Treat Monthly - July 2022 by treatdao

IN THIS TOTM

EDITORIAL

Crypto Jazz

30 31

INTRODUCING OUR JULY TOTM, THE VIVACIOUS CHERIE NOEL

TREAT SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Find us!

Is Crypto the Future of Videogaming?

LIVESTREAM SHOPPING

Retail Influencers Go Viral

NFTS ON THE RED CARPET

Film and TV Production on Web3?

WEB3 TRENDS

WALL OF FAME

Treats to collect!

Crypto Jazz

June 2022 and the Crypto Bear Market Keeps us Playing the Blues

Unless you’ve been living under a Martian rock for the last month, you’ll have seen endless media reports of the “end of crypto life as we know it”, the “bursting of the Bitcoin bubble”, and the “death of NFTs” and similar doomsday headlines. While some of these headlines are hyperbole, it is undeniable that the market and major cryptocurrencies have experienced severe turbulence this month, and several, most notably $Luna, have crashed and burned. So take a seat, pour yourself a long, hot, black, cup of Joe, and just relax to B.B King’s “The Thrill is Gone” on the TreatDAO gramophone, and let us sing those old Crypto blues for you.

Matt Damon singing the virtues of crypto investment -image courtesy of the Super Bowl 2022

It is hard to imagine that it was only a few short months ago that the avuncular Matt Damon was leading the celebrity endorsements for the stampede of Super Bowl crypto investment adverts. Here were the sunny uplands of the new Crypto Dawn (again), and the promise of ﬁnancial rewards for all of us everyday, ordinary, DeFi (soon to be rich) investors. Since then some $600 billion in value has evaporated from crypto exchanges and users' wallets. The Jazz and the Blues of the Crypto Crash 2022 -image courtesy of Getty Images

“The Thrill is Gone”

on the TreatDAO gramophone, and let us sing those old Crypto blues for you.

@simon_morton_

June has been a salty month for Bitcoin. $BTC the market's most in-demand cryptocurrency fell sharply from its 2021 highs to less than $18,000 in June 2022. The coins' lowest price since 2020. Meanwhile, Ethereum ($ETH) has lost more than 2/3rds of its 2021 value. This current volatility, set against a backdrop of bearish sentiment in the wider markets, has chilled the Crypto space and left many of us wondering whether it is safe to invest at all. Binance.com, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, caused several heart attacks among already anxious investors when it also announced a pause on all bitcoin withdrawals on the platform. Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao quickly stated the issue was a “stuck transaction” that was simply causing a backlog.

El Salvador is the ﬁrst country to go all-in on Bitcoin as legal tender -image courtesy of Reuters

In September 2021 El Salvador became the ﬁrst country in the world to stake its economy on the success of bitcoin. A bold visionary social experiment by populist President Nayib Bukele, making bitcoin legal tender, promising a sovereign bond linked to $BTC, and in shades of Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil, a crypto mining city powered by a volcano! The current crash has disrupted these plans and wiped 50% off the value of the country's holdings of 2,301 $BTC. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended that the country drop bitcoin. El Salvador's government is looking for $1.3 billion in loans. However, any potential credit line would have to address the IMF’s concerns, including "those related to the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender as well as risks related to economic governance”.

One of the best indicators of market sentiment in crypto is the Fear and Greed Index (FGI). This FGI is a daily update on the emotional state of buyers and sellers active in the crypto market. The FGI is a useful way for market watchers to get a sense of the trending sentiment for trading and investments. It compares various data feeds including asset dominance, trading volume, volatility, current news, and social media. Unsurprisingly the FGI turned ugly in June registering as "Extreme Fear" with a peak of 7 (out of 100) being the second-worst Fear rating since the gauge was created. The worst ever rating was a solid 5, or the “Run Around the Room Screaming” level, set in August 2019, as Bitcoin $BTC tumbled in value amid wider trade war worries caused by the 10% tariff imposed on Chinese goods in the US.

In chilling terms crypto exchange Coinbase has warned of a “Crypto Winter”, as the company announces the axing of 1,100 employees. It intends to cut its workforce by 18%, following the steep declines in the value of digital assets, and the rising inﬂation rates in the US. The allure of DeFi, that promise that ordinary investors could become rich from trading, holding, and staking cryptocurrencies, suddenly rings hollow. On the back of these economic headwinds, America looks all set to enter a recession this year. The “Perfect Storm” of economic turbulence isn’t all Crypto’s fault. Global stocks have gone into a downturn since the start of the year as a result of direct threats to trade, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The spiraling rates of inﬂation and interest, sanctions, oil & gas prices, and blockades of vital commodity shipments from Ukraine - all of which fuel a broad ‘cost of living’ crisis putting pressure on both businesses and consumers. These concerns, and fears, feed bearish sentiment, which has bled through into the cryptocurrency market.

$Luna Falls Short of the Moon

Terra $Luna and the brutal decimation of an algorithmic stablecoin

A common phrase often seen in crypto social media posts is “to the moon” referring to the hope of a currency's imminent parabolic rise to a new all-time high (ATH). Terra’s $Luna currency shot for the moon but came crashing down to earth in June, precipitating a rout that wiped out $200 billion in the crypto space in hours and sent shockwaves through global exchanges. The algorithmic $Luna de-coupled from its peg and crashed and burned, from a $120 ATH in April 2022, shedding 85% of its value to now be almost worthless. Hold up a moment, wasn’t $UST meant to be a stablecoin? Okay, so essentially a stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that's pegged to another currency considered to be ﬁnancially stable. The most popular stablecoins are Tether and $USDC, which are both tied to the US dollar. So if you have 1,000 $USDC tokens, for instance, they can at any time be exchanged for $1,000.

Stablecoins also provide the means for cryptocurrency loaning and borrowing, making them a foundational technology of DeFi. Stablecoins were designed to be ways for investors to hedge against the volatility of the cryptocurrency market. Say $ETH price is $2,000 -- a trader could exchange one $ETH for 2,000 $USDC tokens. If tomorrow $ETH drops 50% to $1,000, those 2,000 $USDC tokens would still be worth $2,000 and could be traded for 2 $ETH tokens. When investors get jittery and sense a change coming, they buy into stablecoins like Tether, $USDC, and, until this month, $UST. The $UST coin, created by Terraform Labs, is different from Tether and $USDC in one major regard - it isn’t backed by US dollars reserves, but by a process referred to as algorithmic or decentralized stablecoin. To create $UST you had to burn $Luna. This deﬂationary protocol was meant to ensure luna's long-term growth. As more people buy into $UST, more luna would be burned, this scarcity making the remaining $Luna supply more valuable. Advertisement

Terraform Labs founder and CEO Do Kwon created the Luna Foundation Guard, a consortium whose job was to protect the peg. The LFG had about $2.3 billion in bitcoin reserves, with plans to expand that to $10 billion worth of bitcoin and other crypto-assets. If $UST dipped below $1, bitcoin reserves would be sold and UST bought with the proceeds. If $UST goes above $1, creators would sell $UST until it goes back to $1, with the proﬁt being used to buy more bitcoin to pad out the reserves.

The de-pegging of $UST all started on Saturday, May 7th, 2022. Over $2 Twitter chronicles the end of $Luna billion worth of $UST was un-staked (taken out of the Anchor Protocol), and hundreds of millions of that was immediately sold. Nobody knows if this was a deliberate malicious act, or simply a result of a correction in the Crypto market. Such massive sell-offs pushed the price down to 91 cents. Traders tried to take advantage of arbitrage (proﬁting from buying from one exchange, and simultaneously selling on a different exchange, at a slightly higher price), exchanging 90 cents worth of UST for $1 worth of $Luna. Then a hole opened up in the road. A $100 million sized sinkhole. The issue was nobody had planned ahead for the potential for billion $UST trades. The maximum limit of $UST that could be burned for $luna in a single day was set to $100 million. The writing was on the wall. $UST had just de-pegged, traders panicked, investors bailed, and the currency began a death spiral that sent seismic waves through the Crypto markets. Now that $UST is broken and $Luna is dead, what next for Terraform Labs? Well, in tried and tested IT methodology, Do Kwon says “long live Terra 2.0” naturally, and forks to a new chain. The Terra 2.0 plan will mothball the current Terra blockchain (renamed to Terra Classic), while the shiny new chain will simply go by Terra. 08

Celsius Feels the Heat - Freezes Withdrawals� Due to extreme market conditions, today we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts. We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better vposition to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations," Celsius Network Ltd announced in a blog post.

Crypto markets tumbled after the Celsius announcement, with Bitcoin dropping as much as 14% to the lowest level since December 2020 and other major tokens like Ether also falling sharply. Celsius’s $CEL token was down about 50% to 19 cents as of 7:16 a.m. in New York Kong, according to pricing data site CoinGecko. Celsius had acted like a DeFi lending bank, offering high-interest rates for customers staking their crypto with the company. The highest yields were for holding $CEL, its own Celsius token. The $CEL value fell after the $Luna crash and subsequent chaos in the crypto markets. Analysts have noted that Celsius' liquidity is also being challenged by the de-pegging of the stETH token from the Ethereum price; since the company had staked customers' assets using stETH.

“The plunge of Celsius’s token $CEL seems to be a realization of the contagion risk of UST/LUNA into similar financial tools,” warned Burak Tamac, a senior analyst for CryptoQuant. The immediate future looks highly uncertain for the company’s 1.7 million customers. There could be life after death for Celsius, which is bringing in the Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld law ﬁrm and restructuring experts Alvarez & Marsal and Citigroup to advise on restructuring. The block has advised the company to ﬁle for bankruptcy, according to a report by CoinDesk.

Nexo, a London-based company, announced that it is preparing to buy any “remaining qualifying assets” of Celsius, deﬁned as “their collateralized loan portfolio.” Nexo updated the plan, with a letter of intent (LOI), detailing the proposal published on Twitter. Goldman Sachs is also reportedly circling Celsius assets. The institution is seeking to raise $2 billion to acquire Celsius' remaining assets in the event of a bankruptcy ﬁling. As we sip our coffee and tap our toes, we at Treat DAO feel wiser and somehow stronger (in a Nietzschean sense), for having survived several cycles now of crypto “boom and bust”. We’ve all been cheated on, and left on the street with nothing but our shirts repeatedly by our most beloved Altcoins and NFTs, yet we still abide in the space. We abide in the hope that we will build back better as a community with DeFi, Web3, and NFTs as robust pillars for innovation and creativity. Leveling up our platform is worth our collective time and effort, as crypto represents our best chance of a fairer, more decentralized, more democratized long-term future - “The Thrill is Gone” of short-term gains and greed, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing, as we sober up and work towards a better and more stable blockchain reality.

Join us for more at

Treat.com now!

Web3 Trends Is Crypto the Future of Videogames? Can the gaming industry adapt and innovate for the future of Web3 and engage an already suspicious community? Or can gamers expect Crypto and NFTs to just add more expensive grinding for unlocks, loot boxes, skins, DLC, and more pay2win greed from publishers? Let’s investigate!

Crypto video gamers -the future frontier of games, or just scamming players?

The global games market is a pillar of the overall media and entertainment industries and will continue to grow with a strong CAGR (2019 to 2024) of +8.7%, to reach an estimated $218.7 billion in value by 2024 -as reported by Newzoo.com. The market is expected to be disrupted through 2022-2024 as new technologies impact mobile, console, browser, and personal computing game releases, including integration with web3/metaverse, blockchain, and NFTs.

At the crudest level, crypto gamiﬁcation takes all the basic elements from typical games like competitive point-scoring, ranking up, unlocking items by completing tasks, or defeating bosses, and combines it with DeFi (or GameFi) where blockchain allows gamers to use their in-game assets and progress to grind for ﬁnancial rewards - usually in the form game credits swappable for currency, or sometimes fractions of the game cryptocurrency tokens. Often this requires an initial stake or buy-in of real currency to unlock

unlock the initial tokens required to risk for these rewards. Non-fungible-tokens (NFTS) add proof of ownership to crypto gamification, for example in the game Axie Infinity, each digital monster creation – known as an Axie – is minted as its own unique NFT. Players can then do battle royale with their NFT Axies, and the more they win, the bigger the crypto rewards. Play-to-earn crypto gaming guilds have started to appear online that help orient first-time players with the know-how to monetize their play and reward veterans for the success of the game, and for adding these new players. It is a good way for newbies to learn the ropes of crypto gamification in a community. The guilds sustain growth as these players get more adept at monetizing their play and earning more assets. So why will NFTs be a gamechanger, in the literal sense? Games that are powered by blockchain technologies will have the following utilities: NFTs provide proof of ownership and proof of participation with smart contracts that are unique to each individual player in the game's ecosystem. NFTs secure assets on the blockchain as non-fungible (unique) and immutable (unalterable), making it far more secure to buy, trade, and burn items in the game’s marketplace. NFTs offer decentralization and interoperability: this is accessible to all the players, all of the time, and isn’t controlled by any one publisher, hardware platform, or network client.

NFTs have helped to revolutionize the online world with their blockchain ledger technology. Many industries have radically changed direction to take account of current and upcoming applications of NFTs, Crypto, and Web3. A growing number of gamers and investors are turning on to the incredible potential of the technology for gaming. Though many are suspicious of the intentions of developers and publishers, who only have themselves to blame for a history of greed in promoting gambling to children, rewarding inequality with the unfair advantages given to players who pay for unlockables; while clawing money from their players for ever-diminishing returns with paid season passes and downloadable content (DLC).

Especially when it comes to the large proﬁts potential of gaming, large publishers and their parent corporations (and shareholders) see NFTs as just another avenue to produce a near-continuous growing revenue from their existing and new digital content. It also creates opportunities to earn from user-made creations too. For example, if a unique Call of Duty weapon mod were minted and listed as an NFT, the ﬁrst player to pay the asking price will take ownership of the item. The token for that item can be resold to the highest bidder and regardless of the increase or decrease in value, the game's publisher will still take their percentage from the transactions. Thanks to blockchain technology this potential to earn transaction fees will continue in perpetuity for the publisher! It is easy therefore to see why so many developers and publishers are keen to push the gamer content creation tools toward NFT production for their brands.

A Diabolic Outrage "Probably the greediest P2W game ever created, triumphing even over the insane money grabs we see from Korean and Chinese P2W games…" -source Metacritic user.

Diablo Immortal is free to play but very expensive to win -source Metacritic.com

Nothing quite highlights the dangers of corporate greed to gamers like a game that is offered as free-to-play, only to pull the rug on you and prove unbalanced, unfair, and unplayable, without a serious level of investment in micro-transactions, pay2win (P2W) mechanics, and loot boxes! The latest, and possibly the most avaricious example of this type of cash-grabbing title is Diablo Immortal, developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Ever since the game launched into general access on June 2nd, 2022, Reddit has been awash in outrage and complaints against the game and the developer. The Metacritic site rating for Diablo Immortal is a truly record-breaking (in the worst possible way) 0.4 (and yes, that's out of a 100). One user on Metacritic commented, "Diablo Immortal is probably the greediest P2W game ever created, triumphing even over the insane money grabs we see from Korean and Chinese P2W games.". If anything that is an understatement, given that the estimated total spend required to fully equip and max-out your character in-game is a truly mortifying $100,000. The game is uniformly described by gamers as being predatory, and desperate to force you to pay-to-play, teaching you gambling (random item drops from paid loot boxes) and pay2win mechanics at every opportunity it gets. It gets worse, and more conniving with currencies to juggle, multiple battle passes to choose between, and a “legendary crest mechanic” that is an unvarnished cash grab. There isn’t much point in caring about the challenge of the game when anyone can simply outspend you to win.

Loot boxes are closely associated with gambling -source BBC.com

It isn’t just Blizzard that is guilty of exploiting gamers. Major publisher Electronic Arts have come in for sharp criticism (and legal action) for promoting in-game transactions. A highly critical report published in early 2022 by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), says gamers are being "manipulated" into spending large sums of money on loot boxes. Consumer groups in 18 European countries have backed the report calling gaming loot boxes "exploitative."

The report concludes that it "appears obvious" that gaming systems and mechanics used to convince gamers (including teenagers and children) to part with real money in games are "predatory, manipulative, and exceedingly aggressive". The consumer groups are all calling for their respective governments to take action against these types of games through regulation.

Moore’s Gaming Law So where does this leave gamers looking toward crypto and NFTs games? In a strong position if they rally around the developers and games that play fairly, respect their communities, and encourage fun gameplay and player creativity. Videogames like Bethesda’s Skyrim have enjoyed classic status since launch, and have aged like fine wine over more than a decade (Skyrim was released in 2011) thanks to innovative design, free content creation tools, and a thriving player base. The game is kept fresh by these engaged players who release new free content that adds to the core game with high-resolution textures, new dungeons, storylines, characters, and even whole new land expansions. It is likely that NFTs will revolutionize the entire business of games before it creates the first revolutionary NFT game. In other words, blockchain technology will be used in new and innovative ways to redefine the marketplaces and communities for gamers, and the games will then adapt to the full potential of these technologies. NFTs will leap beyond the confines of gaming, and drive the consumer adoption of augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR). It is easy to imagine those fashionable and on-trend gaming assets, such as avatars, 3D models, textures, virtual clothing, and even sounds and music, as Gen Z AR & VR gaming in the metaverse! created by talented mod artists and teams, will easily translate into web3/metaverse utility. People with VR headsets can interact with, and decorate their corner of the metaverse with items traded or purchased from Fortnite players. People could even subscribe to their favorite artists or photographers in order to whitelist for buying up NFTs to fill their web3 social media home pages and feeds and show off their culture and style across their owned games and spaces in the metaverse simultaneously. These interoperable NFT assets are already secure on the blockchain and so cannot be copied, altered, or removed. 18 @simon_morton_

A phrase you will often hear in crypto (and around the Treat DAO community) is “we are still early”. This is essentially true for NFT gaming potential, the possibilities are endless and the hype is real. What is undeniable is the effect of Moore’s Law (the number of transistors on a microchip will double about every two years) which has been the key factor driving innovation throughout the Digital Age. It is undeniable that gamers' appetite for better, faster, more immersive video gaming has also been a competitive driving force in computing and software technologies. From the ﬁrst 8-bit sprites to polygon graphics, to today’s UHD multi-megapixel displays, haptic controllers, advanced audio, to VR headsets, open worlds to AI. Undoubtedly the ﬁrst really successful and truly immersive implementation of a massively multi-user metaverse will come from a gaming developer delivering on the promise of a Skyrim level of open-world user experience.

Treat look forward to joining you in our own web3 sandbox!

NFTs

on the Red Carpet

Is film and TV Production Really Ready to Embrace Web3?

The world-famous red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival -image courtesy of Palais des Festivals

Lights, camera, action! The direction of the Metaverse and NFTs seems to have only been parabolic over the last couple of years and has already disrupted several major markets including ﬁnance, art auctions, and luxury brands. It is set to grow even more ubiquitous across sectors in the next decade. Household brands like Meta and Disney are investing heavily in the success of the Metaverse and NFTs globally. So just how will this impact ﬁlm and tv production?

To understand the risks and opportunities of the future, it is sometimes a good idea to start by looking back at recent history. As the year 2000 dawned upon an expectant globe, the Cannes Film Festival (a place well-known for big reveals and high heels) was hijacked by the dot-coms. A fresh-faced generation of tech start-up nerds and chic geeks strutted the Croisette in their designer gear promising a revolution for film and tv provided by this new digital frontier called the internet. All manner of trendy posters adorned the sun-kissed facades of the hotels and billboards popped up to declare the old film business dead - long live the dot-com film business! @simon_morton_

A year later, the dot-com bubble - inﬂated by the sheer exuberance of those same “tech evangelists”- had burst and faded, along with their dreams of digital entertainment dominance. Flash forward 20 years to the here and now of Cannes 2022. We can substitute the eager dot-com soothsayers and the nirvana of the internet, with doxxed hipsters from the crypto projects and sexier Web3 technobabble. The Croisette is awash with buzz about Crypto parties, NFT-expert panels, and major brands sponsoring must-see Metaverse events. The major sponsor of the Cannes’ amfAR Gala (held on May 26) was the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX. These blockchain start-ups, celebrity NFT artists, and DAO leaders are discovering Cannes for the ﬁrst time this year and have all new mantras about the coming of decentralization, democratization, and utility. Their buzzwords are “token”, “content creator” and “smart contract”, but their promises to revolutionize the industry echo around the Palais des Festivals with spooky familiarity.

On-Demand, On-Chain It is the early days of decentralized filmmaking, but it is already happening. 2022 has already seen significant deals within the industry and well-known producers and studios getting involved with decentralized platforms. Democratic Film Financing and Production Support Steven Soderbergh’s production company Extension 765 supported Decentralized Pictures (DCP), a non-profit platform for filmmakers utilizing blockchain and created by Roman Coppola, Leo Matchett, and Michael Musante.

Extension 765 pledged $300,000 for the final budgets for small projects pitched by creatives on DCP’s platform. As Cannes was due to start DCP announced a joint venture with the Gotham Film and Media Institute. This will provide a finishing-fund grant of $50,000 to award the best-selected documentary makers. DCP is an exponent of blockchain technology for everything from submission of projects, community voting, and data analytics, to insights on audience feedback. The pillars of the organization are decentralization, transparency, accountability, and democracy. Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine has been getting a lot of attention after signing a deal with the World of Women (WoW) NFT community project. WoW is a large NFT collection with some 10,000 unique pieces of digital art celebrating the diversity of Reese Witherspoon -image courtesy of Hello Sunshine its female content creators. Vanity Fair states that to date WoW’s NFTs have generated over $120 million in sales. London-based film financier Goldfinch, which has backed projects like the 2019 animated feature Bombay Rose and last year’s Twist, starring Lena Headey and Michael Caine, earlier this year launched FF3, a crypto crowdfunding platform for indie filmmakers that kicked off with The Dead of Winter, a horror-thriller project from Stephen Graves billed as a classic ghost story set against the homelessness crisis.

“At the moment we are just scratching the surface with the potential of this technology,” says Goldfinch COO Phil McKenzie, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter. “Web 3.0 — using cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, and smart contracts — can solve a lot of challenges that we face as filmmakers, as financiers, as distributors, and as sales agents. It could change how we fund content, how we release it, how we make it. It is only a matter of time before we see NFT community projects, like the wildly successful Bored Apes Yacht Club, producing and financing its own film or television properties. 26

Not just a Token Gesture Some of the more ambitious crypto entertainment projects that go beyond supplementing ﬁnancing or improving transparency include a DAO launched by crypto ﬁlm company Film.io, which will let fans and creators invest in and help greenlight projects while earning Fan Tokens, the digital currency used on the decentralized platform, through their participation.

“This isn’t just about crowdfunding,” says Film.io co-creator Chris J. Davis. “This isn’t just about crowdfunding,” says Film.io co-creator Chris J. Davis. “It’s about providing our creators with a full-service kind of application to take them through every aspect of making a movie [and] connecting up with like-minded individuals who might have complementary skill sets. So if you need a lookbook or a poster, there will be people who are already part of our community who can do that and are looking for projects they can invest their time, energy and talent in.”

The new platform Ritestream.io is planning to disrupt the industry by enabling a creator to formulate a somewhat democratic system from their overall ownership to increase monetization opportunities.

$Ritecoin Token -image courtesy of Ritestream.io

Content ideas placed on the platform can be funded by a native token called “$Ritecoin”. The NFT of the idea is minted pre-production and each funding member is a part-owner of the project. Funds are released through the production process and when completed the content is released in the form of a concluding NFT. When the content is sold or distributed each funding member shares in the proﬁts. The company also plans on partnering with current entities in the space to develop cinemas in the metaverse where people from around the world can share in a unique viewing event.

Caveat Emptor “Those who are skeptical and doubt Crypto technologies can revolutionize entertainment, should take a breath and reflect that in 2002; amid the false starts and broken promises of all those Cannes dot-coms, one video streaming company took to the market with a very big idea. The idea was that internet-only content could disrupt the entertainment industry. That company was Netflix.” 28

NFTs, smart contracts, and blockchains are undoubtedly complex and technical ideas to appreciate and people are rightfully skeptical of anything Crypto at present. Thanks to media obsessions with currency fluctuations, all-time highs, and spectacular crashes, people are cautious and afraid to get involved. “At the moment people are rightfully skeptical, it is very much buyer beware,” says Peter Csathy, chairman of CreaTV Media and a prolific commentator on the digital media industry. “People should be very cautious. Be afraid, be very afraid. But just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t start experimenting. … There’s going to be a lot of crap out there, a lot of people just trying to do money grabs. But ultimately, you will get some real success stories. Because this technology, the tech that underlies this, that’s real.” The complicated legality around film financing — which is strictly regulated in many countries, including the U.S. — may scupper many, even most, of the crypto-backed projects being pitched in Cannes this year. The still-nascent NFT entertainment business has yet to deliver a success story to prove its case that this new technology can be truly revolutionary. The blockchain sphere of influence is set to grow exponentially with more projects, DAOs, tokens, and NFTs coming online daily. This is going hand-in-hand with widespread adoption by major brand names in every industry from high fashion and luxury goods to video games. With every sea change brought about by technical innovation, comes a new dynamic market ripe with opportunity. We at Treat DAO are primed to offer live streaming to our creators, and a platform for their mixed media NFTs with video and audio. We’ve already partnered with RDLand to create our own “Hollywood” in the Metaverse! 30

Introducing our July TOTM

the vivacious

31 Reﬂecting on our hot July TOTM Cherie Noel -image courtesy of Playboy Magazine

The sultry Summer is well and truly upon us, and our Treat of the Month for July, Cherie Noel, really knows how to turn up the heat and have us gasping for a cold shower!

We are very proud to present Cherie Noel as our July 2022 Treat of the Month (TOTM)! Here the vivacious Playboy center fold talks exclusively to Treat about herself and her life in the modeling spotlight.

“Hi, Cherie, and a warm welcome to Treat! Tell us about yourself?” “I originally group up in Dutchess country which is outside of New York City. I lived there until my family moved to Los Angeles at age 18. I have a genuine personality that is hard to explain but shows in my actions towards people. I’m also pretty silly most of the time. I love making jokes when nervous. My personal mantra is “you do good you get good!” Most of all, I love traveling. It’s exciting for me to learn about new cultures and try different foods. I also enjoy hiking and playing video games! I’ve been wanting to model since I was 8 years old and in grade school. I took every art class. I’ve always been fascinated by Renaissance paintings that had a lot of nudity. I’ve been surprised that creating hot content, and keeping your audience happy is a lot of work! It’s more than just editing a photo of yourself.

“I first got into modeling “I first got into modeling thanks to my best friend” thanks to my best friend”

34 The vivacious Cherie Noel heats up our Summer

I ﬁrst got into modeling thanks to my best friend, who I ﬁrst met when I moved to Los Angeles. She is an amazing photographer who always inspires me. She’s actually the person who took all these photos. It was her that told me I could model and to keep trying. I do pay attention to the health of my body and I get my blood work done yearly to make sure I’m okay. I’m not one of those diet-crazy girls. I like to eat anything in moderation. To keep in modeling shape I’m adding pilates to my daily hike. Growing up I used to be really inspired by Kate Moss and Anna Nicole Smith. I loved Kate's natural high fashion beauty, but Anna Nicole had this glamour, the old Hollywood sex appeal, so she has always been a favorite of mine. Modeling for Guess has been one of the biggest highlights of my modeling career so far. It was a childhood dream of mine to model for the brand. I think my biggest achievement outside of modeling is being a mom. I know it’s cliché, but it truly makes me proud to see what I’ve made, and how I’m able to juggle being a parent while having a modeling career. I get a lot of comments like you're beautiful, but I think the most interesting one is when someone says I’m ‘thicc’. Normally women hear that word and think “I’m fat” but for me, I like to embrace it since I know I have a booty that I’ve worked hard to keep it tight. I have to say that consistency is key to growing your social media. I personally feel I’m on a journey right now to inspire me on what I wanna do next. I’ve reached my goals already in a lot of things. This year I’ve been focused on making content and traveling. 35

I tell everyone who asks me how I did it to never give up and “keep doing what you love doing”. The struggle is part of the journey. Stay true to yourself and never do anything you don’t feel comfortable with. I also think having a great personality is important. In the future, I definitely feel like I would love to become more of an influencer and start my own brand. If I was the CEO of OnlyFans (OF) I would definitely market it more. I feel like it got popular during covid but has slowed down. Maybe have a creator house brand it more. I think Treat DAO and NFTs are a great way for models to get creative. It’s more than just a hot photo to look at, you can collect it and keep it for yourself. I would like to tell my fans “thank you for following me on this amazing journey” and for supporting me over the years. It’s a blessing that still feels like I’m dreaming. I truly hope you enjoy my NFTs as much as I enjoyed making them!”

For more of the amazing Cherie Noel, follow her now on Social Media: Instagram: @cherienoel Facebook: @thecherienoel Twitter: @thecherienoel TikTok: @thecherienoel

Livestream Shopping Retail Influencers Go Viral Live Streaming Influencers at the Forefront of the Gen Z Retail Revolution

Gen Z is redeﬁning the tried-and-tested Home Shopping Formula

“Whoever said that money can’t buy you happiness, simply didn’t know where to go shopping!” -Bo Derek Have you ever watched one of those cable television home shopping channels? QVC helped pioneer the format for round-the-clock selling with glassy-eyed always-smiling hosts breaking the fourth wall to urge watchers to defy the countdown and “call in to buy now!” The fear of missing out (FOMO) on the latest last-minute deals is the integral trigger of the retail televangelism beamed into homes around the nation, day and night. For the millions who have enjoyed this sales format, you could buy anything from the latest dustbuster to jewelry, stylish pink tracksuits to inﬂatable pools, home decorations to health and beauty products. Just remember, once it’s gone, it’s gone! QVC has embraced new technology, now boasting 24/7 shopping on their website, or via Apple and Android apps. 39

Livestream shopping is the 21st century Gen Z equivalent of their parents' spine-tingling home shopping adventures, though with a lot more interactivity and engagement powered by social media. This shift to the digital experience is transforming both e-commerce and inﬂuencer marketing. Livestream shopping is already making waves in Asia. A 2020 nationwide survey showed that 75% of Chinese consumers had purchased products from livestream apps within the last 12 months. It’s already ‘big business’ that is only set to grow exponentially post-pandemic. Coresight Research anticipates the North American live streaming space to be worth upwards of $25 billion by as soon as 2023. To put it another way; livestream shopping is already too big to ignore.

It is worth taking a moment to cover which apps are the best for trying livestream shopping for yourself:

Instagram (IG) Live Shopping

You can’t really argue with a platform that boasts more than one billion active users. When it comes to inﬂuencing through mixed media, Instagram is already very well established with a massive global user base. The company, owned by Meta, took its e-commerce to the next level by adding its Live Shopping features in 2020. These features allow businesses to sell their products and services directly to users via Instagram Live.

TikTok Live Shopping

It isn’t a great surprise that with the ongoing success of livestream shopping in China, that TikTok would rise to become one of the top apps in the marketplace. TikTok features short video clips that are well suited to advertising and the majority of users are under 30 years of age, and therefore inﬂuential in the family for impulse buying. In online surveys, TikTok users are nearly twice as likely to purchase products they’ve experienced via the app. More surprisingly, some 67% of users admitted to being inspired by TikTok content to shop, even when they didn’t originally have the intention to buy anything!

Amazon Live Shopping Events

It's no secret that Amazon is the top eCommerce platform in the world. That's why with Amazon Live, sellers can be content creators of shoppable videos to increase their product discoverability. They can connect their shoppers in the mid-funnel stage of their sales strategy with product videos and then take them to the purchase page through their Amazon stores. All live streaming, whether Twitch hosts playing a videogame or YouTube creators on ‘superchats’, provides a direct, impulsive connection between followers (or fans) and their hosts (or influencers) in a shared, interactive, and dynamic experience. Put simply, it’s live, visceral, and fun! So how can brands and marketers take advantage of these interactive experiences? To get optimal results (and returns on your investments), you’ll need a campaign, and to build a strategy around a specific type of influencer in your market or niche.

Know your

Influencers, know your

customers

Know your Influencers, know your customers!

As livestream shopping grows, Inﬂuencers are in big demand -image courtesy of Wowza.com

So what are some examples of successful campaign types, and of inﬂuencers to follow, with opinions worth listening to?

Juggling her Boibs! “Buttholes are nothing to be laughed at” -From the song of the same title -lyrics by Laura Clery

We love Laura Clery. The former actress, writer, and comedienne currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, children, and her own private petting zoo of rescued animals. She has close to a million avid followers on YouTube, some 15 million on Facebook, a tidy 3 million on Instagram, and a thumping 7 million on TikTok. That’s a lot of potential engagement! She grew her substantial following as a talented writer and performer with weekly comedy videos. Her online business is called Boibs and sells lifestyle clothing with a sense of humor, for hard-working moms everywhere. Why Boibs? Excellent question! Laura was inspired by an errant cyber-bully who was attempting to troll her for breastfeeding her newborn. Fortunately for us, this troll, common to the species, couldn’t spell (or had turned off their auto-ﬁll) and the intended epithet “boobs” became the business “Boibs”! Clothing to reﬂect the often unintentionally funny side of parenting. 43 @simon_morton_

In addition to promoting her Boibs, Laura recently hosted a successful Facebook Live stream promoting the puzzle game Best Fiends - a free-to-play mobile game, downloaded more than 100 million times since 2014.

It’s Judy Time! Let’s give a hearty Treat welcome to inﬂuencer Judy Travis, aka, Itsjudytime. Judy and her partner Benji are from Seatle and have put in thousands of YouTube video hours, having vlogged consistently each day since October 2011. Judy has amassed some 1.3 million followers on YouTube, nearly a million on Instagram, and 3 million-plus on Facebook. She promotes health and beauty on her main channel. Her Amazon store sells featured products related to health, beauty, baby, kids, and skin care. In addition, she has a second popular YouTube channel focused on vlogging called Itsjudyslife. For Black Friday 2021, Judy hosted a Facebook Live Shopping stream for Kohl’s Department Stores. She streamed live to her 1.3 million followers from the store as she shopped for hours, being sure to basket, bag, and trolley for all the clothes, kitchen, bedding, and home products she and Benji needed for the coming holiday season.

A Model Influencer Leomie Anderson is a British model, fashion designer, and activist. She walked in four consecutive Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows from 2015 to 2018 and became a Victoria's Secret Angel in 2019. She has walked for brands including Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Chloé, Fenty Puma, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilﬁger, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Moschino, Oscar de la Renta, Jeremy Scott, Temperley, Vivienne Westwood, and Yeezy.

Therefore, it made sense that Tommy Hilﬁger would look to Anderson when wanting to enter the world of Instagram live shopping streaming. She was part of the brand's ﬁrst shopping livestream with host Manuela Frey and other special guests, including Manuela Frey, Zoë Pastelle, and Noah Luis Brown. They talked about trends and how to style everything they were currently loving. .0

3 EB

Unstoppable Shoppable Web3

Treat is evolving as a platform, as a website, and as a DAO community. We are constantly adding and updating features to offer creators, collectors, and our users the best experience possible. We’ve already added live streaming for our creators, one-on-one chats, and tipping. Live Shopping is coming soon but in our own very pink, very NSFW way! We plan to add special NFTs as “proof of purchase” (PoP) giving access to our VIP “Pink Ticket” (Willy Wonker would eat his heart out!) with very exclusive beneﬁts to holders. These will include advance notice of special events and exclusive NFT drops from your favorite creators, sometimes with 1/1 physicals as add-ons. Front-of-the-line priority with our limited edition digital and physical merchandise including unique Treat branded t-shirts, baseball caps, bikinis, and the printed editions of the TOTM Magazines. Holding a PoP NFT will also afford in-real-life access to Treat events across America, meetups with featured TOTM’s and other adult creators, and give you the unlimited kudos of custom-UI badges based on your rank in the community as a creator, collector, or livestream inﬂuencer! For those about to rank, we salute you!

Live Shopping is coming soon but in our own very pink, very NSFW way! 45

A showcase for Devan, our favorite Sweet Shop content creator for July 2022 Experience the joy of owning original uncensored NSFW NFTs direct from our featured content creator. Exclusive hot Treat NFTs, only on the Sweet Shop. Collect and treasure them all.

Our Treat Sweet Shop super talented content creator Devan

Click here to collect this awesome Sweet Shop Treat NFT: https://www.treatdao.com/view/161 Devan creator proﬁle: https://treatdao.com/creator/devan 47

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nftdevan

T A E R T IAL C O S IA D E M KS LIN

Come join in our big conversation, we always have a lot to talk about and even more to show you.� You’ll ﬁnd us on the social media of your preference on the links below:

Discord: https://discord.gg/dkJ4g2DrYv Telegram General Chat: https://t.me/TreatDAO Twitter: https://twitter.com/treatdao Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treat.dao/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@treatdao Medium / Blog: https://treatdao.medium.com/