tl;dr:
News: Binance $500M Elon Twitter contribution, Do Kwon allegedly manipulated the price of LUNC, Fidelity Crypto commission-free trading, Stripe firing 14%, Galaxy Digital firing 20%, Chain x NBA Miami Heat partnership, MoneyGram to allow U.S. crypto purchases, Andre Cronjie returns, Revolut instant messaging NFT pfps, Mastercard crypto accelerator startups, Bakkt to acquire Apex Crypto
Data: Total Crypto Market Cap: $1T, DeFi TVL: $55B, Nansen Smart Money % holdings in stables: 26%, Nansen Smart Money weekly inflows into WETH and WBTC, Monthly outflows outweigh inflows, Art Gobblers NFT 37.7k ETH volume, In the past month - Ethereum down 2.2% in NFT sales, Solana down 55% in NFT sales, ImmutableX up 40% in NFT sales, Polygon up 119% in NFT sales, Top 5 protocols by revenue: Ethereum, OpenSea, PancakeSwap, dYdX, Lido, Most active bridges by Volume - Polygon, Optimism, dYdX, Arbitrum
DeFi: Hodlnaut lost ~ $189.7M in Terra crash, MakerDAO co-founder dies, Matter Labs Layer 3 proof of concept in Q1 ‘23, Matter Labs deploying Aave on zkSync testnet, dYdX DAO moving towards subDAOs, ApeCoin DAO approved $4.4M bug bounty program, Boba Network integrates with BNB Chain, Revolut x 1inch “Learn & Earn” DeFi course, HUSD stablecoin peg lost, Solend $1.26M oracle attack, Rubic $1.2M exploit
NFT/Metaverse/Gaming: Meta integrating Arweave & Instagram Polygon-powered NFT marketplace, NBA Curryverse, Kraken gasless NFT marketplace, Dapper Labs firing 22%, GameStop’s NFT marketplace officially live, Immutable to enforce royalties+5% token unlock, Stepn developer zero-fee compulsory royalty NFT marketplace, Nissan NFT trademarks, Atari X initiative, Open Metaverse Alliance officially launched, Visa FIFA World Cup-related NFTs, Magic: The Gathering creators’ Blockchain Brawlers on WAX blockchain, Solana Exchange.Art launches “Royalties Protection Standard”
Exchange: Deribit $28M hot wallet hack, Zipmex $100M rescue package for 90% stake, Binance potentially buying banks, Robinhood’s crypto revenue declined 12%, Huobi HQ moving to Caribbean, Bitmex fires 30%, OKX digital asset license in The Bahamas, FTX teases GameStop partnership, FTX new phone/email send function, Binance Ledger partnership
Government, Regulatory and Legal: Singapore cross-currency transactions using Polygon and Aave Arc, IRS’s hundreds of crypto cases, Blockchain Association and Coinbase support Ripple Labs against SEC, Do Kwon $57M class-action lawsuit, a16z supports Ooki DAO case, Paradigm lobbying on Capitol Hill, Not Financial Advice not legally binding, MiCA bill may impact crypto influencers, Circle and Paxos Singapore licenses, Reserve Bank of India piloting wholesale digital currency
- Time moves differently in crypto. Crypto is an intricate game filled with various players operating across multiple time frames and with varying agendas. Day in, day out, the pieces are moving all across the board. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. The following is a look at the crypto landscape during the past week covering various sectors. Use these events like clues - let it tell you the larger overarching story of crypto -
I just got a recent bump in people subscribing. Thanks, Jack! Super quick about what I do if you’re new. These are my weekly notes and observations. I like tracking news, events, data, catalysts and narratives. Over time all of this comes together to tell you a story and gives you a good grasp on the market. So much happens in this space and I find this a very helpful way of organizing myself and staying on top of things. Remember to zoom out and stay safe out there. If you have any feedback or suggestions, you can reach out to me on on tweeter
I also write an abridged version of this week’s events here:
Data:
Bitcoin:
Like a lot of people, I also look at the lower time frames but at the end of the week, I like to check in with what’s going on at the big picture level. Bitcoin, the big daddy of the crypto market, has been relatively quiet despite things pumping all over the place. We’re holding above $20k but haven’t made any meaningful moves in any direction and still in the same range we’ve been in since summer.
Ethereum:
Et hirium - what a resilient bad boy. Much better bear market performance off the lows than Bitcoin. Lotta people were calling for sub $1000 ETH. This type of “strength” during the bear can be indicative that perhaps ETH will eventually flip Bitcoin when market conditions fully shift to being risk on again. All we know for now is that while Bitcoin is chilling near its summer lows, ETH has been performing much more promising
Crypto Market Cap:
The total crypto market cap hasn’t started to move in any convincing way but at least we’re above the $1T level. Total volume also hasn’t significantly started increasing yet.
Nansen Smart Money Token Inflow and Outflows:
This is a nifty little way to keep an eye on how risk on or risk off “Smart Money” is feeling by how stabled up they are. Has been gradually slipping down since that little local top area in September. The more it slips down, the more they are hopefully slipping out of stables and in theory that money should flow into crypto but of course on-chain data is only one piece of the puzzle.
Largest Smart Money Inflows this week: We finally see Smart Money starting to move back into WETH and WBTC - they were reluctant to make any considerable moves during last week’s rally. However $20ish mil isn’t a lot of money for the big boys..
Largest Smart Money Outflows this week: 2 biggest coins seeing outflow are Compound USDC and Compound ETH.
Largest Smart Money Inflows this month: Looking at the bigger picture - on the monthly level, the most amount of smart money is flowing into WETH, stETH and Compound WBTC - again still not very impressive amounts, only $26M? That’s chump change for the big boys being tracked by Nansen’s smart money
Largest Smart Money Outflows this month: ~ $127M out of two types of USDC followed by WBTC, Compound DAI, and Compound ETH. Monthly outflows outweigh inflows
Nansen Hot NFT Contracts:
Highest Volume NFT collections of the past week: Nansen has yet to integrate Blur Marketplace which is currently accounting for the bulk of the Gobblers volume. Gobblers has currently seen 37.7k ETH volume since launch according to Blur.
I can’t help but wonder what this Ethereum NFT market size chart would look like if Nansen integrated Blur already.
Bridges: Most active bridges by Volume - Polygon, Optimism, dYdX, Arbitrum
DefiLlama DeFi TVL:
~ $55B - Similar to total crypto market cap, while money has been flowing into select coins/projects - the big picture shows that DeFi is still ded. Liquidity is not currently being locked in smart contracts. What will it take to kick off another DeFi summer? Perhaps by the next actual summer?
Top protocols by TVL:
Peeping the top protocols by TVL - These have been very unexciting for the past several weeks. Gonna pick on PancakeSwap as it had one of the bigger increases this week at 12% and it’s also popped up recently in the news cycle
We can see that PancakeSwap TVL peaked in the $6B-$7B region last year and comparatively speaking didn’t drop off as bad as other protocols. Only halved. Give that a quick comparison to something like SushiSwap which just cratered. BTW - Sushi has had a far more active news cycle recently. Always interesting to take note of such comparisons.
The top blockchains by TVL:
Looking at the top chains now - poor solana TVL continues to crater. Gonna pick on Fantom since Andre’s return to twitter this week caused a spike in FTM price.
Not great…. This fell off the cliff in April and has since rolled straight into the pits of Hades. Can Andre do something?
Token Terminal Revenue:
I like looking at the projects that generate the most protocol revenue. Top 5 protocols by revenue: Ethereum, OpenSea, PancakeSwap, dYdX, Lido. GMX has been a strong performer for weeks now but we finally see it starting to drop - down ~32% this week. Biggest weekly revenue increase is PancakeSwap with a 55% increase. Gonna pick on PancakeSwap again and take a closer look.
Comparing price to revenue. That 55% move doesn’t look as impressive from this perspective but PancakeSwap caught our attention twice now this week while browsing through data. Interdasting
CryptoSlam Blockchains by NFT Sales Volume (30D):
In the past month:
Ethereum: down 2.2% in NFT sales
Solana: down 55% in NFT sales
ImmutableX: up 40% in NFT sales
Polygon: up 119% in NFT sales
Picking on ImmutableX since they had some big news this week with the GameStop NFT marketplace going officially live. Sales aren’t very impressive but the # of unique buyers has been gradually rising since about August.
Don’t show this to all the Polygon bulls…. - Sales and unique buyers for Polygon NFTs have been in the dumps.
DappRadar Rankings by Users: (30D)
Looking at the dApps with the most unique active wallets. Well, hello PancakeSwap, we meet again. 1.68M users in the past month. Pretty sure most of those are bots however.
DappRadar Rankings by Volume: (30D)
It’s interesting to compare Uniswap with PancakeSwap. Uniswap only has 225k users vs PancakeSwap’s 1.68M but Uni has massively more volume however. $125M vs $5B. And in between them lies 1inch aggregator.
DappRadar NFT Marketplaces Volume: (30D) *excludes washtrading*
In the past month:
OpenSea: saw a rather large spike of 1960% in traders on the platform. Could that have perhaps been from Art Gobblers? DappRadar still hasn’t integrated Blur Marketplace which saw the bulk of the Gobblers volume this week
From: Nansen, DexScreener, CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, DefiLlama, DappRadar, CryptoSlam, TokenTerminal, Tradingview, Dune
Crypto News:
Monday:
Bitcoin Whitepaper! Officially released by Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31st, 2008
Blockchain infrastructure company Chain announced an undisclosed-sum advertising and promotional partnership deal with NBA team the Miami Heat to become their “official Web3 and blockchain infrastructure partner”
Matter Labs, developer of zkSync, is working on a Layer 3 chain called Opportunity - plans to release a proof of concept in the first quarter of 2023
A judicial report has reportedly revealed that crypto lender Hodlnaut lost around $189.7M due to its exposure to the Terra crash
A revised vision of the Cosmos Hub is now expected to be on-chain for voting on Oct. 31, after being originally scheduled for Oct. 3
Digital bank Revolut partnered with DEX aggregator 1inch to introduce its joint crypto “Learn & Earn” course focused on DeFi
Dogecoin flips Cardano in Market Cap
Private equity firm Apollo Global Management has expanded its crypto offering through a partnership with crypto custodian platform Anchorage Digital
Tuesday:
Galaxy Digital, the crypto-focused financial services firm run by Michael Novogratz, plans to cut at least 20% of its global workforce
Layer 2 solution Boba Network integrates with BNB Chain. SushiSwap will launch on the BNB Chain version of Boba Network as a launch partner
Nissan has filed 5 trademark applications for some of its most iconic car models like GTR, SKYLINE, and Z, claiming plans for NFTs + NFT-backed media, Online NFT marketplaces + Digital wallets, NFT minting, trading, storing software
In Oct. 2022 - 44 exploits (53 protocols affected) stole ~$760.2M with ~$100M already returned the exploited protocols (Total loss: $657.2M)
Payments firm MoneyGram has added a service to its mobile app allowing nearly all U.S. customers to buy, sell and hold bitcoin, ether and litecoin and expects to grow those their selections over the coming year
Startup Stasis completed an integration with XRP Ledger in an effort to expand the settlement layers it uses to facilitate cross-border payments with its euro-backed stablecoin, EURS
At a time when many bitcoin miners are struggling with liquidity, CleanSpark has bought an additional batch of 3,843 Antminer S19J Pro machines at a total of $5.9M
Crypto fund manager Bitwise has introduced active trading strategies, designed to capitalize on market inefficiencies across the crypto market to cater to institutional clients
Wednesday:
Binance contributed $500M as an equity partner with Elon Musk to buy Twitter in hopes of using the social media platform as a “sandbox” to deal with Web 3 issues, according to the exchange’s chief strategy officer
Digital Currency Group (DCG) has moved Mark Murphy from the role of chief operating officer to president as part of a restructuring saw 10 people leave the company
The Web3 Domain Alliance established itself as a new coalition this week to combat fraud and naming collisions as well as to promote technological advancement and user experience of the next generation of web3 domains. Unstoppable Domains, Tezos Domains, Polkadot Name System, Hedera and Bonfida are among the founding members
Alameda had $14.6B of assets as of June 30, much of it is the FTT token issued by FTX
Cosmos Prop 82 is open for voting - Introducing “ATOM 2.0: A new vision for Cosmos Hub”
Web3 crypto startup Multis is rolling out corporate cards and checking accounts to U.S.-registered web3 businesses to enable easier spending and management of crypto treasuries. Has been tested by over 100 partners including Sky Mavis, Audius and Orange DAO
NEAR launches the latest Regional Hub in South Korea which will play a major role in laying the foundation for Web3 gaming’s future, both in Korea’s thriving blockchain community & beyond
A rogue actor disrupted the Lightning Network with a single transaction by exploiting a Bitcoin consensus bug that had a downstream effect on certain Lightning nodes. Developers issued an emergency fix for the critical bug
Tenderly revealed its Web3 Gateway, a development tool designed to reduce obstacles for the integration of blockchain-based applications
Payments platform Worldpay, a subsidiary of publicly-traded FIS Group, will soon enable USDC settlement for clients on the Polygon blockchain as part of a broader strategy
Thursday:
Andre Cronjie returns to social media after a hiatus - updates his LinkIn to “Vice President of Memes at the Fantom Foundation”
More than 1,000 Solana validators hosted on Hetzner have seen their server access blocked by the cloud provider causing more than one-fifth of the Solana stake that secures the network to be delinquent
Investment powerhouse Fidelity opened up a waiting list for Fidelity Crypto, which will offer commission-free trading of bitcoin and ether alongside traditional stock investments in one app
Revolut's new instant messaging feature, which launched recently in the UK and the European Economic Area, will integrate NFT profile pictures, CEO Nik Storonsky said in an interview
Mastercard adds 7 blockchain startups to its crypto accelerator
Payments firm Stripe is firing 14% of its workforce as layoffs continue at fintech and crypto companies
Goldman Sachs is working with index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics to develop a crypto classification service
Three top executives at web3 gaming unicorn Mythical Games announced their departure. Those leaving include the startup’s co-founder Rudy Koch, chief operating officer and head of game studios and publishing
Digital asset platform Bakkt, which has an interested in crypto staking and NFTs, is set to acquire crypto trading infrastructure firm Apex Crypto for $55M in cash, with another $145M in stock to be paid if time-dependent financial targets are hit
The founders of crypto investment platform Bitpanda have quietly set up a venture capital firm
Protocol Ventures, a crypto fund of funds that invested in the likes of Multicoin Capital, Pantera Capital and Electric Capital, is reportedly shutting up shop
Friday:
GALA token suffered a potential exploited on BSC however Gala Games said the unusual activity of its pGALA token was actually part of efforts to safeguard it from potential attack. The developers of pNetwork, an independent cross-chain bridge protocol used to transfer assets across different chains, ethically took $4.3M in pgala (pegged gala) tokens that it had issued to bridge users in a whitehat attack
South Korea claims that the country’s prosecutors have obtained evidence to suggest Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon had once ordered an employee to manipulate the price of Luna Classic
Twitter has stopped its plans to build a crypto wallet and turned to developing paid verification features, Notes and Revue are also planned to be suspended
Limit Break CEO Gabriel Leydon’s Twitter account was hacked and used to spread a scam link. The attacker successfully stole NFTs and crypto from users that interacted with the scam link
Investment bank UBS AG introduced its new digital bond - the first-ever to be publicly traded and settled on both blockchain-based and traditional exchanges
Block reports $14.7M net loss in Q3 and $1.76B in bitcoin sales
Singapore's central bank has approved an in-principle license for a local unit of Hong Kong virtual asset manager Hashkey Group - will allow the company to conduct fund management services in Singapore
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
Monday:
United States-based crypto advocacy group Blockchain Association has come out in support of Ripple Labs amid its ongoing legal battle with the SEC, claiming the case could be very important for the future of the crypto industry
Terra co-founder Do Kwon faces a $57M class-action lawsuit in Singapore. The lawsuit alleged Kwon and others made fraudulent claims on UST
The Reserve Bank of India will begin a pilot wholesale digital currency with the goal of reducing transaction costs and the need for collateral when trading government securities
Singapore pilots tokenized fiat with smart contract capabilities
Government Policy Statement on development of Virtual Assets in Hong Kong
The financial technology associations for Thailand and Hungary have signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support the introduction of blockchain technology to their respective financial sectors
Tuesday:
Crypto exchange Coinbase has filed documentation asking permission to help Ripple Labs in its ongoing legal battle with the SEC
The Justice Department is returning to a probe into potential bank fraud at stablecoin operator Tether - The probe focuses on Tether’s controversial banking relationships, which have drawn scrutiny from U.S. regulators in the past
Wednesday:
a16z the latest entity requesting to join the case against Ooki DAO, in which the CFTC alleges the DAO had violated federal commodities laws by offering illegal leveraged and margin crypto trading products to U.S. residents
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) successfully completed a cross-currency transaction involving tokenized Japanese yen and Singapore dollar deposits using Polygon and Aave Arc as part of a pilot exploring the potential of DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets
Stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos, issuer of the USDP and BUSD, have received in-principle approval as a major payments institution license holder from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
Thursday:
The Bank of England's Bank Rate, or the cost of borrowing money, rose by 0.75% to 3% - the highest rate in 33 years
Crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm will host its first public event on Capitol Hill on Nov. 16 to help policymakers better understand the Web3 technologies they’re attempting to regulate
According to several digital asset lawyers, the popular disclaimer “this is not financial advice” — may not actually protect them in the eyes of the law
The European Union’s crypto regulation bill, set to be made law following some additional steps, contains a section that could impact many crypto influencers
Online trading brokerage Robinhood (HOOD) reported $51M in crypto revenue in the third quarter, down 12% from $58M in the second quarter
Friday:
The IRS’s Criminal Investigation division is building “hundreds” of crypto cases, and many of them will soon be public
Circle Internet Financial has begun moving the reserves for its USDC stablecoin into a dedicated fund set up by BlackRock and registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and will finish early next year
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York completed a successful experiment focused on using a digital dollar for complex foreign exchange transactions running across different blockchains - brought clearing and settlement down from the current average of two days to under 15 seconds
Japan’s Digital Agency, aimed at harmonizing nationwide initiatives related to digital transformation, has announced the launch of a DAO to further its exploration of Web3 technology
Exchange News:
Monday:
FTX staff has been encouraged to make the move to Miami, which is home to FTX Arena, by mid-November
Allegedly: the former CEO and CFO of Huobi has resigned. Justin Sun's TRON team has taken over important departments of Huobi. Huobi has 1,600 employees, Justin Sun believes that there are too many people, and there may be large-scale layoffs
FTX upcoming partnership with GameStop
Alta, a Singapore-based alternative-assets marketplace formerly known as Fundnel, has acquired the digital securities exchange Hg Exchange
Tuesday:
Huobi denies it has plans to conduct “large-scale layoffs” and has refuted reports that two of its top executives have resigned amid a takeover
FTX will list Mask Network (MASK) spot and perpetual futures
FTX completed its 171st FTT buy and burn - 109,737 FTT this week, worth approximately US$2,870,000 of FTT
Crypto exchange operator Binance set up a seventh unit in Ireland as it continues to expand its roots in Europe
Wednesday:
Deribit, the largest bitcoin options exchange by market share, lost $28M in Bitcoin, ETH and USDC in a hot wallet hack and halted withdrawals
Troubled South Asian crypto exchange Zipmex is close to signing a $100M rescue package with an existing investor in return for a 90% stake
Crypto exchange Bitmex cuts 30% of its workforce and refocuses on becoming a leading crypto derivatives trading platform following CEO departure
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao would be willing to join Twitter’s board of directors if invited
Huobi Global is planning to move its headquarters to one of the jurisdictions in the Caribbean due to the region’s “super-friendly” crypto stance
FTX has launched a new send function. Users can now send crypto (or dollars) to any email or phone number
Thursday:
Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao is looking into potentially buying banks as a way of bridging the gap between the worlds of traditional finance and crypto
Coinbase and Coinbase Pro will list Marinade (MNDE) and Marinade Staked SOL (MSOL)
FTX will list Tortuga Staked Aptos (tAPT) spot market
Binance has partnered with Ledger, opening up more pathways for users to purchase digital assets, and increasing the growth of the Web3 ecosystem
OKX, the world's second-largest crypto-only exchange by trading volume, follows rival FTX and obtained a digital asset license in The Bahamas, where it plans to hire up to 100 people over the next 12 months
Friday:
Coinbase reported net revenue of $576M for the third quarter, down 28% from $803M the previous quarter and transaction revenue fell 44% compared to the second quarter as fewer users were active
Binance now supports Mastercard credit/debit cards issued by banks from the UK and EEA countries for the Sell Crypto to Credit/Debit Card feature
DeFi:
Monday:
Aptos-based DeFi project Arco Protocol facing criticism after a error-struck token sale and a sudden loss of key partnerships - gives decision to its community: back it or let the whole thing shut down
The attacker behind the $14.5M exploit of crypto launchpad Team Finance has returned ~ $7M worth of tokens to four projects
The Injective Explorer V2 is now live. Major upgrades include interactive views of interchain assets, a markets section, smart contract code
FriesDAO hacked for $2.3M in latest Profanity exploit
HUSD stablecoin peg lost - dropped to as low as $0.30. Huobi plans help users convert HUSD to USDT
Hop’s first liquidity mining program is live
Tuesday:
MakerDAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian dies at 29 in Puerto Rico
Gearbox V2 is live - has seen a sudden spike in TVL
3 of the 4 people behind now-defunct DeFi bonds tool Porter Finance have relaunched the project and rebranded as Arbor Finance, months after Porter was shut due to a lack of demand from borrowers
Credix Finance, a decentralized credit marketplace, unveiled a $150M stablecoin credit pool to Clave, a digital lending platform, to originate loans to businesses and consumers in Latin America
DeFi yield platform PieDAO has filed a proposal to its community for a phased buyback of its tokens, after ending the protocol’s liquidity mining program in October
Wednesday:
Lending protocol Solend suffered an oracle attack on three of its lending pools resulting in $1.26M of bad debt. The attack targeted three lending pools that held Hubble stablecoins, Coin98 tokens and Kamino tokens
Failed crypto hedge fund and Terra-victim Invictus Capital defaulted on a $1M loan from decentralized lending protocol TrueFi - 2nd time in a month that a lender defaulted on an unsecured loan
Cross-chain DEX service Rubic was exploited for over $1.2M after attackers gained access to the private keys of an administrator's wallet
Aera, a treasury management protocol, has launched treasury optimizing vaults for DAOs on Polygon to enable crypto projects to manage their token reserves in a more efficient manner
Thursday:
In a unanimous vote, Matter Labs’ proposal to deploy Aave on the testnet for its Ethereum scaler zkSync has been approved
A hacker siphoned $3M from Skyward Finance, a launchpad project on Near Protocol
The Uniswap Protocol is four years old today
The dYdX DAO near future will likely consist of several autonomous subDAOs in the near future that each work on core functional areas of the dYdX protocol and are ultimately accountable to the dYdX community
The ApeCoin DAO has voted to approve a $4.4M bug bounty program with ethical hacking platform Immunefi, aiming to guard its upcoming token staking mechanism from hacks
Yield App partnership with Trovio Group, Asia Pacific’s leading hybrid asset manager and technology solutions architect, for the launch of the $35M Trovio DeFi Fund
AirDAO, which governs the Ambrosius Layer 1 network, launched an Ethereum bridge for its blockchain ecosystem. The ecosystem already has a BNB Smart Chain bridge
Rubic exploit - admin’s wallet addresses compromised that managed the RBC/BRBC bridge and staking rewards - 34M of RBC/BRBC were sold on Uniswap and PancakeSwap
Friday:
Lithium Finance will launch its Mainnet Beta on the Polygon blockchain in December
New Curve UI version deployed
The BitDAO community governance proposal seeks to generate a yield from a portion of the organization’s $2.1B treasury - goal is to create yields for holders of BitDAO’s native token, called bit, while also expanding its liquidity on Uniswap
NFTs/Gaming/Metaverse:
Monday:
Mark Zuckerberg cast as web3 supervillain in forthcoming game. The Rabbit Hole features characters that are “posed to defend Web3 from the corporate overlord, Metazuckbot”
Tuesday:
Art Gobblers, an NFT project co-created by Rick and Morty’s Justin Roiland and backed by Paradigm, sees over 15,000 ETH in volume on its first day. The project attempts to make a self-sufficient art creation ecosystem, or a decentralized art factory
GameStop’s NFT marketplace officially live. Built using the Immutable X Layer 2 scaling protocol, the platform will offer digital assets from major web3 games
Stepn developer Find Satoshi Lab is going against the creator royalty trend set by other NFT marketplaces with its own multi-chain offering called Mooar - with a zero-fee, compulsory royalty structure. Payments to artists will default to 2%, or within a 0.5% to 10% range, depending on what the creator chooses to set. No service fees but adopts a membership model, which costs $29.99 per month
National Basketball League megastar Steph Curry to introduce his own version of the Metaverse to the NBA’s 650 million fans - filing a “Curryverse” trademark application on Oct. 26
Atari is introducing the Atari X initiative, uniting all of its blockchain interests under one operation that will be funded and managed by the top-class economy. Atari.X launched their first NFT collection, and those who hold these assets can look forward to virtual and physical utilities
The Open Metaverse Alliance officially launched and opened membership to Web3 builders and sponsors. The association, which includes members like Dapper Labs and Yuga Labs, is pushing for an interoperable, blockchain-powered metaverse
Opensea launching a new copymint detection system today that can identify exact matches, flips, and fuzzy copies within seconds of a mint
Zora has launched Nouns Builder, a no-code tool for creating a Web3 organization powered and funded through NFT auctions
Wednesday:
Visa has become the latest major company set to cash in on FIFA World Cup-related NFTs — unveiling a charity auction for five NFTs ahead of the upcoming tournament in Qatar. The auction is in partnership with crypto exchange Crypto.com, with all auction proceeds going to Street Child United
The creator of Magic: The Gathering card game Richard Garfield has launched a new Player versus Player game for the NFT project, Blockchain Brawlers - a play-to-own game based on the WAX blockchain, created by Tyranno Studios
Solana-based fine art NFT marketplace Exchange.Art has launched a “Royalties Protection Standard” that will enforce creator royalties on secondary sales of NFTs that originate on its platform
The creators of Game of Thrones have partnered with the NFT marketplace Nifty’s to launch a collection of digital collectibles based on the popular television series
Major web3 wallet provider MetaMask has partnered with NFTBank, a firm building out NFT price-tracking tools to improve decision making for NFT portfolio holders
Goblin Sax, a DAO for NFT finance, is launching an instant loans service. It acquired instant loans app Fluid, which it will rebrand as Goblin Lend, to build out the product alongside its already existing peer-to-peer NFT lending service
Ripple’s XRPL blockchain has officially become a new home for NFTs
V-Art's new tool, called the V-Art Protocol, is aimed to help protect IP rights and improve NFT project licensing on the NEAR and Ethereum blockchains, with support for Aurora and Polygon coming this year and Solana in the next. Has raised $1.4M in seed funding
Thursday:
Meta is now using decentralized data storage protocol Arweave to permanently store digital collectables from Instagram. Instagram will also support a Polygon-powered NFT marketplace
Kraken, the world’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, is launching its new NFT marketplace promising gas-less transactions - will initially host over 70 Ethereum and Solana-based NFT collections
The Bored Ape Yacht Club creators say an open standard to enable NFTs to migrate between Otherside and other metaverses is coming soon
Haas F1 Team, the only American-owned team in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, announced a partnership with OpenSea - deal will include the production of a line of branded NFTs and cross-promotion during racing events where the OpenSea logo will appear on the Haas F1 Team VF-22 series cars
Blockchain software company Alchemy has launched a new product called Spearmint, which aims to make the NFT allowlist signup and management process easier for creators
SuperRare launches RarePass for exclusive curated art drops - will airdrop exclusive art to 250 holders of the subscription-like passes over the course of a year
Web3 browser Opera has launched DegenKnows, a new NFT analytics, tracking and exploration tool that includes on- and off-chain analytics
Roham Gharegozlou, Founder and CEO of Dapper Labs, announced that the Web3 studio for blockchain games and NFTs, like NBA Top Shot has reduced its team size by 22% citing macroeconomic environment
Friday:
Video game publisher Square Enix has revealed Symbiogenesis, an Ethereum NFT-driven web-based game
Immutable is rolling out a product on Ethereum that it says will help enforce the payment of creator royalties. It will work as a community-governed whitelist and blacklist for smart contracts that honor royalty fees
ImmutableX is set to release $66M worth of IMX tokens in an upcoming token unlocking. A total of 110M IMX, representing more than 5% of the token’s total supply, will be freed from vesting
Japanese sportswear manufacturer ASICS taps STEPN to launch running shoe, Solana NFT Collections. The physical shoes are available to order for $200 using USDC on Solana Pay
Elrond rebrands as MultiversX, shifts focus to the metaverse and introduces three new metaverse-forward products. xFabric, xPortal and xWorlds
Boson Protocol launched a revamped version of its NFT platform that allows people to sell real items - in the form of NFTs - that can be burned and redeemed for the actual product within a certain time period
LooksRare acquires Flava Tools to bring advanced trading tools and powerful analytics to the platform
Fundraises:
Monday:
Crypto wallet Braavos raised a $10M round to simplify crypto wallets with an easier user interface on StarkNet led by crypto-focused investment giant Pantera Capital. Other investors in the round included Road Capital, BH Digital, DCVC, Crypto.com, Matrixport, and StarkNet creator Starkware
The Stellar Development Foundation $10M Enterprise Fund investment in NetXD Inc., a platform that enables businesses to manage their asset securitization and digital asset custody needs
RakkaR Digital, a Singapore-based crypto custodian that uses technology from Fireblocks, has raised $10M in a seed funding round backed by a single investor - SCB 10X
Fluidity, which aims to solve the utility problem in DeFi by introducing a novel incentive mechanism that rewards users for on-chain transactions. raised $1.3M in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, Solana Ventures, Lemniscap plus others
Tuesday:
Reap, a Hong Kong based digital payment company has announced the closure of the $40M investment round led by Acorn Pacific Ventures with Arcadia Funds, HashKey Capital, Payment Asia, Hustle Fund, and Fresco Capital have also participating
Lingfeng Innovation Fund (LIF), a new venture capital fund led by former Binance Labs executive Nicole Zhang, landed $20M to invest in crypto startups. The vehicle is a sister fund to Lingfeng Capital, the Beijing-based fintech investment firm with over $400M in AUM
RealFevr raised €10M to build the Ultimate GameFi Sports Ecosystem
State-chartered digital asset bank Custodia, formerly known as Avanti, raised $7M. Custodia is designed to provide real-time settlement finality for U.S.-dollar payments in digital asset transactions
Zebra Labs raises $5M to help Chinese celebrities enter the metaverse. Funds raised from the Chinese gaming firm NetDragon and the Japanese conglomerate Sumitom
NiftyApes, a firm that lets users take out loans on any NFT collection and intends to augment the secondary debt economy for NFTs, moving it away from the predatory lending practices that benefit the wealthy in web2 settings, has raised $4.2M in seed funding led by Variant and FinTech Collective. Additional participants include Robot Ventures, Polygon, Coinbase Ventures, The LAO, FlamingoDAO, Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, Eric Conner, Anthony Sassano, Cyrus Younessi, DC Investor, James Young, James Duncan, Nadav Hollander and Brendan Forster
Cryptosat raised $3M in seed funding as part of a bid to bridge the worlds of crypto and space technology. The round was led by Cryptosat's founders, joined by FileCoin and IPFS developer Protocol Labs
Scrimmage raised $600,000 pre-seed round to support cryptocurrency-based gamified rewards betting system led by Miami Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg through his Eberg Capital and IA Ventures funds
Laser Digital, the crypto subsidiary of Japanese banking giant Nomura, has joined the roster of investors in Orderly Network, a DeFi infrastructure protocol built on the Near blockchain. The capital injection is additional to the $20M seed round raised in June from several backers, including Sequoia China, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly and Jump Crypto
Wednesday:
Microsoft’s latest web3 investment is in South Korean gaming firm Wemade as part of a $46M funding round. Microsoft has also invested in web3 companies Consensys and Space and Time this year
Crypto-focused investment firm CoinFund is looking to raise $250M for seed investments
Tharsis Labs, the core developer of Evmos, a blockchain that allows for cross-chain transactions between Ethereum and Cosmos, raised $27M in a token sale led by Polychain Capital. The funding will go toward hiring more engineers, developing partnerships and building out the Evmos ecosystem of interoperable dApps. Other participants in the round included Galaxy Digital, Huobi, HashKey Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Asymmetric
DeFi protocol Centrifuge, enables real-world assets, such as real estate, consumer credit and invoices, to be tokenized and leveraged within DeFi services, has raised $4M in a strategic round from backers Coinbase Ventures, BlockTower, Scytale and L1 Digital
Mozart raised $3M to build an NFT platform that makes it dead simple for game studios to integrate NFTs into their games and provide a great UX. Investors: Arcanum Capital, AG Build, Future Perfect Ventures, and SaxeCap
Bookvala, an Indian book industry blockchain tech startup, raised $180k at a $1.8M valuation
Thursday:
Ex-Bain investor launches $30M web3 consumer VC fund
Beosin, a leading blockchain security service provider, closed a $20M strategic financing round
WalletConnect, which aims to provide social features for noncustodial wallets, raised $12.5M in what it calls an "ecosystem round" from previous lead investors 1kx and Union Square Ventures, along with companies and projects such as Shopify, ConsenSys and Gnosis
Pudgy Penguins is working on a raise of up to $10M in a round that would value the project at $50M
Y Combinator-backed Web3 startup Courtyard raised $7M and plans to redefine NFTs and the marketplace for digital collectibles
Blocto, a Mark Cuban-backed multi-chain crypto wallet and ecosystem, has announced a $3M Aptos Ecosystem Fund to help projects onboard new users
VenturePunk raises $1.5M to build Web3 product studio - round includes: PunkDAO, The LAO, Bufficorn Ventures, Erick Calderon (Snowfro), Devin Finzer (OpenSea), Bain Capital Crypto, ConsenSys Mesh, and Polygon Ventures
Standard Chartered (STAN) has invested in Partior, the blockchain-based payment network founded by JPMorgan (JPM), DBS Bank (D05) and Singapore government-owned investment fund Temasek. The size of the investment has not been disclosed
Friday:
Mozilla Ventures will be a $35M+ venture capital fund for early stage startups whose products or technologies advance one or more of the values in the Mozilla Manifesto. Privacy. Inclusion. Transparency. Accessibility. Human dignity
Solana DeFi yield platform Texture has raised $5M in a round co-led by P2P Capital and Sino Global, and is now live in private beta testing. Other investors in the round include Wintermute, Semantic Ventures and Jane Street Capital
Elusiv, a leading Zero-Knowledge-based compliance privacy system secures, $3.5M in seed funding led by LongHash Ventures & Staking Facilities Ventures
AptosLaunch, a crypto startup offering a platform for Aptos-based projects to launch their tokens before an exchange listing, is on course to raise about $2M in a token round
Early Stage Projects:
Monday:
Matter Labs releases first phase of zkSync 2.0 mainnet called 'baby alpha'
1% of the Sei token supply is allocated to our incentivized testnet and rewarding early members of the Sei community who use the chain
Binance announces the 31st project on Binance Launchpool - Hashflow (HFT), a decentralized exchange connecting traders with professional market makers
ETHLison Hackathon Winners
Agoric Composable Smart Contract Framework mainnet-1 is live
Amarok, the network upgrade of Connext Network, is finally complete, and it's ready to be launched in Beta in the coming weeks
Introducing Forward, a permissionless protocol for improving NFT liquidity WITHOUT abandoning creator royalties
Releasing, Alchemy Transact - get full control over your transactions, while unlocking a 100% transaction success rate, at 7.9x the speed
Calling for proposals for naming StarkNet’s testnets
Tuesday:
Y2K Finance - IFO is live
Introducing Eclipse - 1) The first Solana Sealevel VM rollup, 2) An IBC-enabled rollup on Celestia, 3) A Rollup-as-a-Service with a customizable base layer
Introducing - JitoSOL, Solana’s 1st MEV-powered liquid staking derivative. JitoSOL Yield = Staking + MEV Rewards
Inverse Finance - new whitepaper: FiRM. The Fixed Rate Money Market Protocol- will unlock new possibilities in DeFi, from fixed-rate loans for any duration to interest rate hedging and speculation and more
AlphaVentureDAO partnering with Sei to deliver the most competitive DeFi incubation program, Alpha Incubate Batch 2 - will help accelerate Web 3.0 startups exploring the rapidly growing DeFi design space
Wednesday:
ZkSync will integrate the Java, Go, and Pyton programming languages to expand application use cases
Upcoming launch of Hadron Finance, an lending protocol, on Evmos
Stride Airdrop Details
Introducing the DegenScore Beacon - a soulbound token that highlights a user’s on-chain ability and skill
Launching Peti, a brand-new ominichain liquidity protocol built on Celer
Thursday:
Introducing 3 new Sui payment methods – Pay, PaySui, and PayAllSui – released as part of v0.14.0
Fantom Alpha Round - leveraging Gitcoin's grants protocol, Fantom Foundation will be running an initial round allocating 125,000 FTM to projects building within the Fantom ecosystem
The second wave of the Aztec Grants Program - funding smart, ambitious people chasing after big ideas in privacy
Introducing TokenTable - EthSign is officially launching its first vertical solution bridging legal agreements with smart contracts
Friday:
Launch of Sui Capys – a fun new prototype that serves as a dev preview (not an airdrop) and demonstrates key capabilities of Sui. Capys leverage Sui’s object-oriented nature to allow portable accessories that players can trade and buy.
Shell Protocol deploying Proteus, groundbreaking AMM engine, to Arbitrum mainnet
Announcing the airdrop of Inverse Finance’s new token, DBR
Skip is live on Juno Mainnet - Skip helps networks earn additional revenue from MEV by running auctions where traders compete for top-of-block execution, and gives the proceeds back to validators and stakers
Nitro Devnet has officially been deployed - The first Solana VM chain. Built on Cosmos
Introducing Firefly - the next-generational, cross-DID social mobile app that is launching soon. Backed by Mask Network
Research/Reads:
According to this research 97.7% of tokens launched on Uniswap were rugs - source
Blockchain Security Alliance Q3 2022 Blockchain Security Report - source
Arbitrum Part 2 - Non Copypasta protocols - source
The Essential DeFi Tax Guide - source
The Stablecoin Arms Race - Token Insights: Blockchain central banks are coming - source
The dream of redistributing the extracted value - source
A Crypto Pragmatist Deep Dive: Integral Size - source
The Curve Wars and 4Pool Drama (Part 2) - source
Rethinking DeFi Tokenomics - source
Measuring risk for DeFi yield strategies - source
FAN TOKENS: Tokenizing Fandom and Onboarding Millions of Sports Fans to Web3 - source
GCR Investment Review – Third Quarter 2022 - source
Art Gobblers - source
Art Gobblers - GOO (Gradual Ownership Optimization) - source
Blur Review: An NFT Flipper’s Paradise - source
Glassnode - Hammering Out The Bottom - source
Jump Crypto - Accelerating Multi-Scalar Multiplication in Hardware… and Software - source
Multicoin - Value Flows in the MEV Ecosystem - source
Solana Network Performance Report: October 2022 - source
Since the Merge: How Are Things Changing? - source
Early stage project database - source
FOMC Playbook - Market Update: A 100% hit rate for 2022 - source
Chainlink - Introducing a Low-Latency Oracle Solution for the DeFi Derivatives Market - source
Messari - State of Polygon Q3 2022 - source
Messari - State of BNB Chain Q3 2022 - source
M6 Labs - Sui Network - source
Variant Fund - Building a Better NFT Debt Market - Why we're backing NiftyApes - source
Do DeFi Protocols Really Need a Token to Work? - source
Analysis of the Arbitrum ecosystem - source
Wublockchain - DID: How to return to use value from price speculation - source
Blockchain Music Creation - source
The Buildooooooor - Marc Zeller of AAVE - source
ZachXBT - Since late 2021 a scammer known as Elliot / Chinese / Devil has stolen $5M+ worth of crypto and NFTs through phishing scams and a NFT rug pull project - source
Messri - Covalent: A Unified API for Retrieving Blockchain Data - source
Why and How zk-SNARK Works: Definitive Explanation - source
SEC vs LBRY: Summary Judgement Hearing Transcript - source
How to find new contracts early and catch a 100X — Bots edition - source
WuBlockchain - VC Monthly Report:Financing Amount in Oct. was the Lowest in Past Two Years - source
ZKPs in Web 3: Now and the Future - source
New Framework for Funding Rates - source
Vitalik - Proposed milestones for rollups taking off training wheels - source
Scaling, modularity and the question of blockchain longevity - source
Is the Block Building Market doomed to monopoly? - source
DappRadar - October Crypto Recovery Comes with More NFT Traders, Hacks and Exploits - source
A guide to MEV in post-merge Ethereum - source
WuBlockchain - Why is Core Scientific, the largest bitcoin miner in North America, on the brink of bankruptcy? - source
WuBlockchain - Alameda's Messy Balance Sheet Raises Concerns About FTX Does It Pose Systemic Risk? - source
Coinbase Third Quarter 2022 Shareholder Letter - source
Web3 Developer Report (Q3 2022) - source
The Types of Value Graphs - How web3 platforms are leveraging ownership graphs - source
Twitter:
Vitalik - we shouldn't be enthusiastically pursuing large institutional capital at full speed - source
Bitcoin miners blowing up - source
Many VCs are now quiet quitting - source
Monetary premium of alt l1s will slowly erode - source
3 KEY severely overlooked Aptos & Sui differences and the reasons why Spartan Labs is building on Sui - source
What a whitelist really is - a bribe to get influencers to market your garbage so it can be subsequently dumped on retail - source
Fashion NFTs - source
Art Gobblers is a decentralized art factory owned by aliens - source
Paradigm - source
Dead founder conspiracy theory - source
Insights and what to expect for crypto and risk markets heading into 2023 - source
Guide on Optimistic vs Zero Knowledge Rollups - source
Airdrop Strategy: Celestia - source
Stablecoin Megathread - source
October summary - source
J.P. Morgan has executed its 1st *LIVE* trade on public blockchain using DeFi, Tokenized Deposits & Verifiable Credentials - source
Web3 Gaming News: Uptober Edition - source
Spartan Labs on Art Gobblers - source
Sybil attackers have become sophisticated and almost undetectable on-chain - source
Upcoming Events in November - source
How DeFi fits into the core principles behind a DCM (CFTC clearing house license, the most core financial infra) - source
Investment thesis on the 2023 crypto primary market - source
Web3 Social Thesis - source
Meta big announcements - source
Polygon bizdev team - source
9 catalysts/events to keep your eye on in November - source
CeFi meets DeFi - source
Gala “exploit” that isn’t an exploit explained - source
RAAS: Rollups as a Service - source
A roadmap to a sustainable Ethereum - source
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