Ohnahji U Syllabus for February 11th, 2023 (Wild Times in Web3)
🎼 “Now, now, now / Now once upon a time in the West / Mad man lost his damn mind in the West / Loveless, kidnap a dime, nothin’ less / Now I must, put his behind to the test (can you feel me?).” 🎵
Hello Alphites, future Alphites, and friends of Alphites! My apologies for keeping you waiting in the Study Hall; things have been busy both on and off campus! Thankfully, ONJU Communications Major Janine has been keeping her ears to the sidewalk, so she’ll be helping us all out on this one! So grab your stuff; we’ll be waiting for you right here to jump in and start.
This space took place live on 2/11/23 at noon PST and was hosted by Ohnahji University Founder Ohnahji B. The space has been moving so quickly and so much tea is happening in the W3B streets; we had to spill!
OHNAHJI U NEWS
The fabulous Ohnahji fam has been up to some thangs lately, namely minting tokens! There was an awesome mint party last night with many new Ohnahji hitting the blockchain, shooting us up to 4728 tokens in 936 wallets! The Black History Month promo of Mint One, Get One, is still running, which cuts the price in half to .005eth, making tokens an even better deal than they already are! Shot us up to 936 wallets
The Ohnahji University Metaverse campus also launched on January 21st on Spatial.io, making it available on mobile devices, desktops, and Oculus. The campus allows us to assemble with fellow Alphites and showcase art collected from the Ohnahji fam! In addition, Ohnahji B recently wrangled the VR headset from his little ones and was able to experience it in VR. We recently hit the trending page on Spatial with nearly 200 visitors to the campus. To experience the sprawling property, go to Spatial.io and search “OhnahjiU.”
WEB 3 THIS WEEK
The Kraken is Released…(from the US, at least)
Centralized cryptocurrency exchange Kraken recently came under fire from the SEC for failing to register their staking mechanism for crypto coins. For those unfamiliar with staking, it’s a process where users deposit their coins via smart contract for the protocol to help validate consensus models or to secure lending protocols.
With Kraken, the SEC found that their staking function violated securities guidelines. Since it’s a centralized organization, it must abide by financial rules to inform the government of “investment contracts” where users invest money guaranteed to be returned to them as profit. Consequentially, Kraken was fined 30 million USD, and US customers are no longer allowed to use the staking functionality on the exchange.
This is a sign that crypto regulation is coming, so stay vigilant about where you exchange and store your cryptocurrency. Remember: Not your keys, not your crypto — if you do not hold the private key to the wallet where your assets are stored, you risk their potential loss as collateral damages in situations similar to the one Kraken was subject to.
Not Quite in the Bag
Luxury handbag retailer Hermès recently won their copyright infringement case against Mason Rothschild, who created Metabirkins, an NFT collection using likenesses of the super exclusive Birkin handbag. Hermès sent multiple cease-and-desist letters to Rothschild, causing him to delist and reupload the collection to various platforms. Finally, after a plea in vain that the collection was considered art and therefore did not violate copyright laws, the courts found that the Rothschild had infringed on the company’s trademark rights and awarded Hermès $133,000 in total damages.
Ohnahji B always encourages our Alphites to stick with their creations as derivatives are often flash in the pans that pump fast but dump faster. However, if this Hermes lawsuit is any sign of what’s on the horizon for IP use, it will be better to be on the side of original content creation and ownership.
FIRST OF ITS KIND
One of the hottest topics of the past week has been the Ordinals. What on Earth is that? Ohnahji B has the answer! At the end of January, an engineer released information on inscribing, or making data accessible, on the bitcoin blockchain. The gold standard of the cryptocurrency space, Bitcoin pioneered using blockchain technology as a monetary transaction method with the release of a whitepaper by pseudonymous engineer Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin itself is a fungible token, meaning they are all valued the same and can be traded like for like. Then along came Ethereum, allowing tokens to be non-fungible, or hold differing values based on the perceived value from the owner. So now, the technology enables non-fungible tokens to be stored on a blockchain whose tokens are fungible.
How It Works
When breaking down Bitcoin, its base unit is called a Satoshi (sat). For example, 1 BTC contains 100 million Satoshi. A unique identifier can be found for each Satoshi and also allows it to be indexed and tracked. When adding identifiers to something that was once considered to be all the same, information can be attached to them, or inscribed, to be tracked, and once done, the data becomes permanent.
Pros & Cons
Keep in mind this technology is weeks old. The main argument from those interested in putting NFTs on Bitcoin is that since most blockchains are owned by companies or can be controlled by whales holding large amounts of the coins, they aren’t truly decentralized. However, in its purest form, Bitcoin is immutable and fully decentralized; it offers much better security and ownership of data held on-chain.
Keep in mind this technology is weeks old. The cons encompass many people rushing to recreate IP found on other chains like ETH and Solana and porting them over to Ordinals on-chain.
Questions
Speaker EyeSeeThru asks, with inscribing, are people creating their own collections or recreating existing ones? Ohnahji B sees that many people are already taking collections on multiple chains and replicating them with ordinals; for example, On-chain Monkeys, Cryptopunks, and BAYC.
He also asked if there would be the same apprehension to inscribe an original collection to the blockchain rather than an existing one. Is there any harm in doing that? The more eyes and ears there are using the technology, the more reasonable and bad players are attracted to it, eventually diminishing the chain's reputation and capabilities. If users aren’t doing harm with how they transact, there’s a benefit in jumping in sooner rather than later. As we learn to use new tools like Manifold and Thirdweb, what’s the difference in this?
Technoking jumped onstage to share that every one of his clients is looking to jump into the Ordinals tech, so he’s excited to use it and possibly integrate it into parts of the blockchain. He also mentioned speaking to a fellow developer who put him onto a script that allows the use of any EVM-compatible chain in the same way you would use on BTC. In this way, you could do anything you could do on Solana or ETH on Bitcoin. He’s now bitten by the Bitcoin maximalist bug and is interested in developing and creating on the chain.
Speaker Symbolik mentions that there’s been so much work to get ETH from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, but Bitcoin has done nothing of the sort, so there are still significant downfalls in using so much blockchain power for something potentially so small.
For Ohnahji B he’s adopted a wait-and-see approach to NFTs on Bitcoin. He’s witnessed much of the transacting so far has been done in good faith, with people going to track transactions on google sheets. But, on the other hand, if you have the capital to risk on something new, you have more power!
EST feels that the hesitancy is unwarranted as the transactions are present on the blockchain, so there’s not much to worry about. Furthermore, at the beginning of every chain, the tools had to be made that bettered the user experience. The information is present regardless of whether the transaction is on-chain, especially a chain as secure as Bitcoin.
I jumped onstage to ask why NFT transacting on Bitcoin was even a thing. If we have other blockchains that can do it faster or more efficiently, why are we trying to retrofit legacy tech (albeit PREMIERE legacy tech) for new uses?
The first to respond was EST. For him, if you’re interested in making money, it’s wise to be on the cusp of what is new in tech. As Technoking shared earlier, There’s a big benefit for people in tech building with it as new clients are chomping at the bit to take advantage of putting their data on chain. Experimentation is always good, and we should have people (especially our people) involved in emerging tech so as not to miss a great opportunity if it does turn into something greater.
Technoking followed to proclaim that Bitcoin is the grandpappy of cryptocurrency and that we should respect our elders! He believes that Bitcoin has splintered into developers, investors, and participants and that opening new possibilities for the blockchain is pulling everyone back into the fold so that they can realize Bitcoin’s true capabilities.
A Reintroduction to Ohnahji U
Speaker Erica M, one of our newest Alphites, came up to get the real talk about Ohnahji University. She recently aped in (meaning she minted and got into the community with a lot of prior research, which she also made a point to state she does NOT recommend doing with every project) and wanted more info on the intentions behind the collection. B shared with her our mission to educate black and brown communities on the blockchain and the strides we’ve made in the space by partnering with other organizations who share our mindset.
Erica has been watching for a few weeks and has loved what she has seen of the project. In Ohnahji, she sees similarities to Gary Vee’s VeeFriends collection insofar as the emphasis on educating people about the Web3 space. Thankfully, Ohnahji’s price point is more affordable the VeeFriends, which she also finds great for reaching more parts of the community. As a result of all she’s observed, she hopes to give her children Ohnahji tokens to jump-start their journey in Web3 and wishes us much success in the future.
Y’all know how we do at Ohnahji U! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the recap and even taken some notes on what you have questions on. Feel free to dive into it yourself, but if you get lost or need some help, we’re here to make these concepts easier to understand. Seek us out on Twitter, our website, or on campus where you’ll find a community of people always willing to help you start your Web3 journey or answer any questions you have along the way! 🎓
