tl;dr:
Stuff: Aptos launch, zksync mainnet live on Oct. 28, Mastercard partnership with Paxos for institutional crypto trading, Shopify partners with no-code Web3 commerce platform Novel, Fintech bank Nubank token on Polygon, Telegram app upcoming marketplace, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood resigned as CEO at Parity Technologies, a16z launch of new accelerator
Data: Over the past month: Nansen Smart Money is flowing into Compound DAI, Compound ETH and WETH and flowing out of USDT, USDC and Rocket Pool. DeFi TVL ~ $51B, Uniswap TVL down 22% in past month, Sushi TVL up 40% in past month, GMX revenue down ~ 40% in past week, Polygon revenue up 300% in past week, In the past month: Ethereum: down 11% in NFT sales, Solana: down 31% in NFT sales, Magic Eden up 55% in unique active wallets and Axie Infinity is down 33% in the past month
DeFi: PancakeSwap proposal to deployment to Aptos, Binance did not intentionally delegate a large amount of UNI tokens to itself, SushiSwap proposal includes non-transferable “shares” in Sushi governance voting, Frax Finance to release liquid staking within 2 weeks, Hivemind deploying $25M into Algorand DeFi, Umee mainnet upgrade to unlock the full potential of the Cosmos ecosystem, Synthetix Perps v2 improvements coming soon, pSTAKE partnership with Anchorage Digital for institutional clients, Olympus DAO $300,000 exploit
NFT/Metaverse/Gaming: Magic Eden optional royalty payments, NFT marketplace Blur live + airdrop crates, Azuki released the PBT (Physical Backed Token), Magic Eden launch of Boots allows customizing NFTs by trading traits, a16z backed Everyrealm home design and virtual real estate game, X2Y2 "Trackable Royalty" records user's royalty choice, Rarible 2, FIFA launched virtual ecosystem ‘FIFA World’ in the Roblox metaverse, Ripple second wave of creators to join its $250M NFT Creator Fund, Tezos partnership for Shopify NFT loyalty program, Audius acquisition of SoundStage to provide virtual music experiences, Warner Bros. Lord of the Rings NFTs, Disney web3 experience to celebrate 100 years of Disney music
Exchange: Voyager Digital customers may recover about 72% of the value of their accounts, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss no longer a director at Gemini Europe, FTX and SBF under investigation by Texas’ securities regulator, Kraken latest to restrict accounts of Russian users due to EU sanctions, Coinbase waiving USDC conversion fees, Lionel Messi partners with Bitget
Government, Regulatory and Legal: Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg claims actions were legal, SBF posts views on regulation, Hong Kong considers direct retail participation, SBF agrees with CFTC Commissioner over disclosures and knowledge tests for trading, IRS draft instructions language changed to cover NFTs, Israel to test out using digital state bonds, Silvergate Capital postponing stablecoin to be regulatory compliant, Coinbase joins Grayscale against SEC for spot market Bitcoin ETFs
This week I write out some of my thoughts on the recent launch of Aptos and some lessons that can be learned from their fumbled launch as well as a more condensed version of the week here:
- 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 -
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Data:
Bitcoin:
This has just been grinding painfully along the old 2017 top and summer lows. Macro continues to be shaky af - the FED is serious about sticking to tight monetary policy and will most likely keep raising rates for a while. So it’s hard to see this moving considerably up or making any type of ATH soon. All we need is time and patience. The casino will be in full force again - eventually.
Ethereum:
Unlike bitcoin, efferium continues to hold up higher than the summer lows. That’s a little hopium for those who like ETH more than BTC
Crypto Market Cap:
For now it looks like we’re grinding along just above the $900B MC level. Same as the rest of the market - crabways action. Boring.
Nansen Smart Money Token Inflow and Outflows:
Starting by taking a look at how stabled up Smart Money currently is. 28% and it looks like it was moving up and to the right but has begun to recently fall a bit.
Largest Smart Money Inflows this week: flowing into WETH and WBTC but $4M isn’t very much
Largest Smart Money Outflows this week: flowing out of stables USDC, USDT, DAI. Outflows are considerably higher than inflows
Largest Smart Money Inflows this month: flowing into Compound DAI, Compound ETH and WETH
Largest Smart Money Outflows this month: flowing out of USDT, USDC and Rocket Pool
Nansen Hot NFT Contracts:
Highest Volume NFT collections of the past week:
Meta Bounty Huntress deployed 6 days ago and dwarfed all other volumes for the week with almost 14K ETH volume. Looking at their twitter, absolutely no one I follow is following their account and that’s a bit suspicious. Xaxa Land also deployed 8 days ago and comes in on this list with other big names like Azuki, BAYC and CryptoPunks.
DefiLlama DeFi TVL:
The level to watch now is $50B. We’ve been bleeding down for a while now and it would sure be unfortunate to see this drop more. The state of defi is in pure shambles. Eventually this has gotta nuke or start moving up.
Top protocols by TVL:
Picking on Uniswap and Sushi here. On the month, Uni TVL is down 22% and Sushi is up 40%. Looks like the memes about the Sushi CEO fingering a horse didn’t scare off LPs. Let’s take a closer look at their TVLs.
This looks a little odd with these weird omega nukes but still held up way better than Sushi
This just omega nuked after November. The 40% spike looks trivial from this pov.
The top blockchains by TVL:
Solana DeFi is still not looking too hot. Down more than 30% on the month and Algorand continues going up and is near all time highs - up almost 20% on the month now
Taking a look at biggest gainers over the past month - a few stand out such as Tezos which got some partnerships this week and Canto which is still pretty early stage. Seen a few people playing around over there.
Token Terminal Revenue:
Looking at the projects that generate the most protocol revenue. Ranking these by revenue over the past week and I also like to look at the 7 day, 30 day and 180 day trends to gauge their performance over time. CT favorite “Real Yield” candidate GMX is dipping in revenue - down about 40%. Another interesting note is Polygon jumping up 300%-400%. Interdasting.
Taking a little closer peak - it does seem that Polygon has gotten a little recent flurry of activity in revenue. Interdasting. Polygon has a killer business development team and has sealed some high profile partnerships this year
CryptoSlam Blockchains by NFT Sales Volume (30D):
In the past month:
Ethereum: down 11% in sales
Solana: down 31% in sales
The dollar amount of ETH sales are way greater than Solana but Solana has a little less than double the transactions of ETH but the numbers of users seem comparable between the two chains. Solana NFTs had recently been doing better but that seems to have cooled off for now.
We can see evidence of Solana’s NFT volume cooling off a bit better here. Got that spike in September followed by staying flat and now we’ve moved down.
Another comparison with Ethereum NFTs and this has been dead since May when it had its last little hurrah.
DappRadar Rankings by Users: (30D)
Looking at unique active wallets over the last 30 days, we can see that Magic Eden (which has been active in the creator royalty debate) is up 55% in UAWs and Axie Infinity is down 33%
DappRadar Rankings by Volume: (30D)
Now looking at things ranked by most volume over the past month, Sushiswap seems a little low on this list. Only ~ $700M in volume? Beat out by CoW Swap and 0x Protocol. Interdasting to note.
DappRadar NFT Marketplaces Volume: (30D) *excludes washtrading*
In the past month: Opensea numbers look glitched. Focusing in on both Magic Eden and X2Y2 which got some announcements this week. MAgic Eden is up 50% in traders but down 24% in volume and X2Y2 is up in 22% in traders and up 10% in volume. Gonna be paying attention to these number to see what numbers of traders and trading volumes have to say about the creator royalty debate.
From: Nansen, DexScreener, CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, DefiLlama, DappRadar, CryptoSlam, TokenTerminal, Tradingview, Dune
Crypto News:
Monday:
Mastercard is launching a program in partnership with Paxos to let financial institutions offer cryptocurrency trading to their clients. Mastercard will handle the regulatory compliance and security — two core reasons banks cite for avoiding the asset class
Avraham Eisenberg, the man behind the $114M exploit on Mango Markets, confirmed that he orchestrated the attack and claims all actions were legal after after returning $67M - crazy $47M bounty
StarkWare's token will launch within this month of October
The ApeCoin DAO is considering whether to push back the launch of NFT and ApeCoin staking in order to allow for a 1 million APE ($4.5 million) bug bounty program and last 2-4 weeks
Flashbots upgrade SUAVE - aims to address censorship resistance and concerns over decentralization
Ripple is testing a way for developers to deploy smart contracts made for the larger and more popular Ethereum on its XRP Ledger (XRPL) blockchain with little effort
Bitgreen wins Polkadot's 29th parachain auction and DAO IPCI has won the 55th Kusama auction + Ecosystem Weekly Digest
North Korean cyber crime group Lazarus has been aggressively targeting Japanese crypto companies through phishing and social engineering attacks
Cosmos IBC security vulnerability patch
Tuesday:
The Aptos Foundation released the tokenomics outline for the newly launched Aptos blockchain as it launched its mainnet. Coinbase, Binance, KuCoin, FTX, OKX, Huobi, Gate & MEXC are listing Aptos on Oct. 19. Transaction speeds and controversial tokenomics disappoint on the first day. Recall - received $150M funding in July, led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with participation from Binance Labs and others. Aptos asked major exchanges not to list perpetual contracts within 2 weeks however Binance and OKX will list perps within an hour of spot
Mango Markets is proposing to pay back users with different tokens following the $114M hack using a snapshot of balances from an hour before the attacker made his first deposit
Major global e-commerce platform Shopify partners with Novel, a no-code Web3 commerce platform, to make Web3 technologies accessible and approachable for all merchants
BitKeep Wallet Swap hacked on BNB Chain - more than $1M stolen and transferred to Tornado Cash
The Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of a pre-Shanghai upgrade testnet it's calling “Shandong”
Conflux launches $5M accelerator program - will provide early-stage teams with up to $100,000 in funding to launch their projects on Conflux Space
Nuri, a Germany-based neobank that offers crypto investment tools, has shut down after failing to find outside investment. Had previously raised $45M in funding from investors including Sony
Wednesday:
Avalanche’s Banff upgrade has given subnet creators more customization and control - subnets can now let validators stake using the subnet's token
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s decentralized social media initiative, Bluesky, renames from “ADX” to the Authenticated Transport (AT) Protocol and provided additional documentation
Nubank, a fintech bank in Brazil, introduced Nucoin token on the Polygon blockchain, paving the way for a rewards program for its 70M clients across Latin America
Aptos airdropped 20M tokens to early testnet users
LUNC Proposal 5234 passed - reduces the tax burn for on-chain transactions of LUNC and USTC on Terra Classic from 1.2% to 0.2%
Carbon footprint app Kora chooses Tezos blockchain for payments and data security
a16z launch of new accelerator, Crypto Startup School - Investment from a16z ($500k), Mentorship from leading founders, Advice from domain experts, Network of fellow builders
Bitcoin now has multiple entries in the Guinness Book of World Records, including most valuable and the first decentralized cryptocurrency
Latin American crypto exchange Lemon has integrated with TravelX – a tokenized travel products marketplace – to allow its users buy airline tickets
Thursday:
Tether - SmartPay plans to launch USDT in over 24,000 ATMs across Brazil
A group of nearly 4,400 investors have joined forces to find Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon. The so-called UST Restitution Group uses Discord to share clues
Fidelity Digital Assets will start offering its institutional customers the ability to transact with ether on Oct. 28
Fintech firm Plaid - most known for providing open banking APIs - has launched MetaMask, Coinbase, Ledger Wallet Onboard, its first web3 product
Bitcoin mining remained unprofitable throughout Q3
Ethereum alarm clock exploit leads to $260K in stolen gas fees so far
Friday:
Ethereum records 1st deflationary month in history as circulating supply declines
zksync is going live on mainnet on Oct. 28 and will make an announcement on tokenomics in the first week of November
Gavin Wood is stepping down as CEO at Parity Technologies, the key backer supporting the Polkadot ecosystem. Co-founder Björn Wagner will become new CEO
The Telegram messaging app is soon to launch a username auction platform - channels, stickers or emojis, could later also become part of this marketplace
OrangeDAO, a 3,000-member decentralized community open to Y Combinator founders, has unveiled a web3 fellowship program
Craig Wright loses lawsuit against Hodlonaut in Norway over Satoshi Nakamoto claims
Bluesky, the decentralized social network initiative backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, received 30,000 waitlist signups in 48 hours
Naxo, a newly-launched cybersecurity firm, was co-founded by a former FBI special agent and computer scientist who both played pivotal roles in the takedown of the infamous Silk Road marketplace
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
Monday:
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried agrees with CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero over the benefits of disclosures and knowledge tests for trading
Tuesday:
Representatives overseeing the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital are asking a U.S. court to subpoena the founders meanwhile the U.S. CFTC and the SEC have followed Singapore regulators in launching an investigation
Wednesday:
Newly released IRS draft instructions for the 2022 tax year change the language from “virtual currency” to broader “digital assets” - this broader language aims to include NFTs
Israel’s Ministry of Finance and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) are preparing to test out using digital state bonds
Crypto bank holding company Silvergate Capital no longer plans to launch its long-awaited stablecoin before the year’s end - related to preparing the stablecoin for regulatory compliance
India ranks third in the world in terms of Web3 workforce size
Turkey taps blockchain for e-Human project - will be based on blockchain tech to keep all services, data and capabilities used by the system under protection
Thursday:
SBF‘s view on regulation: I fundamentally believe that blocklists are the correct approach to sanctions compliance on blockchain environments; BTC and ETH are not considered securities; many long-tail tokens acting as investment contracts are securities; tokenizing stocks could help simplify securities settlement
Coinbase joins Grayscale in claiming that the SEC is failing to give spot market Bitcoin ETFs fair consideration
Tesla Q3 earnings report - holding ~ $218M in crypto - did not sell or add in Q3
A leaked copy of the still in-progress Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), outlines how the Commodities Futures Trading Commission would regulate the crypto industry
VC firm Paradigm aids Ooki DAO in landmark CFTC lawsuit - They believe case could “seriously threaten the viability of DAOs”
Friday:
Interpol has launched the first ever Metaverse specifically designed for law enforcement worldwide - designed to streamline communication between various units, along with providing an avenue to conduct education and training
Hong Kong promises its cryptocurrency stance is separate from mainland China’s, considers direct retail participation
Fidelity Digital Assets platform to roll out Ethereum trading next Week - only available for Fidelity’s existing institutional clients who already trade or custody Bitcoin
Exchange News:
Monday:
Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss is no longer a director at Gemini Europe
FTX US and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried are under investigation by Texas’ securities regulator
Coinbase is hinting it may sue about 1,000 users in the republic of Georgia for taking advantage of a pricing glitch
Tuesday:
Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M APT perpetual contracts and USDⓈ-M QNT perpetual contracts with up to 25x leverage - source
Efinity (EFI) Gets Listed on KuCoin - source
Wednesday:
Huobi will introduce a 0% trading fee for trading USDD pairs on Global Spot
Thursday:
Customers of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital Ltd. may recover about 72% of the value of their accounts under a tentative deal for the company to sell itself to FTX US
Oanda is launching a crypto trading ecosystem for the U.S. market developed with the Paxos Trust Company
Kraken is the latest crypto exchange to restrict accounts of Russian users on its platform in compliance with sanctions from the European Union
Russian users are welcomed by crypto exchanges in Kazakhstan but they need to set up a local bank card for crypto-to-fiat transactions
Berlin-headquartered online bank N26 will leverage Austrian crypto exchange Bitpanda’s trading and custody platform to give some of the bank’s customers access to up to 200 cryptocurrencies for trading
Cyprus has become the fourth European country to approve registration for Binance
Friday:
Coinbase will waive commission fees for USDC conversions to fiat currency in a push to promote the wider global adoption of its stablecoin
Lionel Messi partners with Bitget
DeFi:
Monday:
Aave progress update on the development of GHO
Decentralized stablecoin issuer Frax Finance to publicly release liquid staking protocol within two weeks
Crypto investment firm Hivemind deploying $25M into Algorand DeFi is one of several catalysts attracting liquidity to the Layer 1 chain. TVL hit a new all-time high of $270M
MetaMask is making it easier for users to turn their fiat into crypto through an integration with fintech firm Sardine
Rabby Wallet has narrowed down the hack to 3 individuals with the help of community and security agencies - the estimated loss is $200,000
Tuesday:
Curve stablecoin - crvUSD teaser
Umee - mainnet upgrade to unlock the full potential of the Cosmos ecosystem
Perps v2 improvements coming for Synthetix soon
Wednesday:
An $8.4M exploit on Celo network-based decentralized lending protocol Moola Market - returns most of the funds for a $500K bounty
Liquid staking protocol pSTAKE has partnered with crypto custodial firm Anchorage Digital to allow Anchorage’s institutional clients to hold the PSTAKE governance token
Binance now second-largest entity by voting power in Uniswap DAO. Binance delegated 13M UNI from its books
Evmos Community Incentive Program - Evmos Governance approves 2M+ tokens for DeFi incentives
Thursday:
BNB chain PancakeSwap proposal for deployment to Aptos chain - recently expanded to the Ethereum blockchain
Binance CEO clarified that the exchange did not intentionally delegate a large amount of UNI tokens to itself, claiming it was a quirk of the Uniswap system
SushiSwap is discussing a new proposed update that aims to form a new DAO structure called Meiji - includes the use of non-transferable “shares” in Sushi governance voting
Gearbox Protocol composable leveraged staking enabled by integration with Lido Finance
A cross-chain bridge between BitBTC and Optimism has been able to avoid a potentially costly exploit thanks to the work of a Twitter user
Snowflake launching direct staking onto Solana through a secure multisig
Proposal Draft for Lido to buy CVX
Friday:
ETH staking rewards have risen in the last few weeks, with validators receiving larger transaction fees as a result of increased network activity - leveraged stakers seeing up to 11% APR
A hacker drained 30,437 OHM tokens (about $300,000) from one of Olympus DAO's smart contracts on Ethereum
NFTs/Gaming/Metaverse:
Monday:
Magic Eden users will now be able to opt for optional royalty payments. Decision on how much royalties to pay will be passed to the buyer who will have three ways to set their preferred royalty percentages
Everyrealm, a metaverse content developer with backers like Will Smith, Paris Hilton and venture capital firm a16z, is launching a home design and virtual real estate game aimed at mature gamers
Magic Eden launch of Boots - allows collectors to further customize their NFTs by trading traits and enables creators to sell traits as another creator monetization tool
X2Y2 "Trackable Royalty" - NFT Marketplace contract to record user's royalty choice; Cross-market API to check how much royalty was paid in the LAST buy
Cofounder of CryptoKitties and Dapper Labs Mack Flavelle has signed with top Hollywood talent agency, WME - one of the most powerful talent agencies in the entertainment industry
West Coast rapper, Snoop Dogg, dropped a music video for “Crip Ya Enthusiasm,” featuring a digital performance captured by Web3 startup Astro Project which makes music video assets available to fans
NFT platform LiveArt burned 197 Seven Treasures NFTs stolen from its wallet and pledged to refund buyers who purchased the stolen NFTs
Introducing the Azuki Collector’s Profile: a web3-native showcase for the Azuki universe
Tuesday:
NFT marketplace, Rarible, introduced an NFT aggregator that enables shoppers to browse listings across several marketplaces and compare prices
Dapper Labs allowing users affected by the European Union's sanctions against Russia to withdraw their NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day and UFC Strike NFTs from their Dapper Wallet to a non-custodial Blocto Wallet
FIFA launched its virtual ecosystem, ‘FIFA World,’ in the Roblox metaverse. It hopes to attract new football fans through games, immersive experiences, and exclusive rewards ahead of the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar
Azuki released the PBT (Physical Backed Token) - a new Ethereum token standard based off of ERC721. It ties a physical item to a digital token. Scan-to-own
Ripple second wave of creators selected to join its $250M Creator Fund focused on promoting the development of NFT-related projects on the XRP Ledger
Playing card brand Bicycle bought a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for nearly $187,000 and plans to sell decks of playing cards based on the IP, and may create further decks in collaboration with Bored Ape owners
Pixels's airdrop to those who played p2e games like Axie before
DappRadar says there are now 650 daily Unique Active Wallets (UAW) on Decentraland after pushback when it was reported there were only were 38 users on the $1.1B platform
A number of food companies have recently begun to position themselves within the Web3 ecosystem by filing trademark applications for the Metaverse, and NFTs
Ozzy Osbourne, Soulja Boy and Dylan Francis are among the artists who will play at Decentraland's second Metaverse Music Festival
A real estate investor purchased a three-bedroom house in South Carolina via an NFT marketplace over the weekend for $175,000
Wednesday:
Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart partnered with Polygon-incubated organization eDAO to launch a virtual shopping world in the Metaverse
Tezos blockchain partnered with Web3 automation platform Taco to allow Shopify users to access Tezos NFTs via Taco’s NFT loyalty program
The crypto-powered music platform Audius intends to become the go-to metaverse concert platform via its acquisition of SoundStage, a firm that provides virtual music experiences
Major League Baseball (MLB), is looking to hire someone to spearhead digital gaming, NFT and metaverse licensing projects
Redditors have created more than 3M Reddit Vault wallets to buy and trade NFT avatars, which are based on the platform's Snoo character, since the series launched in July
Thursday:
NFT marketplace Blur is now live after four months of a private beta phase and is airdropping care packages with BLUR tokens to its users and those who list an NFT in the next 14 days
Warner Bros. is releasing NFTs for its iconic 2001 film “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” - Web3 company Eluvio developed the NFTs and is hosting them, along with all the content data, via its Ethereum-compatible Content Fabric blockchain
Ronaldinho tweeted his support for the World Cup Inu token
Marvel, Funko debuted new web3 integrations at Comic Con NY 2022
Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar invests in NFT platform Rario - will exclusively offer Tendulkar's digital collectibles on its platform
Friday:
NFT marketplace Rarible has released a feature-packed update to its ecosystem called Rarible 2, which transforms the platform into an aggregated NFT marketplace and introduces the RARI Foundation and new RARI governance token rewards
Disney collaborated with its Accelerator participant Obsess, an e-commerce platform known for creating interactive virtual storefronts, to release a new web3 experience for its Disney Music Emporium online store to celebrate 100 years of Disney music
A metaverse casino has been hit with simultaneous cease and desist orders from four state enforcement bodies across the United States, who have deemed the firm’s NFTs to be unregistered securities
The price of Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) has declined sharply ahead of a high-profile token unlocking
Polkastarter NFT Hackathon powered by Blokness, happening on Nov 11-13
Alien Worlds NFT Game launches in-game DAOs to spur competition. The WAX-centric game’s Planetary Syndicates let players battle against each other in the NFT-driven sci-fi world
Fundraises:
Monday:
Investment app, Stash, closed a debt round for $52.6M and plans to expand crypto access for its customers
Delysium, an AI-powered open world with diverse Free-to-Own universes, announced its $10M strategic funding round led by LA-based VC Anthos Capital
Tapio Protocol raised $4M in a seed round led by Polychain, Hypersphere and Arrington, in an effort to bring a unified liquidity standard to Polkadot
Yoloyolo, a new platform that connects NFT owners with brands to sell partnered merchandise, has raised $3.5M in a seed round backed that by ParaFi Capital, Mirana Ventures and Morningstar Ventures
t2.world raised $3.4M ro empower readers and writers in the decentralized future
Gritti, the web3 social fitness app building healthier habits through engaged communities and applied game design, raised $1.7M
Blockchain.com raised an undisclosed amount of additional capital in a round led by UK-based investment firm Kingsway Capital
Tuesday:
Jasper raised a $125M Series A at a $1.5B valuation - AI Content Platform that helps you and your team break through creative blocks to create amazing, original content 10X faster
Blockchain infrastructure firm ChainSafe raised $18.8M in an oversubscribed Series A round led by Round13
WazirX founder’s layer 1 blockchain Shardeum has raised $18.2M in a seed funding round from over 50 investors, including Jane Street, Struck Crypto and The Spartan Group
Web3 Builders Inc, a new smart contract and NFT security startup, raised $7M in seed funding with backers including Road Capital and OpenSea Ventures
Light Protocol $4.2M raise led by Polychain to grow the most secure Privacy & Compliance Infrastructure on Solana
Blockchain security company Hexens raises $4․2M in seed funding led by IOSG Ventures
Valory raises $4M for enabling next-gen apps for crypto users and DAOs
Web3 social fitness lifestyle app Gritti raises $1.7M seed funding
Developer MetaJuice has closed its final metaverse token VCORE presale, amount is not disclosed. Strategic presale investors include Animoca Brands
BDMI invests in Book.io, the first ever NFT ebook platform
Clique closed seed funding round - launching an identity-oracle protocol that bridges the web2 - web3 gap
Web3 product company The New Computer Corporation closed seed funding round led by Borderless Capital
Wednesday:
Celestia Labs raised $55M across two quietly closed fundraises this year led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain - values the startup at $1B
Stardust, a platform that provides development tools for crypto-powered game makers, raised $30M in a funding round led by Framework Ventures
Ego Death Capital, a new venture capital firm dedicated to the Bitcoin ecosystem, is raising $30 million for its first fund
Paytrix, an embedded payments company for high-growth vertical software platforms, raised £5M
Otonomi $3.4M seed to build a first-to-market blockchain-powered parametric cargo platform
Arcade2Earn, a P2E gaming platform built on the Solana blockchain, has raised $3.2M in a seed funding round led by Crypto.com Capital
Solana infrastructure startup Helius raised a $3.1M seed round co-led by Reciprocal Ventures and Chapter One
Carapace raised $2.5M - offering protection against default risk on undercollateralized loans in crypto
Pinktada raised $975K - allows users to book specific hotel rooms then swap or sell reservations to other people if they have a change of plans
Thursday:
Stealthy crypto hedge fund Edge Capital raises $66.8M for DeFi
Lava Labs, a London-based blockchain gaming startup, raises $10M with a $100M+ valuation
OKX Blockdream Ventures launches $10M fund to support Aptos ecosystem
Spindl raised $7M to build the tools Web 3 needs to bring a billion users onto the new Internet
Collegiate sport fan experience platform Mercury has raised $7.5M in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital
Auto-chess battler Project Eluune raised $5M in a seed funding round led by C² Ventures, with participation from Polygon
The co-founder of Fab.com and Moxiehas raised $3M in a pre-seed round for his latest venture Airstack, a Polygon-backed web3 API platform
Blocto’s First Aptos Ecosystem Fund - $3M Blocto Ecosystem Fund
BetterData raised $770K to help create better synthetic data
Friday:
Former Revolut employees have raised $6.5M for DeFi investment app Boku, according to recent filings. A co-founder denies this
Ottr Finance, a Solana-based crypto app that makes holding and using crypto as easy as Venmo for the next billion crypto users, raises $3.1M pre-seed funding led by Race Capital
Digital collectibles analytics startup Mintify has raised a $1.6M seed round led by digital assets-focused investment manager Arca
Early Stage Projects:
Monday:
Re-launch of Aptos Name Service, the official name service of Aptos Labs
Sentiment launching on Friday, October 21st, 2022 on Arbitrum
Buffer Finance trading (Mainnet Beta) live on Arbitrum
Tuesday:
Introducing the OP Stack - a modular, open-source blueprint for highly scalable, highly interoperable blockchains of all kinds. Not just rollup. Not just optimistic
zkSync milestone 3: Proof Merging. With the integration of validity proofs, zkSync 2.0 is officially the world’s first-ever zkEVM running on a public testnet
Texture Finance - SOL Leveraged Staking Strategy - Join the Beta. Whitelist your wallet for the beta and book a spot in the strategy's pool
Introducing Aera, the world’s first autonomous, data-driven treasury management protocol
Aries Markets’ public Devnet is now live
Introducing Lex - word processor with artificial intelligence baked in, so you can write faster
Dynamic Multi Wallet support - combine MetaMask, Phantom and others into a single account on your site
Wednesday:
Introducing The Aptos Bridge, powered by LayerZero
Introducing Elix Finance - a hybrid automated market maker operating on Fuel, designed to allow highly efficient trading while maintaining low slippage
Vyper OTC: the first ever trustless otc platform is now live on mainnet
Aptoscan beta release
Thursday:
Introducing Solana Core - the first buildspace program designed to turn anyone into a Solana legend
Velodrome Sugar - new tool that we built to make it easier for devs to work with Velodrome
Public beta launch of the MetaMask SDK: a set of simple, reliable, and secure tools that make it easier to connect your dapp to a wallet
Introducing the CoinList Seed Fall 2022 Batch - early stage startups
WEMIX3.0 is live - the genesis block of WEMIX3.0 Mainnet has been created
Ladder's testnet is live - provides liquidity for NFT swaps
Ava Labs has released Core web, a free, all-in-one command center giving users a more intuitive and comprehensive way to view and use Web3 across the Avalanche network
The Milkomeda A1 rollup is now live on Algorand Mainnet
Friday:
Developers of the Sui Network introduced Mist units for the project’s native SUI tokens in a move geared towards more efficient micropayments. Mist is not a separate token, but functions similar to how 100 cents become $1
Unveiling the Cere Vision 2.0
Announcing Y2K Finance Initial Farm Offering (IFO) commencing on Arbitrum
Introducing Flaave -- the flashlending market. Get a fixed-rate on your lending fees for up to 1 year
Ankr - introducing latest product, AppChain’s Chainscanner - connect you with your favorite App Chains
Introducing Bracket Labs - the hub for supporting the Bracket Protocol
Research/Reads:
Weekly project update: zkEVM's Layer3, AAVE's stablecoins, Magic Eden's optional royalties, etc - source
The Case For and Against the Appchain Thesis - Cross-chain or Multi-chain? - source
a16z - Wallet Security: The ‘Non-Custodial’ Fallacy - source
The Way of Cosmos - source
On the supposed “nihilism” of the Mango Markets arbitrageur - source
Q3 2022 Global Crypto Ranking: Germany tops, USA drops in the latest report - source
Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q3 2022 - source
Delphi - Nouns — Hyperscaling a Brand & Treasury From Zero - source
European VCs are finally launching crypto funds — what took them so long? - source
Where's The Beef? - Non-Speculative Web3 Use Cases - source
Unpacking Web3 Social - source
What are CC0 NFTs, and why are they important? - source
Nodes are going to dethrone tech giants — from Apple to Google - source
KYC to stake your ETH? It's probably coming to the US - source
Apple and the Metaverse: Everything We Know So Far - source
How Binance CEO and aides plotted to dodge regulators in U.S. and UK - source
Aptos Tokenomics Overview - source
Glassnode - A Coiled Spring - source
Jump Crypto - Token Delegation with Lock-Ups - source
Illuminati - Monolithic vs. Modular Blockchain - source
Messari - State of 1inch Q3 2022 - source
Messari - State of Tezos Q3 2022 - source
Farcaster: The New Crypto GTM - source
Good read on bogata - need to click translate to english - source
Creating the App-Chain Internet: Avalanche Subnets vs. Cosmos 2.0 - source
OFAC Cannot Shut Down Open-Source Software - source
How We Onboard Billions to Web3 - Education + Infrastructure + Mentality - source
Web 3 Isn’t Dead, Despite What Critics Might Say - source
Are Layer 2 Networks Good for Uniswap Liquidity Providers? - source
The State of DeFi Perp Exchanges - source
The Other Side Of The Trade: OrBit Markets - source
How our team makes millions in crypto risk-free - Exploiting crypto markets for fun and profit - source
FTX - Possible Digital Asset Industry Standards - source
a16z - Regulate Web3 Apps, Not Protocols - source
Delphi - Dawn of a Modular Blockchain Era - source
Variant Fund - When Tokens Shape Behavior - source
The DeFi Appchain Design Space - source
All about Liquidations — A Look at On-Chain Metrics - source
What The Fork Is Going On? An examination of modern power structures in mature smart-contract L1s - source
Element, a new NFT market invested by Sequoia, can it succeed? - source
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of Blockspace - source
Announcing the dǝath of liquidity mining - source
3Q22 VC Market Update - source
Messari - State of Harmony Q3 2022 - source
Messari - State of Friktion Q3 2022 - source
Messari - State of Metaplex Q3 2022 - source
Q3 State of Crypto: Market Pulse | Binance Research - source
Aptos vs Sui - source
Evolving Yearn Tokenomics: From Value Capture to Value Creation - source
The Reddit NFT surge - source
A Response to SBF and Principled Crypto Regulation - source
Why the Future of Open Source AI is So Much Bigger Than Stable Diffusion 1.5 and Why It Matters to You - source
Rekt News - SBF - THE REGULATOR - source
Twitter:
So what is blockspace, why should you care about it, and what are blockspace-centric architectures? - source
What does identity look like in Web3 and what infrastructure is needed to support that vision? - source
75+ teams are working on growth analytics, attribution, community, messaging, adtech, crm, & incentives - source
Database of early stage projects - source
Use Interchain Security to provide decentralized sequencing as a service for rollups - source
Meet the simple mathematical formulas responsible for tens of trillions of dollars in crypto trading volume - source
Horizontal NFT exchanges like ME, X2Y2, and others are moving towards 0-royalties for creators - source
How to use DefiLlama for research - source
Comparing Scroll and Polygon Herme's zkevm is a very good perspective to help everyone understand the zkVM and zkEVM - source
Here is all you need to know about $GHO - source
The Ultimate Cryptocurrency Research Toolbox - source
How can we best understand MEV and Ethereum? - source
The State of Web3 and digital assets as of Q4 2022 - source
We are NOT 12 days away from the first zkEVM on mainnet in any meaningful way - source
Cosmos: A Builder’s Thesis - source
Joseph Delong's Guide to Developer Success in Web3 - source
Where did Crypto VCs Invest in 3Q22 - source
Optional NFT royalty controversy is one of the most important topics in crypto right now - source
Killer projects were hacked out at the notfellowHacker House at ETHGlobal Bogota - source
Wallet minted 141 Punks for 0.0207 ETH, estimated to now have a value of over 11 thousand ETH - lost seed phrase? - source
A technical dive into PBT - source
Does vitalik know what he’s doing? - source
SBF - thoughts on crypto regulation - source
Analysis of VC funding - source
A thread on Celestia; the first modular blockchain network - source
Copy of a draft of the notorious DCCPA circulating secretly in D.C. - source
The DCCPA greatly threatens DeFi innovation - source
Oracle manipulation attacks over the past 2 years - source
How current censorship impacts transactions on Ethereum? - source
Over the last couple months, the predominant emotion driving the crypto market was fear and recently that's changed to apathy - source
Tokens this cycle are way more real than the tokens of 2017 - source
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