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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

6.58% of 2022 has already finished, which is a scary thought when you put it in that context. This year is truly speeding by. Even with a potential crypto bear market on the horizon - the appetite to do really cool things isn’t slowing down. The genie has left the bottle, and it’s not heading back.

This week marks a landmark week for the newsletter as we gained 257 new subscribers in a week, an increase of almost 50% in one single week.

I owe that to a couple of people who shouted out the newsletter (you know who you are, thank you!) but I wanted to reserve a special thanks to Nathan Baugh (his thread is linked below) who mentioned Sporting Crypto in his ‘8 web3 sports projects you should be paying attention to’. Clearly, many of you started paying attention due to that thread!

🔌 My good friend Nathan made an awesome thread about web3 sports projects he’s excited about…Sporting Crypto made it there! Also, check out his awesome newsletter Sideline Sprint - which is one of the best ways to keep up to date with the world of sports!

🔌 Episode 2 of the Floorcast is live! Tune in every week for some of the best NFT content around :) (Hosted and produced by yours truly!)

🔌 Early days, but if you're interested in getting ahead of the curve and sponsoring the newsletter - feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. I've had some people reach out already, but I'll only accept those who I think will be genuinely engaging and benefit readers :)

Stories of the week

Altered state machine’s all-star game

Crypto. NFTs.Artificial Intelligence. Machine Learning.Usually, when I see this many buzzwords thrown around, I tend to not even give things a second glance just because I know how marketers work.

But ASM’s (Altered State Machine) latest project; AIFA (Artificial Intelligence Football Association), is truly fascinating.

Let’s start with the basics, what is ASM?

ASM’s headline is ‘Make trainable AI-powered agents. Own and trade them using NFTs’ 

This is all quite complex, but from my understanding - this is how it works:

• ASM agents are AI that has two parts, form and brain.

• The form could be anything (2D picture, 3D model) that depicts the AI

• These 2 things (form and brain) are independently changeable.

• The brains themselves, have 2 parts - a genome matrix and a memory tree

• The genome matrix is like DNA. It is randomly generated and depicts the inherent skills and weaknesses a brain will have. This is permanent and doesn’t change. These skills and weaknesses react differently to different worlds and environments. For example, a weakness in a football game could prove to be a strength in an ice hockey game.

• A memory tree is specific to each environment. These memory trees are moulded by experience and training and save as you go on. If your AI was acting as a crypto trading bot and was performing better 4 weeks ago - you could reset to that memory tree.

• The memory tree and genome matrix work together in the same way as a human does. You might be naturally strong and fast, but without training and creating a ‘memory’ tree for specific skills, you won’t be good at any sport.

• The way these agents work independently and in a team are different

• These agents are then used to interact with different worlds in different ways. One agent could be used as a crypto trading bot really well, but as a fantasy football manager really badly.

Okay, so we’ve kind of got to the bottom of ‘what ASM is’ - which is important to then explain AIFA - Artificial Intelligence Football Association

AIFA is an animated NFT collection, where the characters are useable in the AIFA-verse to play a 4vs4 football game.

Here’s how it works:

• AIFA is a 4x4 football game, played autonomously by your ASM All-Star agents.

• The all-stars are any of the 40,000 3D NFTs

• These are ‘forms’ that are paired with a brain to create an AI soccer team.

• No offsides, no rules just furious competition

• Train your team and climb the AIFA rankings

This is all done autonomously. Your all-stars play 4vs4 games as you continue training the agent in the gym, whilst also gaining experience and adding to the ‘memory tree’ through actual games. There is also a play-to-earn economy in the AIFA ecosystem, of which there isn’t that much information yet.

This all seems really cool, weird and wonderful…but I think this type of market is going to explode over the coming years.

We’ve been so used to siloed thinking cross-industry, but there’s going to be projects like this that really change the way we think about a virtual world, platform or product.

The ability to hold an NFT that is trainable, tradeable and customisable in a variety of online worlds is pretty compelling. It made me think of Pokemon first and foremost, but metaverse native with a financial element to it. ASM’s project is much more than that though. These agents can take forms in many ways beyond games. It’s very likely that many of these forms aren’t comprehendible to us right now, but will be in years to come. AIFA in itself is an interesting first launch. The art is fantastic and that’ll be what draws people in first and foremost. The gameplay will be interesting to see, but I imagine something like Super Smash Bros Soccer, back in the day on Nintendo Gamecube. Like that, but on steroids. 

Every now and then I dig into a project that really opens up my mind to the endless possibilities that this space holds. ASM and their first launch of AIFA are certainly in that category. This is definitely a project to watch, even if it expands beyond sports, which I’m sure it will.

More big stories & things to put on your radar

• Peter McCormack was on the BBC talking about the first ‘Bitcoin’ Football club, Bedford FC

• More TV coverage for Sports x Crypto, this time it’s the Australian Open Metaverse 

• Serena Williams has joined Sorare as a board advisor to help facilitate their US expansion and help build a more inclusive and diverse world in web3. She said: “As #web3 and #crypto grow, everyone’s trying to figure out how to make [them] more diverse and inclusive”

• Moonpay is killing it - they’ve partnered up with Sorare to help facilitate fiat payments.

• Neymar buys a Bored Ape!

• Tom Brady’s NFT platform Autograph has raised $170m in Series B funding. 

Great reads, great tweeting and more general ‘stuff

•  There are a lot of people who think about things we consume in a similar model to collectables & art…

• Nice thread, thinking about whether this crypto market cycle is the same or different to previous ones

• The war continues about what web3 is and how decentralised whatever web3 is, actually is

• The institutions aren’t going away

• There’s a huge, huge race in the onramps for crypto

• Twitter made NFT verification a thing. Facebook & Instagram will follow. These web2 giants are making massive bets on the future.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Sporting Crypto newsletter. I’m really happy to see so many people enjoying it and sharing it with their networks. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends who might be interested - and share it on social :)