Moore's L2 law: every year Ethereum's L2's 10x their throughput

Qualcomm just announced a multiyear partnership with Meta to develop custom VR chips for future Quest headsets.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news during a press conference at Berlin's IFA tech show.

Qualcomm's already made the chips in Meta's VR headsets going back to the Oculus Go, and announced a partnership with Microsoft to make next-gen chips for its future AR smart glasses January's CES in Las Vegas.


The Qualcomm partnership promises "multiple generations of premium devices and experiences powered by custom VR platforms in the years to come," according to a statement from Qualcomm. 

In a comment from Mark Zuckerberg provided by Qualcomm, the partnership will bring "customized virtual reality chipsets -- powered by Snapdragon XR platforms and technology -- for our future roadmap of Quest products." 

When asked for further comment on the partnership via email, a Qualcomm representative clarified that the new customized chips will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR platform, but won't use Snapdragon Spaces, an AR software toolkit that Qualcomm's building to bridge phones and AR glasses. Instead, these future products will use Meta's Presence Platform for VR.

According to Qualcomm, the chips could show up in other, non-Meta devices, too. "The VR chipsets that are being designed as part of this collaboration are not exclusive to Meta, but we're excited to work together on a deeper engineering level that's a first for both companies. It's this type of collaboration that's foundational for the metaverse and we can't wait to show you what we'll build together."
Although Meta is working on future AR glasses of its own, Qualcomm hasn't confirmed any involvement in that part of Meta's metaverse roadmap: "At this time, we are strictly only talking about VR."

Coinbase Venture’s POV on the Web3 Developer Stack.

Web3 developer stack

As Web3 gains momentum, there’s an opportunity to invest in more robust developer tools and infrastructure that will unlock the next stage of Web3 innovation and adoption.

This landscape is a framework for thinking about the Web3 developer stack as it continues to evolve.

The Web3 Developer Stack as a nascent ecosystem of promising companies that empower developers with infrastructure and tooling to build on top of crypto network primitives.

Today, Web3 developers represent <1% of the global software developer community (~31.1M global software devs as per SlashDataHQ) given a fragmented developer experience and skepticism on blockchain's long-term viability.

Electric Capital compiled a report which shows that the number of monthly active Web3 developers reached all-time highs in 2021 (*Note: the report doesn’t count work on proprietary projects).

Compared to Web2, building in Web3 requires specialized expertise to interface with complex infrastructure and commonly involves redundant processes.

That said, the tooling that will help onboard the next 1M+ web3 developers is rapidly improving.

Coinbase segmented the Web3 developer stack into the following four layers:

-Protocols
-Infrastructure
-Developer Tools
-Application Enablement

Protocols are the underlying main blockchain architecture and settlement layer

-Layer 1
-Layer 2
-Bridges & Swaps

The infrastructure layer consists of foundational building blocks for creating Web3 apps on top of crypto network primitives

-Node Providers
-Wallet/Key Management
-Identity
-Decentralized Compute
-Decentralized Storage
-Oracles
-Interoperability Protocols

Developer Tools consist of platforms and services that are highly reliable at doing specific tasks across the Web3 developer journey

-Frameworks & IDEs
-Low-code / No-code
-Index & Query
-Test, Simulate & Monitor
-Secure & Audit
-Messaging
-Analytics

The application enablement layer consists of point solutions that provide user-facing applications access to Web3 use case primitives

(i.e, dev tooling for NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, Metaverse/GameFi).

While the framework and layers we highlighted will likely remain unchanged, we continue to see new developer tooling primitives emerge and expect the entire stack to evolve dramatically in the coming years

Substack 2021 gross revenue: $100m
Onlyfans 2021 gross revenue: $4.8bn

Saudi Arabia's Central Bank hires crypto chief

Saudi Arabia’s banking regulator recently appointed Mohsen AlZahrani to lead its virtual assets and central bank digital currency program in a sign of the Gulf state’s potential crypto ambitions. 

Saudi Arabia has until now taken a more cautious approach on virtual assets, with officials raising concerns about their speculative nature. Yet the emergence of the neighboring United Arab Emirates as a global crypto hub has created some urgency in Riyadh to draft more formal rules for the asset class,

AlZahrani, a former managing director at consultancy Accenture, reports to Ziad Al Yousef, the Central Bank’s deputy governor for development and technology.

Nigeria, Binance in early-stage talks for crypto-friendly economic zone

The proposed partnership aims to build a crypto-friendly digital city similar to the virtual free zone in Dubai.

The Nigerian government has held a preliminary meeting with crypto exchange Binance to potentially establish a special economic zone aimed at supporting crypto and blockchain-related businesses.
According to a Friday post from the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), the authority has held preliminary talks with Binance and technology infrastructure company Talent City to discuss the proposed digital city, referred to as a “Virtual Free Zone.”
NEPZA managing director Adesoji Adesugba said the proposed zone will be a first in West Africa and act similar to Dubai’s virtual zones, which are designed to provide crypto-friendly laws, regulations and tax incentives for crypto businesses.

Many aspects of the visa/passport/residency/citizenship system for fiat countries are applicable to thinking about what migration between crypto countries looks like.

The v0 is a passport stamp on your ENS by a given DAO that grants access to allied DAOs.

Each NFT-gated digital community needs to work on its own, but eventually you get circulation between allied communities.

Like “login with FB”, but decentralized.

Ethereum activates Bellatrix upgrade as last step before The Merge — link

Meta Boosts Virtual-Reality Ambitions

Recent events reveal how the murky concept of the metaverse is being refined and shaped through immersive technology, but also deals and legal battles.

Meta acquired Berlin startup Loefelt, maker of tools specializing in haptic technology, which can replicate the experience of touch in a virtual setting.

The news comes as the company remains locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission over a bid for virtual-reality studio Within Unlimited.

The FTC in July said that Meta was already a key player at each level of the virtual-reality sector and was trying to use its financial might to dominate the industry. The technology is considered a key component for building and supporting immersive online experiences.

Can you feel it?

Asked in a recent interview with podcast host Joe Rogan if Meta could use haptic feedback in virtual-reality games to make users feel experiences like those of the film “The Matrix,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “I just think that so much of our experience is our body and not just our mind.” Read the story.

"AI And The Limits Of Language" good article on a big open question in my mind - how much can an AI learn from internet text alone? what if added a lot of images/videos from the internet? do we have to reach all the way to embodied agents?

Google AI introduce an ML-generated sensory map that relates thousands of molecules and their perceived odors, enabling the prediction of odors from unseen molecules and providing a potential tool to address global health issues like insect-borne disease.

Meta Connect, Oct. 11. Don’t sleep on this one

The 1,000 Chinese SpaceX engineers who never existed

If you were just looking at his LinkedIn page, you’d certainly think Mai Linzheng was a top-notch engineer.

With a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua, China’s top university, and a master’s degree in semiconductor manufacturing from UCLA, Mai began his career at Intel and KBR, a space tech company, before ending up at SpaceX in 2013. Except all is not as it seems.

The profile of “Mai Linzheng” is actually one of the millions of fraudulent pages set up on LinkedIn to lure users into scams. Scammers like Mai claim affiliation with prestigious schools and companies to boost their credibility before connecting with other users, building a relationship, and laying a financial trap.

Victims have now lost millions of dollars through scams that originated on the platform, and the problem is only growin

NBA partners with Sorare to launch the first NFT-based fantasy basketball game

The game will be released in time for the 2022-23 season and will allow fans to put NFT-based digital collectibles into action.

The game will provide fans a new opportunity to interact with the league and compete through a unique fantasy gaming experience that offers users the ability to create a lineup of NFT-based digital collectibles representing their favorite players and teams to earn points based on the real-life performance of NBA players.

As part of the partnership, Sorare will have the rights to utilize official NBA league and team logos across its products.

All sectors posted negative performances in the month of August.

Metaverse and DeFi sectors lost the most, returning -23% and -21%, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Exchange sector and the Privacy sector performed the best on a relative basis, returning -3% and -4%, respectively.

• When looking at 1Y performance, the Metaverse sector has significantly outperformed the market YoY with a return of -5%. The Metaverse sector is comprised of assets such as Decentraland (MANA), Sandbox (SAND), Axie Infinity (AXS), Apecoin (APE), and STEPN (GMT).

• In terms of risk-adjusted returns (Sharpe ratio), ETH outperformed BTC with a ratio of 1.59 versus 1.0.

• BTC dominance fell slightly over the course of August, starting off the month at 40% and closing at 37%, Historically, BTC dominance trends increase during downtrends in the crypto market.

Today’s large language models tend to have limited reasoning powers, and are not good at explaining themselves.

To address these issues, DeepMind has developed a language-model based question-answering system that is faithful to the laws of logic:

The “faithful” reasoning system performs well at tasks that require multiple reasoning steps, and generates an interpretable reasoning trace along the way.

While the Merge is likely to cause a reduction in ether's supply, making it a deflationary asset, low network usage may delay the expected bullish effect

Ethereum's long-awaited technological overhaul, the Merge, is just a week away and holders of the blockchain's native token ether (ETH) may be feeling giddy because the upgrade is widely projected to establish ETH as a deflationary cryptocurrency – one with a depreciating supply – and bring more buyers to the market.

The supposedly bullish pivot, however, may remain elusive for some time, according to Singapore-based crypto trading giant QCP Capital.

"The uber-bullish thesis is that ETH 2.0 will immediately herald a new era of deflationary supply for ETH," strategists at QCP wrote in a recently published report. "This is not entirely true. For now, at least."

The QCP strategists, led by co-founder and Chief Investment Officer Darius Sit, said low network usage could delay ether's transformation into a deflationary cryptocurrency.

"Where the bullish kicker will come is in the burn rate – which in the midst of [crypto] winter is not looking so bullish right now," QCP strategists noted.
The burn rate – the amount of ether tokens taken out of circulation daily due to the protocol burning of a portion of transaction fees paid in the cryptocurrency – is essentially tied to the network usage, which has cooled this year due to the bear market.

Stimulation of the vagus nerve strengthens the communication between the stomach and the brain

The nervous system takes in sensory stimuli, processes them and triggers reactions such as muscle movements or pain sensations. A few years ago, a network in the brain was identified that is coupled with signals from the stomach and presumably influences the human feeling of hunger and satiety.

Now, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Nils Kroemer of the University Hospitals of Tübingen and Bonn has shown for the first time that non-invasive stimulation of the vagus nerve at the ear can strengthen the communication between stomach and brain within minutes.

The vagus nerve is responsible for controlling many aspects of human behavior: This cranial nerve connects several important organ systems with the brain and thus supports the transmission of endogenous signals.
These help, for example, in the goal-directed search for food by tuning the reward system for food stimuli when the stomach is empty. Previous research showed that the vagus nerve can regulate digestion via the brain. This mechanism is relevant for therapeutic applications because the vagus nerve can be stimulated non-invasively.
With a new study, the team of Ph.D. student Sophie Müller and Prof. Dr. Nils Kroemer addresses the previously unanswered question of how exactly the modulation via the brain works.

The number of unique wallets that purchased an NFT on a monthly basis has been on a slow downward trend, at just under 250,000 wallets in August, which is almost 50% down from the peak in January — link

EU presents project to fight counterfeiting by using NFTs

The European Union has recently announced that is working on a system that will use blockchain and NFTs as part of its fight against the counterfeiting of physical goods.

The system proposed will be designed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, and is the product of more than five years of work. A document issued this month explains that the organization has already selected a high-level architecture for this task, and details generalities about how the system will work.

Intellectual property (IP) holders will create digital tokens (twin NFTs) to prove that a group of produced goods are authentic. These IP holders will have to be previously included as approved signatories to create these products on the tracking blockchain.

The solution will then allow for supply chain tracking as the products are transported through different checkpoints, allowing the IP holders to be certain that the products that reach stores are authentic.

Implementation

The European Union Intellectual Property Office hopes to have a working system by the end of 2023, but to achieve this objective, it will have to create a registry system to group all of the IP holders, logistics operations, and retailers in the EU. To better achieve its objective, the report states that the system will seek to be interoperable with existing supply chain tracking solutions.
If the European Union manages to implement this system by the end of 2023, it will be one of the first applications of blockchain technology at that scale for the objective. However, blockchain tech has also been used for supply line tracking before. Recently, Vechain, an enterprise blockchain project, announced a partnership with Orionone, a global supply chain technology solution, with the objective of integrating blockchain into its stack of working technologies.

The European Union is also currently discussing MiCA, a union-wide law proposal for regulating cryptocurrencies.