Neo Tokyo News: 07 - 14 Sept 2024

Bytes Already Has More Utility Than 99% of Other Altcoins

Neo Tokyo News: 07 - 14 Sept 2024

In this issue:

  • This Week in Neo Tokyo: Bytes Already Has More Utility Than 99% of Other Altcoins (by PhoenixxDown)

  • Are Node Sales the New Crypto Scam? (by Flower83)

This Week In Neo Tokyo:
Bytes Already Has More Utility Than 99% of Other Altcoins

This week saw the launch of airdrops to BYTES holders, kicking off with a collaboration with Karate Kombat! It was a week filled with exciting content where we dove deeper into learning about Karate Kombat and how this partnership benefits our community.

While BYTES already has more utility than 99% of other altcoins, there’s no harm in further solidifying that position and giving even more reasons to hold our native token. Moreover, this initiative, started by citizens, gives the meatbags among us a solid win—something to reward the faith they’ve shown by holding our token. In my opinion, it’s a genius move, as it will bring those who were either priced out or unsure about fully committing to an S1 or S2 even closer to us.

On this occasion, the $57K (17% more than originally set aside, thanks to the generosity of Karate Kombat) was split between the top 450 holders of BYTES (staked wallets not included). You can check if you made the cut here.

The partnership with Karate Kombat was just the first of these airdrops, and there will be many more along the way—so we hear. Keep an eye out on socials and announcement channels for what’s next.

Another big announcement this week was the continuation of Neo Tokyo’s long-term partnership with the legends at Altura. Interested in a grant for your project? Join the Altura Discord to find out more.

To help support the program, which is granting $50K per month, Neo Tokyo is sponsoring this month’s grant and giving away an S2 to the winner so they can join us, where they belong.

This is how things shaped up with the NT content:

Interlinked #46 - The team is joined by President Awesome and onlylarping of Karate Kombat to touch on key points ahead of their event at Token2049 in Singapore, including influencer fights and community building. As lucky citizens who made the top 450 cut have learned, their league is powered and governed by their token, and fans can use it to pick winners and earn on their Up Only Gaming App!

Lizard Labs AMA – Originally starting out as an NFT project, Lizard Labs has since evolved into the web3 gaming space and is turning heads with its ambitious plans for the future. Listen back here to hear all about it.

Market Monday – The team discusses BTC and alts being absolutely cooked for another week, NEAR’s interesting marketing stunt, "What are programmable NFTs?" and are joined by special guests onlylarping and George (aka CryptosRus) to get our questions answered on Karate Kombat. Things got wild when two of the fighters, Jenna and Yung Snak, cut promos on each other with pure savagery being exchanged. Volume down if you have children in the room. 😅 

NT Stream Team – Gaming Strategist, Kyle Wilson, streamed Nyan Heroes gameplay this week on Twitch, along with a Q&A. Relive the action here, and make sure you're signed up for Gaming Announcements in the Neo Tokyo Discord so you can play with Kyle and other streamers.

Meet Your Citizens – The founders of NextGenGaming, DylanDaVillain and DrKepper, join Block Editor in this week’s episode to talk about their love of web3 gaming, what led them to the Citadel, and forming NGG. We also get insights into their aspirations to drive mainstream adoption.

Age of Dino AMA – The founder of the Web3 MMO strategy game joins Ben and Nick to discuss their prehistoric gaming experience, which involves feeding dinosaurs, resource collection, park building, and more. Learn about their plans to build a sustainable P2E economy around their token by listening here.

Degen Digest – ZeHI is back from trekking around the Amazon, and he wasted no time getting the boys back together for Degen Digest’s relaunch. He’s joined by ButWouldYa as co-host, myself as a poor man’s replacement for the irreplaceable Shamsi, and Beau, the founder of Market Elites, to discuss how things are going one day before the big mint day took place. Watch back here.

Monad AMA – Representatives from the exciting new Layer 1 join the team for a deep dive. They’ve already completed a $225M raise and boast 1-second block times, along with 10,000 TPS and single-slot finality. Listen back in full here.

Interlinked #47 – Ben, Nick, and Jared are joined by Mike Levine, the founder of Plaiant Mojo, and posso.eth, the Director of Marketing, to dive deep into the award-winning indie game studio behind hits like GoGo Mojo, Mojo Melee, and Mojo Maker. Key discussions include escaping the echo chamber, lessons from working with VR, and how to make a fun game.

Twin Protocol AMA – Bill Inman and Stacey Engle join the AMA team, along with friend of NT, LadyTradeRa, to discuss how Twin Protocol unlocks your potential through the future of data. Their platform creates digital twins of individuals who can learn, interact, and engage on behalf of their human counterparts. Interested? Listen back here.

Want to know more about our great and powerful AMA team? Check out this deep dive on what they’ve done, their plans, goals, and more in this deep dive thread.

And finally, have you had the pleasure of meeting up with your fellow citizens IRL? If so, share your experience via the post above on X. Below is a pic of me with ZeHI, where we took on the crucial task of trying to conjure the bull run in the summer of 2023—in a car park just outside of London.

A few weeks later, we started seeing green candles everywhere. Coincidence? I think not. I’m wheeling it out again to do the business for us. Watch what happens now, it’s incredible.

Until next week, citizens.

Are Node Sales the New Crypto Scam?

Some scams in crypto are pretty obvious… you simply get rugged by a dev on pump.fun, or invest in an NFT who’s founder mysteriously dies after mint. But some are coveted, secret, sophisticated—and they take a while to unravel.

This year VC’s and project founders found themselves in a bit of a predicament, you see. It is an industry standard to have your tokens vested for (sometimes multiple) years after TGE. This is done to show commitment to the project. This way, they actually have to deliver, before they get their piece of the pay a hefty payday, so they don't just run away with the money. You know, how it should be.

Naturally, VC’s and founders need to find a way to evolve and innovate around this idea, in order to ensure their exit liquidity is readily available. This is partially done by sybilling their own airdrops and siphoning tokens meant for “the community” to themselves.

Another way to achieve this is through node sales.

So we have tokens, we have NFTs, and lately, teams and VC’s have conjured up another juicy thing; NODES. Given that it is an emerging market, not everyone’s definition is on the same page, but generally nodes are “things” that help “decentralize” the project. It is also usually buried under tons of technical jargon meant to dissuade even the most enthusiastic of readers and researchers.

Lately there are projects coming out there that try to sell you nodes as something that is vital for project’s growth, even though it is just a “filler” product that they can package in a way to get paid upfront, and can then decide how much of the obligations to deliver on the project.

Without naming names, quite a few projects popped up recently with their structure set up in a way that nodes make up for a significant percentage of the venue throughout which they would raise funds; some even aiming for 8 figure raises. But, as people on Twitter pointed out, in most cases, nodes aren’t necessary. This is why I would be cautious.

In fact, almost every node sale in the past has underperformed in terms of expectations from investors. Some promise monthly payouts or some sort of other passive income (generating crypto tokens native to the project) with emissions ranging well into a few years in the future.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, and not financial advice.

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