In this post, we'll introduce 5 web3 leaders building at the cutting edge of their respective areas: from NFT collections to NFT investing to web3 Music and digital identity.We won't just provide you with a peek into their journeys, but we'll also guide you on how to continually monitor their onchain actions.
As you probably know, web2 and web3 have different philosophies regarding user data. In web2, the data is kept in secret data centers by social media companies and sold to other businesses. In web3, user data is owned by the user, and to this day, it can be freely accessed by builders and users like us on the blockchain.
Visualizevalue.eth — the designer turned web3 meme maker
“Ideas have people, we’re all antennas and we digest information and put it back out into the world.” - Jack Butcher, VV (A Film By Zora)
Name: Jack Butcher
Role: Founder and Creator, visualizevalue.eth
Expertise: Jack is a designer, a creator, and a trendsetter. He is currently leading cutting-edge experiments in the NFT industry, co-creating them with his community.
Background
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Jack Butcher started as a graphic designer in the UK and moved to NY in 2010 to work with agencies before establishing his own in 2017.
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In order to attract clients Jack created the Visualize Value Twitter account to demonstrate his approach to brand development. This strategy not only attracted considerable interest but also paved the way for the conception of an educational course that became a business in itself.
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Eventually, Butcher decided to discontinue agency work to fully dedicate his energy to Visualize Value.
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Venturing into the sphere of NFTs in 2021, he minted his work on Foundation and introduced two noteworthy projects:
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His inaugural NFT collection, 'Checks,’ gave users the liberty to mint their own verification badges, providing commentary on the theme of credentials and verification in the digital age.
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His next initiative, 'Opepen,' originated from exchanges on Twitter. This avant-garde avatar project combines the widely-recognized meme, Pepe, with AI-driven generative art and collaborations to produce a wide variety of distinctive artworks dropped over time in ‘sets.’
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Blakefinucane.eth — the NFT and media specialist
Name: Blake Finucane, blakefinucane.eth
Role: CSO @ Pluto Digital
Expertise: Media, NFTs, Fashion, Web3 gaming.
Background
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Blake is currently hosting the Context podcast as part of BoysClub a “social DAO and media company”. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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Blake has been researching the intersection of crypto and art as early as 2016 as she was studying for an M.A. in art history.
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She then graduated with a master’s thesis on crypto applied to the art world, which led her to speak at conferences and be recognized as an expert on the matter.
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After some time spent in the world of investment banking, Blake made a move to Emergent Entertainment, where she runs the NFT investment activities of the firm while contributing to their very own gaming MMORPG called Resurgence.
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Blake sits at the edge of culture x web3 and on her podcast Context, has recently interviewed top web3 thought leaders like Bobby Hundreds, Arianna Simpson, and gmoney.
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Jacob.eth — from Coinbase to Zora
Name: Jacob Horn, jacob.eth
Role: founder & CEO, Zora
Expertise: Jacob is known for his ability to create great brands. He and the Zora team have been very active in the Nouns community.
Background
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Jacob was born and raised in Australia. He thought he would spend most of his career there, but things went down a different route.
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He joined Coinbase as a design intern in 2017, spending over three years there, primarily focusing on USDC and stablecoin products. While at Coinbase, Jacob was pushing for products to be more onchain.
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At the time Uniswap was starting up, and Unisocks grabbed Jacob’s attention. He was interested in the potential for crypto to help capture value around creative projects and created experiments using Uniswap contracts like the St-Fame DAO and long sleeves drop.
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For the past three years, Jacob's primary focus has been Zora, an NFT protocol and application.
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The Zora team recently helped Jack Butcher in his NFT experiment, developing custom code for the Opepen collection.
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Evin from Disco.xyz — shaping our digital identities
Name: Evin McMullen
Role: CEO, Disco.xyz
Expertise: personal data management, digital credentials, and digital identity.
Background
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Raised on an Ohio farm, Evin went for undergrad studies in Connecticut where she encountered Elizabeth Stark, founder of Lightning Labs. Through interactions with Elizabeth, Evin developed an interest in open-source software, CC0 licenses, and online personal data management.
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During the Arab Spring, she grasped the transformative potential of Bitcoin for promoting freedom and resisting censorship.
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Evin then worked in diverse areas, encompassing content creation, music video production, the design of connected devices and autonomous vehicles, and even a period at IBM Watson and Berkshire Hathaway.
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However, the magnetic pull of crypto ended up drawing her into a four-year role at Consensys, the Ethereum-focused organization.
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Evin deeply values and advocates for the control of personal data in our ever-evolving digital landscapes. Her interest in the fluid identities we adopted across different digital platforms, a concept she explored in her undergraduate thesis, led her to leave Consensys and start Disco.xyz.
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Coopahtroopa.eth — your guide into the world of music NFTs
Name: Coop, aka Coopahtroopa.eth
Role: GP & founder, Coop Records
Expertise: Cooper is an early adopter and advocate of music NFTs. He is the N#1 investor by the number of NFTs on Sound.xyz.
Background
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Cooper started working in crypto as early as 2017 through research, consulting, and writing gigs.
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During the "DeFi Summer" of 2020, Cooper was deeply engaged in reporting and analyzing DeFi developments. He collaborated with prominent media outlets like The Defiant, while also voicing his insights through his Twitter account, which rapidly attracted a large following.
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Using this new momentum Coopahtroopa went on to form the ‘Fire Eyes’ squad with former Meta Cartel members, helping various projects launch their tokens.
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Before crypto, Cooper's passion and work revolved around music. In 2021, with the evolving maturity of the web3 music intersection, he decided to revisit his original interest. He then launched Coop Records in 2022, a $10M fund dedicating his efforts primarily towards web3 music exploration and investment.
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Cooper has been an early supporter of several artists, including Daniel Allan, who recently secured $1M in funding to assemble a team and foster his career in the web3 space.
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Find more thoughts on Cooper’s Mirror
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Music NFTs 🎶 — Coop Records, Mint, Invest in Music, Zerion, Spinamp
How to follow web3 leaders and builders onchain
Following web3 builders is a great way to keep up with the market and be early to new cool products, dapps, and NFTs.
With Zerion, you can follow any address and get mobile notifications when that address does something onchain: approvals, trades, mints, deposits, and more. This includes transactions on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and other supported networks.
Here’s how to follow wallets onchains:
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Install Zerion Wallet mobile app
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Tap ‘Explore’ and then in the search field type (or copy & paste) an address, ENS (.eth) domain or a Lens handle (.lens)
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Tap on the address from the search results
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Tap ‘Add wallet’ to add it to your watchlist
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That’s it! You’ll now get notifications when that address does anything onchain
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You can also fine-tune the notifications you get by tapping on the profile icon in the upper right corner — for example, you can get alerts for mints.