Another week come and gone. Nothing major has happened since the FTX collapse. Lots of business as usual and drama. There's uncertainty surrounding large players looming over our heads. Can’t do anything about that. In the meantime I’m staying busy researching.
Launches:
Launch of Chainlink Staking v0.1
APE staking is now live - On December 12th, rewards start accruing
Binance NFT Marketplace will launch an Ape NFT Staking Program
Blur Airdrop 2 is officially live - have 14 days to claim by placing a bid on Blur
Cosmos-based DEX Osmosis launched a stableswap
Synthetix Atomic Swaps V2 is live. The first two protocols to integrate with SNX Atomic Swaps are 1inch and Curve
DeFi Kingdoms: Serendale launched on Klaytn
Tether launched Tether Gold (XAU₮) and Euro Tether (EUR₮) on Huobi exchange
Waves to launch a DAO governance framework called Power Protocol will launch with an airdrop of POWER token
Rage Trade goes live on Arbitrum One on Dec 12th
Nostra Money Market Alpha is live- first lending and borrowing protocol live on StarkNet mainnet
Support for bridging USDC and USDT to & from Canto is now live on Synapse Protocol
Holdr launches with $HLDR on Dec 14th - first Balancer Friendly fork on Aurora
GammaSwap, the first protocol enabling users to turn their impermanent loss into impermanent gain, launching on Arbitrum
Tranchess, a liquid staking provider for the BNB ecosystem, will expand to Ethereum with the launch of the qETH token
CLever USD partnership with Frax Finance - clevUSD token
Staking on Euler Finance deployed. You can earn $EUL by lending ETH, USDC and USDT. APRs range from 9-45%
RTFKT, a subsidiary of Nike, launching the first Web3 physical sneaker "Cryptokicks iRL"
ImmutableX-powered NFTs now available on Gemini-owned NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway
Numoen launches on Arbitrum - permissionless and oracle-free exchange of crypto options
Skip is now live on Terra2 - founded at a Terra hackerhouse in May
Governance Proposals:
SushiSwap new proposal to direct all of the fees paid to xSushi holders into its treasury wallet for a year to provide financing for its operation. Aims to make the project profitable again and increase its runway - which has been reduced to just 1.5 years
Testnets and Mainnets:
Zecrey Legend official public testnet phase 1 is live
F2pool launched mining services on Aleo testnet 3, incentivized testnet stage has been activated
Introducing StarkNet v0.10.3 to testnet
Starknet.id Mainnet launch - register a domain to starknet mainnet directly from your Ethereum wallet
Unlocks
1INCH large token unlock coming up on December 30. 14.813% of the total supply
Polygon strategic token sale of 2021 raised $450M - unlock period started from late Nov. 2022
Airdrops:
Hooked Airdrop Announcement - total 6 batches of HOOK airdrop events for existing Hooked Party Pass NFT holders
Juno Arbitrum Quest. If you've transacted on the Arbitrum L2 before October, you are eligible to earn JCOIN, on Juno
SUI Community Access Program - how Sui community members gain access to the SUI token on Mainnet
Listings:
Binance will remove and cease trading on the following trading pairs - CVC/BTC, CVC/USDT, ROSE/BNB, SLP/BNB
MultiversX (EGLD) listed on Coinbase
Coinbase listed Aavegotchi (GHST) and Litentry (LIT)
Oasys (OAS) will be listed on KuCoin, OKX, Bybit, Gate, and Huobi on December 12th
Binance will remove and cease trading on Cross Margin Pairs for: BNX, DREP, LOKA, MOB. Isolated Margin Pairs: TORN
A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix tokens
Introducing:
The SteakHut Liquidity Whitepaper is now live - The liquidity layer of Avalanche
Introducing Prism v2 — The Yield-Optimized Layer 1 Blockchain - the first layer-1 blockchain dedicated to the harvesting, trading and utilization of yield
Introducing Aries Swap - users on Aptos can execute complex trading and swapping strategies
Introducing the NFT Loss Harvestooor - A dApp that buys illiquid NFTs to help claim losses and reduce your taxes
Introducing rwa.xyz - Analytics on real-world assets
Introducing Reth - a free, open-source Ethereum execution layer client built by Paradigm
Introducing MUX V2 - Leveraged Trading Aggregator. First integrate with GMX
Announcing: The Gitcoin Protocol Alpha Tests
I write out some more end of week thoughts here:
https://www.m6labs.co/p/weekly-alpha-leak-state-of-the-market
- 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:
Bitcoin:
The Bitcoin chart can be so boring to look at. This whole year we’ve had nothing but lower highs and lower lows. We crab painfully for a while with the occasional bullish hopium rally and then we eventually break downwards. Right now we’re in one of those ranging/crabbing sideways phases. Nothing significant has changed yet.
Ethereum:
ETH has similarly made lower highs this year but the difference here is in how the lows are being defended. While the price may not have what it takes to go up, it’s putting up an admirable fight of not being pushed lower despite all the reasons and FUD. The burning question is who will win the fight? Buyers or sellers? I’m of the opinion that markets will need some more time before fully pivoting with conviction so the question is, where will the price go during that time? I’m just an anon on the internet, ionno.
Crypto Market Cap:
~ $850B. Not doing anything exciting. Capital is neither flowing in nor exiting the crypto market currently in any significant way.
Nansen Exchange Flows:
Top 5 coins that flowed onto exchanges in the past week: GMT, ENS, cbETH, ANKR, SHIB. The amounts are comparatively low however. Highest inflow was only $30M
Top 5 coins that flowed off exchanges are ETH, USDC, USDT, BUSD and WBTC. Amounts are also more considerable. ETH and USDC coming in at about $2B each.
DefiLlama DeFi TVL:
DeFi TVL is unsurprisingly still limping along in the low $40B ish range. Eventually we’ll have exciting stuff to look into and explore. Until then, we stand guard and wait for the wind to change.
Top protocols by TVL:
First of all, #9 on this list looks to be a glitch. Padswap only has about $500k in TVL. Convex and Frax Finance are both up on the month about 20-30% on the month.
Picking on SushiSwap since they put out a new proposal this week to direct all of the fees paid to xSushi holders into its treasury wallet for a year to provide financing for its operation to make the project profitable again and increase its runway - which has been reduced to just 1.5 year. TVL-wise, they’ve fallen hard from their peak of $7B.
The top blockchains by TVL:
So which of the top chains have money flowing into them? Seems to be Arbitrum. Up ~ 11% on the week and month. Nice. Will that last once the airdrop is completed?
Token Terminal Revenue:
Over the past 7 days, these are the protocols which have taken in more in revenue than they’ve put out through token incentives. OpenSea of course doesn’t have a token to emit though.
These on the other hand have been emitting more in incentives than they’ve taken in in revenue. Bitcoin, Doge and Litecoin are special cases as those “incentives” are paid out to miners for securing the network so it’s a bit of a different case. PoW type things but at the end of the day, it can still count as sell pressure. We can also see on this list that ETH has shifted back to being inflationary.
Exchanges:
Once again, lining up with the FTX fuckery, USDT, ETH and BTC have begun to flow off exchanges. Previous to that, USDT in particular had been flowing onto exchanges.
DeFi:
DEX Volume:
We saw a big ol’ spike in DEX volume in November from all the FTX stuff going on and people losing trust in CEXs however that volume appears to have dwindled. Of course the month is not yet over.
The boost in DEX volume in November also naturally lines up with the boost in DeFi daily revenue.
Stablecoins:
November had the largest on-chain volume of stablecoins ever recorded. The bulk of which was USDC.
NFT Volume (YTD):
Low volume for NFTs continues.
Buyers and Sellers of NFTS as well as total traders continue to trend downwards.
This is interesting. Despite sales and volumes being down for NFTs, marketplace monthly transactions have steadily stayed up throughout the course of the past year.
NFT Collections:
CockPunch surprise hit this week.
Developer Activity:
Devs, please do something! These fellas have cumulatively not been hustling during the bear.
Both EVM and non EVM devs been sleeping.
Now for the events of the week separated by category and day:
Crypto News:
Monday:
Teneo, the advisory firm overseeing the liquidation of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, has taken control of some of its assets. About $35.6M worth of fiat currency and 3AC’s Starkware tokens
Crypto brokerage Genesis owes $900M to customers of crypto exchange Gemini and owes its creditors at least $1.8B
Code extracted from Twitter’s Web app shows a potential new ‘Twitter Coin’ and integration for crypto in Twitter’s tipping feature
Former FTX US president Brett Harrison is trying to raise money for a crypto trading software startup for large investors
UK-based crypto lender Nexo will phase out its U.S. products and services over the coming months due to clashes with regulators
Circle, the company behind stablecoin USDC, has terminated its agreement with special purpose acquisition company Concord Acquisition Corp, thereby stepping back on its plan to go public
Mysterious Bitcoin miner shows off oldest signature mined Bitcoin dated Jan. 2009 - just a week after Bitcoin came into existence
Solana Foundation is adding a new incentive program called Tour De Sun ‘22 to encourage the geographic and hardware diversification of the Solana network
Bankless acquired Earnifi, a tool that’s helped users claim over $150M in airdrops
Tuesday:
Digital asset platform Amber Group is reassuring clients and stakeholders that it is “business as usual” at the firm following reports that the company laid off "hundreds" of employees
Silvergate sought to reassure investors and customers that the bank’s assets are safe and that they comply with due diligence and anti-money laundering laws after a class-action lawsuit filed last week alleging Silvergate was complicit in the movement of customer assets between two of its clients, FTX and Alameda Research
In response to backlash, ConsenSys clarified that it plans to only store and retain user IP addresses and wallet data for up to seven days in an attempt to reassure users that their personal information is being handled securely
Financial giant Goldman Sachs plans to spend "tens of millions of dollars" to buy or invest in crypto firms whose valuations have been hit by the demise of crypto exchange FTX
GameStop laid off additional employees, including engineers from its crypto wallet team
Crypto wallet maker Ledger partnered with Tony Fadell, the creator of Apple’s iPod and co-creator of the iPhone, to create its Ledger Stax hardware wallet
Web3 developer platform Alchemy is rolling out a dApp store. The marketplace aims to streamline access to decentralized applications for users and developers
Strike partners with Bitnob to facilitate cross-border payments into Africa
Wednesday:
Polygon strategic token sale of 2021 raised $450M from Marquee investors in a private token sale. The first batch of vesting & distribution in a three-year unlock period started from late Nov. 2022
Hedge fund Fir Tree Capital Management is suing crypto investment fund Grayscale Investments for information to investigate potential mismanagement and conflicts of interest and push Grayscale to address the large discount it trades at relative to the bitcoin it holds by lowering fees and resuming redemptions
Crypto tax startup Koinly has cut 14% of its staff, attributed to a bear market made worse by the collapse of FTX
Microsoft and cybersecurity firm Volexity have traced a new version of AppleJeus malware to the hackers behind the Ronin exploit and numerous other online heists. Potentially the North Korean Lazarus Group
New era of privacy. You can have a Telegram account without a SIM card and log in using blockchain-powered anonymous numbers available on the Fragment platform
Marathon Digital, one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, expects to recover only $22M of the $50M it deposited with bankrupt bitcoin miner and data center provider Compute North
London-based crypto custodian Zodia Custody is rolling out a new service, Interchange, to protect client assets from exchange insolvency - will enable clients to keep their assets in Zodia Custody and then mirror them on exchanges for trading
Wirex, a banking alternative built for Web3, has listed 52 new tokens on their app bringing the total number of cryptocurrencies to 130, and traditional currencies to 13
Thursday:
Cross-chain bridge protocol Nomad is set to relaunch and partially reimburse those that lost funds in its $190M hack in August. Users must go through KYC verification to let them bridge back assets to Ethereum
Plaid, a firm that connects banks and fintech firms, laid off about 260 employees as it grapples with the slowing economy
Crypto lender Celsius Network must return around $44M worth of crypto back to customers, even if it didn't enter Celsius's interest-bearing accounts. The possibility existed that Celsius could have claimed ownership of those funds
Shares of the world’s largest bitcoin fund, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), hit a record high discount rate of nearly 50% relative to the price of bitcoin
Nouns DAO will donate 100 ETH ($123,000) to ZachXBT to fund his investigative journalism
PayPal will expand its crypto service to Luxembourg in what may open the door for the service to become available across the European Union
Ren 1.0 network is shutting down due to the events surrounding Alameda. As compatibility between Ren 1.0 and 2.0 cannot be guaranteed, holders of Ren assets should bridge back to native chains ASAP, or risk losing them
American fintech company ZELF introduced an anonymous Visa debit card to be accepted at any of Visa’s 80 million locations worldwide - will allow users to open up a U.S. dollar checking account with only their name, email, and phone number
Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is planning a trial of soulbound tokens for identity verification via a business partnership with HashPort Group
Signature Bank (SBNY) will shrink its deposits tied to crypto by $8B to $10B, signaling a move away from the digital asset industry for the bank that until recently had been one of the most crypto-friendly companies on Wall Street
Friday:
Kevin O’Leary was paid $15M to promote the FTX brand and has since lost it all
Lending platform Amber Group’s expansion plans have been put on hold after raising half of a planned $100M funding round, cutting 40% of jobs and ending a $25M yearly sponsorship deal with Chelsea FC. Owes around $130M to troubled crypto lender Vauld's CEO Darshan Bathija
Three Arrows Capital co-founder Kyle Davies said that it wasn’t Luna, an ensuing credit squeeze or declining crypto prices that brought them down but it was being liquidated on FTX before it collapsed
GameStop says it will no longer focus any efforts on cryptocurrencies, after amounting $94.7M in net losses in the third quarter and laying off staff from its digital assets department
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
Monday:
A court in Seoul denied the prosecution’s attempt to have eight people involved with Terraform Labs held during the proceedings
The two-year-long battle between the SEC and Ripple is approaching the end, with Ripple filing its final submission in its case against the US regulator on Dec. 2
Regulated crypto bank SEBA Bank and digital asset financial services group HashKey have formed a strategic partnership focused on accelerating the institutional adoption of digital assets in Switzerland and Hong Kong
Malta seeks to remove NFTs from crypto law. The move anticipates new EU legislation by excluding non-fungible assets
Pakistan launches new laws to expedite CBDC launch by 2025
Tuesday:
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius received court approval to extend its exclusivity period - the time when it maintains the exclusive right to submit a Chapter 11 reorganization plan - to Feb. 15
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating several unnamed crypto firms over deceptive or misleading crypto advertising
The UK government is expected to announce new rules governing the sale and marketing of crypto assets. Regulators will have more power to police the sector, including a clampdown on crypto-related advertisements by companies based outside the UK
Indonesia Central bank plans to make CBDC the 'only legal digital tender'
Wednesday:
A federal judge authorized the issuance of subpoenas to Three Arrows Capital co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies. Liquidators can now force them to turn over any “recorded information, including books, documents, records, and papers” relating to the firm’s property or finances
The United States House Committee on Ethics slapped Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) with a $15,237 fine for violating rules protecting against conflicts of interest by promoting a cryptocurrency he had invested $150,000 in
Nigeria drastically reduced the amount of cash individuals and businesses can withdraw to $225 a week to attempt to push its “cash-less Nigeria” policy and increase the use of the eNaira — Nigeria’s Central Bank Digital Currency
An alleged participant in the OneCoin $4B ponzi scheme, Frank Schneider is facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering, according to a 2020 indictment unsealed this week
New crypto regulations in Kazakhstan: miners can purchase electricity from the common power grid only if there is a surplus, new crypto taxes; planned ban on advertising of crypto transactions
The Argentine government has created a national committee to develop public policies and technological solutions around blockchain
Thursday:
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee wants SBF to testify on the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX and linked trading firm, Alameda Research
U.S. prosecutors are probing into whether FTX founder and former CEO SBF could have manipulated the prices of TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies earlier this year to benefit his businesses
U.S. authorities arrested the former chief technology officer and co-founder of Blockparty, a blockchain events startup, for allegedly stealing over $1M of crypto and fiat from the firm
Crypto hedge fund BKCoin fired co-founder Kevin Kang in October for allegedly misappropriating $12M in assets from three multi-strategy funds
A federal judge dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against EthereumMax founders and celebrity promoters, including Kim Kardashian and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr
The Bank of Spain plans to start a wholesale CBDC project, asking financial institutions and tech providers to submit proposals for the initiative by Jan. 31
Friday:
SBF to testify before congressional committee on the 13th. 7 class action lawsuits have been filed against SBF so far.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants companies to publicly disclose if they have exposure to crypto assets, including whether they do business with any crypto-related companies
The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission is warning public companies that if they have a stake in the industry’s recent torments, they’d better tell investors
FTX gets 3 more months to stop all operations in Japan because the firm has so far failed to return assets from custody to creditors
US lawmakers introduce bill aimed at reporting on crypto miners' potential environmental impact
Shari Glazer, who sued Aptos Lab CEO Mo Shaikh and claimed she had been cheated out of of an equity stake in the new firm, now says the case is resolved
The U.K. has confirmed it will extend tax breaks for investment managers to cover crypto assets
Exchange News:
Monday:
Trading firm Alameda Research was given outsized borrowing limits compared with other clients of FTX
Bybit is reducing its workforce as a direct result of "the deepening bear market"
Crypto derivatives exchange and clearinghouse LedgerX is for sale, with Blockchain.com and Gemini among those interested in acquiring the firm
KuCoin has engaged Mazars, an international audit, tax and advisory firm, to provide a third-party factual findings report
Australian crypto exchange Swyftx to lay off 35% of staff
Tether will launch Tether Gold (XAU₮) and Euro Tether (EUR₮) on Huobi exchange on December 8th
Coinbase will list Aavegotchi (GHST) and Litentry (LIT) on December 6
Tuesday:
Gate established a $100M industry liquidity support fund for all market makers, high-frequency trading institutions, high-quality listing projects, and other institutional clients or HNW individuals
Binance Margin will delist ACA and more margin pairs on cross margin & isolated margin
Tether adds Chinese Yuan (CNH₮) to the Tron blockchain. At launch, Bitfinex will be the first exchange to support
Wednesday:
Mazars concluded that Binance’s bitcoin reserves are fully collateralized, following a proof-of-reserves and proof-of-liabilities verification with a collateralization ratio of 101%
SBF hired prominent attorney Mark S. Cohen - who recently defended socialite sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell- to represent him. He’s unsure how he would pay the legal fees
Binance.US eliminated fees on spot ETH trading for all customers six months after it first cut such fees for bitcoin
Binance generates 90% of its revenue from transaction fees
Binance will remove and cease trading on the following trading pairs - CVC/BTC, CVC/USDT, ROSE/BNB, SLP/BNB
MultiversX (EGLD) to be listed on Coinbase
Taylor Swift was in talks to sign a $100M sponsorship deal with FTX that reached late stages before collapsing in spring
Thursday:
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the crypto exchange's revenue this year will likely be cut in half or more from 2021's sales number, blaming the state of the industry and shaken investor confidence
Crypto derivatives exchange Bitmex added a derivative tied to Ethereum staking yield. Traders can long or short the asset at up to 2x leverage with ETH staking yield swap (ETHYLD)
Bybit integrated decentralized exchange ApeX Pro into its offering in an effort to give customers the opportunity to trade on both types of exchanges on one platform
Oasys (OAS) will be listed on KuCoin, OKX, Bybit, Gate, and Huobi on December 12th
A court in South Korea has supported the decision of local exchanges to delist Wemade’s Wemix tokens, dismissing Wemade’s request to cancel the delisting
Binance will remove and cease trading on the following margin trading pairs: Cross Margin Pairs: BNX/BTC, BNX/BUSD, BNX/USDT, DREP/BUSD, DREP/USDT, LOKA/BUSD, LOKA/USDT, MOB/BUSD, MOB/USDT. Isolated Margin Pairs: TORN/BTC, TORN/BUSD, TORN/USDT
Friday:
Coinbase introduces zero-fee USDT to USDC stablecoin conversion as the stablecoin wars rage on
Bybit will require updated KYC verification checks for various products from Dec. 15 such as one-click buys, fiat deposits, peer-to-peer trading, NFT purchases and sales of more than $10,000 on the secondary marketplace, and adjusted withdrawal limits
Crypto.com released proof-of-reserves data from auditing firm Mazars Group that showed its clients' assets are fully backed one-to-one
DeFi:
Monday:
As a result of material misrepresentations regarding their financial position, Maple Finance has severed all ties with the parent entity Orthogonal Trading which defaulted on eight loans totalling $36M - represent about 30% of active loans across the entire protocol
Launch of Chainlink Staking v0.1 on December 6th
DeFi Kingdoms: Serendale launching on Klaytn on December 7th
Uniswap “Fee Switch” Pilot Update & Vote
1INCH large token unlock coming up on December 30. 14.813% of the total supply
Synthetix Atomic Swaps V2 is live. The first two protocols to integrate with SNX Atomic Swaps are 1inch and Curve Finance
Avalanche Foundation $4M incentive program for trading platform GMX
WalletConnect v1.0 Sunset Notice and Migration Schedule
Tuesday:
Nexus Mutual expects a $3M loss from exposure to Orthogonal Trading’s $36M default on Maple Finance
APE staking is now live - On December 12th, rewards start accruing. North American ApeCoin holders have been geoblocked from staking. Anyone who stakes in any of the three NFT pools and then sells their NFT would lose their staked tokens
SushiSwap new proposal to direct all of the fees paid to xSushi holders into its treasury wallet for a year to provide financing for its operation. Aims to make the project profitable again and increase its runway - which has been reduced to just 1.5 years
Sherlock's staking pool has experienced ~ $4M loss due to a non-paying borrower in a Maple Finance pool
Wednesday:
Over $30M worth of APE tokens deposited into staking contract on first day
Chainlink - over $75M worth of LINK tokens staked in the first 24 hours
DEX platform Hashflow partnered with Wormhole, a crypto bridge service, to enable users to swap crypto tokens across several blockchain networks including Ethereum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Arbitrum
Mercurial, a DeFi platform that allows users to lend and borrow stablecoins on the Solana blockchain, is revamping its brand, community, and token distribution due to association with FTX and Alameda
Ankr deploys $15M to make whole users as Helio stablecoin recovers after exploit
Activation of the Aave <> StarkNet Bridge lets you hold and trade Aave aTokens on StarkNet while still accruing Aave rewards from Ethereum
ConstitutionDAO will once again participate in Sotheby's auction of a copy of the United States Constitution. Last time it raised $47M in a week
Thursday:
Ethereum devs determined the network’s next hard fork, called “Shanghai,” will have a target release timeframe of March 2023 - will allow Beacon Chain staked ether (ETH) withdrawals
Cosmos-based DEX Osmosis launched a stableswap
Staking on Euler Finance has been deployed. You can earn $EUL by lending ETH, USDC and USDT. APRs range from 9-45%
Tranchess, a liquid staking provider for the BNB ecosystem, will expand liquid staking on Ethereum with the launch of a non-custodial staking service and the qETH token
Friday:
Layer Zero live on Celo mainnet, connecting the Celo ecosystem to LayerZero’s 13+ EVM blockchains and other non-EVM blockchains
Gnosis chain merged successfully
Bancor DAO is considering a proposal to create a self-arbitrage bot to profit off opportunities on its own protocol in an attempt to reduce the deficit of $26M on the platform
The Maple Ethereum App will be unavailable from Saturday 10th December 09:00 ET to Wednesday 14th December 09:00 ET due to upgrading smart contracts
WEMIX Buyback & Burn to Deflationary Tokenomics
NFTs/Gaming/Metaverse:
Monday:
Chinese court says NFTs are virtual property protected by law
Opera to add drag-and-drop NFT creation tool to browser in early 2023 created by cloud-based ecosystems company Alteon
Lens Protocol, the blockchain-based social media project from DeFi lender Aave, acquired Sonar, a mobile app whose users pilot NFT-linked avatars through digital worlds
Coca-Cola teamed up with Crypto.com to release a collection of 10,000 FIFA World Cup NFTs. Developed and hosted on Crypto.com's NFT platform by GMUNK, a digital artist who previously worked with Nike, DoorDash and musician Grimes
Reddit Collectible Avatar minting hits all-time high - More than 4.4M have been minted since Reddit launched the collection earlier this year
Coinbase confirmed that production of its Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed “Degen Trilogy” short film series has been paused
Tuesday:
Blur Airdrop 2 is officially live - have 14 days to claim by placing a bid on Blur. When you bid, you’ll also start earning points towards Airdrop 3, the final and biggest airdrop
Polygon and Warner Music Group have teamed up with e-commerce platform LGND.io to roll out a multi-year web3 music program that will allow users to play digital vinyl on-the-go
Animoca Brands secured a majority stake in the Los Angeles-based music metaverse gaming platform Pixelynx
RTFKT, a subsidiary of Nike, launching the first Web3 physical sneaker "Cryptokicks iRL", which will later enable Move to Earn mode, limited to 19,000 pairs, and the price ranges from $450-1333
Binance NFT Marketplace will launch an Ape NFT Staking Program
Wednesday:
Video game company Atari now allows holders of its NFT collection, Atari NFT, to print framed prints and posters through a new collaboration with print-on-demand company Pixels
ImmutableX-powered NFTs from web3 games such as Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians, Illuvium, Embersword and Planet Quest now available on Gemini-owned NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway
National Basketball Association Hall of Famer, Scottie Pippen, partners with Web3-based entertainment company Orange Comet, to produce the “SP33” digital sneaker collection of 1,000 pairs of shoes based on Pippen’s career
Electronic musicians Aoki and Justin “3LAU” Blau will use their Ethereum CryptoPunks NFTs as their alter egos to release new music under the name Punx
Metaverse platform Decentranland new platform feature allows its users who own virtual LAND to essentially become landlords. Owners can now officially rent out their property to other users on the platform for predefined periods of time
Old-school media player from the ‘90s Winamp now supports Ethereum and Polygon-based music NFTs in its latest desktop update. Winamp was originally released in 1997 and is most widely remembered as the dominant Windows media player of the day
Financial media website Investopedia published a detailed run-down of NFT tax law in the United States emphasizing that people should probably hire a tax professional
Thursday:
ImmutableX and MoonPay announce NFT Checkout. The Moonpay primary NFT sale checkout feature enables users to mint and own an asset using a credit or debit card
Blur offers some NFT traders 50% refund after ETH losses from UI bug - we will query for collection bids that were accepted over 25% of the non-flagged floor and refund them automatically
Polygon-based Starbucks NFTs are now available to beta testers with a marketplace powered by Nifty Gateway coming in 2023
Author and podcast host Tim Ferriss launched an NFT-driven fiction project called The Legend of Cockpunch. The initial mint sold out, with secondary sales since topping $3.3M worth of ETH
Friday:
OpenSea announced various changes to its enforcement of creator royalties following complaints from some creators and builders - extended the deadline to have royalties fully enforced
Metaplex accused Magic Eden of attempting to take over the NFT protocol as power players battle over royalties and decentralization
Binance NFT Marketplace launches “Showdown: Pacquiao vs DK Yoo” Mystery Box Collection
Before Jan 2nd, OpenSea will transfer ownership of the Operator Filter Registry to a multi-sig controlled by a collective - Meet the Creator Ownership Research Institute (CORI)
Fundraises:
Monday:
Korean VC firm Daesung Private Equity announces a $83M “Metaverse Scale-Up Fund.” The fund, which will have the participation of the Korean state represented by Korea Venture Investment Corporation’s Korea Fund of Funds, aims to put investments into virtual reality and digital twins-related businesses
Tuesday:
Few investments have been closed through a $200M co-investment program unveiled by Animoca Brands and BNB Chain one year ago as Animoca prepares to launch a new $2B fund for later-stage metaverse bets
Panoptic, a Uniswap-based DeFi protocol for trading perpetual options, raised $4.5M in a seed funding round. Gumi Cryptos Capital led the round, with Uniswap Labs Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Jane Street, Avalanche Foundation's Blizzard fund and others participating
Camelot, a DEX on Arbitrum, raised $3.8M
Gridless, a bitcoin mining company that helps generate new sources of energy in East African rural communities, secured a $2M seed investment round led by Stillmark and Jack Dorsey co-founded payments firm Block
Oasys, a gaming-optimized blockchain, has successfully closed a strategic funding round, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, South Korean gaming giant Nexon
Wednesday:
Crypto accounting, tax and compliance platform Bitwave raised $15M in a Series A funding round led by Hack VC and Blockchain Capital. Other venture capital firms including SignalFire, Valor Equity Partners, Arca, Pulsar Trading and Alumni Ventures Blockchain Fund
Perennial, a DeFi protocol for trading derivatives, raised $12M in a seed funding round. Polychain Capital and Variant co-led the round, with Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, Scalar Capital, Robot Ventures and others participating
Syncfy, a leading open finance platform in Latin America, today announced $10M in seed funding led by Point72 Ventures
The Mirror, a game development platform that lets indie developers build virtual worlds, raised $2.3M in pre-seed funding led by Founders Found, the Silicon Valley venture fund that backed Stripe, Airbnb and Lyft
Liquid Factory raised $1.25M to launch a privacy network auction-style NFT marketplace, co-led by KuCoin Labs and Republic Capital. Other investors: IDG capital, CDH VGC, Lapin.Digital, Ascensive Assets, and Acheron Trading
Crypto infrastructure firm Blockstream is looking for a fresh injection of capital at a significantly lower valuation (~70% lower) than it raised at last year - previously valued at $3.2B
Thursday:
Binance Labs is leading a private round II for GoPlus Security who is working on the “security infrastructure” for Web3 by providing open, permissionless, user-driven security services
Bitcoin․com completes VERSE $50M token sale and launches token on Verse DEX
Shibuya, a decentralized video platform co-founded by Emily Yang of pplpleasr fame, raised $6.9M in seed funding led by a16z and Variant with additional participation from Joe Tsai, GMJP, Kevin Durant and Paris Hilton
Friday:
Digital collectibles company Forum3, the firm that helped power Starbucks' recent web3 loyalty program, raised $10M in seed funding led by Decasonic with additional participation from Bloccelerate, Liberty City Ventures, Arca, Polygon Ventures and Valor Siren Ventures
Metagood, a for-profit social impact NFT startup, has raised $5M in its pre-seed round. Investors include Animoca Brands, Morgan Creek Capital founder and CEO Mark Yusko and Virgin Group investment manager Freddie Andrewes
Earn Alliance closed a $4.75M seed raise to connect game developers with genuine gamers worldwide co-led by CoinFund and Fabric Ventures with participation by Blockchain Coinvestors, Animoca Brands, Stake Capital, Athena Ventures, NLS Ventures, MAD World Ventures, Guild Alliance
Crypto startup Outdefine has raised $2.5M to help web3 talent find jobs co-led by Jump Crypto and TCG Crypto. Other investors include Big Brain Holdings, Formless Capital and Blocore
Bitcoin miner 360 Mining raised $2.25M in a new funding round and plans to deploy the funds to increase natural gas production and mining capacity. Investors: Luxor, BT Growth Capital
NF3, a one-stop-shop for NFT trading and launching ApeCoinStaking.io, a staking platform that combats geo restrictions, raised $1.65M in a seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures Crypto and Spartan Group. Other backers include DWF Labs, Saison Capital and prominent angel investors including Bitmex founder Arthur Hayes
Coin98 Labs acquired CyBallOfficial, moving further into Web3 Gaming
Early Stage Projects:
Monday:
BNB Grant DAO - Round 2 is live
Waves to launch a DAO governance framework called Power Protocol that will provide the tools to manage new or existing DAOs - will launch with an airdrop of the system’s native token called POWER
Presenting Juno Arbitrum Quest. If you've transacted on the arbitrum L2 before October, you are eligible to earn JCOIN, on Juno
FREQUENCY is the latest Polkadot parachain
Zecrey Legend official public testnet phase 1 is live
Introducing Prism v2 — The Yield-Optimized Layer 1 Blockchain - the first layer-1 blockchain dedicated to the harvesting, trading and utilization of yield
Introducing Aries Swap - users on Aptos can execute complex trading and swapping strategies
The SteakHut Liquidity Whitepaper is now live - The liquidity layer of Avalanche
Tuesday:
Rage Trade goes live on Arbitrum One on Dec 12th
Support for bridging USDC and USDT to & from Canto is now live on Synapse Protocol
BNB Chain Builder Grant November winners: dynamic NFT creation tool Owl Protocol and Web3 real-time data index BlockVision
F2pool launched mining services on Aleo testnet 3, as the incentivized testnet stage has been activated. Aleo is a new L1 for creating scalable and private applications applying zero-knowledge cryptography
Recap of Sui Testnet Wave 1, successfully achieved goal of practicing decentralized coordination and incident response on a geo-distributed Sui network
Introducing the NFT Loss Harvestooor - A dApp that buys illiquid NFTs to help claim losses and reduce your taxes
Nostra Money Market Alpha is live- first lending and borrowing protocol live on StarkNet mainnet
Wednesday:
Introducing StarkNet v0.10.3 to testnet, includes increased performance improvements & the removal of deprecated Deploy transactions
Optimism Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 2. In February 2023, 10M OP will be distributed to the people and projects powering the public goods that make Optimism possible
Announcing: The Gitcoin Protocol Alpha Tests
Starknet.id Mainnet launch - register a domain to starknet mainnet directly from your Ethereum wallet
CLever USD partnership with Frax Finance - clevUSD token
The Gnosis Chain Merge - will transition from its Proof-of-Authority legacy to PoS
Introducing rwa.xyz - Analytics on real-world assets
Holdr launches with $HLDR on Dec 14th - first Balancer Friendly fork on Aurora
Thursday:
SUI Community Access Program - how Sui community members gain access to the SUI token on Mainnet
GammaSwap, the first protocol enabling users to turn their impermanent loss into impermanent gain, is launching on Arbitrum
Introducing Reth - a free, open-source Ethereum execution layer client built by Paradigm
Introducing MUX V2 - Leveraged Trading Aggregator. First integrate with GMX
Hooked Airdrop Announcement - total 6 batches of HOOK airdrop events for existing Hooked Party Pass NFT holders
Friday:
Numoen launches on Arbitrum - permissionless and oracle-free exchange of crypto options
ScalingX, a global developer community, and accelerator dedicated to advancing Web3 and blockchain technologies, with a focus on scaling technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP), announced an incubation program to help relevant startups gain initial traction
Skip is now live on Terra2 - founded at a Terra hackerhouse in May
Research/Reads:
Vitalik - What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me - source
Stages To Comfy and True Decentralization - source
Art Gobblers Deep Dive - source
Reckless – The Story Of Cryptocurrency Interest Rates Chapter 3: The Natural Rate - source
All is Fair in Arb and MEV on Avalanche C-Chain - source
Augmenting Culture: The Emerging Field of Digital Fashion - source
Revealed: the Alameda venture capital portfolio - source
CoinShares Bi-Weekly Digest Data-driven analysis - source
Innovating the Main Chain: a Polygon PoS Study in Parallelization - source
Apple Wants to Tax Ethereum - source
Panoptic: Solving DeFi’s perennial option problem. How to avoid fragmented liquidity, toxic flow, oracle problems, and more - source
How can PoPW networks win? - source
Vitalik- a quick GPT chatbot coding experiment - source
Glassnode - A Capital Reset - source
Layer 2 Economics - The Business Model of Ethereum's Scaling Solutions - source
The State of CBDCs in 2022 - source
Binance Research - Web3 Social: Road to Mass Adoption - source
Regulating the crypto assets landscape in Japan - source
Life After FTX: How Solana DeFi Is Starting Over—Without SBF’s Serum - source
Huobi Research - Global Crypto Industry Overview and Trends - source
Towards Digital Self-Sovereignty: The Web3 Identity Stack - source
What Web3 could learn from Twitter’s timeline architecture - source
Rethinking "Governance Token" and Advancing "Non-Token Governance" - source
Ethereum Foundation - Allocation Update Q3 2022 - source
Nansen - An On-Chain Look at Ethereum's Liquid Staking Landscape - source
EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective - source
Metaverse Report - source
Account Abstraction Will Evolve Wallets - source
Future of Payments - source
Did Sam Bankman-Fried Finally Admit the Obvious? - source
BlockFi employees were discouraged from describing risks in internal communications - source
SPOT — A Responsibly-Designed, Inflation Resistant, Store of Value - source
Unlocking Payments Over Crypto Rails - source
MEV Driven Centralization in Ethereum: Part 2 - source
Pantera Portfolio Compensation Survey - source
Twitter:
Coinbase CEO Rejects FTX ‘Accounting Error,’ Funds Were Obviously ‘Stolen’ - source
SBF The Block interview call notes - source
Alameda ex-CEO Caroline Ellison spotted in New York, Twitter users claim - source
Institutional losses in FTX/Alameda Crash - source
Price of $BNX dropped ~53% - what happened - source
Bybit called out by Cobie for hosting another Moon Carl token launch - source
Eth net supply growth does NOT mean the network's value accrual (i.e. fee burn minus outlays) is 'unprofitable' for tokenholders in aggregate - source
Web2 giants filing trademarks for their IP for NFTs and the metaverse - which are the most promising? - source
CZ’s list of wrong narratives he’s seen recently - source
Ape staking issues - source
Owning the BAYC NFT entitles the owner to all of the contents of their staking vault - source
Updated FTX contagion chart - source
Root cause of the May UST depeg - Terraform Labs - source
Practical tips for protecting yourself against accidental and malicious leaks - source
Performance of Uniswap NFT trading after launch - source
Circumstantial evidence that $5B AUM Ambergroup is insolvent - source
$77.7M of $LINK deposited into staking contract - source
Alameda investments (more than 470) - source
Do Kwon on the attack for Terra collapse - source
DEEP dive into some previously unlabelled wallets, and suspicious movements of the FTT token - source
Number of BTC and ETH whale addresses has reached all-year highs, reflecting a combination of whales retreating into self-custody & buying the dip - source
10 mind blowing things you can do using ChatGPT - source
SBF/CZ he said-she said drama - source
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