GM folks! ✨

Welcome to This Week in Web3's 19th Issue. We're delivering on our promise to keep you up to speed with Web3 updates that matter! Let's see what we have covered today:

• The Merge gets a step closer & News

• Do we need another stablecoin?

• Funding & Work in Web3

• Bonus reads

Estimated reading time: 3:35 minutes

This week in crypto

Oh, the greens 🤌

Getting closer to Final Merge isn’t the only thing Sepolia merge achieved, but this Peak Bengaluru moment also came out of it. ala re ala, panda ala! 🐼

Weekly Web3 Wrap

Major updates from the web3 world:

• Reddit’s new NFT marketplace will allow users to buy Polygon-based avatars 🖼

• Questbook announced its migration to Filecoin using Web3.storage 🗂

• Foundership has announced 0xbreakfast is coming to 11 cities in India soon! 🍳

• Polygon has partnered with "Nothing" Phone to get web3 to smartphones 📱

• Binance started offering a $0 trading fee for Bitcoin on July 8th 🪙

• SushiSwap passes a governance vote to let traders offset carbon emissions ☘️

Ethereum crosses another milestone to reach The Merge 🐼

Ethereum is getting closer to its transition to a proof of stake consensus mechanism as the Sepolia testnet merge was successfully completed this week. Want to catch up on Ethereum POS and The Merge? You can read This Week In Web3 Issue #8 to get a better picture.

What is Sepolia and why was the test important?

Sepolia was the second of 3 public testnets to run through the Merge. It was essential to ensure that the technology employed is error-free before the final merge.

No significant glitches were reported since the testnet merge happened, however, there were a few hiccups:

• About 25-30% of the validators went offline shortly after the merge.

• The reason for the offline validators was the wrong configs.

• The offline parties have now updated their configs, and validators are up.

We’re only 1 step away from the real deal: Goerli, which is expected to happen a month from now.

Ropsten = Merged ✅

Sepolia = Merged ✅

Goerli = Coming soon 🔜

Mainnet ⛓

But wait… why the panda? 🐼

It comes from a series of Panda Fusion memes stemming from community posts suggesting that merging consensus and execution layers will result in a Dragonball Z-style fusion of personas. Freaking adorable, innit?

When the testing is successfully finished, Ethereum will switch to the proof-of-stake consensus, that has promised us a more affordable, quick, and energy-efficient Ethereum.

We’re almost there with our eyes stuck on a better Ethereum owing to Vitalik's assurance that the transition might be complete by August this year. 🤞

What’s Euro Coin? The first Euro-pegged stablecoin

From the issuers of USDC comes a new stablecoin ✨EUROC✨ or Euro Coin. It is the first stablecoin backed 1:1 by euros held in euro-denominated banking accounts. It means holders can redeem 1 EUROC for €1 at any time.

When coins keep coming, it may be challenging to know their true relevance. The Euro Coin is fairly new and may amass a larger market in the coming days. But, here’s everything you should know about Circle’s stablecoin.

• Circulation supply: over $55B right now.

• Exchanges: Bitpanda, Bitget, Hubi Global (DeFi: Compound, Curve, DFX, Uniswap Protocol).

• Compatible wallets: Ledger, MetaMask Institutional.

• For now, EUROC is only available to U.S. citizens. Yeah, strange but following LUNA’s collapse, EU is formulating a bill subjecting stablecoins to operation restrictions.

But coming from a history of setbacks and the current bad reputation of stablecoins, will it fare? The answer depends upon the quality and plan that it provides to its increasing number of users. What do you think?

Work in Web3

• Be a Marketing Manager or a Content Writer at Orangeshark ✍️

• MetaMask is looking for a Web3 Art Director Sports (Consensys NFT) 👩🏻‍🎨

• Become a Web3 UI/UX Designer at Polygon 🛠

Open doors for bigger and better opportunities by kickstarting your journey led by seasoned Web3 builders. Your Web3 self is just one click away.

This Week in funding

• Gaming firm, Cauldron, closed a $6.6 million seed round and plans to launch its first web3 gaming world, Project Nightshade, to become the “Pixar of web3” through storytelling.

• Planetarium Labs, which is building a community-driven Web3 game network, has raised $32 million in a Series A funding round led by Animoca Brands.

• KoinX, an Indian crypto tax startup planning to automate taxes of crypto retail investors, closed its seed round with a $1.5 million fundraise led by the likes of iSeed Fund and We Founders Circle.

If you made it till here, we have a quick lesson in Web3 Fundamentals for you— ✨NFTs in a sketchnote.✨

Also, some bonus reads to sip your Sunday coffee to:

That’s a wrap for This Week in Web3, see you next week! 🚀

Wait a second... if you’re an early-stage Web3 builder going from 0 to 1, holler at our creative-capital studio Spacekayak and let’s create something extraordinary through design! ✨

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