Round Tripping
a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem
as always, thanks for reading and follow me here
tl;dr: markets bouncing, Solana phone announced, improving NFT liquidity & financialization, dYdX’s Cosmos SDK app-chain, and UNI acquires genie
BTC dominance 41% | ETH dominance 15% | DeFi TVL $76B |
Total Crypto Market Cap $987B | Stablecoin Supply $153B |
funding:
FalconX, institutional crypto access platform, raises $150M, valuation @ $8B
Magic Eden, NFT marketplace on SOL, raises $130M @ $1.6B valuation
1Confirmation launches $100M, 10-year life NFT fund
Flowdesk raises $30M to expand crypto trading and market making strategies
Cryptoys, NFT gaming platform, raises $23M
Admix merges with metaverse builder LandVault, valuation reaches $300M
Prime Trust, crypto infrastructure provider, raises $107M
Astaria, NFT liquidity and lending protocol, raises $8M seed
news:
Solana announces Saga, a web3 native Android phone with integrated apps
Shopify releases Tokengated Experiences enabling merchants and users to connect noncustodial wallets for exclusive drops, merch, experiences, etc.
eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin
MoonPay, crypto payments firm, launches HyperMint allowing brands and creators to safely mint NFTs — launch partners include Fox Corporation, Universal Pictures, FaZe Clan, Death Row Records and others
Teller Protocol, asset tokenization, partners with Tower Fund Capital to bring real estate investments and yield on chain
dYdX announces V4 moves the protocol from ETH to standalone Cosmos chain
FTX US acquires Embed Financial Technologies to boost FTX Stocks division
Ledger, security and hardware wallet company, launching NFT marketplace and Web3 service platform for enterprises
BlockFi signs term sheet with FTX securing $250M revolving credit facility
Binance US cuts trading fees for (B)USD(C,T) BTC pairs to zero
Bisonic, game developer, launches MMORPG Forgotten Runiverse based on NFT collection Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult
NHL partners with Sweet platform for officially licensed NHL NFTs
Coinbase releases updated noncustodial wallet with support for SOL blockchain
TIME partners with The Sandbox (SAND) to build TIME Square in metaverse
Christiano Ronaldo and Binance ink exclusive multi-year partnership
Solar powered BTC miner, Aspen Creek Digital, launches operations in Colorado
thoughts & notes:
NFT Financialization & Liquidity Improvements
As I outlined previously in Cyclicality & What’s Next, one of the core verticals I’m watching develop over the coming months is the increasing financialization and liquidity improvements for NFTs. I’ve outlined numerous times the increasing competition and desire of companies to access the profits associated with NFT marketplaces as well as the onboarding mechanism NFTs represent. Announcements this week further solidified that thesis as we saw NFT developments including:
Uniswap acquiring NFT aggregator genie to expand their product suite
Magic Eden raise $130M @ $1.6B valuation as the SOL NFT ecosystem grows
Astaira, NFT lending platform and liquidity engine, raise $8M allowing users to post their NFTs as collateral for access to instant liquidity
eBay acquiring NFT platform KnownOrigin
Ledger & MoonPay building NFT products for enterprises and creators
Shopify releasing wallet connect Tokengated Experiences for cross community collaboration, exclusive drops, real life events, merch, etc.
Solana Phone
Jokes and tweets were exploding across CT on Thursday as Solana announced they’re building their own smartphone dubbed Saga. While the instant reaction was met with hesitation, The Wolf, per usual, brought clarity to the topic.
The end result, impact, and adoption can be questioned but the ambition to create better crypto mobile UX and applications can’t. A few of the key potential ramifications come from a great Decrypt overview of the announcement saying that,
“Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) is an open-source software kit designed to enable the development of native Android apps built around the Solana blockchain..Solana Labs will also launch a new SOL dapp Store designed for mobile devices, providing easy access to Web3 applications and wallets built on Solana without fees.”
Ultimately, time and the market will be the judge of its success but Solana’s ambition to build crypto mobile SDKs and pressure the duopoly of mobile app stores that have largely shunned the crypto ecosystem is admirable. Saga is available for preorder today, and will be shipped starting in early 2023.
dYdX to Cosmos SDK
Outside of Solana announcing Saga, the biggest news of the week was dYdX’s announcement that V4 of the protocol “will be developed as a standalone blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Proof-of-stake consensus protocol.” There has been no shortage of threads and takes on what this means for the combination of dYdX, Cosmos, and ETH as one of ETH’s biggest L2 integrated dapps is leaving the ecosystem.
Monitoring dYdX’s move and the building narrative surrounding app-chains in the coming months as L2’s continue to build and optimize their scaling solutions should be an interesting dynamic. While it’s unclear how the move will be perceived in the long term, large market participants were moving dYdX tokens as a result. According to DexGuru’s dYdX token profile transactions tab, sorted by transfers greater than $1M, we see $46.6M worth of token transfers likely responding to the announcement.
The founder of dYdX, Antonio, has been adamant in the past, present, and future about his commitment to building the best possible chain-agnostic product. There are various theories as to why they have decided to make the move with the most convincing being a combination of L2’s current inability to handle dYdX’s orderbook transaction thourghput, their current decentralization limitations, dYdX’s desire to accrue more value to the token and its holders, and regulatory compliance.
tokens:
Markets have bounced nicely this week with BTC (+~4%) and ETH (+10%) giving way for alts to outperform. While the broad market was green this week, narratives and product developments led to SOL (+31%), UNI (+36%), ATOM (+27%) and LOOKS (+43%) to enjoy some of the largest gains.
Uniswap (UNI) acquires NFT aggregator genie and will rollout direct NFT buying and selling on Uniswap “this fall” — Uniswap also providing USDC airdrop to users who held a Genie Genesis NFT or used genie multiple times before April 15th
THORChain (RUNE) rallies with mainnet launching on seven different networks
ZigZag Exchange (ZZ), DEX on zkSync, token sale is live with tokenomics here
Looks Rare (LOOKS) launches conditional listing for NFT collections
Ava Labs (AVAX) launches Core, a noncustodial wallet for AVAX ecosystem that includes a direct BTC bridge
Arbitrum’s Odyssey begins — high likelihood it leads to Arbitrum airdrop
Synapse (SYN) integrates Klaytn bridge features ahead of Klap Finance launch
Timeless Finance, yield market protocol, launches live on ETH mainnet
Element Finance, fixed and variable yield markets, releases their 2022 roadmap
around the ecosystem:
new knower recapping the recent events and developments across crypto
Frogs Anonymous breaks down and examines sudoswap’s NFT AMM model
Armani outlines xNFTs, a programmable web3 interface starting with wallets
0xMacroDAO, helping web3 builders with security, audits, funding, etc launches
Thyborg with a good thread detailing dydx and their decision to move to ATOM
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