Round Tripping
a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem featuring news, notes, tokens, charts & more
as always, thanks for reading and you can follow me here
tl;dr: macro in the drivers seat, chasing BAYC & gamefi returns, goblin town population growth, LOOKS & SYN keep shipping, HOP airdrop, & LIDO tops TVL.
funding & news:
Blockchain Coinvestors raises $200M fund for “mid-stage” investing
LFG buys $1.5B in BTC to continue backing UST, total BTC now worth $3.5B
Nym, privacy enabled blockchain startup, launches $300M ecosystem fund
Ryan Watkins & Daniel Cheung launch $85M digital asset fund Pangea
Zora, NFT tooling/infra/marketplace provider, raises $50M @ $600M valuation
Amberdata, crypto analytics for institutions, raises $30M series B
Bitcoin.com raises $33.6M in private token (VERSE) sale
Jane Street, global market maker, enters DeFi with $25M USDC loan
Binance is building a team to explore social media/crypto integrations and commits $500M to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter
Google Cloud is creating and enhancing developer support for web3
Billboard’s President stepping down to become new Doodles CEO
Decrypt, crypto news outlet, raises $10M @ $50M valuation
Block (formerly Square) reports $1.7B in BTC sales via Cash App
Bundlr raises $5.2M to help scale decentralized storage protocol Arweave (AR)
Starbucks to launch utility NFTs with “unique experiences and benefits” by EOY
Valkyrie Investments launches new AVAX trust
Kraken opens waitlist for NFT marketplace with built in analytics tooling
Under Armour and Steph Curry partner to launch NFTs
Tron’s (TRX) new algo-stablecoin USDD goes live with initial 30% APY
LootRush raises $12M to enhance user access/onboarding to blockchain games
Cometh, blockchain game on Polygon, raises $10M seed round
InfiniGods, blockchain gaming dev studio, raises $9M seed
Untamed Planet, gaming startup on SOL, raises $24M series A from Animoca
Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) launches HQ inside Sandbox
thoughts & notes:
NFTs & GameFi
On the heels of BAYC’s one year anniversary, launch of APE coin, and disastrous land sale we see gamefi and legacy brand NFT integrations accelerating. The BAYC ecosystem created the best ROI (~5000x) the crypto industry has seen since BTC’s launch and ETH’s ICO. In addition, while the Axie ecosystem has crumbled in recent weeks, the explosive growth they endured in a few short months (also see GMT) is a reference point for investors to deploy capital chasing insane multiples.
The combination of broad market and L1 ecosystem fund trend exhaustion, paired with failed gamefi tokenomic learnings and NFT ecosystems expanding (BAYC, Azuki, Doodles, etc.) entices funds, individuals, and brands alike to shift their focus to gamefi and NFT investing. I previously alluded to this in a crypto recap at the end of March saying that D2NI (Direct to NFT Investing) would gain traction over the coming months. TBD on how the trend plays out, but the returns NFTs and NFT integrated gamefi examples of the past are fueling the current movement exemplified by several announcements linked above.
Correlation Determining Direction
While the correlation between legacy markets, specifically the S&P and Nasdaq, have become common knowledge it’s important to remember what you’re trading. Crypto will eventually decouple from the legacy intraday movements, but until that occurs and the market provides clear indication we’re all along for the unfortunate ride.
tokens:
LOOKS — 7d -9%
The LooksRare team keeps shipping as they announced a new development to their listing rewards this week. Users are now incentivized to list their NFTs closer to global floor prices with maximum rewards coming from listing within 1.1x of the collection floor. The upgrade should serve several benefits to the both the user and the protocol. Liquidity, inventory depth, rewards and users should all increase while the protocol earns additional revenue. Dingaling wrote a good thread on the new mechanics here and Dune dashboards suggest the reward system is working.
SYN — 7d +16%
I’ve previously touched Synapse, the bridging wars, and the multichain future ad nauseam in previous Round Tripping installments when they bridged ~$500M of assets during DFK’s transition to an AVAX subnet and when they launched xAssets a few weeks ago. SYN has been one of the strongest outperfomers this week on the back of their growing cult of meme heavy users/investors and product expansion which included the launch of their first NFT cross-chain integration this week. SYN and STG are the current leaders in building the multichain native asset future, a space that should be monitored by market participants.
Other Token News
FXS added as asset to AAVE V3 markets
Optimism outlines their plan for OP token adoption through Stimpack
Hop Protocol’s token airdrop and vision moving forward; tokenomics here
Polkadot releases parachain messaging for interoperability of assets
Retrograde Phase 1 launch on Terra is underway
LIDO, liquid ETH staking, tops Curve for #1 DeFi protocol by TVL
$36M worth of JUNO tokens mistakenly sent to burn address
Bastion proposal for UST integration into Aurora and NEAR ecosystem
Yearn announces and outlines v3 Vaults coming soon
ETH’s third mainnet merge test is successful
Alice Finance, releases UST point-of-sale system integration
AURY, blockchain game on SOL, beta gameplay launched
around the ecosystem:
gigabrain/whale GCR updates his LUNA short and bet
Charl3s with thoughts on scarcity of digital land
Ansem outlines his May Monthly Plan with charts and analysis
The goat zachxbt with an amazing, and ongoing, track of a recent hack
The Block’s L2 report released with a detailed thread on their analysis
always read mgnr threads and thoughts
Nansen data providing a view on the current state of market
Bixin Ventures with a deep dive on AVAX, subnets, and their future
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