Alpha Schedule #19 - Pharrell Williams Joins Doodles

I absolutely loved seeing so many of you during the NFT NYC satellite events over the past few days; I had so much fun partying alongside everyone!

Hearing everyone’s WEB3 stories energized me, and seeing how many brands are about to enter the space makes me bullish for the future.

Next to the latest news, I stumbled upon a few interesting articles that grabbed my attention. Hope you like them as well.

See you soon!

Pharrell Williams has expanded his presence in the NFT space by going “all-in” with Doodles.

Pharrell joined Doodles as its Chief Brand Ambassador and board member, which was announced at an event hosted alongside the NFT NYC conference. “I’m here to announce that I will be joining Doodles as a member of the board and Chief Brand Officer,” Williams said in a pre-recorded video message at the event. “When the Doodles team presented its vision for business, I was immediately all-in”.

Williams will guide the collection’s approach to music, events, artwork, consumer products, and animation. He will also produce a Doodles-inspired music album, dubbed “Doodles Record: Volume 1,” in partnership with Columbia Records.

Shopify is updating its platform to allow consumers and merchants to connect through their crypto wallets.

According to its website, Shopify is releasing a framework enabling merchants to launch “tokengated stores” to which fans can have early or exclusive access, should they possess tokens from the particular brand. Limited edition merchandise, experiences, and drops were among the rewards suggested by the company to sellers to “incentivize” fandom.

The company is now also offering the possibility of minting and selling NFTs straight from the blockchain and onto the online store. A dozen NFT minting apps are suggested to smoothly complete the operation, with Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Flow indicated as the supported blockchains.

In addition, Shopify announced that it is working with Adam Bomb Squad, Doodles, World of Women, Invisible Friends, Superplastic, Stapleverse and Cool Cats programs on Tokengated stores.

Christie’s head of NFTs announced that he would be joining industry heavyweight Yuga Labs as brand leader for its recently-acquired collection CryptoPunks.

Additionally, BAYC co-founder Garga wrote on Twitter that new terms for Punks will be rolled out in the next couple of weeks.

It’s no financial advice, but you might want to start doing your research and grinding for these allowlists before it’s too late.

A bear market is a perfect moment to work on your skills, which is why I loved Advik’s Twitter thread that describes how you can become a web dev in less than 180 days.

I loved the GOD HATES NFTs protest outside of Adam Bomb Squad’s NFT NYC event, but this Kmoney joke made me laugh out loud 😂😂😂

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This newsletter is a curated overview of the most interesting things I’ve read the past week, the projects I’ve researched, and the NFTs I’ll be trying to buy.

This means I’m - per definition - biased, so don’t consider this as financial advice and keep doing your own research if you see something you like.