Volume #2: Wallet safety, smart contracts and how to survive in crypto.
Your weekly Web3 round-up.
Volume #2 of High Five Friday’s is here and as usual, it was a busy and fast-moving week in Crypto.
Let’s dive into our Friday 5 to keep you up to date and ready for the week ahead.
The High Five at a Glance
Hot Tip: Wallet safety tip to avoid new scam
Tweet: How to read a smart contract
Podcast: Cobie on ‘How to survive in crypto’
Stat: NFTs are pumping to start 2022
Learning: The purpose of different coins
🎁 Crypto Tip of the Week
Hot Tip: Always check the transaction (txn) before signing it on your MetaMask (MM) wallet, and never give permission for “unlimited approval”.
Every week there seems to be a new scam out there aimed at draining all your tokens from your MetaMask wallet. One scam that’s surfaced recently is the “unlimited approval” hack that allows the hacker to steal the funds for the amount approved, written into the smart contract. (Note: a hardware wallet doesn’t protect you again this hack). So, always check the txn before signing!
For more information on wallets, check out our guide on Crypto Wallets.
🐦 Tweet tweet of the week week
This tweet thread is a little more advanced but at a minimum, it is important to understand what Smart Contracts are and why they’re important.
“A smart contract is a program that executes code on the blockchain when conditions are met. Parties sign the contract digitally, giving it permission to execute. This could be anything from sending money to a friend, to fractionalizing an NFT.”
Web 3 has full transparency built into projects through smart contracts since they are viewable by anyone. As you advance along your crypto path, understanding smart contract will give you a leg-up in analyzing the value in prospective projects and in avoiding scams.
🎙️ Spotlight Podcast
Cobie joins the Bankless team with ‘How to Survive in Crypto’.
Cobie has been a cultural staple in the Crypto space over the past 10 years. He sees the macro trends, he’s made all the mistakes and here he gives a healthy dose of skepticism and curiosity in how to survive in Crypto. Well worth the listen, here is a snippet below to help you take precautions before ‘aping’ into the next coin you feel like you’re early on.
The biggest challenge for retail investors: Unfair terms of entry (of taking a risk)
“Once the FCC started to regulate ICOs (initial coin offering), projects would raise in private prior to launch which allowed only insiders (professional investors / VCs / Influencers) early-entry and retail investors could only buy it in market, when the insiders were already up ~100x. Since retail wants to be early, it opens them up to scams for fair market launch coins. Whereas the founders with long-term vision for their projects (often the better projects) are maybe going… shit… regulation is something we have to contend with, maybe we should raise from professional investors until we get it right.”
Listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
✍️ Spotlight Stat
NFTs off to a hot start in 2022.
It appears the historic run for NFTs in 2021 is continuing into 2022. Some factors include ‘blue-chip’ NFT projects like Doodles and Mutant Ape Yacht Club continuing their quick-paced rise, growth in female focused projects like World of Women and rapid growth of new markets with the release of PhantaBear NFT by mega-star Jay Chou.
In the first 11 days of 2022, OpenSea has done 11.7% of the volume for all of last year.
📖 Learning of the week
This week Tesla announced they would test out using Dogecoin as a payment option (for merch, at least). While Dogecoin is considered a meme coin, it does hold an advantage over Bitcoin for payments - with lower transaction fees and its ability to make more transactions per second (33 vs 7, respectively).
In this regard, the inflationary Dogecoin acts as a better medium of exchange, while Bitcoin prevails as a Store of Value, with its finite number of 21 million tokens. Store of Value refers to how an asset maintains its payment power in the short and long term - i.e. holds its value!
Remember, each coin and token is designed for a specific purpose and use case. Learn more about different types of cryptocurrencies here.
One more thing! Since we’re new here, we have one quick favour to ask.
If you have any friends who are interested in Crypto, but not sure to start, feel free to share this newsletter. We’d love to have them join us on the journey. :)