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Crypto Recaps

Round Tripping

a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem

tolks
Jun 25, 2022
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Round Tripping

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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.

Twitter avatar for @HsakaTrades
Hsaka @HsakaTrades
To those of you who are rooting for the Solana phone to fail. Remember even after we overcome Gary and the laundry list of 3 letter agencies, cryptos final boss is UI/UX. Mobile dApp Stores/SDKs are a step in the right direction, think of the hardware as just a conduit for now
3:40 PM ∙ Jun 24, 2022
759Likes73Retweets

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.

dYdX’s transactions inside DexGuru’s Token Profile

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

tweets:

Twitter avatar for @twobitidiot
Ryan Selkis 📖 🖊🔑 @twobitidiot
My thoughts on the crypto market in one slide.
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11:03 AM ∙ Jun 23, 2022
827Likes213Retweets
Twitter avatar for @tier10k
db @tier10k
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1:38 PM ∙ Jun 20, 2022
2,047Likes215Retweets
Twitter avatar for @fndati0n
fndati0n.eth @fndati0n
NFT people have completely flipped NYC nightlife. 10s getting sent to the back of the line while Johnathan gets VIP access for minting a cybertooth duck 7 months ago. This is the future internet nerds have dreamed about for millennia
5:32 PM ∙ Jun 23, 2022
964Likes164Retweets
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