In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: We like the Relentless Winning (by PhoenixxDown)

•  The Starknet Fail: A Case Study Of How Not To Do An Airdrop (by Flower83)

• Blast Off: Crypto's Decisive Breakouts Signal Bull Market (by CryptoTots)

These recaps are getting longer again. Lord commanders, please give your boy some room to breathe. I joke, we like the relentless winning.

Citizens, let's extend a warm welcome to Karel Vuong, Co-Founder of Treasure, joining us in The Citadel. Many of us have been following the progress of $MAGIC for some time, so it's fantastic to finally have you with us.

Another newcomer through our gates is the mobile gaming studio, InfiniGods, building a suite of fun, free-to-play, Web3-powered games. Another exceptional addition to our Neo Tokyo family.

Another week, another partnership, this time with the self-proclaimed “EA Sports of Web3 Gaming,” Versus-X. What can citizens expect? An NT exclusive VIP zone, $BYTES integration (yes, wagering with $BYTES), and exclusive wearables. Full announcement here.

This past Monday marked our 20th Town Hall. If you missed it, you can listen back to the audio recording here. On the agenda were the usual division announcements, Q&A feedback, and notes on what’s being worked on. Prominently discussed was the Citizen Directory now having a World Map view, allowing you to see who’s most local to you for those citizen meet-ups—whether it's for serious business and important buildoor planning, or just getting steaming in your local bar together. Why not both?

Another exciting update was the kickoff of the NT Agency; an initiative to enable service providers to generate new clients and revenue, while boosting the Neo Tokyo network to even greater heights! Led by Citizen Slime as the Agency Account Executive, this looks to be an absolute game-changer for those looking to extend their visibility and connect with potential clients.

Another stacked week on the content front from the News and AMA teams. NTN hosted NodeRunners on the most recent episode of Market Monday, and for those listening carefully to ButWouldYa’s spellbinding close-out, you may have an inkling as to who our next guest will be.

We also released our monthly recap video for January, so if you missed anything, we got you covered right here below:

And this week's Degen Digest saw the coming together of two divisions with the team being joined by one half of the AMA division, Cryptoetheus. Interlinked, always 🤝 Watch it here.

And on that note, Interlinked Episode #16, hosted by Ben Gothard and Cryptoetheus, featured special guest Jason Brink of Gala Games. Jason has possibly the most fire official title in Web3, “Barbarian: Path of the Berserker;” he’s an interesting character who’s doing exceptional things—check out the discussion below:

Castle of Blackwater, a 2D social deduction game on Beam, was one of the AMAs featured this past week. Not only that, but they announced their citizenship and have joined us in The Citadel. We just keep getting stronger with each passing day! SpaceNation were also guests with the AMA team this week. You can recap on what went down here and learn about this Web3 Space Opera MMORPG here. Yes, Space Opera! Sounds fun.

Orangie made his NT Stream Team debut playing Shrapnel for $100K, and you can watch back to see how our man did here.

Today sees yet another CitCap investment opportunity, this time Chronoforge is on the books, and citizens are fired up for this. If you’re on the fence about it, go check out the recent AMA they had with the CitCap team. Investment goes live at 12:00 EST today!

To finish off, a few short scoops: A shoutout to @BladesEliot who has been behind those clean new design posters Neo Tokyo has been dropping on X. Aren’t they handsome? Show our fellow citizen some love here.

Becker hasn't been doing any heavy marketing for Neo Tokyo lately; NT’s work has been speaking for itself for the longest now. Despite that, Becker dropped a post on X just to remind the masses what’s happening here. Interact with it to support The Citadel.

Lastly, a massive congratulations to our friend, ZeHI, on the successful launch of his IM-1 Moon Mission carrying the ILO-X payload to the lunar South Pole! It’s been years of hard work to see this come to fruition, and we’re extremely proud of you. Watch the launch below, and learn more here via TVD’s post.

Zodiac Swap is ready to facilitate the trading and growth of @mainnetz; all set to go live on February 16th between 10:00 am EST and 4:00 pm EST!

Make sure to have notifications on and follow their official channels to stay up to date! 🔔

• Website: ZodiacSwap.com

• X: @ZodiacSwapDEX

• Telegram: ZodiacSwapDEX

Learn more via our thread about why so many are building on MainnetZ.

It’s Valentines Day.
I woke up disappointed.
I saw a big fat zero for my Starknet allocations across all 11 wallets.

How? I mean; I admit I started a bit late, but at least some of them should be eligible, no? No, actually no. Because, you see, not every project does airdrops the right way.

Oh no, some teams actually mess up their distribution royally and fail with epic proportions. Turns out I wasn’t alone in this, and my Twitter timeline was pure gold on that day. So what happened in this specific case?

On February 14th, 2024, what was supposed to be a day of love and celebration turned into a nightmare for many in the crypto community. Starknet - a highly anticipated L2 project, posted their eligibility checker, only to end up severely disappointing their community. It turned into a real FUD fest on social media, with many feeling cheated and disillusioned.

In short, the issue was that instead of rewarding genuine community members and early adopters, StarkNet heavily favored developers (some getting 1800 tokens for a single GitHub commit), insiders, and investors.

The criteria for eligibility was perhaps one of the worst for any airdrop to date. For starters, one of the most glaring issues was that they decided to completely disregard the 8-week engagement farm campaign they ran months ago. Additionally, providing liquidity to pools on their chain was not taken into account as one of the parameters at all, despite its crucial role in supporting core decentralized applications.

What hurt some genuine users the most, was the absurd disqualification of wallets that did not have more than 0.005 ETH in their wallet at the time of the snapshot. You could have thousands of ETH locked in liquidity pools, but the team was too lazy to check, thus rendering these wallets ineligible. Not punished with a score decrease like Arbitrum. No, completely disqualified. The complaints, comments and memes piled up quite frequently on this one:

Adding insult to injury, one wallet received 360k $STRK with almost zero on-chain activity. Resulting in tweet gems like these:

But wait there is more. A day before the eligibility criteria release, a wallet-checker website Wenser got everyone excited. Starknet, back in the day, supposedly told people that early users of Ethereum (mainnet) will also be eligible.

But then, of course, Starknet failed to uphold their promises on this one as well. The FUD was so bad that Wenser had to post an explanation.

To top it all off, the StarkNet team's decision to technically launch the token on-chain two years ago (with no liquidity to trade it of course) meant that their vesting schedule technically (and legally) began years ago. The team and investors will be able to dump on their community in just two months after the “actual” TGE.

Many disillusioned users withdrew their support (and funds) from Starknet, posting “never looking back” tweets.

This debacle serves as a cautionary tale, highlighting the importance of transparency, fairness, and community engagement in token distribution events. It will live in our hearts as an example of how to not do an airdrop. 

For now, if we can’t enjoy the gains, we surely can enjoy the memes and FUD. Here are some more funny posts below. We will catch the next one. Soon.

In the first blossoms of a new bull spring may be emerging, it pays to zoom out and explore the distinct yet interrelated themes shaping this market shift. It’s becoming clearer that it is the convergence of multiple narratives that has consolidated crypto's foundational role in finance's digital transformation.

Could surging institutional adoption signal crypto going mainstream?

The unprecedented success of Bitcoin ETFs from giants like BlackRock and Fidelity, with their offerings shattering industry records, signals a profound shift. Their meteoric rise stems from heightened investor appetite no doubt, but also crypto's growing legitimacy as a mature asset class within traditional finance.

As this trend gains momentum globally, Bitcoin solidifying the $50k support is no mere price milestone. Fueled largely by ETF inflows, it underscores strategic shifts in investment approaches towards digital assets. Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy doubling down on Bitcoin holdings further amplifies this mainstreaming trend. Institutions are demonstrating robust confidence in crypto's future value.

Price action is but one side of the coin, so what’s happening under the hood?

On the technology front, similar tailwinds can be witnessed across chains and use cases - showcasing the thriving ethos of experimentation and progress central to crypto philosophies.

Ethereum crossing 25% staked with a pretty long queue awaiting validation, reflects tremendous commitment from the community further securing the network's ambitious roadmap. Decentralization and active participant oversight remain core governing principles.

Equally, DeFi protocols on Ethereum and rival chains like Solana have also topped 2022 highs reaching nearly $100 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL). Resurgent decentralized lending and trading protocols like Aave, Uniswap and Raydium speak to the sector's resilience and enormous growth prospects compared to traditional finance.

Are digital assets supplanting traditional investments?

Mirroring the contrasting fortunes of Internet companies during the dotcom era, current market indicators outline a profound shift amongst investors - now pivoting from old safe haven options towards digital scarce assets.

As gold ETFs face mounting outflows with waning prices, Bitcoin funds have chartered record inflows surging 5x over the last year. This divergence outlines investors increasingly embracing crypto's digital attributes - transparency, accessibility, inflation resistance - over physical assets amidst global financial turmoil.

At the end of the day…

As this convergence of soaring adoption, decentralized technology innovation and shifting investment preferences continue gaining momentum globally, the future (the one we’ve weathered years of bear for) is unfolding before our eyes.

These tailwinds are likely to persist going forward. However, we shouldn’t forget that the markets giveth and taketh away . Yet for all the turbulence, the long-term trajectory seems clear - one where digital assets cement their integral role across finance and beyond.

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

That’s it for our 34th edition of the Neo Tokyo Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you don’t miss out on future content.

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