This week (like many other weeks) I’m on the hunt for things to be bullish about and trying to find interesting little observations. Long story short, despite the recent price rally, a lot of other metrics just aren’t looking impressive right now. Stablecoin exchange reserves are low, DeFi TVL in the gutter, low exchange volume, low DEX volume, low on-chain activity such as transaction count, active addresses, volume. Low NFT volume (except for Solana), low Google web search volumes for crypto. Want to see some of these start upticking. If anyone has any other metrics they like to look at, let me know. This week was also really heavy in fundraising announcements. My figuring is that projects waited for improved market conditions to announce.
Have a great weekend!
- 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 -
Some of my longer form thoughts on what is going on this week can be found here:
https://www.m6labs.co/p/weekly-alpha-leak-market-pulse-and
Data:
Prices:
Bigger picture, we can see the crypto price rally that everyone was creaming themselves over. Bitcoin, ETH and other specific sectors took off. Nice! Money to be made during times like that if you’re active.
Zooming in and looking at what happened over the past week, crypto and stonks fell on Wednesday, coinciding with that DOJ/Bitzlato announcement that spooked the market but prices have since begun to recover.
Crypto Market Cap:
Total crypto market cap is hovering just underneath a billion. Recall that we topped at just about $3B back in November, 2011. Volume is still subdued as well.
Stablecoin Exchange Reserves:
~ $27.57B. Stablecoins are currently still not flowing onto exchanges. We’re gonna want to see this going up - because how else are people supposed to buy our bags?
DeFi TVL:
~$45B. Once again, from a big picture POV, assets are not meaningfully being locked in DeFi smart contracts. We’re still far off the ~$180B high.
When we zoom in though, we can see we’ve gained less than $7B since the beginning of January which is something. Risk has been tepidly flowing back in all over the place, whether that be DeFi TVL or the total market cap. Just not in any way that will blow our socks off.
Let’s also take a gander at what has been performing well. Wonderland is interesting at the number 2 spot because its TVL was basically wiped out, going down to as low as $50k and recently spiked back up to ~ $20M. Most likely linked to the return of Daniele Seste.
Now looking at the chains, most of the chains are seeing pleasant green as liquidity slowly creeps back however my eye is drawn to Solana. Solana’s price has 2x’d off the bottom in December and its NFT volume is currently going bananas but none of that translates into TVL activity. Solana DeFi seems dead - currently being beat out by the likes of Cronos, Mixin and DeFiChain.
Exchange Volume:
Exchange volumes are also unimpressive. On the daily we can see a spike at the beginning of January that coincides with the recent rally we’ve seen but looking at the monthly, we are still trending downwards.
Dex Volume:
How about on-chain DEX volume? Are the on-chain degens saving us? Not yet. Volume is woefully low and with the exception of that spike in May and November that coincides with Luna/3AC/FTX/CEX uncertainty, monthly dex volume has been decreasing since basically all of 2022. ‘Tis a wasteland out there.
On-Chain:
Transaction count and number of active addresses don’t look particularly impressive. We want to be seeing up and to the right.
On-chain volume for both Bitcoin and ETH look like poop and in the dumps.
ETH volume difficult to see when compared with Bitcoin but it has been trending downwards since 2021
NFT Volume:
Ethereum NFT volume is woefully low. Basically dropped off since May 2022 and has been crawling along since.
As previously mentioned, Solana NFT volume is currently going bananas. Check out the monthly volume for January. Not bad.
January has definitely been a good month for Solana NFT and predominantly on Magic Eden Marketplace. Highest activity ever depending on which data you’re looking at.
Daily Active Users:
Gonna stick with Solana since it’s relevant. Monthly active addresses have been trending downwards since May 2022 and we can also see another spike in users coming in off the lows in December. To recap: Solana DeFi TVL: low, NFT Volume: bananas, Active Addresses: low
Revenue:
For revenue, let’s look at the wall of shame over the past 30 days. A protocol takes in fees, captures a portion of those fees as revenue and then distributes an amount out via token incentives. Whatever is left over helps paint a partial picture of how good it runs as a business. Who do we see as number 2 on this list? Solana. $833.7k in fees. $416.9k is captured as revenue. $32.2M is distributed as token incentives. Remaining: -$31.8M.
Treasuries:
Another interesting observation surrounding Daniele Sesta. Abracadabra.money (SPELL) has popped back up as showing the 5th largest treasury. DeFi TVL hasn’t been growing like we saw with Wonderland earlier but we’ve seen a spike in the treasury. Daniele has teased he’s working on Popsicle Finance again. What can we expect from these other projects?
Web Traffic:
Looking for signs of normie interest by checking out web traffic, we see little to get excited about. Basically all major categories are down. Wen will the normies return to buy our bags?
Importanter Highlights of the Week:
Monday:
Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the founders of 3AC, along with CoinFLEX co-founders Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugamaim aim to raise $25M to start a new crypto exchange called GTX
Shiba Inu will soon launch a beta for its planned Ethereum Layer 2 network called Shibarium with Bone tokens used for transaction fees
Justin Sun considering buying up to $1B of Digital Currency Group’s assets
North Korea’s Lazarus Group moved $63.5M (~41,000 ETH) from the Harmony bridge hack through Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing on three different exchanges
Skybridge founder Anthony Scaramucci is investing in a company set up by Brett Harrison, the former president of defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX US
Visa listed Alchemy Pay as an Official Service Provider
Bitcoin data is live on Dune
New Avalanche app for Ledger devices and Ledger Live
Tuesday:
Sushi's protocol's 2023 roadmap will focus on user experience, release its DEX aggregator in the first quarter, optimized tokenomics, launch decentralized incubator: Sushi Studios
BNB Chain completed the 22nd Quarterly BNB Burn via BNB Auto-Burn of over $500M worth of its native tokens
Polygon successfully completed a hard fork designed to reduce instances of spiking gas fees and disruptive chain reorganizations known as reorgs
Yuga Labs BAYC Sewer Pass mint
Polygon zkEVM Mainnet launch soon teased by co-founder
Aave team member teases Aave V3 could launch this week
The European Parliament’s final vote on the comprehensive Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has been postponed to April, stalling the implementation process
Filecoin Foundation will deploy IPFS aboard a Lockheed Martin spacecraft this year to test use cases for decentralized storage in space
Digital currencies, such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins, are the natural evolution of money and payments, Bank of America said in a research report
Binance Custody will allow institutional investors to keep their collateralized crypto used for leveraged positions, off the platform in cold storage
Wednesday:
Digital Currency Group halted its quarterly dividend payments to conserve cash and strengthen its balance sheet
$90M in FTX US assets were moved via 'unauthorized transfers' after bankruptcy
Coinbase paused its business in Japan and has advised customers to withdraw their assets from the platform
Polkadot released version 3 of its cross-chain messaging format Cross-Consensus Messaging (XCM), which enhances interoperability between different blockchains in its ecosystem
Optimism transactional activity has steadily surged in the past weeks, crossing over rival Arbitrum’s activity, which has fallen nearly 50% since its November peak
ConsenSys cuts 11% of the workforce which accounts for 96 employees
Circle taps Deloitte as new auditor and doubles down on Proof of Reserves
First National Geographic NFT Launch met with anti-NFT backlash
Thursday:
The crypto lending unit of DCG could file for bankruptcy as soon as this week
New FTX CEO says crypto exchange could be revived
The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested and charged with processing $700M in illicit funds. China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime
Yuga Labs has blacklisted addressed related to Blur, SudoSwap, LookRare and NFTX that don't mandate NFT royalties in Bored Ape's Sewer Pass mint
DEX aggregator 1inch Network has developed a hardware wallet
Aave V3.0.1 deployed across all testnets
National Australia Bank is launching a fully backed stablecoin called AUDN on the Ethereum network and Algorand blockchain
Trader Joe DEX plans to bolster the utility of its native governance token JOE and expand to Arbitrum and BNB Chain
NFT marketplace Rarible is expanding its white-label marketplace building tool for Polygon-based collections. Co-founder is bullish on Polygon
Flashbots, an Ethereum infrastructure service, is in discussions with potential backers about raising up to $50M at a billion-dollar valuation
Friday:
Digital Currency Group's Genesis Global files for bankruptcy protection and owes more than $3.6B to top 50 creditors
Digital Currency Group owes subsidiary Genesis Global over $1.65B
Crypto lender Genesis Global Capital is FTX's largest unsecured creditor. FTX and its affiliated subsidiaries owe Genesis $226.3M
Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, threatened to file a lawsuit against DCG and its CEO Barry Silbert after bankruptcy unless they make a "fair offer" to Gemini's Earn customers
NFT marketplace Blur postpone token release date to February 14
Nexo to pay $45M to federal and state agencies after being charged by the SEC for failing to register the offer and sale of its retail crypto asset lending product - Earn Interest Product
Robinhood Wallet, smartphone app that allows users to swap, transfer crypto, NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon. It’s currently being slowly rolled out to over 1 million waitlisted
Fantom released a decentralized funding system to finance new projects, dubbed the “ecosystem vault”
Crypto News:
Monday:
Hardfork for Polygon PoS chain will make key upgrades to the network on Jan 17th
Cardano will release a software toolkit later this month that will enable developers to deploy custom-built sidechains on Cardano aimed at improving the ecosystem
Tuesday:
Data provider CryptoSlam and crypto news site Forkast.News have combined to become Forkast Labs, a web3-focused media company
Crypto-focussed bank Silvergate reports Q4 loss of $1B
Ethereum validators numbers 500,000 ahead of March’s scheduled Shanghai upgrade
TaxBit, a crypto tax and accounting software provider, acquired rival Tactic to expand its offerings and boost its expansion plans
The Ethereum Foundation grants to support Ethereum-related academic work. Up to $1M in total available funds. Proposals due February 27th
Wednesday:
Another example of potential insider trading around Binance listing RPL
Venture capitalist Tim Draper launching a web3 deals syndication platform called the Draper Round Table through the Draper Venture Network (DVN), a self-governing organization of independent venture funds that cooperate on investment diligence and co-investments
Media start-up Semafor is exploring ways to buy out its biggest outside backer SBF
Vauld has until Feb. 28 to figure out a revival plan. In early January, Vauld turned down Nexo's final acquisition offer
Crypto lender Celsius is attempting to call in a more than $6M from an $8M investment commitment made by VC firm Fabric Ventures before going bankrupt
The Giving Block, a crypto donations marketplace cuts about 12% of its workforce
Thursday:
Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, closed almost all of its eight-year position in crypto shortly before the market began to crash last year, generating about $1.8B in returns
CoinDesk, whose parent company is Digital Currency Group, has retained investment bankers at Lazard Ltd. to help it explore options including a partial or full sale
Ethereum scaling platform zkSync partnering with Espresso Systems, a crypto infrastructure company, to enable private transactions on its network
Cross-chain bridge protocol Stargate integrated with the Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution Metis in first blockchain expansion since it was launched
Fireblocks enlists crypto insurance firm Coincover for third-party key recovery service
Crypto infrastructure firm MoonPay acquired web3 creative agency Nightshift for an undisclosed amount
Friday:
Quiet
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
Monday:
DOJ objects to FTX’s choice of lawyers citing conflict of interest
The Central Bank of Iran is reportedly cooperating with the Russian government to jointly issue a new stablecoin backed by gold
Tuesday:
The digital yuan (e-CNY), a digital token issued by the Bank of China, has been used to buy securities for the first time
Crypto lender Nexo sued the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority to reverse its rejection of Nexo's application to register as a virtual asset services provider (VASP)
Four U.K men sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraudulently obtaining and laundering bitcoin and other crypto worth ~ $26M from an Australian crypto exchange
Bradesco, Brazil's second-largest private bank, launched its first tokenized bank credit note
Wednesday:
196 members of the new US Congress, many of whom were just sworn in last week, received donations from SBF or other senior executives at FTX
Nearly half of SEC crypto enforcement actions in 2022 were against ICOs
Thursday:
The SEC charged SBF with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd
The Central African Republic has set up a committee to integrate Sango coin into its national economy
Friday:
The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default
China enabled smart-contract functionality for its CBDC, the digital yuan, through the e-commerce app Meituan, one of China's largest food delivery and lifestyle apps
Busan, South Korea will establish a decentralized digital commodities exchange
Exchange News:
Monday:
Bithumb ordered to pay $200,000 in damages to more than a hundred investors over an exchange outage during Bitcoin's rally in 2017
Korbit exchange plans to monitor the accounts of its employees and their family members in a bid to improve internal control standards
Binance will support the Gifto (GTO) token swap to Gifto (GFT)
Astra Protocol (ASTRA) and MAGIC listed on KuCoin
Tuesday:
Binance Futures will launch BUSD-margined AGIX perpetual contracts with up to 15x leverage
Fidelity-backed crypto exchange OSL is cutting staff and reducing overall costs by about a third
Wednesday:
Binance will list Rocket Pool (RPL) in the Innovation Zone
Bitget $300M Protection Fund that includes auditable protection funds and beefed-up proof of reserves
Binance’s entity in Poland is fully compliant with local regulatory standards for virtual asset service providers
Thursday:
OKX published its third monthly Proof-of-Reserves report showing $7.2B held in BTC, ETH, and USDT
Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M FXS perpetual contracts with up to 20x leverage
Binance will delist BEAM. Rocket Pool (RPL) listed on KuCoin. Coinbase will add support for Kava on the Kava network
Binance Margin will delist NEXO, POLS, QUICK as Borrowable Assets From Cross Margin and ALCX, NEXO, POLS, TOMO Trading Pairs From Isolated Margin
Friday:
Data suggests traders may be finding Gemini to be less desirable than other exchanges
Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M HOOK perpetual contracts with up to 20x leverage
DeFi:
Monday:
Avalanche will support the stablecoin USP created by Platypus DeFi
Uniswap proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on the StarkNet network, as well as the new problems faced by its deployment on the first non-EVM network
DeFi protocol Frontier started an in-browser wallet extension that allows crypto users to interact with staking, transactional, and NFT activities over 35 supported blockchains
Tuesday:
Option Liquidity Pools live on Dopex
Solflare, a wallet on the Solana network, brings 'priority' gas fees to Solana
Wednesday:
Frax Finance gains momentum amid Liquid Staking narrative
21Shares new Staking Basket Index ETP – the world's first crypto staking index ETP offering diversified staking income, including BNB, ADA, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, and Tezos
MakerDAO governance voting designed to limit exposure of DAI to Gemini as a result of the current liquidity crisis facing the exchange's lending platform called Earn
Thursday:
Multi-chain wallet BitKeep will issue full refunds to victims of a hacking incident in December, costing the project around $8M
MakerDAO’s community voted for keeping Gemini USD (GUSD) stablecoin as part of the protocol’s reserve system for DAI
The number of BTC bridged from the Bitcoin blockchain to Avalanche blockchain has surpassed the number of coins held in the Lightning Network
A governance proposal for ENS DAO, proposed liquidating 10,000 ETH to cover operating costs over the next two years
Raydium hacker funnels $2.7M through Tornado Cash mixer
Friday:
Stablecoin issuer Paxos proposed paying a steady fee to MakerDAO for holding up to $1.5B of Pax USD (USDP) stablecoin among its reserves
Astroport, which was one of the largest DeFi apps on Terra, launches beta on the Injective testnet
NFTs/Gaming/Metaverse:
Monday:
South Korea’s Woori Bank launches 3D Metaverse banking experience
Tuesday:
Yuga Labs BAYC Sewer Pass mint
Nat Geo Genesis NFT Collection - GM: Daybreak Around the World - Primary Sale begins January 17th on Matic Network
Uniswap airdropped .01E to everyone that purchased an NFT on Uniswap from Nov 30-Dec 14
Synergy Land, a web3 action role-playing game currently in development, will move from the Solana blockchain to Polygon
South Korea is bringing Seoul to the metaverse, launching a virtual replica of the city with a goal of improving its public services
Fashion brand YVES SAINT LAURENT has filed trademark applications for NFTs and virtual goods
Wednesday:
Mobile payment firm Zebedee and mobile game studio Viker launch of two new play-to-earn games, Bitcoin Chess and Bitcoin Scratch, a digital scratch-card game
Thursday:
Virtual land developer LandVault, which has worked with global brands like Mastercard, L’Oreal and Heineken, signed with top talent agency Creative Artists Agency
L'Oréal’s NYX makeup brand to launch DAO and Ethereum NFTs called the “FKWME Pass”
Friday:
Stardust, a seamless solution for developers to integrate NFTs into their games, has added Avalanche C-Chain and Subnet compatibility
Web3 game studio InfiniGods' debut game InfiniMerge came out of beta and is available to the public
Fundraises:
Monday:
Createra, a creator-oriented metaverse project, raised $10M in Series A funding led by a16z to continue its pursuit of building the largest Gen Z-focused metaverse platform. Type: Series A. Sector: Metaverse. Investors: a16z - @Createra_
Sortium, a developer of Web3 entertainment technology, raised $7.75M. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3 Studio Investors: Arca. - @Sortium
Autofarm $5M Investment in AI-Fi: Decentralized AI Finance. Type: Strategic. Sector: DeFi - @autofarmnetwork
Acumen Network strategic investment from Blizzard, The Avalanche Ecosystem Fund Type: Strategic Sector: DeFi Investor: Blizzard - @acumenofficial
ABGA Eco Fund - focusing on blockchain games. Launching in Q1. $45M - @ABGAasia
Animoca Brands Japan strategic investment in Psychic VR Lab
Tuesday:
Crypto investment firm HashKey Capital closed its third fund, HashKey Fintech Investment III by raising $500M. Type: Venture Fund. Sector: New Fund - @HashKey_Capital
Mobile games publisher Carry1st raised $27M to advance its publishing and digital content creation platform in Africa. Type: Strategic. Sector: Web3 games. Investors: Bitkraft Ventures, a16z. TTV Capital, Konvoy, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, Kepple Ventures - @carry1st
Web3 infrastructure provider Parfin raised $15M in a bid to dominate the Latin America region. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: Web3 infrastructure. Investors: Framework Ventures, Alexia Ventures, Valor Capital Group, L4 Venture Builder - @parfin_io
Ethereum startup Obol Labs raised $12.5M to decentralize validators. Type: Series A. Sector: Infrastructure. Investors: Pantera, Archetype - @ObolNetwork
SYKY, a next generation luxury fashion platform, raised $9.5M. Type: Series A Sector: Digital Fashion. Investors: Seven Seven Six, Brevan Howard Digital, Leadout Capital, First Light Capital Group, and Polygon Ventures - @the_SYKY
Crurated, a membership-based wine community, raised $7.2M from private investors. Type: Strategic. Sector: Real World Assets. Investors: Private - @Decanter
House of Blueberry raised $6M in seed funding for its digital fashion business in the metaverse and interactive entertainment. Type: Seed. Sector: Digital Fashion. Investors: Makers Fund, Everblue Management - @WearBlueberry
Diva raised a $3.5M seed round to build a decentralized liquid staking protocol and compete with Lido and centralized exchanges. Type: Seed Sector: DeFi Liquid Staking Investors: A&T Capital, Gnosis, Bankless, OKX Ventures, Metaweb, DCV Capital, Alphemy Capital, Very Early Ventures and Stake.vc - @divalabs
Web3 security infrastructure provider Trusta Labs raised $3+M in Seed Round. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3 security infrastructure. Investors: SevenX Ventures and Vision Plus Capital. HashKey Capital, Redpoint China Ventures, GGV Capital and SNZ Holding - @TrustaLabs
DeFi protocol Elixir closed a $2.1M seed round to allow anyone to participate in crypto market making. Type: Seed Sector: DeFi Investors: FalconX, Commonwealth, OP Crypto, ChapterOne and Bitmex founder Arthur Hayes - @ElixirProtocol
Wednesday:
Web3 gaming platform Intella X raised $12M ahead of an upcoming launch on Polygon. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: Web3 Gaming. Investors: Polygon, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Planetarium, Big Brain Holdings, Crit Ventures, JoyCity, Pearl Abyss, XL Games, Wemix and Global Coin Research - @TeamIntella
pieFi raised $4.6M, launched Upside.coop, and co-published a White Paper on regulatory clarity in Web3. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3. Investors: Kickstart Seed Fund, Origin Ventures - @Upsidecoop
Metahood raised $3M to build the Zillow of the Metaverse. Type: Seed. Sector: Metaverse. Investors: VC firm 1confirmation, Volt Capital, Flamingo DAO, and Neon DAO - @MetahoodXYZ
Sleepagotchi, which launched a mobile app that helps gamify sleep via digital collectibles, raised $3.5M. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: NFTs. Investors: 6th Man Ventures, Collab+Currency, Shima Capital, 1kx, DeFi Alliance, Sfermion, Emoote, and LCA Game Guild - @sleepagotchi
Fintech firm Arch starts crypto lending product and raises $2.75M to allow other alternative assets as collateral in the future. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: DeFi. Investors: Tribe Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Picus Capital and Global Founders Capital - https://www.archlending.com/
Crypto content business Collective Shift raised $1.5M at a $15M valuation. Type: Seed Sector: Content. Investors: RNR Capital, Smorgon Family - @cshift_io
Thursday:
Sequoia Capital fifth dedicated $195M fund enables seed investments across the U.S. and Europe, and also includes investments made in future Arc cohorts. Type: New Fund @sequoia
SSV DAO, the DAO behind the decentralized staking protocol SSV.network, is starting a $50M ecosystem fund to help mature Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) infrastructure. Type: New Fund. Sector: Infrastructure. Investors: SSV and Digital Currency Group - @ssv_network
ZK tech developer Nil Foundation raised $22M at a $220M valuation. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: ZK tech. Investors: Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, Starkware and Mina Protocol - @nil_foundation
Ulvetanna, a zero-knowledge-proof hardware firm, raised $15M at a $55M valuation. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3 infrastructure. Investors: Bain Capital Crypto, Paradigm, Jump Crypto - @UlvetannaHQ
Multichain web3 wallet Cypher raised $4.3M. Type: Seed. Sector: Wallet. Investor: Y Combinator, OrangeDAO, Samsung Next and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan - @CypherWalletIO
Gateway, a web3 credential protocol, raised $4.2M. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3. Investors: Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Spartan Group, Figment, Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal and Messari's Ryan Selkis - @Gateway_xyz
Obligate, a startup offering blockchain-based regulated debt securities, raised $4M. Type: Seed Extension Round. Sector: DeFi. Investors: Blockchange Ventures, Circle Ventures, Earlybird, SIX Fintech Ventures - @obligatecom
Neopets Metaverse raised $4M. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: Metaverse. Investors: Polygon Ventures, Blizzard Avalanche Ecosystem Fund, Hashkey Capital, IDG Capital, NetDragon Websoft - @NeopetsMeta
Blue, which offers KYC and AML identity verification products for traders on DeFi protocols, came out of stealth with $3.2M raised. Type: Seed. Sector: DeFi. Investors: Blockchange Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, DoraHacks, Knollwood Investment Advisory, Gate.io, Wave Financial @BIueFi
DeFi startup Davos raised $500k. Type: Pre-Seed. Sector: DeFi. Investors: Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon Ventures - @Davos_Protocol
Virtualtech Frontier (VTF), a metaverse development company raised an undisclosed amount. Type: Seed. Sector: Metaverse. Investors: Blockchain Founders Fund, 500 Global - @VTFrontier
Amsterdam-based Authic Labs, an NFT marketplace for creators built on the Ethereum raised an undisclosed amount.. Type: Pre-Seed. Sector: NFT Marketplace. Investors: Rockstart, Graduate Entrepreneur - @authic_io
Friday:
Web3 social platform builder Plai Labs raised $32M. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3 Social. Investors: a16z - @PlaiLabs
Escape Velocity, a crypto venture firm, raised a $25M early-stage projects fund. Investors: Castle Island, a16z, Framework Ventures.
Sports-focused NFT firm Candy Digital raised over $38M. Type: Series A extension. Sector: NFT. Investors: Galaxy Digital, ConsenSys Mesh, 10T Holdings, ConsenSys
Former FTX.US president Brett Harrison raised $5M to build out his latest venture: Architect to provide DeFi software trading tools. Investors: Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, SV Angel, Third King Venture Capital, Motivate Venture Capital
Zero-knowledge middleware developer Hyper Oracle raised $3M. Type: Pre-seed. Sector: Middleware. Investors: Sequoia China's seed fund, Dao5, Foresight Ventures, FutureMoney Group. - @HyperOracle
SphereOne, a crypto payment platform that allows users to make purchases with any cryptocurrency across any blockchain, raised $2.5M. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: Payments. Investors: Distributed Global, Newark Venture Partners, Zero Knowledge, angel investors Leore Avidar of Alt.xyz and Lob.com and Eric Feldman of Bolt.com - @sphereone_
Koinos Group, the developer behind the free-to-use Koinos blockchain, raised $500K. Type: Seed. Sector: Developer. Investors: DWF Labs - @TheKoinosGroup
Mask Network received strategic investment and partnership from DWF Labs, a global digital asset management firm in the Web3 industry. Type: Strategic. Sector: Web3 - @realMaskNetwork
Early Stage Projects:
Monday:
STFX Token Sale is live
Introducing Radiant v2
Binance Labs and BNB Chain Launch Season 6 of MVB Accelerator Program
Bittensor wins Polkadot's 36th auction
Mars Hub testnet goes live; $100,000 bounties up for grabs
Core Mainnet live
Bungee BETA Invites rolling out
Tuesday:
Masa Finance launched the first soulbound identity protocol for the Ethereum mainnet
Premia’s upcoming V3 launch
Introducing Hyperlane V2 - The permissionless and modular future of interoperability
Flux Protocol rebrands to Seda Protocol, a new standard for data transmission across web3
Timeless Finance - $LIT LBP concluded - Over $2.47M committed by 600 community members
Wednesday:
Decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol Swing debuted a new widget and SDK to simplify cross-chain crypto deployments
Vela Exchange - beta launch January 31st
Introducing zkIgnite, Cohort 1 - 3-month program supports developers and entrepreneurs building zkApps and tooling on Mina Protocol
Airdrop to $ATOM holders & Prism’s Cosmos validator
Introducing Den: the fastest multisig for onchain teams, built on Safe
Eagle: two-factor-authentication that plugs into your existing wallet
Thursday:
Rage Trade official integration with Stargate Finance
Osmosis DEX will conduct its v14.0.0 upgrade, termed “Neon,” in line with a broader plan to expand product integrations and make cross-chain trading more lucrative
Friday:
Sui Testnet Wave 2 coming soon - will focus on testing epoch management, tokenomics, and stake delegation
ZigZag Exchange’s first round of token airdrop
Odos is live on BNBCHAIN
ShapeShift $FOX airdrop confirmed
Research/Reads:
Glassnode - Is Bitcoin Back? - source
A Brief Crypto History of the Winklevoss Twins - source
State of NFT markets - source
Multi-Precision Fast Modular Multiplication - source
Circle - State of the USDC Economy - source
CoinGecko - 2022 Annual Crypto Industry Report - source
Alchemy Q4 2022 report - source
Modular Design and the Two Blockchains - Replacing a monolithic codebase - source
How to resurrect the ‘Metaverse dream’ in 2023 - source
Complete Knowledge - source
WuBlockchain on TON ecosystem - source
Immutable’s outlook for blockchain games in 2023 - source
NFT Legal Issues: 2022 Overview - source
2022 Electric Capital Developer Report - source
Crypto Report 2022 - TK Ventures & Coinwire - source
SEC Cryptocurrency Enforcement 2022 Update - source
The signs of economic stress are everywhere - source
New cashflow protocols: A rising tide lifts all the boats - source
How to Become a DeFiLlama Pro - source
Innovations of On-Chain Perpetual Protocols Part 3 - source
TokenUnlocks 2022 annual report - source
QCP Capital - The Crypto Circular #9: Frightful Fours - source
Arthur Hayes - Bouncy Castle - source
Digital Asset Funding Landscape presented by HashKey Capital - source
Visa - The Merge: What to expect from a new era of Ethereum - source
Bankless - State of Ethereum Report — Q4 2022 - source
Ape Metaverse's first game Dookey Dash - source
Next Gen Onchain Gaming with User-Generated Logic - source
Variant Fund - Canto: A Layer-1 Incentive Experiment - source
KuCoin in 2022: Annual Review - source
On-chain Foreign Exchange and Cross-border Payments - source
Polygon Insights for 2022 - source
Privacy market outlook in Web3: report - source
Twitter:
Ex-president of FTX US finally speaks - source
CPI was formerly based on two years of consumption data. Now, CPI will be based on a single year of data - source
Intern notes on the Delphi Digital 2023 Year Ahead Report space - source
How the ETH Shanghai upgrade exit queue works - source
Influencer project STFX Launch Dune analysis - source
2022 Echo Bubble - Full thesis - source
Crypto Narratives: DeFi Prediction Markets - source
Wintermute CEO warns doesn’t want to work with people investing in coinflex/3ac/gtx - source
Wassie Lawyer analysis on new GTX/3AC exchange - source
2023 trends: reports, including a16z, Coinbase, and Messari analysis summary - source
OP ecosystem “hidden gems” - source
SBF doubles down that FTX US is solvent and always as been - source
ETH as ultrasound money consideration - source
Twitter Coins - source
268 Tweet Shill Thread - 2023 version - source
Intern notes on the DOJ International Crypto Enforcement Action on Bizlato - source
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