#1 GameStop NFT marketplace off to a slow start
GameStop, primarily known as a brick-and-mortar video games retailer and reseller has had tumultuous recent years. GameStop has become a meme stock to the infamous r/wallstreetbets community on Reddit, which took part in a massive short squeeze in January 2021 that contributed to a stock price increase over +1750% in only three weeks.
In spite of the challenges the firm faces and the current macro bear market conditions in the crypto industry, GameStop announced the launch of the GameStop NFT Marketplace public beta available at nft.gamestop.com. Since the launch of the marketplace, GME stocks have increased 15%.
The GameStop NFT Marketplace works with Metamask, WalletConnect and also supports GameStop’s very own GameStop Wallet, enabling gamers, creators, collectors and other community members to buy, sell and trade NFTs
The new NFT Marketplace which is meant to return Power to the Players (GameStop’s slogan), is built on Loopring, an Ethereum Layer2 zkRollup, promising faster transaction speeds and cheaper gas fees compared to Ethereum while inheriting Ethereum’s self-custodial security.
As of time of writing, the top10 collections on GameStop NFT facilitated a total trading volume of 2468 ETH (nearly US$2.75 million). According to Kotaku, Gamestop charges a 2.25% commission on every sale, meaning that in the first 4 days of operation the marketplace has generated US$62,000 for GameStop.
Critics are quick to point out that this performance is weak. Undoubtedly the timing of the launch that coincides with a crypto bear market is partially to blame. Looking at OpenSea’s daily trading volume, we can see a strong decline in NFT trading activity.
Nonetheless, seeing traditional industry behemoths foray into Web3 is a sign of heightened adoption, indicating that we are moving closer to a Web3 future.
＃2 Nice try for web3 native database: Tableland
Tableland is a SQL database supporting on-chain data processes.
Preface
Today’s smart contracts are complicated. They support more complex applications. Smart contracts need to store, query, and process more complicated and larger data.Smart contracts are highly coupled with data. Thus these complicated data process scenarios make smart contracts complex and hard to maintain. Developers need to add data-related logic to their contracts, like data queries, data updates, and data filtering. For different data structures, developers need to write different functions.
Besides extra complexity, another problem is flexibility.When developers need to query data with complex filters, developers need to add custom query functions to the contracts. Developers cannot directly read and filter the data.
In the Web2 world, the database takes all data-related work. Applications store clean and structured data in the database. Developers can read desired data with SQL. Data are decoupled with applications.
Tableland is born to solve these problems. Tableland call itself, Web3 native database.
Mechanism
Because on-chain data storage is expensive, Tableland uses the off-chain database and on-chain smart contracts for privilege checks and data modification.
- Dapp smart contracts send data update requests to Tableland smart contracts
- Tableland smart contracts check the caller’s privilege and emit events with query
- Tableland off-chain validator network monitor on-chain event and execute SQL
- Sync Tableland off-chain validator network
⚠️ Although developers can use smart contracts to execute SQL, dapp smart contracts cannot get any return values. This hurts composability.
Tableland solves this problem with a dapp frontend, dapp smart contracts, and Tableland three parties interaction. The dapp frontend reads data and dapp smart contracts update data.
Dapp frontend reads data from Tableland gateway. Tableland gateway can directly interact with Tableland off-chain validator network. The function of the Tableland gateway is similar to the function of blockchain RPC. With the gateway, developers don’t need to build their own network nodes.
If the dapp frontend sends a data update request to the gateway, the gateway will relay the request to the Tableland smart contracts.
Limitation
As a "Web3 native database", Tableland still has lots of limitations:
- Dapp smart contracts cannot read data and receive execution results. Developers cannot put all data-related logic into smart contracts
- One table is limited to 100k lines row, 24 columns
- One data cell is limited to 1KB
- Only support a subset of SQL, CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT, GRANT, REVOKE
- Only support some types, INT, REAL, TEXT, BLOB, ANY
Application
Tableland names itself "Web3 native database". This is a little exaggerated because of the bad composability between contracts and data. Now Tableland can be applied to games and NFT.
Tableland has great support for NFT. After creating the table and inserting NFT metadata, developers get a gateway link. Developers can use this link as URI.
Later developers can use Tableland CLI to update NFT metadata.
Roadmap
Tableland will release its NFT in July. NFT holders can access more development functions. In the future, Tableland will make improvements in the following areas:
- Support more SQL
- Decentralize the validator network
- Release tokens and use tokens to secure the validator network
- database admin panel
Future
Tableland is not the end of the Web3 native database. A truly Web3 native database should satisfy the following requirements:
- Separate contracts and data
- Composability between contracts and data
- Censorship resistance
- Support Web3 data types, like address and transaction
- Users have data ownership
#3 Next Generation Smart Contract Platforms
Paradigm has released a new article focusing on the relationship between latency and throughput in blockchain networks. To put it simply, for a blockchain network, there is a certain correlation between network latency and throughput, and there is an optimal balance between them, and different nodes in the network have different optimal balance points.
Latency and throughput are mainly issues that engineers or developers need to consider, but cost and specific user experience are the real factors that need to be considered. Below are the current transfer costs for Ethereum and its Layer2 network. For high-frequency micropayment scenarios, the cost is still too high. Therefore, the large-scale application of Web3 in the future requires more technical solutions or infrastructure.
There are two main directions that are worth looking forward to, namely Celestia and SCP based on Arweave. Compared with traditional public chains, these two schemes have better flexibility and can better balance the relationship between performance and security.
Weekly Recap
- Generalist Capital raised a $12.25 million venture fund with backing from Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Tushar Jain, Polygon and LayerZero.
- Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures raises $665m for latest VC fund.
- YGG Japan Secures $2.8 Million in Funding.
Indicator Tracking
MVRV
Crypto Fear & Greed Index
Data of NFT Market
Total Value Locked of DeFi
Total Value Locked All Chains
Protocol Total Revenue
