When Amazon’s Greg Linden applied for a patent for “item to item collaborative filtering” in 1998, he couldn’t possibly have imagined the societal impact it would have. Previously, Amazon had used data based on an individual's purchases to recommend a product they might like; this approach was inefficient because it recommended things that were extremely similar to what the customer had bought before. In fact, this first method of using data was so bad that Amazon was almost better off having their team of book critics pick what to promote on the landing page. Linden’s technique was revolutionary because it made associations across products and customers - if there were correlations between buying a bike and sneakers, then a customer who bought a bike would be shown sneakers as well. Today this seems obvious, but this technique is responsible for turning data collecting, buying, and selling into an annual 100 billion dollar industry.

By: Alex Debayo-Doherty

DeFi options have seen phenomenal growth in 2021 and now 2022, with its Total Value Locked (TVL) booming from 92 million dollars a year ago to over a billion as of May 2022.

A clear highlight of the club’s first year was HBC 2022, the inaugural blockchain and web3 conference hosted by the blockchain clubs at Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and ourselves at Harvard College. 

Squeeth is a new DeFi product released by Opyn in January. As the first on-chain power perpetual, Squeeth is similar to an option without an expiry date or a strike price. In addition to increasing liquidity in the options market, some have suggested that Squeeth can be used to hedge Uniswap LPs, hedge all ETH/USD options, and predict the volatility of ETH in the short term. This piece will investigate whether Squeeth adequately serves this purpose.

Recent innovation in the NFT space has unlocked more growth potential by introducing utility. These NFT 2.0 projects are distinguished by their team-led initiatives to grant users deliverables, including yield generation, merchandise, private yacht parties, exclusive access to Michelin-starred omakase, coffee beans, membership to alpha groups, play-to-earn video games, musical compositions, meetups with celebrities, and IRL events and parties. Where NFT 1.0 projects like CryptoPunks and Art Blocks triumphed by building gated cliques around their digital collectibles, NFT 2.0 teams instead focus on storytelling and worldbuilding using the Web3 tech stack, creating positive system dynamics. NFT 2.0 teams try to build a socio-cultural milieu—a belief system—that lends itself to organically forming Web3 lifestyle brands that are collectively and decentrally owned and governed.

By Joshua Yang and Andy Zeng