BeReal vs Instagram

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👉 These are the crazy things I learned last week.

1/ If you haven't heard of BeReal - the Instagram Killer from France - you have to slide out from your digital rock!

The idea is simple:

Everyday at a different time, everyone is notified simultaneously to capture and share a Photo in 2 Minutes.

That way, instead of posting well-manicured pictures, you post "real" photos of your everyday life.

The app is getting traction in the U.S., and Instagram is already testing (copying?) a similar feature.

Have you used BeReal? What do you think? 🤔

2/ In the past, I've experimented with my DAO in creating Virtual Influencers and, more specifically, creating the first Greek Virtual Influencer.

But for various reasons, we have abandoned the project (for now?).

Of course, the space of Virtual Influencers is still growing, and one of them signed up with a record company for his rap album.

Sadly, the A.I. Virtual Influencer was kind of racist, and the company pulled out, following the steps of Microsoft's racist A.I.

3/ If you are an engineer, I guarantee you that you don't know this tool I used for my NFT Ticketing platform.

I hope you remember that I released an NFT Ticketing Platform a couple of weeks ago as part of Polygon's hackathon. It was built in 2 weeks (20 hours in total) by one person (that's me!), and it was tons of fun.

The technologies that I used to build a scalable and decentralized ticketing platform are:

1. Python (Flask)
2. Solidity
3. TailwindCSS
4. AlchemyAPI
5. IPFS & Filecoin
6. Google Cloud
7. Docker
8. Sendgrid
9. Polygon
10. DaVinci Resolve

Do you recognize all these tools? Can you name which one was used for what purpose without googling? Do you know any of these tools?

4/ On September 6th, the long-awaited Ethereum Merge starts, and by September 15th, we will have "the new Ethereum".

This is an iconic moment for the tech space (I won't say for humanity because it is cringe-y) as Ethereum - the SuperComputer crypto-blockchain - switches from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

What does Proof of Stake mean? Here is a very good explanation.

5/ A new web3 platform exclusively funding new movies launched by Roman Coppola, Kevin Smith, and Steven Soderbergh.

The entertainment business is trying to embrace web3 as more creators join the crypto space.

That's all for now. See you next week! 🚀

-- Jon V (as in Victory)

- Fri 26 August 2022