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Crypto Recaps

Round Tripping

a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem featuring news, notes, tokens, charts & more

tolks
Apr 16, 2022
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Round Tripping

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tl;dr: goblin town population growth, every successful token wants a venture arm, sports partnerships as a trojan horse, funding never stops, BTRFLY/FXS developments, and ETH merge delay. let’s get to it.

News & Funding:

  • Pantera raises $1.3B for new Blockchain Fund, looking to raise again in 2023

  • Circle, USDC creator, raises $400M, partnering with Blackrock as a strategic advisor, and will apply for U.S. bank charter

  • Ava Labs, AVAX builder, raising $350M @ $5.25B valuation to continue scaling and building subnet ecosystem

  • Ignite, formerly Tendermint and core developer of Cosmos, launches $150M accelerator program for multi-chain crypto projects

  • Terraform Labs “gifts” $880M worth of LUNA to Luna Foundation Guard, to be partially burnt along with used to purchase more backing for UST

  • Fabric Ventures completing $245M raise for two separate crypto funds investing separately into early and late stage

  • White Star Capital looks to raise up to $120M for second crypto fund focusing on DeFi and blockchain gaming

  • Uniswap Labs launches venture arm to invest directly from balance sheet into web3 protocols

  • EPNS (ETH push notification service), cross-chain communication and on-chain identifiers replacing usernames, raises $10M @ $131M valuation

  • Toncoin, TON L1 PoS blockchain endorsed by Telegram, raises $250M ecosystem fund from Huobi, Kucoin, others

  • Fasset, crypto exchange/gateway, raises $22M series A

  • Genies, metaverse NFT avatar company, raises $150M valuation @ $1B

  • BloXroute, DeFi trading infrastructure, raises $70M led by Softbank

  • Civitas, blockchain strategy game, raises $20M from Delphi, 3AC, eGirl, others

  • Context, wallet tracking social platform, raises $19.5M seed round

  • Animoca Brands acquires Eden Games, former developers of F1 and Need for Speed games, to build out REVV Motorsport and other blockchain racing games

  • Dfns, wallet password protection platform, raises $13.5M seed round

  • Shrapnel, AAA blockchain based shooter game, raises $7M in token sale

  • Loop, recurring web3 payment solutions, raises $4M seed round

  • Leap, non-custodial wallet for Terra eco, raises $3.2M in token round

  • Nasdaq survey indicates tradfi inflows are awaiting crypto ETF approval

  • Blockchain.com closes sponsorship deal with the Dallas Cowboys

  • Robinhood adds support for SOL, MATIC, COMP, and SHIB

  • MGM testing NFT tickets, Amazon explores selling NFTs in the future, Emirates and Dubai continue embracing NFTs and crypto economy, Warner Music partners with POAP for NFT mementos of events

  • Ethereum successfully shadow forks the merge, but delays the implementation past June now hoping for sometime in Q3

thoughts & notes:

ERC Token Funds

  • Every form of successful ERC token (20, 721, 1155 alike) are forming and/or exploring venture arms. The space has evolved from exchange venture arms resembling traditional VC funds, to DAOs and anon funds investing in the ecosystem, and now we have treasury balance sheet investing directly from Uniswap joining the likes of Solana/OpenSea ventures and others.

  • The next logical evolution is NFT venture arms as highlighted by an interaction with NoSleepJon and Calvin here. Every successful project in crypto creating a venture arm to invest in upcoming projects, fund M&A, and acquire each others NFTs & protocol tokens is a reality that’s becoming clear. How this will play out, especially in down trending markets, is undetermined but it’s an emerging space to keep an eye on as funding continues to move down the risk curve instead of TWAPing BTC/ETH and pushing the broad market up (plz).

The Sports Trojan Horse

  • Coming from the gambling and DFS (daily fantasy sports) world, I’ve noticed increasing parallels between sports sponsorships as a semi Trojan Horse mechanism. While crypto has infinite more practical implementations and future social/economic empowerments when compared to the mundane world of sports betting, the playbook of becoming a topic of conversation and broad awareness through sports in eerily similar.

  • These parallels have been developing in the background for months as we see FTX leading the charge through partnerships with the Miami Heat, the MLB, Tom Brady, Steph Curry, etc. while Crypto.com bought the naming rights to the Staples Center and Blockchain.com partnered with the Dallas Cowboys (among a growing list of others I may expand upon in a longer post). Sports betting and DFS were looked at as a nascent, blemish ridden industry by the general public, but now major coverage of every sporting event is littered with talk of betting lines, the which side pundits would take, and casino/DFS site partnerships.

  • Ultimately, the fees, taxes, and deep wealth associated with sports betting industry, along with its ability to establish efficient, open, integrity driven markets led to the public acceptance and awareness. Crypto’s ability to highlight trusted, verifiable, 24/7, global markets applicable to ~everything~ may creep into the general public’s collective consciousness through sports partnerships while the economic and social benefits so many of us deeply believe in continue advancing in the background waiting for their moment to change everything.

token highlights:

Image
BTRFLY’s incorporation of Balancer, Frax, and Ribbon Finance

BTRFLY, FXS, & FPI

  • REDACTED CARTEL and Frax dominated the collective token mind share this week as Frax introduced their new token FPI which aims to be a inflation resistant stablecoin that fluctuates in price to steady purchasing power on a consumer price index adjusted basis. For a deep dive on FPI and it’s governance token FPIS you can read an excellent thread here.

  • REDACTED CARTEL activates Hidden Hand soft-launch and releases a new edition of [Redacted] Files to cover all the recent developments and partnerships throughout the BTRFLY ecosystem along with the rollout of v2. BTRFLY is synergistic with FXS through their hidden hand integration along, their accumulation of FXS and FPI, and FXS’s recent inclusion in the new Curve 4 pool. For an excellent, in-depth overview of the entire system and the connections between BTRFLY, FXS, and FPIS read kamikaz here.

GMT & Move2Earn

  • In what is otherwise a boring, slow-grind down market $GMT (STEPN) continues to show relative strength and the ability to onboard new users to the ecosystem through crypto-enabled incentives and mechanism design. For a deep dive on the protocol and its potential sustainability, Nat Eliason has you covered here.

Bridge Wars Update

  • The Bridge Wars have been highlighted and covered extensively here in recent weeks, but as stated previously they will be an ongoing trend for months/years. There was some good coverage on the topic from Our Network here and Aya Kantorovich here where you can read more on one of crypto’s most important sub sectors going forward — Nomad, Stargate, Wormhole, Connext, Hop, Rainbow Bridge, and Synapse are covered in the linked posts.

Other Token News & Reports

  • Thorchain report and all the recent developments from Messari

  • Delphi removes paywall and breaks down everything Celestial

  • Uniswap launches Swap Widget to integrate into any site

  • Arbitrum airdrop token rumors and ways to ensure you receive it here

  • NEAR & Bastion Lockdrop info — here, here and eco overview here

  • Cosmos Theta upgrade goes live, read more here

around the ecosystem:

  • Mason Nystrom with a look at Web3 infrastructure protocol’s revenue

  • The Block Research recapping Q1 funding/M&A in a good thread

  • Tornado Cash now blocks sanctioned addresses

  • Good read from Peter Hans on expanding the surface area impact of NFTs

  • FBI & Treasury Department link Ronin hack to North Korea

  • noodles with a deep dive on actual use of perp protocols

  • 6529 with a mega-thread and introduction into his project OM

tweets of the week:

Twitter avatar for @terencechain
terence.eth @terencechain
Mainnet shadow fork was a success! The blocks are finalizing, and everything looks solid on the execution clients. Congrats to all the hard-working teams! 🎉
Image
4:40 PM ∙ Apr 11, 2022
3,223Likes645Retweets
Twitter avatar for @basedkarbon
davis 🐺🦊 (tubbycat whale) @basedkarbon
The most successful people I know: - wake up at 6 am - chug coffee til they shit - think about working out but go on twitter instead - doomscroll twitter for 18 hours a day - forget to eat til they feel like shit - read headlines only, don’t read articles
2:51 PM ∙ Apr 14, 2022
2,683Likes218Retweets
Twitter avatar for @VirtualElena
Elena @VirtualElena
seen on the UWS
Image
12:50 PM ∙ Apr 13, 2022
195Likes30Retweets
Twitter avatar for @CoinDesk
CoinDesk @CoinDesk
Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million last year. He listed the NFT for sale again at $48 million last week. The top bid was $280 (or 0.09 ETH). @iamsandali reports
trib.al‘Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet’ NFT Went on Sale for $48M. It Ended With a Top Bid of Just $280Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million last year. He listed the NFT for sale again at $48 million last week.
6:48 PM ∙ Apr 13, 2022
479Likes86Retweets
Twitter avatar for @RussellKlein
russellklein.eth @RussellKlein
There are two Americans. One has a net worth of $5 million and makes $250k a year. One is in debt and makes $40k a year. Now when they send their bitcoin to Celsius only one of them will earn passive income on it. Guess which one. We live in a regulatory clown world. https://t.co/aaAX8srJun
Twitter avatar for @CelsiusNetwork
Celsius @CelsiusNetwork
Important Celsius Update for our Users in the United States https://t.co/pzU9MERJEZ
3:01 PM ∙ Apr 12, 2022
3,676Likes659Retweets

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