Lightspeed Newsletter: Waka Flocka Flame is Drip’s newest celebrity creator

12.07.2024

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Against my better judgment, I ventured out after work yesterday in pursuit of a free 7-Eleven slurpee. Upon entering the store, I beelined for the slurpee machine, at which point a haggard-looking employee frowned at me and said: “No more slurpees.”

I hung my head and walked out of the store back into the heat, my July 11th ruined.

But today is July 12th, and I interviewed a rapper:

Hard in Da Drip

Waka Flocka Flame, the artist who gave us “Hard in Da Paint,” is taking another spin at the crypto world.

He’s been promoting his memecoin on X alongside “Block Squad Monopoly,” an onchain “talent finding platform” that lets users stake Flame’s memecoin. Then on Wednesday, he released a single on the NFT collecting platform Drip.

Waka Flocka Flame told me in an interview that he decided to launch his memecoin after seeing the online provocateur Andrew Tate launch a memecoin using the n-word. He likened himself to a figurative Batman in the Gotham City of memecoins.

“Batman don’t look good in the beginning, he don’t always look good in the middle, but he always wins in the end,” the rapper said of his memecoin and his plans to have a more positive impact than people like Tate.

In this Batman timeline, a bunch of insiders seem to have bought up most of the Wayne Enterprises stock: Flame’s memecoin was alleged to have seen one whale buy up 40% of the supply before the rapper announced its existence. (Waka Flocka denied involvement in the early buying in an interview with Decrypt, saying the token was “sniped” by traders outside of his team.)

Waka Flocka Flame, or Juaquin James Malphurs, has been involved in crypto for years. In 2021, he made headlines after $19,000 was drained from his OpenSea account.

His new track “4th Quarter” — which Flame called “war music” for Web3 — debuted on the NFT collectible platform Drip this week.

On Drip, creators can release collectibles — things like art, videos and music — for users to collect, and they can offer fans perks based on tips that are paid out in off-chain “droplets.” The platform is enabled by compressed NFT technology on Solana, which was originally developed for Instagram during its now-sunset NFT initiative, CEO Vibhu Norby told me.

Drip is also developing a mobile app that Norby said he hopes to release before Solana Breakpoint in September.

Most Drip creators aren’t celebrities, so I picked Norby’s brain a bit about the platform allowing Flame and singer Jason Derulo to recently join.

Norby said “we kind of live in this ZachXBT world” (in reference to the notorious onchain sleuth) where celebrities can be labeled “scammers” for being paid to promote projects. Norby noted he wished some celebrities would do more “diligence” on promoting products they may not know much about.

But, as Norby pointed out, being paid to promote products is not “unusual” for celebrities, who spend a lot of time doing paid promotions to profit from their platform. “This is actually the de facto thing that they do,” Norby said.

Norby called celebrity projects a “permissionless referral scheme for Solana” and said he sees them as an effective way for celebrities to monetize attention — which is already a big business outside of crypto.

“I think it’s actually one of the better things that this infrastructure provides, basically tokenizing an audience,” Norby said.

After tipping two droplets, I’m #41 on the Waka Flocka leaderboard, meaning I’m part of this tokenized audience — and am currently slated to earn a “Legendary” alternate album cover. Norby said his main requirement for celebrities coming to Drip is that they have a content strategy.

It remains to be seen how thought-out or long-term Waka Flocka Flame’s strategy is.

— Jack Kubinec

Zero In

Norby called celebrity projects a “permissionless referral scheme for Solana,” and there seems to be some data backing that classification.

Moonpay’s report on the first half of 2024 showed Solana experienced a 1650% increase in buying volume compared to 2023.

Moonpay provides a service for investors to convert fiat into crypto, and it’s a popular onramp for retail users. This major increase in Moonpay purchasing could indicate an increase in retail users using the blockchain.

— Jack Kubinec

The Pulse

Imagine donating your hard-earned crypto to put a meme on the Vegas Sphere, and it never happens. Disaster! Pandemonium! Crisis wif hat!

Well, maybe/maybe not, depending on who you ask. Back in March, Ansem, a prominent figure in the DogWifHat memecoin community, raised over $700,000 to display the $WIF dog meme on the Vegas Sphere. Despite the successful raise, the project never materialized. What’s more, any queries into the situation seem to have been met with silence from the people involved. Speculation has ensued.

Ariel Givner, an attorney who runs a law firm focused on blockchain and other “emerging technologies,” posted about potential legal issues, noting that regulations might actually prevent crypto advertisements on the Sphere. She raised concerns about the funds’ usage, suggesting possible legal ramifications like fraud and misappropriation. Critics argued that the funds are held in a multisig wallet controlled by a number of individuals, not just Ansem, making it difficult for a single person to misappropriate the funds.

Responses to Givner’s tweets have often been harsh and dismissive, with many accusing her of engagement farming and lacking proper legal understanding. Which makes sense, of course. Surely Twitter’s armchair legal scholars know more about the law than an actual, practicing lawyer.

— Jeffrey Albus