Watching the Olympics always stirs something deep within me, a mix of awe and mild panic. Every four years I find myself in a midlife crisis. I mean, 11-year-olds are out there skateboarding for gold, and 51-year-olds are winning silver in sharpshooting. Meanwhile, I consider it a win surviving another day in New York City at 28.

I know it's too late to start my Olympic journey, but I've started wearing Kim Yeji's shooter glasses around the city and it is surprisingly effective at making me feel like a champion.

The Olympic Medal Table is the ultimate global leaderboard to find yourself on. It's a humbling reminder of what dedication and hard work can achieve, and here I am, wondering if I should have gone for a run this morning.

But then I remember that the Olympics isn't just a competition; it's a reminder to strive for greatness, even if our personal best is finally mastering the art of keeping a houseplant alive for more than a month.

- bradorbradley.eth

🏗 Stack Updates

🎁 Intersend.io, a new gateway to discover crypto apps, announced their partnership with Stack and Bitrefill. Users can purchase gift cards with one click, earn points, and cash out for thousands of gift cards worldwide with Intersend's utility-based crypto rewards program powered by Stack.

🍄 Bello.lol, an onchain analytics platform, announced a new Warpcast direct-cast feature that helped Adam Levy drive more permissionless reward claim from his leaderboard on Stack, leading to a 13% claim rate in 24 hours.

🎶 Sonata.tips, a music curation app on Farcaster, announced new channel monetization tools. Sonata allows users to earn and tip in NOTES points powered by Stack.

🕹 Atari, Coinbase, and Stack announced winners of week one's arcade.fun leaderboard! Congrats to the top Asteroid blasters Denjin, papacrypto, and [anonymous]. The leaderboard resets every week and anyone can mint and play to earn prizes.

📰 Loyalty must-reads and watches

Here's what the Stack team read this week 👇

🐓 Blackbird released their flypaper, detailing their vision for restaurant economy onchain and introducing $F2, the network ownership token

📰 JP Morgan recently released their report on Web3 as the future of social commerce

🛍 Jarrod Barnes from NEAR shares how the future of how we shop is being rewritten by onchain commerce