In their original form, they’re far darker than the harmony-washed Disney versions — and thus a far more fitting metaphor for the news this time around.

Story One

Story time 

Once upon a time, deep in the dark forest where blockchain meets Silicon Valley ideology, lived three ambitious founders who decided that IP had to be disrupted by putting it onchain. Disregarding advisors telling them otherwise, they moved on to raise $130 million from top crypto VCs such as a16z and built their use-case specific Layer-1 chain. Just as in the original Grimm's tales, one looks for a peaceful resolution in vain. 

On August 16th, one of the co-founders, Jason Zhao, tweeted that after 3 years, he was leaving Story Protocol after an incredible ride. In fact, so incredible that the chain now produces a staggering $45 in revenue on a good day. I am not great at math, but considering the billions worth of IP tokenized on the chain, it does not add up.

Crypto Twitter quickly erupted in outrage at this departure, conveniently timed just around a new round of token unlocks. Whether Jason left voluntarily or was pushed out remains unclear.

What appears obvious to many is that it's just another slow rug, another one of those schemes to "dump on retail" as Joseph Schirazzi posted in response to the launch of a treasury company dedicated to the Story protocol token $IP. 

Takeaway: Money can't buy PMF. 

Story Two

Are we the baddies?

Remember when, for a while, outsiders would bring up that, all his nazi allegiances aside, even Kanye West could not bring himself to launch a cryptocurrency? That time is over. The lure of a quick buck and the attention that comes with it has got the upper hand and Kanye came down from his high horse to meet us in the trenches. 

Advertised as a "concept for a new financial system", Yeezy is complete with a payment solution and a debit card to spend it. As the Solana crowd cheered on, the coin quickly reached a $3 billion market cap, but people soon came to their senses, realizing that 94% of the supply was owned by insiders who did what insiders typically do.

The most interesting part of this launch wasn't the sheer lack of dignity once again on display, but the way it was executed to dissuade sniping bots. The team deployed 25 contracts and had one picked at random in the last minute to issue the token. 

In other parts of Solanaland, the community invested in coins supposedly allied with Kanye, such as Swasticoin and Yeezy crashed out hard, some going as far as planning the next Holocaust as retribution.

Takeaway:  At the risk of coming across as a boomer, certain jokes are not fun. We should be more chalant about these things, not write them off as "just another meme." 

Story Three

Privacy, I don't know her 

An attitude frequently encountered under surveillance capitalism. It's easy to look at the UK and think "Haha", but in a way, we're all complicit in the erosion of our own privacy when we tweet in real-time about our whereabouts and innermost thoughts. The cognitive dissonance of privacy maxis live-tweeting aside, the much-awaited government recognition of crypto has had some lesser great side effects.

Take the US Treasury, now concerned with DeFi. In an effort to comply with KYC/AML requirements, they are exploring whether identity checks should be directly integrated into DeFi protocols. 

While just in the exploration stage, it's still worrisome to see such ideas out in the open. For one, no DeFi protocol wants the hassle of admin work associated with identity checks. There's also the idea that DeFi was supposed to be open and accessible to all. 

Most importantly, though, this could quickly grow into an absolute privacy nightmare. DeFi protocols already act as a treasure trove for North Korean hackers, I reckon, adding our identity to that would be their cherry on top. 

Takeaway: What's the point of DeFi if we just add the same gatekeeping mechanisms as in TradFi?

Fact of the week: On the topic of fairy tales, the brothers famously associated with them are the Brothers Grimm. In an attempt to ensure that tales would not be lost in the era of industrialization, they wrote them down and had them published. However, as their collection grew in popularity, the brothers faced harsh criticism and saw themselves forced to edit out things such as premarital sex (Rapunzel) or mutilations (Cinderella). They succeeded in preserving the tales, but the versions we read to our kids today are far removed from the more brutal, moralistic tales they sought out to capture.

Naomi for CoinJar

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