Round Tripping
a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem
as always, thanks for reading and follow me here
tl;dr: UNI launches NFT integration, Telegram & Stripe embrace crypto, all roads lead to GBTC, GMX growth continues, & everyone wants a stablecoin or NFT marketplace
BTC dominance 37% | ETH dominance 17% | DeFi TVL $43B |
Total Crypto Market Cap $900B | Stablecoin Supply $142B |
Outside of the delusional insanity that is the words that come out of SBF’s mouth, it was a welcomed quiet week in crypto. ETH & BTC have essentially spent the last week oscillating in a five percent range as volatility and liquidity continue to dry up. On Tuesday, BTC, ETH, and the broad market put in a couple strong hourly candles and the market has largely sat at those levels since.
This market structure will likely remain in place until lenders can reestablish themselves and there is further clarity on the same market overhangs we’ve discussed previously: DCG/Genesis & FTX/FTX hacker ($235M of ETH).
Speaking of that, CMS provided us with one of the best explanations of how we got to where we in a concise (when distilling a year down to four tweets), twenty-four step process where everything leads back to DCG’s money printing GBTC.
The biggest development in an otherwise quiet week was Uniswap finally releasing their NFT aggregation marketplace. UNI acquired NFT aggregator Genie back in the summer which culminated this week as they launched their NFT aggregation platform which routes NFT listings from OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Sudoswap, Larva Labs, Foundation, and NFT20.
As you can see, the initial volume from their launch a week ago leaves something to be desired but UNI is extremely well capitalized and is surely playing the long game (as evidenced by them not rushing a product out after the Genie acquisition).
Affecting their volume is the exclusion of Blur, an NFT aggregation platform that has dominated volume in recent weeks through incentivizing users to transact with an upcoming airdrop of their token (although, tbf, Blur’s platform is amazing). Still, UNI has thrown their name into the crowded ring of NFT marketplaces which, before wading too far into terv’s NFT waters and combined with CMS’s succinct year recap, brings me to CRV’s stablecoin.
As we build towards the eventual next cycle, two of the most sought after assets from this cycle, and moving forward, are NFT marketplaces and stablecoins. There are now a dozen plus NFT marketplaces and CRV will soon join MKR, followed by AAVE, in issuing native stablecoins. Once again, in hindsight, it’s abundantly clear as to why these two categories are the big winners of this cycle. Funnily enough, both of these categories resemble the success of web2 giants in that they have massive TAMs, print money, compound network effects, and have static day to day experiences for users that are largely automated.
Entering last cycle, few predicted that stablecoins and NFT marketplaces would be the crown-jewel of the cycle but here we are. All of this is I guess is to say that it’s worth examining and thinking through what will be the next contrarian winners and what tokens or sectors benefit from their eventual growth (i.e. early DeFi from stablecoins and the NFT boom from marketplaces).
A final note, Page One has partnered with the gigabrains at Parsec so all readers are now eligible for 20% off a Parsec NFT Pro subscription with the code PAGE1. Parsec is an incredible platform and Terv and I often incorporate their data/charts so check them out at parsec.finance if you haven’t yet (to clarify, we don’t get any referral fees or anything other than memberships because we’re adverse to making money).
funding:
Animoca Brands planning to raise up to $2B (!!) for a metaverse investment fund
Game7 DAO launches chain-agnostic $100M grant program for crypto gaming
Keyrock, crypto market maker & infra provider, raises $72M series B
Fleek, decentralized content & app delivery network, raises $25M series A
Kiln, ETH staking-as-a-service platform, raises $17.6M series A
Ngrave, hardware wallet maker, looks to raise $15M series A @ $60M valuation
Ejara, Cameroonian crypto and saving platform, raises $8M series A
Cyvers, crypto cybersecurity solutions company, raises $8M series A
Wildxyz, residency & marketplace for NFT art, raises $7M seed
Catapult, DAO coordination platform, raises $5M seed
Burn Ghost, free trivia & gaming platform with NFT rewards, raises $3.1M seed
Daylight, crypto perks aggregation platform, raises $3M seed
Lyra Finance, options protocol on Optimism, raises $3M strategic round
news:
Stripe launches customizable & embeddable fiat-to-crypto on-ramp that can be natively deployed inside any dApp front end
Apple blocks latest version of Coinbase Wallet that would enable users to send NFTs to each other as Apple wants its 30% cut of ETH fees for every transaction
Magic Eden, leading SOL NFT platform, follows OpenSea’s lead and debuts code allowing new NFT collections to enforce creator royalties
CoinStats launches NFT product Midas, partners with ZenAcadamey’s 333 Club
Telegram sells $50M worth of usernames on its TON blockchain, Telegram plans to build crypto wallets and DEXs in the future
BlockFi’s bankruptcy filings say the company has $355M stuck on FTX
Phantom, SOL-based wallet with the best UI/UX in crypto, is expanding functionality to ETH & MATIC
OpenSea says creators earned $1B in revenue through royalty payments in 2022
DEX volumes double MoM in aftermath of FTX collapse
tokens & protocols:
UNI — officially integrates NFTs to their platform, launches NFT aggregator; proposal discussion also live on potential fee switch for three select pools
JOE — AVAX-based DEX Trader Joe is expanding protocol to Arbitrum
BNB — Binance Chain NFTs are now supported on OpenSea
MKR/DAI — vote will pass that increases DAI yield to 1%
GMX/UNI — on 11/30, GMX surpasses UNI in daily fee revenue for first time
Aztec — Aztec Connect Testnet V1 is live
L0/STG/LINK — LINK oracles are now integrated to LayerZero Network
Espresso — ZK L1 launches Testnet 1 & introduces the Espresso Sequencer
Mantle — modular designed ETH L2 network introduced by BIT’s BitDAO
FTM — proposes gas monetization program to incentivize/keep builders
reading:
“Crypto’s bad incentives are dying“ — Jill Gunter
A large portion of the space has spent the last few weeks examining what’s next and internalizing the wrong turns taken as we continue to pick up the pieces from last cycle’s high. Jill Gunter, crypto veteran & co-founder of the ZK L1 & scaling protocol Espresso Systems, provides us with a realistic examination of crypto’s often abused incentives while remaining optimistic towards the future of its real-world utility saying,
“However, these catastrophes have not been a result of the underlying technology being fundamentally bad or broken or evil…the incentives have just been about making money…if you can get away with a money grab, you are not going to stick around to try to create value…there is optimism, because as of last week the party is over…the sinkhole of speculation that has sucked attention, time, money, users, brainpower, and builders over the last several years is finally closing…an opportunity to focus on building products with real utility is emerging.“
around the ecosystem:
lars0x providing a data-driven recap of November in crypto
@mhonksalo writes on “10 positive (adoption) charts from crypto apps/protocols”
0xsmac with his usual list of topical articles in “good stuff i read this week”
tweets:
Lastly, thank you all for the continued support! We’re actively looking to expand our platform and relationships in the form of protocol partnerships, potential guest posts, sponsorships, branding, etc. so reach out to me or Terv if that sounds like you.