Mad News: NFT Staking Goes Live, Interview With Jakey, Mad Albert Content Challenge, Solana Responds To SEC
Mad News: NFT Staking Goes Live, Interview With Jakey, Mad Albert Content Challenge, Solana Responds To SEC
Mad News cuts through the noise of crypto Twitter and delivers a curated snapshot of Mad Lads and Backpack news, project updates and community highlights.
Mad Lads launch NFT staking with more to come, an exclusive interview with The Roster member Jakey where he drops alpha about MAD MOVIE 2, Mad Alberts challenge filling Twitter timelines, Solana Foundation draws line in sand with SEC and more.
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Table of Contents
Mad Lads
Backpack & xNFTs
Mad Community
Solana Ecosystem
Staking, Soulbound NFTs and Mad Lads Inventory System
Mad Lads dropped staking this week. The process took seconds inside of Backpack and was another successful product demo showing what xNFTs are capable of.
Staking your Mad Lad starts a counter that generates coins which are ‘soulbound’ to the Mad Lad itself. Soulbound means that all coins generated from staking will not be transferrable between holders - they belong solely to the Mad Lad NFT and the wallet address it is staked with.
Never fear, there is a mechanism planned where holders can reclaim their coins in the event they unstake their Mad Lad.
These coins live in a soulbound inventory system view that will look similar to Runescape and World of Warcraft game menus.
Armani Ferrante, Mad Lads cofounder, has previously compared the soulbound inventory system to loyalty rewards programs like hotels, airlines and credit card cash back programs. Mad Lads coins function more like in game currency than crypto tokens.
More important than the inventory being a place for coins, a Mad Lads inventory can also hold xNFTs themselves. That means that you can airdrop an xNFT or any other digital asset directly to the inventory (read: wallet) of a Mad Lads holder.
Mad Albert Challenge
The #MadAlbert challenge was born this weekend, pull out your phone and turn on the Mad Albert filter. Dozens of entries have already been submitted however the challenge will accept new entrants until June 17th.
One lucky winner will earn a Mad Lad NFT and three runner-ups will receive prizes as well. Winners will be based on creativity of content and will not be selected randomly.
How To Play
Use the Mad Albert filter on Instagram or Snapchat
Post photo/video with the hashtag #madalbert
Reply here on Twitter with a link to your Albert post
Note: the challenge ends on June 17th.
Toly The Kittie discovered he had a new set of whiskers today.
The Jakey Interview
Jakey drops alpha on MAD MOVIE 2, talks about creating content in web3 and gives advice to new creators searching for their voice.
Jake Hillhouse, known in web3 circles as Jakey, has been a video content creator for years in the YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok worlds.
A few weeks ago, Jakey and the Mad Lads announced something called The Roster. The Roster is a stable of content creators with the goal to make Mad Lads and Backpack relevant all throughout the internet - not just Twitter and Discord.
I digitally sat down with Jakey this week for a brief interview. He recently Tweeted about an experience with the builders concept of “I care about my consumers experience” and that’s where our interview started.
Mad Blogger: How do you apply that concept of “I care about my consumers experience” when planning a video shoot?
Jakey: I try to apply the best I can in video fashion. I want the viewer to feel like they are with me for the experience, they get the same enjoyment and fun watching as I do creating.
Does your creative process change when planning content in web2 vs web3
I think before it definitely changed a lot, but now having the opportunity with Mad Lads to really bridge my web2 content here into web3, the creative process feels very similar with minor changes. Changes that directly apply web3 gimmicks into the content.
I want the viewer to feel like they are with me for the experience, they get the same enjoyment and fun watching as I do creating.
Do you have any advice to help creators show up for their audience with their content?
My best piece of advice for creators just starting out is: try not to cater too much to your audience off the jump. Don’t worry too much about what you think the viewer may like.
Create content you enjoy, find your niche, then when you have garnered that first initial audience, you can start pivoting to find a balance between what you like making and what the viewer wants to see.
If you cater too early, its very easy to lose sight and that initial motivation and drive.
Creating content has to come from passion and enjoyment, that’s crucial when starting out. Just get out there, create and be consistent.
What brands or creators in web3 are doing the best job with their community experience?
Oh man, I think their are a good roster of people/brands doing a great job. At the end of the day, Web 3 content is brand new, we haven’t even scratched the surface. The bar is as low as its going to be.
One person in specific who has paved a path for creators here in Web 3 is Easy, he deserves all the flowers. Video content was and still is scarce, but I remember him pushing the narrative very early on, love that guy.
Mad Blogger: You’ve said that your best friend Colton is your editor. How did you guys meet?
Jakey: I met Colton thru a mutual friend named Sideneck. Sideneck and I were traveling to Vancouver Island back in 2021 to link up with Colton and a friend of his to shoot some content here on Vancouver Island.
Colton and I immediately hit it off and you could see that within the content we created together.
What is the hands down most fun day of filming content you’ve ever had together?
I think [there] are quite a few, hard to label them down, but one that sticks out is for sure our first trip to LA together, we spent about month over there and got [to] collab and film with a lot of other creators.
I think the worst also took place while on that trip to be honest. We drove from LA to Vegas since the Superbowl was taken place in LA and it was hard to find any hotels or AirBNBs that were available to stay at.
When we got to Vegas, it was no different, we were trying to film on the Strip, we were stressed and I remember finally getting a hotel room and we were both deflated. About to just pack it up and go back home, was a rough feeling since it was pretty early on in the trip.
But we woke up the next morning refreshed and filmed some banger prank footage on the Vegas Strip!
Mad Blogger: Care to drop us a little teaser about MAD MOVIE 2?
Jakey: FOCK YEA, so a ‘lil teaser, a ‘lil alpha, so for the first MAD MOVIE, the premise was introducing who I was, my web 2 background and me officially joining the MAD LADS roster.
For MAD MOVIE 2, I wanted to take a different approach and have much more production value. I wanted a storyline, an objective. ON A PURSUIT TO FIND MY FAVOURITE EXTREME HOBBY. That’s all I’ll give for right now, JUNE 21ST!
“A PURSUIT TO FIND MY FAVOURITE EXTREME HOBBY.”
Kick Rugs Armani During Sunday Stream
Armani started off the Sunday Stream #9 on streaming platform Kick before quickly switching back to Twitch. Kick footage was not uploaded but don’t worry you did not miss out on anything.
When the stream resumed Armani tackled a varied array of topics including:
Mad Missions xNFT game demo
Mad Lads intellectual property usage
Discussing the NFT marketplace wars
Mad Lads soulbound inventory and staking
Mobile Backpack application
xNFTs replacing social media platforms
Backpack biometrics
View the full length video on YouTube.
Rogue Sharks Tease “The Rebirth”
Rogue Sharks announced that they were turning their collection into xNFTs last month and yesterday they dropped a teaser video for an event they’re calling “The Rebirth”.
The Rebirth as an art upgrade experience where holders will interact with their Rogue Shark xNFT inside of Backpack. Rogue Sharks has already began experimenting with the new traits and launched their first reveal to holders in Backpack shortly after announcing the shift to xNFTs.
Mad Lads Staking Process Completed In Seconds
The process for staking a Mad Lad is:
Open your Backpack
Click on your Mad Lad
Click Stake
Approve transaction
That’s it. It takes about the same amount of time to login to your wallet as it does stake your Mad Lad.
Singapore Lads Attempt 24 Hour Go-Kart Race
A group of Mad Lads and Lasses met up to go-kart in Singapore this weekend - no injuries were reported.
spacemandev is planning more Mad Lads meetups in New Delhi and Bangalore in the coming weeks. Subscribe to Mad News so you don’t miss the invite.
Mad Galaxies Drop Merch That Is Out Of This World
Show up to Breakpoint with a Rolls Royce in your hoodie.
The Mad Galaxies are a subcommunity of the Mad Lads with active socials and Discord. The floor price for the Galaxy trait is around 190 SOL at the time of this publication.
Townhall Spaces with Solana Legend Are Cooking
Town Hall #6
Community Creators Turn The Record Button On
We talked about the Mad Alberts challenge earlier - winners will be based on the creativity of their content and mostafa.sol has set the bar high.
Mad Girl must have been inspired over the weekend because this Mad Albert makeup tutorial is crushing it.
sol.fiend just doesn’t miss with these Mad Lad edits (posted by timmydroptables)
tflo gives us an Albert inspired warning: DO NOT CLICK IMAGE!
In a sudden twist of reality Thomukas challenges the Mad Alberts right back - are you a Mad Genius?
Solana Plans IRL Event In Nashville
Pack your saddles and feed the horses. A wave of of cowboy emojis swept over Solana last week before ROVE dropped a hype video for the first ever Solana Summer Fest. The three day IRL event is being held at Nashville, Tennessee in the United States.
Here are just a few of the things you can expect if you attend:
Degen bar crawl
Scavenger hunt style challenges
Honkytonk takeover
MagicEden sponsored picnic
ROVE is an event and entertainment platform built on web3 and the have created IRL experiences for numerous Solana buildoors.
Solana Foundation Addresses Latest SEC Moves
Recent volatility on Solana can be, in part, attributed to the United States SEC labeling SOL as a security in lawsuits they filed against exchanges Coinbase and Binance last week.
The Solana Foundation responded over the weekend.
Anchor Releases Updated Version, v0.28.0
Anchor is Solana framework that provides developer tools for writing smart contracts. The project, another dream child of Armani Ferrante, is one of the most widely used tools in all of Solana.
v.028.0 of Anchor launched on GitHub yesterday. Some of the most relevant changes include:
Events CPI
"you can now emit events with emit_cpi! to store longer logs in cpi data”
Solidity support
CU usage benchmarks
“if CU usages changes between builds by >1% than it will be noted otherwise CI will fail.”
View full change log here on GitHub.
Starting today the Mad News and xNewsletter publications will be combined into one weekly release. We also added a handy Table of Contents.
Mad News is a content experiment and we’ll continue to tweak things to find what works best. Your feedback is the best barometer - drop a comment below!
Mad News: NFT Staking Goes Live, Interview With Jakey, Mad Albert Content Challenge, Solana Responds To SEC
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