tl;dr
Top: $116M Mango Markets exploit, BNB Chain hard fork to reverse $100M hack, Matter Labs Ethereum Layer 3 scaling prototype, Polygon and Matter Labs zkEVM competition, Bank of New York Mellon to custody Bitcoin and ETH, Cosmos critical software vulnerability
Data: Smart money near ATH for how much of their holdings are in stables, Largest Smart Money Inflows this month into cETH, cDAI, followed by regular DAI, Largest Smart Money Outflows this month: USDC and Rocket Pool, Solana 30% drop in DeFi TVL, Ethereum: down ~ 17% in NFT sales, Solana: up 100% in NFT sales
DeFi: New CEO SushiSwap accused of fingering a horse, Circle's USDC market cap drops below $50B, Tether replaced commercial paper with U.S. Treasury Bills, Tool shows Celsius user’s losses, CPOOL staking live, dYdX hires former ConsenSys director as foundation CEO, Refreshed Uniswap Web App + V3 live on zkSync on Oct. 28, Offchain Labs acquiring Prysmatic Labs, BUSD on Polygon network, Cosmos developer Agoric developing a stablecoin
NFT/Metaverse/Gaming: Dapper Labs blocking Russian accounts because of new EU sanctions, Limit Break DigiDaigaku Super Bowl commercial, Meta’s Horizon Worlds on quality lockdown, X2Y2 launches P2P NFT loan function, OpenSea launches on Avalanche, DeGods switches to 0% royalty model, CNN pulls plug on Web3 NFT project Vault
Exchanges: Google selects Coinbase to take cloud payments, FTX v2 live on Nov. 21, Huobi selling majority stake to About Capital Management, Binance may spend more than $1B on acquisitions and investments, Coinbase gets license in Singapore and plans to expand in Asia, Binance $500M fund for struggling miners
Economic/Government/Regulatory: Markets in Crypto-Assets legislation passed the European Parliament, Yuga Labs facing a probe by the U.S. SEC, Portugal's 2023 budget proposal includes a 28% income tax, J.P. Morgan and Visa partner to streamline cross-border payments, Coin Center lawsuit against OFAC over sanctioning Tornado Cash, Chinese CBDC volume crossed $14B, Crypto advocates to join Ooki DAO defense against CFTC
This week, I expand out some thoughts on the recent wave of hacks/exploits and the ongoing creator royalties debate and summarize this week’s events here:
Reach out to me on tweeter
- 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 -
Data:
From: TradingView, CoinGecko, DefiLlama, DappRadar, CryptoSlam, TokenTerminal, Nansen
Bitcoin:
Hmmmmmmmmm. Literally no change. We remain in the same tight and cucked range. Things looked a bit shaky when Bitcoin dropped to the low $18k area on a higher than expected CPI print but that rebounded quickly. However, bigger picture, we’ve made no definitive moves and continue grinding sideways with the macro hanging over us. Timeline sentiment keeps flipping between bullish and bearish. Never change, CT
Ethereum:
The most interesting observation here is that while bitcoin has revisited the summer lows, ETH has been holding up relatively will in the $1300 region instead of falling closer to $1000. Not too shabby - for now. We will most likely be beholden to the macro for a spell longer. Inflation and all that doesn’t clear up overnight, it’ll take some time of restrictive monetary policy.
Crypto Market Cap:
~ $900B - $950B - grinding away sideways.
Nansen Smart Money:
A look at how stabled up smart money is. The more stabled they are, the less risky they’re feeling and vice versa. Smart money is currently near all time highs for how much of their holdings are in stablecoins.
Largest Smart Money Inflows this week: Weekly inflow is clearly going into stables - USDC, USDT and DAI. This is interesting actually because we’ve recently primarily seen a flow out of USDC and now this is running counter to that
Largest Smart Money Outflows this week: Outflows are much lighter than inflows and this week looks like it’s primarily out of WBTC, Aave stETH and Matic.
Largest Smart Money Inflows this month: This paints a different picture. Over the past month, the most money has net flowed into Compound ETH and DAI, followed by regular DAI. The move into DAI is interesting. The trend changed from USDC to a couple months and now an uptick in DAI holdings. Worth keeping an eye on. Also interesting that smart money would rather hold the derivative Compound ETH instead of actual ETH.
Largest Smart Money Outflows this month: This again shows a net outflow of USDC. So while we have money flowing into USDC on the weekly level, the monthly is still net negative. Next we see outflows from Rocket Pool and WETH.
Nansen Hot NFT Contracts:
Highest Volume NFT collections of the past week:
BAYC: 3096 ETH
CloneX: 2845 ETH
Otherdeed: 2459 ETH
MAYC: 2195 ETH
Street Machine: 1608 ETH
DefiLlama DeFi TVL:
Oh boy. Poor DeFi. Very little signs of life. Week in, week out, I check TVL. Bad TVL. Can devs do something???
Top protocols by TVL:
The past several weeks has felt very up and down. These top protocols have a +/- 30% range. Focusing on Curve and Aave since they have upcoming catalysts with new stablecoins. Curve TVL is up 16% in the past month and Aave is down 9% - interdasting. Aave has however seen a lot of play over in the Nansen smart money section with derivatives like wrapped Aave WETH, WBTC, USDC and others.
The top blockchains by TVL:
Ayoooo. What’s with Solana. 30% drop in TVL in the past week/month. The NFT market over there has been holding up extremely well too. Curious. DeFi TVL looks like it fell off (another) cliff
Token Terminal Revenue:
Looking at the projects that generate the most protocol revenue which flows to token holders. In other words, these protocols accrue value to the token. Wow. This looks horrible. What’s up with all the down 100% in the past day? Showing $0 in revenue. Error or ? Even then, the 30 day trend looks pretty miserable. Even some CT faves like GMX are down on the monthly basis. Tuff out there.
CryptoSlam Blockchains by NFT Sales Volume (30D):
In the past month:
Ethereum: down ~ 17% in sales
Solana: up 100% in sales - focusing on Solana again. What’s up with the difference we’re seeing here between the DeFi TVL dumping 30% and NFT sales coming in strong?
DappRadar Rankings by Users: (30D)
It’s actually pretty funny how DappRadar had to clarify how it measures users and changed the metric here to “unique active wallets” after some drama this week with data showing that Decentraland only had 30 users - the difference is that people can be playing the game but not actively connecting their wallets to make transactions. Anyhoo. The range for the top 10 daps by users is pretty much 2 mil to 228k. Magic Eden saw a 37% increase in users, further pro Solana propaganda.
DappRadar Rankings by Volume:
The volume range for this is wide, from Uniswap’s $224B to Sushi’s $716M. Let’s further compare these two and look at their UAWs. Uniswap V3 UAW up 22% and Sushi down 15%.
DappRadar NFT Marketplaces Volume: (30D) *excludes washtrading*
In the past month:
OpenSea: up 76,633%? Nahhh. That looks weird. I always have it in the back of my mind to question data when I see it as I see inconsistencies everywhere and this is one of them. Seems to be a glitch. Clicking shows it’s down 19% in the past month. Be Careful when interpreting and receiving data. In general, ETH NFT market is fairly down and flat across the board.
Magic Eden: down 8% in volume - this is a bit counter to the fact that Solana NFTs have been doing very well.
Crypto News:
Monday:
Circle's USDC market cap drops below $50B for first time since Terra's collapse - taken a hit since Binance's decision to consolidate order books and Circle's decision to freeze addresses associated with Tornado Cash
Using data pulled from Celsius bankruptcy filing, a new tool now shows exactly how much different users lost following Celsius' collapse
The Markets in Crypto-Assets legislation passed the European Parliament after a two-year long debate and drafting process
The Luna Foundation Guard citing mounting legal pressure and threats as a reason to forestall repayment efforts with no current timeline to establish payments
Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots, last month resigned from the MEV service following disagreements with the team over censorship
London-based blockchain firm Fnality, in conjunction with the Bank of England, is delaying the launch of its Sterling Fnality Payment System to Q3 of 2023. The system was expected to launch this month
A California jury indicated a man for allegedly using crypto channels to launder more than $5M in drug trafficking proceeds
Tuesday:
Bank of New York Mellon, the oldest bank in America, is enabling customers to custody bitcoin and ether alongside traditional investments on the same platform
Portugal's 2023 budget proposal includes a 28% income tax on cryptocurrencies held for less than a year
Google selects Coinbase to take cloud payments with cryptocurrencies and will use its custody tool
New CEO of DEX SushiSwap, Jared Gray was accused of a series of crypto fraud and once sexually assaulting a horse
When you search for an Ethereum address on Google, the search engine now shows the wallet’s ETH balance
A group of Bitcoin companies including Spiral and Braiins is taking action to promote the adoption of Stratum V2, which would be an upgrade on the current protocol miners use to communicate with pools
Large Bitcoin transaction briefly took down bulk of Lightning Network
Crypto Fight Night - Nov 12 2022
Wednesday:
Offchain Labs, the firm behind Ethereum layer 2 network Arbitrum, said it was acquiring Prysmatic Labs, one of the core engineering teams behind Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake.
Crypto market maker and liquidity provider GSR has laid off less than 10% of staff as part of structural changes to position the business for long-term growth
21Shares, a major global provider of cryptocurrency exchange-trading products (ETP), is debuting a physical Bitcoin ETP in the United Arab Emirates
Thursday:
A judge has partially denied a motion by Aptos Labs CEO Mohammed “Mo” Shaikh to dismiss a lawsuit filed by entrepreneur Shari Glazer, who claims to have been cheated out of equity as an early investor
J.P. Morgan and Visa are teaming up to streamline cross-border payments using their private blockchain networks, Liink and B2B Connect
October becomes worst month in DeFi history as hackers steal $718M across 11 protocols
A group of web3 companies has launched an alliance focused on raising awareness about the need for data privacy following U.S. sanctions on coin mixer Tornado Cash - includes p0xeidon labs, Nym Technologies, Secret Network from SCRT Labs, Orchid, Railgun, Status and Oasis Foundation
FalconX is launching a risk management platform for institutional clients in order to offer cross-margin capabilities and broader liquidity access
Hidden Road, with backers like Castle Island Ventures and Citadel Securities, has launched an over-the-counter prime brokerage for digital assets
Polygon powers India police complaint portal to battle corruption by allowing citizens to register complaints against the police without worry of it being dismissed or manipulated
Stepn denied reports it has laid off contract workers, said it is actively hiring and hinted that a new project is on the way
Solana is live on thirdweb - brings full stack web3 development kit and network of 60,000 builders
Bitcoin rewards app Lolli launch of new mobile app for iOS and Android featuring new Lolli Card Boosts, which allows shoppers to earn up to 10% in bitcoin rewards on in-store purchases
US crypto policy advocacy group Coin Center has filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) over sanctioning cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash
Brazil's Rio de Janeiro will accept crypto-payments for property taxes
The Chinese digital yuan, the largest CBDC pilot in the world, transactions volume crossed $14B. Plans to expand on citizen payments and cross-border operations with Hong Kong
US judge allows crypto advocates to join Ooki DAO defense against CFTC
Introducing the refreshed Uniswap Web App
Temple DAO: A fair path forward - proposal seeks to enable every party in the Temple DAO to win. Middle ground
Friday:
Tether has eliminated commercial paper from its reserves, replacing those investments with U.S. Treasury Bills
NFTs/Metaverse:
Monday:
NFT company Dapper Labs is blocking crypto accounts with Russian ties because of new EU sanctions on Russia
Meta leadership has placed their metaverse VR platform, Horizon Worlds, on a “quality lockdown” through the end of the year due to persistent bugs
X2Y2 launches P2P NFT loan function - users can use NFTs as collateral to borrow ETH from other lenders. The current NFT whitelist only includes BAYC, Azuki, Doodles, Otherdeed for Otherside
Zapper: You can now explore NFTs on Optimism
Manifold Gallery - zero fee marketplace for creators
Tuesday:
OpenSea launches on Avalanche - currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Klaytn, Arbitrum and Optimism. BNBChain is the only mainstream blockchain that OpenSea does not currently support
Solana NFT project DeGods has switched to a 0% royalty model in ongoing debate over royalties
CNN pulls plug on Web3, NFT project Vault, which commemorated major news events - had promised utilities for the future and offering holders partial refunds
Race-car league Formula One files 'F1' trademarks covering crypto, NFTs and Metaverse
Artificial intelligence ecosystem Multiverse Labs has launched a new metaverse city in the United Arab Emirates called Sharjahverse
Introducing Sujiko Protocol - a next-generation decentralized NFT trading platform that allows shorting any NFT collection
Logan Paul’s $600K NFT falls to $10
Axie Infinity creators Sky Mavis will stake the 11,475,000 AXS tokens on its balance sheet to reinforce its long-term commitment to the Axie Infinity ecosystem
Introducing Seaport Order Attributions - on-chain identifier "tags" that attribute Seaport orders to the domains where they were created and fulfilled
Wednesday:
Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, is facing a probe by the U.S. SEC into whether sales of some of its offerings violate federal law
Meta has partnered with Microsoft to bring a range of Microsoft Office 365 products into Meta’s virtual reality platform, aiming to entice companies into working in virtual environments
NTT Docomo, the largest telecom carrier in Japan, has announced the launch of the $412M metaverse unit
Yuga Labs: starting work on the CryptoPunks.App restoration project
Axie Infinity Raylights - first land mini-game is live for all landholders
Thursday:
Limit Break has purchased a commercial spot starring DigiDaigaku for SUPERBOWL LVII February 12th 2023
Gaming veteran Konami Digital Entertainment is hiring for a slew of roles specifically related to NFTs, web3 and the metaverse
Metaverse platform Mona has rolled out a new AI tool to help builders design more realistic objects in online worlds
Damien Hirst, one of the UK’s best-known modern artists, set fire to hundreds of artworks this week – with plans to torch thousands more – as part of a long-running NFT project
French authorities utilized research from blockchain sleuth ZachXBT to charge five people on suspicion of stealing $2.5M worth of NFTs via phishing scams
Sir Anthony Hopkins is launching an NFT collection which promises randomly selected holders Zoom meetings with the two-time Oscar winning actor
Ukrainian Art Museum to launch exclusive NFT collection on Binance NFT in support of Ukraine cultural heritage
Friday:
Beer company Budweiser’s latest NFT collection - Budverse x FIFAWorldCup Live Scoreboard NFT Collection allows buyers to mint a scoreboard that will track the progress of their chosen country throughout the competition
NFT artist Beeple is building a digital art studio create and share digital artwork, and aims to expose NFTs to new audiences
CoinShares launch of an experimental Twitter bot called CoinSharesNFTAI to help traders determine ‘fair’ prices for NFTs that belong to the top collections list of OpenSea
Recent Project Developments:
Monday:
Matter Labs will launch a public testnet for an Ethereum Layer 3 scaling prototype called Pathfinder in Q1 2023
Polygon zkEVM Hermez public testnet - Aave and Uniswap, along with other projects, will be among the first projects to deploy on the zkEVM testnet
dYdX hires former ConsenSys director as foundation CEO
CPOOL staking is live
Ethereum development company Nethermind has “transpiled and compiled” Uniswap v3 on “Warp” - a project designed to allow Ethereum users to swap tokens on the more scalable StarkNet
The chief operating officer for the Helium Foundation, Scott Sigel has claimed there is “no basis” for Binance to delist Helium Network Token (HNT)
Token holders of DeFi project Yam Finance are debating whether to dissolve the project’s treasury and distribute the funds among token holders in an attempt to salvage what’s left of the project
South Korean blockchain investment firm Blockwater Technologies defaulted on a $3.4M BUSD DeFi loan from TrueFi lending protocol
The Graph has announced its 2023 roadmap with plans to move the entire Graph protocol to Arbitrum
Privacy-focused crypto and payments firm MobileCoin, in collaboration with stablecoin platform Reserve, has launched a new stablecoin - Electronic Dollars (eUSD)
On the 4th of October, ~$1.1M was stolen from Sovryn, a “DeFi” protocol on the controversial “Bitcoin smart contract network”, RSK
The hacker that exploited cross-bridge DeFi platform Transit Finance for $28.9M has transferred 2,500 BNB tokens ($686,000) to Tornado Cash, agreed to return 10,000 BNB ($2.74M) to victims - in addition to $18.9M that was returned last week
Polkadot Ecosystem Weekly Digest. October 3 -9
ParaSwap DAO governance forum calls for a new rewards system called social escrow where users earn rewards by performing actions deemed positive for the protocol vs current system where users who stake their tokens earn a portion of the fees generated
Perpetual futures beta (powered by zksync) is live on 1KX Protocol
MES Protocol Mainnet launch on Nov 7
SLAMM: A Unified Model for Cross-Chain Liquidity - Whitepaper
QuickSwap Lend is live
Reserve Protocol deploying on Monday Oct 10th, concurrently with launch event
Introducing Thala Labs - building an over-collateralized, decentralized stablecoin, first for the Aptos blockchain
Introducing the DeFi superapp built on Injective: Project X
Introducing Vyper OTC, the first ever trustless OTC platform
Introducing Dappnet - resists capture, a permissionless application network
Squads - announcing Mesh - a new program built specifically with institutions and DAOs in mind
Introducing Metaplex Creator Studio - create, sell and manage NFT projects with no-code tools
Numoen, the world's first permissionless options exchange live on Celo Mainnet
Taiko whitepaper - describes Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup
Tuesday:
BSC will perform a hard fork as a fix for the exploit on Oct. 6 that drained an estimated $100M from the platform
Polygon and Matter Labs competition on zkEVM rollups. Polygon announces its zkEVM’s public testnet is live; Matter Labs zkSync mainnet is expected within weeks
LayerZero, a cross-chain application platform, will be integrating with Aptos when it goes live
The MetisDAO Foundation has released Smart L2, a new Optimistic rollup technology that tackles Ethereum’s scalability issues with business users in mind
The inflation rate of OP token was mistakenly set at 20% instead of 2% and will be fixed without issue
Wirex, a leading payments platform, announced the launch of USDC on the Stellar blockchain within the Wirex app
Native smart-contract platform Soroban has launched on the Stellar network with the support of a $100M fund
Temple DAO, DeFi protocol that offers users yields on deposits, has been hit by a $2.3M exploit
Mangata X was targeted by a governance attack which resulted in attackers gaining voting rights on the on-chain Council - 11700 KSM stolen
Exploit on Rabby Swap smart contract
Layer 1 blockchain QANplatform, which claims to be resistant to attacks aided by quantum computing power, suffered a bridge hack of 1.4 billion QANX tokens worth over $1M
The regenesis of zkSync 2.0 testnet is now complete, and the documentation has been updated
Upgraded version of the Scroll Pre-Alpha Testnet after 3 months of building
EthSign TokenTable is coming - an automated one-stop, on-chain investment tool for VCs, angels, and DAOs to invest in private token sales of crypto projects
Launch of Supermodular - a venture studio that builds regen web3 projects, often on top of & adjacent to gitcoin's protocols
12 ETHBogota finalists
Beamer Bridge is live on Mainnet - important step toward breaking down rollup silos and enabling free exploration across rollups
Wednesday:
The exploiter who stole roughly $116M from Mango Markets, a trading and lending platform on Solana, put forward a governance proposal that would grant them approximately $70M as a bounty reward
BNB Chain has finished a hard fork upgrade called Moran in an attempt to recover and secure infrastructure following a large hack last week
Binance USD (BUSD) is now available for deposits and withdrawals on the Polygon network
Cosmos developer, Agoric, is developing a stablecoin, IST, ahead of its mainnet launch for the Interchain
A proposal to enable rewards originating from stablecoin swap application Curve on third-party applications passed with overwhelming support
MetaMask integrates with Sardine to bring instant bank-to-crypto option for US users
STEPN began to lay off staff - more than 100 MODs, ambassadors, etc., and will reduce investment in STEPN, and some development progress has been delayed
TRON to develop and issue the Dominica Coin (DMC) with the Caribbean country Dominica, which will adopt TRON Protocol as its designated national blockchain infrastructure
The Metaplex Foundation recently launched an airdrop of its MPLX token for Solana NFT creators and when it extended the offer to eligible collectors that had previously interacted with certain NFT projects, it tanked its price
Skip is live on Juno Testnet - the first-ever MEV solution that rewards with validators and stakers, without harming users via extractive MEV strategies
Semantic SBTs: encode social relationships to co-build Web3 social graph, essentially making Ethereum a linked data Web
ACX Airdrop – what you need to know - it’s not too late to qualify
Introducing a new SBP DAO on Vite — Making Cents
Introducing Sentiment, a protocol that aims to unlock DeFi’s potential by enhancing users’ access to capital through undercollateralized lending
Introducing Aera - the world’s first autonomous, data-driven treasury management protocol
Thursday:
Introducing Polynomial Portal - one click deposit from any chain
Introducing, Quix, the official Optimism NFT Bridge
Introducing, Aera, the world’s first autonomous, data-driven treasury management protocol
Introducing Sudoswap.Vision - detailed stats on Sudoswap pools
Introducing Clique: an identity oracle that bridges data from web2 to web3
nxyz beta - provides flexible, reliable blockchain indexing for web3 developers
Lithium Finance testnet to mainnet
Zomma new testnet on Arbitrum
Maverick - aims to be a game and learning platform for Web3 developers
Introducing: Waves Camp Incubator - Apply for funding & support
Friday:
Mango Markets community set to approve $47M deal with hacker in favor of letting the hacker return half the funds in exchange for no criminal prosecution
Uniswap V3 will be available for users to trade on after zkSync launches on Oct. 28
Stable Swaps and Pools live on Sushi - swap & create pools among like-kind assets on Polygon, Optimism, Metis & Kava
Developers have disclosed a critical software vulnerability within all Cosmos blockchains that run the IBC protocol, the network's cross-chain messaging and bridge protocol
ConsenSys R&D launches an updated and expanded zk-EVM version
DefiLlama hacks dashboard
zksync is renaming the Layer 3 prototype from "Pathfinder" to "Opportunity"
What if you could customize your interchain security? What if you could control your risk? Introducing Hyperlane and Sovereign Consensus
Introducing, flox, a next-generation environment manager built on Nix
Introducing Bunni, a protocol that makes Uniswap v3 liquidity composable
Silent Research Labs introducing Silent Protocol, a privacy wrapper for the Web3 ecosystem
Pulsar is now live on Cosmos - track all your assets across 30+ Cosmos chains, including DEFI & NFTs
Launch of Dolomite - a next generation margin protocol and DEX - source
Introducing nftperp, a perpetuals futures DEX that allows you to trade blue-chip NFTs without actually owning them
Fundraises:
Monday:
Sovryn raises $5.4M to expand its global financial operating system
DeFi startup Arch raises $5M to become the 'BlackRock of web3'
Waterfall raises $4M seed round led by Electric Capital and Pantera Capital to build an NFT trading and pricing protocol
Bond Protocol raises $2.5M to make it easier for crypto protocols to utilize treasury diversification and protocol-owned liquidity
Tuesday:
a16z led a $14M funding round for Rye, a new e-commerce API from Twitch Co-Founder that lets merchants, stores and customers transact openly and with minimal fees on the Solana blockchain
Crypto app store Magic Square has raised $4M at a $75M valuation from investors such as Crypto.com
Crypto lending platform Moon Mortgage has raised a $3.5M seed round to finance Moon’s mortgage lending product, CryptoMortgage
Elyzio $2M pre-seed round for building a gaming multiverse on blockchain
Flowstate Games has raised $2M and announced its first Web3 arcade game, a car combat game dubbed Smash Stars: Thunderdome.
Tribo has raised $1.17M for a new game studio that is making multiplayer games with Web3 technology
Wednesday:
Banking platform Step, which caters to a teenaged and young adult clientele, has secured $300M in new debt funding
Crypto.com has announced a $145M investment into France to support its operations in the country, including a European headquarters in Paris
Blockchain development platform Tatum has raised $41.5M in funding from Octopus Ventures, Circle, Leadblock Fund and others
Blockchain indexer Nxyz spins out of private search engine Neeva and raises $40M in a Series A round led by Paradigm
Low-code, web3 developer, blockchain platform SettleMint has raised a €16M Series A round led by Molten Ventures and OTB Ventures
Decentralized finance platform Zerion raised $12.3M in a Series B led by Wintermute Ventures and aims to disrupt the crypto wallet landscape
NFT infrastructure company Gomu closes $5M seed round with participation from Coinbase Ventures, DeFiance Capital and Saison Capital
Thursday:
Crypto custodial firm Copper raises $196M in Series C round
Uniswap Labs raised $165M in Series B funding, led by Polychain Capital with participation from a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant
BlockTower launches $150M fund backed by BPI France and Mass Mutua
Venture capital firms Accel and Quona have led an $18M round into Singapore-based crypto investment app Pillow
Neel Somani, a former Terra developer, raised $15M for his Solana-based cross-chain modular rollup startup, Eclipse
Crypto hardware startup Fabric Systems has raised $13M in seed equity funding, to build two products - a liquid-cooled bitcoin miner and a computer processor for advanced cryptographic algorithms
Dragonfly and OpenSea back $10M raise for NFT financing firm MetaStreet
Exceed raised $8M in seed capital for new SEC-compliant ventures that are expected to bring creatives, investors, and fans together on music and art-led projects
NFT startup Otterspace has raised $3.7M to build a protocol and application that it hopes can reduce financialization in web3
Nuwton received institutional investments
Friday:
VUZ raised $20M to scale its immersive social app
Enterprise crypto wallet startup Pine Street Labs raises $6M in Polychain-led round
Developer of autonomous software systems Valory AG raised $4M in a seed funding round led by True Ventures
SuiNS - Sui Name Service closed seed funding round with Mysten Labs
Exchange News:
Monday:
Huobi will sell a majority stake to Hong Kong-based investment company About Capital Management. Tron founder Justin Sun has denied reports that say he has bought Huobi’s majority stake adding that he is only an advisor to Huobi
FTX v2 will go live on Nov. 21, featuring an improved matching engine aimed at addressing complaints - whole new order matcher, lower latency API pathways
Binance may spend more than $1B on acquisitions and investments this year despite what may be a prolonged crypto winter
Tuesday:
Coinbase gets license in Singapore and plans to expand in Asia, focusing on serving institutions
HUSD loses dollar peg after Huobi's delisting of 21 trading pairs
U.S. Treasury fines crypto exchange Bittrex $29M over years-long sanctions violations
Wednesday:
:p
Thursday:
Crypto exchange platform Binance has concluded its 21st quarterly BNB burn, eliminating around $547M worth of BNB tokens from its supply
BitMEX adds 14 tokens as it moves beyond derivatives trading
Blockchain.com becomes the second crypto exchange in two days to receive preliminary approval to provide crypto services within Singapore
Friday:
Binance launched a $500M fund to provide loans to Bitcoin miners struggling with difficult crypto-market conditions
New Listings:
Binance Custody now supports DeRace and its native token $DERC - source
Listing on FTX: TreasureDAO $MAGIC spot market - source
AVAX is now listed on Gemini - source
Coinbase & Coinbase Pro will list Illuvium (ILV) - source
GMX gets listed on KuCoin - source
Binance Will Delist DNT, NBS, BTG and TCT - source
Research:
a16z - Virtual Society, Blockchains, and The Metaverse - source
TheDeFiEdge - Some trends for Quarter 4 - source
Studied 50+ startups on TikTok and here’s what we found - source
Token Cap Table Allocation - Why Founders Are Misallocating Tokens to VCs? - source
a16z youtube - A deep dive into basics of consensus, from the ground up - source
Vitalik - Arithmetic hash based alternatives to KZG for proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) - source
Messari - State of Polkadot Q3 2022 - source
How to use DeFillama Raises for your crypto research - source
Q3 2022 | Metaverse Virtual Real Estate Report - source
Bankless Token Ratings | October 2022 - source
Hyperapps: a primitive for a new internet - source
Why Does Arbitrum's Odyssey Evolve Into Rat Race? - source
Messari - State of Avalanche Q3 2022 - source
a16z - building in web2 vs web3; hot topics in NFTs, art, AI; more - source
Lyn Alden - October 2022 Newsletter: Energy vs Sovereign Bond Markets - source
XEN doomed to failure and why benefits to Ethereum - source
Have NFTs Become More Than Just Another Crypto Fad? - source
2022 State of DeFi: Price Performance, TVL, Trading Volume, Development Activity - source
OpSec via @ officer_cia - source
Consensus at the Threshold - Quick Look at Miners and Validators Crossing The Merge - source
The State of DeFi Perp Exchanges - source
The Liquidity Wars: Empire of Frax - source
Jarvis Labs - Ending Boredom - Market Update: The slingshot is pulled back - source
Variable security data sharding - source
Application-Specific Rollups - source
Mango Markets - Rekt - source
TempleDAO - Rekt - source
The Man Who May Have Milked $100+ Million from Mango Markets - source
Eastern Europe’s Crypto Market Active, With Spikes in Last Year Driven by Russia-Ukraine War - source
Messari - State of Osmosis Q3 2022 - source
Beyond IBC - ZK Light Clients, Verkle Trees and connecting IBC to non-Cosmos chains -- the future of Interchain bridging with native IBC support - source
One month after launch, how is the ETHW ecosystem doing? - source
Chainalysis - Hodlers prefer centralized exchanges over DeFi for security - source
WTF is Account Abstraction - Scaling the UX and security of crypto by 10X - source
What’s the Difference Between Rare NFTs and Rare Traditional Art? - source
Web3 Developer Report (Q3 2022) - source
CZ’s Principles - source
Cross-Chain Bridging – Current Risks & Future Development - source
The Cosmos Endgame. It's Ethereum vs Cosmos. Which blockchain has the better endgame? - source
Can Aztec Win the War on Privacy? An Intuitive Explainer of Aztec Network's Unique zkRollup - source
Why ATOM 2.0 Is Not Really A Gamechanger (Part II) - source
Binance Research on Arbitrum - source
The Making of the Aptos Gas Schedule - source
Apps as Sovereign Communities - source
Meta's infamous legs, rumbles about royalties, and more SEC scrutiny - source
Twitter:
CZ on Centralization Vs. Decentralization - source
The TIE Thesis for Arbitrum - Research visualized through seven charts - source
Check if your wallets and by extension you were exposed by Celsius - source
Everything that Parsec can do and show you how to do it - source
What is a Credit Default Swap? (and wtf is going on with Credit Suisse?) - source
Binance hack - Binance is the largest user of the Cosmos software - source
Data comparing NFT trading volume data from Ethereum vs Solana - source
Thoughts on the whole 0 royalties movement in NFTs - source
ROYALTY debate - source
ARK open letter to the Fed - source
Building zk infra - which to decentralize first: the prover or the sequencer? - source
Thoughts on XMON SUDO - source
On Is Money Just A Game? - source
The end of 2% inflation and what it means for crypto - source
Do new stablecoins have a chance at cutting into USDT and USDC's dominance? - source
Without royalties NFTs lose 50% or more of their value proposition - source
Introducing “The Internet of Modular Blockchains" - source
Evaluates Polygon zkEVM - source
The Inter Stable Token (IST) is a fully collateralized and decentralized crypto-backed stable coin - source
Parallels in Web3 today with the first batch of F2P browser and later mobile games - source
10 Life Principles To Apply To Crypto - source
Dynamic NFTs - source
Wrath of Powell 2: Bad Price - source
October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity - source
ETH OI has been overall down recently, but on FTX it's at all time highs (1.2M ETH) - source
SBF on oracles - source
GMX's price oracle updates can be abused by toxic MEV bots, able to extract ~10% of total protocol profits - source
Don't trade, submit DAO funding proposals - source
Get a grip, stop gambling - source
On Market Efficiency, Expected Value, News/Event Trading, and one of the simplest (but not easiest) edges you can acquire - source
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