Introduction
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the vVv Alpha Report. This monthly newsletter offers readers a highlight of the latest vVv community news, community resources, AMAs, allocations, project analysis by the research team, and investment updates.
Since vVv’s inception in May, we have built a truly unique and top-tier community composed of entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and Web3 enthusiasts. The vVv team has worked relentlessly to present the best curated investment deals and AMAs, in addition to empowering the community through the vVv Academy and Research Institute. It’s remarkable what we have accomplished In such a short time span and the best is yet to come!
-Crptogrl2, resident baby shark
NFT News
vVv NFT Phase 3 mint
We are currently in phase 3 of our mint with a mint date circa late November. Our marketing campaign officially commenced on November 1st, spearheaded by our strategist and collaborations manager, Darknight. Holders or phase 3 whitelisted members can refer their friends and family with their personal vVv server Discord invitation link. To grant referred members a phase 3 whitelist spot, please fill out the vVv referral form.
Diamond Fin Whitelist
We will be releasing a new feature that will have massive implications for the whole blockchain space. To prepare for this, all members and holders should earn the Diamond Fin whitelist role ASAP. This also applies to all previous minters and holders. To be eligible for the role, complete any of the following:
✓ participate in the vVv academy or research institute
✓ attend our Twitter Spaces events & ask questions
✓ being an active investor (invested $1,000 total or more)
✓ staking vVv NFT for 12 months
✓ completion of Shark Test 2.0
As a reminder, the diamond fin phase 3 mint price will be at an 80% discount off the average of the 10 lowest listed dolphins on OpenSea.
vVv Shark NFT Airdrop
Shark holders who stake their NFTs will be rewarded with Airdrop 1 and a revolutionary business utility that will be publicly disclosed after phase 4 of the mint. With 220 Sharks NFTs in the collection, it is worth reiterating:
Sharks will be the gatekeepers of vVv with the greatest utility
Since the last shark NFT sold on September 30th for 6.7Eth on Opensea, no others have been listed. Sharks on the open market have undergone a mass extinction with 92.54% of sharks staked for 12 months. Thus, the only other means to procure a shark is through a shark whitelist for phase 3 mint.
Shark test 2.0
After the great success of our first shark test and the induction of 47 sharks, it was time to expand the gene pool. With the goal of discovering new members who exude the shark mentality, we unveiled our second Shark Test on October 6th. It’s important to note, that the Shark test 2.0 is vastly different from the first test; certain questions were deliberately created to evoke strong emotions from the applicant.
All applicants who participated before October 30th were eligible for a shark whitelist if they scored greater than 200 out of a maximum achievable score of 403. There were 500+ applicants and 11 scores over 300. From the shark test results, we granted 100+ shark whitelists. Congratulations to all the future sharks!
It is always survival of the fittest for every species, including vVv sharks
Shark whitelists were merit-based - shark test performance or high community contribution - and minting the NFT will require shark acumen and be a blood-infested feeding frenzy. And although the shark whitelisting has concluded, we encourage all new members to participate. The full benefits of sharkhood have yet to be revealed and taking the test has tremendous value and rewards for top performers.
The shark NFT mint is tentatively scheduled for this week with around 20 NFTs up for grabs. However, as the shark whitelist is 10x oversubscribed coupled with the mint challenge, only a minority will become coveted shark holders. Fret not, those who qualified for the shark whitelist and are unable to mint will have the biggest advantage in the upcoming shark trade. Although the shark trade is non-exclusive, those who have the shark whitelist or scored highly on the shark test will have a competitive edge.
After the closure of the shark test, we will elucidate the psychology and provenance behind each question ad naseum. The test has provided an extremely useful dataset on the psychological profiling of successful entrepreneurs and we’ll delve into the statistical analysis, interpretations, and implications in a new psychology channel.
vVv Scholarship Program
To further empower our community, we will implement a scholarship program as an additional utility to NFT holders who stake for 12 months. This will be extremely beneficial for multi-holders who do not utilize the full potential of their NFTs. Soon they will be able to share their NFT utility with scholars (non-holders) for a specified time period. Scholars will be able to unlock utilities such as diamond tier tickets for allocation raffles and direct investments for scholars who can KYC. Additional details coming soon!
Upcoming......
vVv Raffle System
The vVv raffle system fulfills two purposes: 1) To create a method that would allow US citizens exposure to our allocations, who can not KYC for direct investment and would otherwise be excluded, and 2) to offer a gamified experience for crypto traders. We have launched a tiered raffle system based on NFT holdings and staking. Please note that tickets will not be available for every project allocation, especially those in high demand.
Community Resources
vVv Research Institute
After months of preparation, we were excited to finally open our doors and officially launch the vVv Research Institute. Our first course Web3 Project Research 101 is taught by Andreas Pensold, our Chief Research Officer and Research Institute Lead, and Academy mentors Leon Betsch and Squabba. The course will teach the vVv research methodology of analyzing and evaluating Web3 / blockchain projects based on data collection in key research categories and comparative analyses. Through 10 video lessons, interactive tasks, learning media, and vVv mentorship, students will learn to implement the skills and techniques necessary to perform independent due diligence of not only vVv projects, but any investment proposal. All courses sponsored by the vVv Research Institute are 100% free to holders. Enrollees will receive certification upon course completion. Signup for the course below.
vVv Academy
With the influx of new members, we’ve enacted some logistical changes. This is primarily to maintain high academic integrity amongst our students and reward those who continue their personal growth and edification.
Private lessons with the exception of lesson 01
Sequential unlocking of lessons
Mentor discretion on lesson completion and progression
Private homework submissions via https://vvv.fund/academy
Exemplary homework will be featured on the vVv medium page and newsletter
Rewards for active students
BIG rewards for those who are current with the lessons
New courses, live events, sections, and resources post phase 3 mint
vVv Blockchain Fund
We recently held our first team meet and greet with a vVv blockchain fund Board of Directors (BOD). The BOD member has decades of experience in fund management and institutional strategic initiatives and previously worked for one of the industry’s largest investment firms with trillions of dollars under management. It was a great experience to meet an individual from the traditional finance sector who shares the same core investment thesis and passion for blockchain technology. We look forward to welcoming additional members and introducing them to the community.
vVv Video Team Chats
In the coming weeks, we will unveil our private internal calls to the public via videos on Twitter. These will be announced beforehand but as a result of Twitter live streaming technical issues, we do not encourage members to join live. Despite this, we will still hold a live and uncensored internal call in a public space such as Google Meet which will be recorded and posted on Twitter. From these team calls, members will gain insight into how vVv manages its logistical backend and the research team workflow through more humanizing and engaging community experiences. The first internal video call is scheduled for Wednesday 2pm CT.
vVv AMAs
We spoke with some great projects this month, from EigenLayer’s CEO Sreeram Kannan on ETH2 re-staking and a free marketplace of trust to optimistic rollup inventor John Adler, who co-founded not only Celestia Labs but now his new venture Fuel Labs which is creating the world’s fastest modular execution layer and addressing the shortcomings of Ethereum. See below for Tweet threads, AMA summaries, links to the AMA article, and Spotify recordings. For more intellectual discussions of each project, updates, and community testing, see respective vVv Discord channels. Missed a vVv AMA? Visit our AMA articles page or listen to recordings vVv Deep Dive.
EigenLayer
EigenLayer solves the liquidity issue for new dApps by leveraging staked Ethereum and allowing access to it through re-staking on EigenLayer. Through ETH2 re-staking, EigenLayer supplies flexible and scalable trust for novel innovations built on its protocol. They address scalability and security issues to help onboard the next 1 billion users. Additionally, they have introduced a dual token staking mechanism that could utilize tokens from other PoS chains and provide economic security for middleware tokens. EigenLayer’s core premise is to support open innovation and security through its free marketplace of trust.
Fuel Labs
Fuel Labs claims to be the world’s fastest modular execution layer with high security, flexible throughput, scalability solutions, and a focus on a superior developer experience. John Adler, who designed optimistic rollups, and the Fuel team developed a high-performance alternative to the EVM (Ethereum virtual machine) called FuelVM, which can be deployed as a Layer 2 rollup or L1 on any blockchain. The FuelVM is designed to scale by parallelized execution based on a strict access list and UTXOs. They are creating the FuelVM to address the current issues of state bloat, dynamic multi-resource pricing, native asset systemization, and centralization of the sequencer role. They are also building Sway, a high-level language inspired by Rust, to empower developers to write reliable and efficient smart contracts.
Orderly
Orderly Network is a permissionless decentralized infrastructure layer with modularized orderbooks built on NEAR Protocol with a multi-chain goal. It uses an on-chain orderbook to provide a platform with a risk engine, matching engine, and shared asset pools for dApps to build on. They will allow for financial instruments such as spot trading, margin, perpetual swaps, lending, borrowing, and more. And, with the help of their incubators, WOO network and NEAR, they can leverage the knowledge and experience of both teams to achieve their grand vision.
