UFO is a place for revolutionary ideas . A podcast where artists, musicians and web3 builders talk about the future. Hosted by Nick Hollins and produced by Apollo. Subscribe to UFO iTunes • Spotify • Everywhere • Lens • RSS Sirsu is the co-founder of BLVKHVND. He’s an artist, designer, brand creator, gamer. BLVKHVND is creating an emerging ecosystem for onchain esports organizations. Their mission is to be the center of competition no matter where it lives. After breaking history as the first DAO to win a professional world championship they are driven to make the HVND fully owned and stewarded by everyone on the internet to build upon that success. In December 2022, BLVKHVND launched on Nouns Builder with a daily perpetual auction of NFTs to join their DAO. In this episode we talk about Sirsu’s journey from earlier days in gaming, art and crypto. You’ll hear stories from the origins of Zora, Rarible and Foundation. Being in telegram groups for art and NFTs long before the hype really came into the space. What it’s been like for Sirsu behind the scenes. Extraordinary experiences like raising $1 million in one day on a Mirror crowd fund and booting up an eSports organization with multiple teams competing around the world. Helping to launch Mint Fund in collaboration with others at Forefront, Zora and Seed Club \~ a community-owned initiative helping crypto creators mint their first NFTs. Sirsu has many stories to tell, and much of it is shared here for the first time. Links Sponsors Zerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started today at zerion.io Lens Protocol is the open-source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. A permissionless and transparent social graph that is owned by the user. Your followers go with you to whatever application you want to use. Lens is the last social media handle you’ll ever need to create. Visit lens.xyz Yup is the best of web3 all in one feed. Aggregating content across Lens, Farcaster, Mirror, NFTs, and Crypto Twitter. Search across platforms, customize your feed, and show off your NFTs and POAPS on your profile. Visit yup.io \-- Follow UFO on Lens, Twitter, Instagram

Hello, fam 👋🏾 Pitch, the collaborative presentation tool, was probably my most used application this week. I spent a lot of my time preparing, giving and sitting in presentations. Now, I know this sounds like an utter waste of time but they are all tied to product (vision), fundraising and hiring. I also did my internal show and tell this week which was full of shxts and gigs. Anyways. Let’s. Dive. In. What happened this week? (Product, Fundraising, Hiring + more) Final round interviews took place and candidates reviewed. Functionality added to the MVP. Product teardown with contributor. Worked on story for investor showcase. Demoed product to JG. Interviewed by Founders Intelligence re: community building. Discussed private launch strategy w/ Christiana. What’s next? Offer sent out to tech lead. Tech lead onboarded. Continuing with the process to get investor ready. Tech handover from contractor to lead. Product vision workshop with JG and Christiana. Skeleton content + deck completed for showcase. Monthly board meeting. How can you help? Intros to companies or talent who may be a good fit for our product. The product isn’t ready yet but we would love it if you could sign up for our waitlist or subscribe to this to receive product updates. How can I help you? Happy to brainstorm ideas or have a coffee with founders that are interested in web3 either from a personal or business standpoint. Can make intros to funds, founders, talent and senior stakeholders with a focus on web3 or diversity and inclusion. Written with ❤️ E ✌🏾

“The garment becomes more than just an outfit. It's an optical sculpture. It's an interactive object.” - Nicolas Sassoon DRAUP X Nicolas Sassoon’s inaugural collection SEEN ON SCREEN takes the moiré pattern as its fabric focus. In fashion, textiles, prints and patterns are more than just flat designs. They’re not just 2D abstract artworks. They exist in dimension, informing the qualities of garments like their texture, weight and forms. They are integrated into the clothes, not just applied on top. As such, in creating SEEN ON SCREEN, there is an entire area of work outside of the creation of the moiré prints themselves: the dimensional design — the sculptural elements, the garments — within which the patterns are experienced. Whilst digital fashion can make it easier to create clothes with the absence of material constraints or the help of generative AI, DRAUP’s digital fashion demands a similar level of skill and depth of process to that of a Paris couturier, albeit in its digital form. STEP 1: THE CONCEPT Although digital fashion can feel like an obvious opportunity to push the bounds of physics, in this collection we looked to simple silhouettes to best display the optical illusions of moiré. Playing on the visual tensions of the pattern — between depth and flatness, the 2D and the 3D — the collection’s design concepts drew on the physical qualities of screens. Panelling, layering, folding — we used large surface areas of materials to showcase the beauty of digital illusions. early designs by Nicolas Sassoon focusing on panels STEP 2: THE SKETCH Once the concept was cast we moved on to visualising using Midjourney. Much like a couturier’s toile making step (a white full-size mock-up), at this stage we could assess the strengths or weaknesses of our designs through generating these sample images. Midjourney concepting focusing on planes and folds After we had a more concrete vision of the garment, we began sketching what we call “draw overs” on a tablet, which allow us to decide the core design elements of the piece that exemplify the moiré. In a traditional atelier, this stage would be the free-hand drawing from the Creative Director. STEP 3: THE PATTERN In a traditional atelier, once a sketch is drawn, pattern cutters reduce it down to a silhouette’s basic components — its patterns. A chalk outline is drawn onto fabric around the parameters of a pattern, and darts, seams and hems are sensitively marked in place. These chalk lines serve as a guide for scissors to cut the fabric into shape and are, finally, sewn together by seamstresses. examples of transforming our sketches into 2D digital patterns Translating these physical practices into the digital, DRAUP’s 3D designer, Nikolas Makridakis,  interpreted the sketches into 2D digital patterns in Marvellous Designer, where they are translated into 3D and sewn directly onto the mannequin. Without the limitations of materiality, he software allows for creative reimagining to continue. The extendable and adjustable constraints of digital swathes of fabric means that, in the digital, the design can evolve. examples of digital pattern creation in Marvellous Designer STEP 4: THE FABRIC Traditionally, the art of draping — the literal draping and pinning of fabric — can be used to create an initial pattern or to design organically by repositioning and styling fabric on a mannequin. In DRAUP’s design process, ZBrush software allows the designer to sculpt mock-ups as if they were moulded from clay. Doing away with patterns and toiles all together, needles, thread and sewing machines are replaced with cursors, pixels and software. dress shape adjustments in ZBrush The embroiderers, plumassiers and weavers, that are required to complete an haute couture garment, are matched with their digital equivalents in the form of infinite scaleable and electable visual traits in Houdini, Blender (and other DRAUP deployed 3D softwares). This process not only parallels the detail and intricacy of an atelier, but in many cases surpasses it, expanding the capacity for what is possible. logo-shaped eyelets crafted for our corset in houdini STEP 5: THE PRINT When it comes to digital textiles, instead of taking a 2D print and applying it to digital clothing, the collection more closely mirrors the process of textile creation in traditional fashion, born out of embroidery or printmaking. In this collection, we use qualities of the digital medium to reveal a pattern from the layers of the garments themselves. DRAUP’s digital fabric sample in Houdini To extend the traditional fashion metaphor, Nicolas Sassoon, in our atelier, is the print designer — the textile creator. In his own words “I especially think \[the role of\] pattern maker is the one that I feel very comfortable with, because a lot of my work as an artist is literally pattern making.” a sample moiré print “I have absolutely no problem transitioning from working as an artist or taking on a role that traditionally would fall more on the role of a decorator or a designer or a pattern maker.” -  Nicolas Sassoon a sample moiré print applied to a garment STEP 6: TYING IT ALL TOGETHER Whilst each components of our garments' final forms are created in Houdini, they are all passed through a generative system (a precoded programs, which with the help of chance, produce multiple unique outputs) to reach their full realisation. More on that coming soon… sample garment generations in Houdini As a project working to expand the creative and technological bounds of digital fashion whenever we create, the tools we use, and the approaches we take to craft are fundamentally digital — they draw out the elements of the garments that can’t exist physically. By shining light on digital artisanship we hope to elevate digital fashion as a form of craft seen, not as secondary to its physical counterparts, but rather as its equal. See our virtual atelier for more… DRAUP is a platform expanding the creative and technological bounds of digital fashion - follow us on Twitter or join our Discord for more

When you’re reading this you probably have access to clean tap water. More than 2 billion people don’t. Crypto isn’t just digital currency - it’s a tool to change the world. It can unlock more than just financial freedom. But with a multitude of causes seeking for help - each of them worth supporting - there is only so much you can do with your personal resources before they run out. What if you could make change without actually spending your money? Everyone wins stETH.win is a PoolTogether pool that allows you to save money, win prizes and support public goods at the same time. This works by turning the daily stETH yield into weekly prizes. Public goods are a winner by default as 50% of the prize pool goes to charity every week. By depositing Lido’s staked ETH token you become eligible to participate and win in future prize draws. The best part: you can just withdraw your stETH in full whenever you need it back. 1 stETH = 1 Well After being live for 20 weeks we’re now partnering with The Giving Block to support WaterAid’s Crypto Water Fund. WaterAid is an international organization that works to improve access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene in some of the world's poorest communities. The Giving Block helps to bridge from protocol layer to real world impact. Our goal: Amass 1 ETH to fund the creation of one well. Through the weekly prize split all depositors are directly contributing to unlock access to water for the people that need it. Every week’s yield is donated to WaterAid America using a smart contract that unwraps and swaps the prize to ETH. This is a completely permissionless process as anyone can call the donation function and beneficiary address can’t be changed until the donation has been executed. Draw 21 was the first prize draw contributing to the new goal. Thanks to the x in the app, checking on the status is now super easy. We already make it 7% of the way: Quick math: 1 stETH = 1 ETH = 1 Well Based on the current TVL it will take 14 weeks until we can say well funded. Help us to get there sooner! 👉 Deposit now to help us fund our first well Tap in 🚰 Dive into the User Documentation Join the PoolTogether community on Discord Learn more about WaterAid’s Crypto Water Fund