Hi, Web3? It’s us... the Web2 giants... 💾

Hey everyone, Happy Tuesday!

Over the weekend, one of our awesome subscribers shared a recent article announcing Amazon’s upcoming NFT initiative. First of all, we love when you all engage with us and share what you’re learning about the space, so please keep it coming! If you read about anything interesting, shoot us an email because chances are there’s something within the article that we haven’t explored yet. Second of all, the Amazon article sparked a deeper interest in us to see what these massive Web2 tech companies are up to as they create their own lane in Web3. 

To kick things off, we’ll dive into what’s happening over at Amazon!

As the world’s largest retailer, Amazon is positioned well to try their hand at Web3 

Word on the street is that Amazon’s newest project is launching a digital assets enterprise this spring. While there aren’t many public details available, it probably comes as no surprise that Amazon has been toying with the idea of how to make their grand entrance into web3–between selling NFTs, allowing crypto as a payment, and creating play-to-earn games, the possibilities seem endless for this tech giant. One of the biggest considerations for Amazon’s entry into the digital assets world is how it will impact current market leaders such as OpenSea. Amazon’s customer base alone would be enough to make a serious splash in the NFT world, but is that a good thing? Isn’t Web3’s whole value proposition around cutting out the middlemen and putting the power back in the hands of the creators? 

As we learn more about Amazon’s plans, we’re challenging ourselves to think critically about whether these moves are opportunistic or if they push the ethos of Web3 forward. Time will tell! 

Is Meta more than a Metaverse?

According to insights by Coindesk, popular NFT creators, including Micah Johnson, Drifter Shoots and Refik Anadol, have used Instagram’s NFT marketplace to sell their art… and they’re selling out in seconds. 

As one of the largest social media platforms and a hub for creators across the world to showcase their art, Meta capitalized on the opportunity to create their own NFT marketplace for select creators. We also know that Meta has taken a serious hit on their metaverse division, so it makes sense why they leaned into their strengths with creators to find opportunity. 

As of now, they have launched their digital collectibles feature in 100 countries where the users are enabled to connect their digital wallets. This feature is only available for Polygon, Ethereum and Flow NFTs though. It’ll be interesting to see how Meta pivots over the next few months and years!

That ~$60B Canadian retailer you should know about (and probably do)

That company is Shopify, the multinational ecommerce platform helping with online and point of sale transactions. Shopify’s leadership team members are enthusiastic supporters of Web3 and all that it entails. CEO, Tobi Luke tweeted:

And, Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein, said: 

“I think the future of retail and commerce will happen everywhere, on every surface area. That may be online, in the metaverse, AR, or VR. It may be offline at a beautiful boutique or a great farmer’s market.”

Now it’s one thing to have all this enthusiasm, but Shopify is turning their ambitions into reality. And that’s where Shopify started its efforts in Web3: augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). In addition to filing for several AR patents that can do things like measure your body to suggest clothing sizes, they also launched an AR shopping experience, Shopify AR, in 2018, which uses 3D assets and videos of products to give customers a better understanding of their size and function.

And let’s not forget NFTs. In 2021, Shopify launched a beta version of its NFT-supported marketplace. Here, you and I can buy and mint NFTs across multiple blockchains like Ethereum and Polygon. What makes this market so important is that unlike other NFT marketplaces where merchants need to accept the cryptocurrency of the blockchain the NFTs are minted on, Shopify enabled payments on cards, Shop Pay, debit. Everyone can play now without any upfront transaction issues. 

Imagining all the papers we could have “written” when Microsoft invests in ChatGPT…

Over the past few weeks, ChatGPT, the auto-generative artificial intelligence chatbot, has taken the world by storm given many different use cases, ranging from writing quality pieces of work in academia to potentially replacing customer service agents. Nonetheless, this technology caught the attention of a tech giant: Microsoft.

Since 2019, Microsoft has been developing a partnership with ChatGPT creator company, OpenAI. The intention of the partnership was not only to break new ground in AI but democratize it for everyone. The partnership started with a $1B investment in 2019, but rumors say investment might be as high as $10B now. Imagine what these two companies could do together with $10B??

OpenAI isn’t the only place Microsoft is investing in Web3 though. Microsoft was also a part of ConsenSys’ recent $450M fundraising round, pushing a valuation of $7B. Who is ConsenSys, you ask? If you’ve ever heard of or used MetaMask, you’ve used ConsenSys. As a refresher, MetaMask is one of the most popular hot wallets on the internet, with over 30M users. And ConenSys is the driving force behind it. Microsoft is all in ConsenSys so much so that its stopped directing clients to Microsoft Azure’s blockchain services and began collaborating with ConsenSys instead,

What does this mean for you?

There’s a lot of quotes out there that could describe what large, incumbent Web2 players are thinking when faced with a new internet world that disrupts yours. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” or “If you can’t beat em, join em” might be coming to mind. For some companies, they’re prepared to spend $10B a year to create a Wii-Sports looking metaverse (sorry we had to) and for others it's investing millions, if not billions, in companies that are leading the charge in this new tech wave. Lesson learned: don’t sleep on these big tech players. They have money to spend and they aren’t afraid to spend it. 

See you next week!