. Check the comments out here.

🤬 Why You're Not Getting A Web3 Job (And It's REALLY Obvious)

If you can’t find the jobs page, you WON’T get an interview!…

Rage farming is back! And this week, my frustration is with the good people of LinkedIn who message me with:

“Looks like you’re hiring. Here’s my CV. Let me know if you think I’d be a fit for any of the roles your looking for…”

I LOVE that LinkedIn makes it accessible for people to find their next roles, but as a hiring manager (and somewhat busy person) I need y’all to know:

1. It’s not my job to parse your CV and find relevant roles. That’s your job.

2. I’m not going to refer you if we haven’t worked together. That’s unethical.

3. I’m not going to book a 1hr call to tell you more about the job. That’s what the job spec is for.

And finally… If you’ve seen the ‘Hiring’ banner on my profile, and you haven’t taken the time to click on my profile and see the “Midnight and IOHK Jobs HERE” link, and CLICKED IT!… there’s a good chance you don’t have the initiative and ‘self-starter’ energy needed to be successful on my team.

I have no issues with ‘hey, I just applied for a role at Midnight’ messages btw. But if you’re showing any of the intellectual short-cuts listed above… PLEASE rethink your outreach strategy to prospective employers. 😮💨 Rant over…

🎁 Social Media Manager Job At Midnight

I need a Social Media Manager to help us share all our exciting work, events and content at Midnight. Are you in?

This could be one of the best jobs in Web3... If you're creative, have experience with Blockchain and Crypto, are interested to travel, have a passion to community, and want to work in a professional environment at a top Web3 company: this could be for you!

Details here: https://lnkd.in/eTvsE4-K

If you've been waiting for your change to join a major project, or you've just left another Web3 project and are looking for the next challenge, please APPLY. There may be other applicants, but there's only one YOU.

Please share this with your network, or tag a friend who has Social experience. Let's get them a dream job!...

📁 A DePIN Masterclass With on the Blockchain Won't Save the World Podcast

Want to learn more about DePIN? Listen to the latest Blockchain Won't Save the World Podcast with Porter Stowell from Filecoin Foundation

We talk about:

- A Filecoin 101 for those who are new here

- How to manage supply and demand in DePIN networks

- The art of the ‘deal’ for B2B, large-scale storage

- What more is needed for DePIN networks to become attractive to enterprises and a wider user base

⛓️ Integrating ALL THE BLOCKCHAINS with Jan-Jaap Jager and Chainstack 🛠️💙 on the Blockchain Won't Save the World Podcast

Want to meet the man who's trying to integrate ALL the Blockchains? That's no mean feat. Jan-Jaap Jager is transforming Web3 and making it easier for anyone to build Dapps on one or many different chains...

We've said this before, but Web3 will never reach 'mass adoption' if applications are hard to develop, and we don't provide tooling for developers and teams who don't want to learn random Blockchain coding languages.

Step forward Chainstack! It is their mission to make Blockchain development and infrastructure easy to use, and to give developers and organisations as much choice as possible when it comes to starting and supporting their Web3 journeys. Public. Private. Subnets. APIs. It's all here...

In this show we cover:

- The origins of Chainstack

- The problems with building on Blockchains today

- The importance of BaaS and SaaS for Web3 to scale

- The most exciting or impactful use cases that Chainstack enables

- What it takes to manage a portfolio of 25+ Blockchains

- Advice to anyone looking to build Dapps or Blockchain offerings

You can rewatch the LinkedIn Live here, before it goes to podcast this weekend.

👾 Launching Web3 Games with Banksters and Magic Eden

Blockchain Gaming is on the rise, and we've got Matt Biamonte from Magic Eden (marketplace) and Alexandru Carbunariu from Banksters (NFT-based game) to take you through the beautiful but complex process of launching a successful Web3 game.

NFTs are dead, right?

Wrong... Tokenisation of assets, be they 'real world' (e.g. real estate) or 'digital' (e.g. gaming items, rewards, loyalty) is accelerating rapidly. The part of the story that very few people get to see, is how games go from concept into the hands of the community (and creation of secondary market for sales of unwanted or tradeable items) through Marketplaces.

Magic Eden is one of the fastest growing, and best known NFT marketplaces out there, and Matt Biamonte, their lead for Gaming, is here to talk us through how ME work with gaming projects. We also welcome back Alexandru from Banksters to share their experience of preparing to launch on ME.

In this show we cover:

- What is the unique proposition of NFT Marketplaces?

- Where is the NFT market today in terms of maturity?

- What has been gamers' reaction to NFT gaming so far?

- What does it take to launch a project on Magic Eden?

- Case study: Banksters talk about working with Magic Eden for their coming launch on the 17th April.

My LinkedIn Profile (Go click the 🔔 icon and turn notifications on!)

Blockchain Won't Save the World Podcast

RightClickSaveTheWorld Podcast with Diego Borgo ᵍᵐ

5-Hour Blockchain Growth Training with Blockchain Training Alliance

30-Min Short Course: Getting a Job in Web3 with LinkedIn Learning

And if you're wondering what it's like to get a taxi to Token 2049 in Dubai, right now...