The Format #026

Right now in the world of tech it feels like a lot of things are changing, moving forward or at least trying to.

It’s great to see companies pushing tech in different directions and trying to really innovate beyond the standard incremental improvements. Literally just this week we had the (albeit relatively unsuccessful) releases of both the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 device.

The important thing to us (at OPENFORMAT) is that this new wave of tech has the foundations and business model that allows them to have a fair value exchange with their users.

With that thought in mind, here’s a quick round up of some of the more interesting things we’ve found in the past fortnight:

DePIN for the Win: Spreading the Benefits of the Gig Economy

The rise of the gig economy gave birth to unicorns like Uber and Airbnb, and eventually a ‘gig’ app for basically everything. These apps in theory offer a flexible alternative to a standard 9-5 job, but in reality the platforms tend to be monopolistic and exploit the workers in many, many different ways.

A potential solution? Creating similar platforms and ecosystems, but built in a decentralised way, where the platform is underpinned by a community-driven protocol. That way the workers get the vast majority of what they charge, build an economic stake in the platform and have the ability to directly influence the future direction of the platform.

Zuckerberg Doesn’t Want AI to End Up Like Mobile Apps, Controlled by Apple and Google

You know it’s an interesting state of affairs when Mark Zuckerberg is commenting on the problems with mobile apps, but in fairness the app store duopoly is a real problem. With the choke hold Apple and Google have on apps and the companies who build them, it feels like there is a clear and urgent need for an open and decentralised phone operating system and app store…

‘It's Modding, But on Steroids’: Mark Long on the Future of web3 Gaming

Modding has been around as long as games themselves: building on top of a game to improve and remix the experience. Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft took this and RAN with it, it’s the core part of their games, and what makes them great. Why introduce web3? It provides the technology to fairly reward players for the contributions they make to a game’s success. Modding may be a gaming term but this concept holds true outside of gaming too.

Stripe bringing back crypto payments, this time with a stablecoin

After stopping support for Bitcoin in 2018, Stripe have brought back crypto payment options to their checkouts. They are using the USDC stablecoin (which is pegged to the US dollar) to offer super fast transactions. It’s great to see an established platform like Stripe using blockchain technology in the right way → to improve the users experience.

The United Nations ditches Big Tech in a bid for security

The UNICC (United Nations International Computing Centre), the people responsible for the tech that powers all the UN organisations, have moved all their communications over to Element, an encrypted messaging platform.

Why? They understand the importance of digital sovereignty and complete ownership and control over their data, something which can’t be achieved with big tech.

OPENFORMAT News

The team has been hard at work (with the occasional break for a giant Bristol sandwich) and we have a very exciting month ahead full of hackathons, partnerships, competitions and more!!

In Person Hack Night

It’s been FAR too long since our last hack night, almost a year actually. But on June 4th we’re back, and very excited to fill our new office with builders, developers, designers and product people. The invite will be going live to our Meetup group very soon.

Competition

May is a big month for us because we’ll be sharing our product with LOTS of builders as part of a competition we’re running with BuildShip and a few other no-code platforms.

We’re very excited about this because it will give literally anyone the building blocks they need to build products in the right way, where they don’t have to rely on taking and selling users data or bombarding them with advertising in order to make money. We haven’t seen any other web3 company enabling the rapidly growing no-code and low-code community in this way.

Our First Technical Integration

As part of this competition BuildShip will become our first (of many…) technical integrations, which will allow anyone to add a leaderboard, missions or reward system to their app in literally just a couple of clicks.

We’ll also be releasing some templates and tutorials to show off what you can do with BuildShip and OPENFORMAT, including creating and rewarding digital twins automatically when using a Stripe checkout.

ANOTHER New Hire

Last week George joined OPENFORMAT as part of the core developer team, he was actually with us back in the early days of OPENFORMAT before taking on the role of CTO at an awesome interactive art company called OLTA.

The whole team is THRILLED to have him back!

BIMA web3 Talks - A chat with AND Digital

As part of her role as the co-chair of the BIMA web3 Council, Sarah spent some time chatting with Stephen Paterson, the Chief for Tech & People Evolution at AND Digital. You can check out their full conversation here.

And that’s all for this week.

Have a great weekend, Dan and the OPENFORMAT team 👋🏽

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Prompt (generated using DALL-E 3): “An allegorical illustration depicting Apple and Google as colossal gatekeepers of a vast digital realm. In the center, a large, ornate gate stands, representing the app stores. On either side of the gate, towering figures symbolize Apple and Google. Apple is depicted as a metallic figure with smooth, sleek surfaces and an apple emblem, while Google is vibrant, colorful, and has elements resembling its logo. They loom over a crowd of small, diverse app developers looking up, emphasizing the power imbalance. The setting is futuristic, with digital motifs and a sense of vast control.”