Round Tripping
a weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem
as always, thanks for reading and follow me here
BTC dominance 37% | ETH dominance 17% | DeFi TVL $50B |
Total Crypto Market Cap $950B | Stablecoin Supply $147B |
musings:
Alright, well, what an absolute shitshow of day today was. I was extremely under the weather this weekend, which is why Round Tripping hasn’t been out yet from last week, so my apologies there.
This week, I had the usual Musings prepared and ready to send covering a sweeping market update, the recent meta of announcements being profitable catalysts, and an exploration on the importance and future of LSDs (liquid staking derivatives) as a result of a few recent developments. With the events unfolding today around FTX, Binance, and the crypto market broadly it didn’t feel right, so I’ll be delaying those thoughts along with covering all the fallout that occurs over the coming days next week.
I hope everyone is hanging in there as best they can and I’m sending virtual hugs to all. We’ll make it through this, same as every other obstacle. I’ll see you next week!
funding:
Orderly Network, NEAR-based DeFi infra protocol, raises @ $200M valuation
Wemade, South Korean gaming firm embracing web3, raises $46M
Tharasis, dev firm behind Cosmos based EVMOS, raises $27M in token sale
Lingfeng Innovation Fund (LIF) raises $20M for crypto fund
WalletConnect raises $12.5M to push deeper into social features & authentication
Braavos, wallet built on ETH scaling solution Starknet, raises $10M seed
RakkaR, crypto custodian platform for institutions, raises $10M seed
Custodia, state-chartered digital asset bank, raises $7M
Texture, SOL-based DeFi yield platform, raises $5M
Centrifuge, DeFi protocol tokenizing illiquid real-world assets, raises $4M
NiftyApes, NFT financialization protocol, raises $4.2M seed
news:
META — Instagram fully launches NFT product with native wallet connect & initial support for MATIC & SOL — Arweave (AR) to be used for permanent data storage
Google Cloud x Solana — Google running SOL validator, integrating SOL into its Blockchain Node Engine for easy user node launch next year, & indexing SOL data to add to Big Query for devs/users to easily access historical transactions
Goldman Sachs developing crypto token classification service for institutional investors called Datonomy in partnership with MSCI & CoinMetrics
Block Inc. reported $1.76B of BTC sales across Q3
Kraken launches private beta of its upcoming NFT marketplace
Fidelity announces Fidelity Crypto, commission-free trading of BTC & ETH
Revolut’s in-app messaging feature will natively integrate NFT PfPs, Revcoin still planned to launch “early next year”
bloXroute releases Solana Blockchain Distribution Network (BDN) with latency improvements over other public and local SOL RPC nodes
Bakkt to acquire Apex Crypto for ~$200M to bolster staking & NFT products
MoneyGram adds crypto tooling & ability to buy, sell, hold BTC, ETH, & LTC
tokens & protocols:
AR — integrated with Instagram to permanently store IG’s NFTs
MATIC — Instagram launching Polygon based marketplace for creators to mint & sell NFTs; JPMorgan uses MATIC for test transaction of trading tokenized cash deposits; Singapore completes cross-currency transaction using MATIC
SOL — Google Cloud announcements & Ledger natively integrated to Saga mobile
jitoSOL — “the first third-party, MEV-boosted validator client for Solana”, enables the ability to earn MEV rewards on SOL through liquid staking SOL for jitoSOL
GRT — The Graph now supports SOL including all historical transactions
SYN — “syncing CANTO nodes”, bridge integration should be live any day now
Drift — perp protocol built on SOL, launches v2 live on mainnet
Zeta Markets — derivative exchange on SOL launches perps product
Inverse Finance — introduces FiRM, The Fixed Rate Money Market Protocol
LOOKS — acquires NFT analytics company Flava Tools
IMX — officially launches StarkWare powered GameStop NFT marketplace
zkSync — to integrate support for Java, Go, & Python into its SDKs
DFlow — ATOM-based appchain for hosting decentralized order flow auctions
reading:
Jonah Van Bourg is the head of trading at Cumberland and yesterday morning (before today’s shitshow) he laid out some interesting thoughts on the current state of the main factors influencing crypto markets. To me, the most important takeaway centers around whatever we consider “adoption”, as the trend of legacy companies adopting crypto rails to further engage, reward, and service their customers grows by the day.
Dollar’s rally “seems to have topped out” on the expectation of 2023 Fed pivot
Disruption in macro factors have reached a “choppy equilibrium” where “in the absence of new geopolitical developments, a reduction volatility should result in higher asset prices”
A less adversarial environment for crypto in Washington, “primarily because of the deadlock of different parties controlling the executive & legislative branches”
“Without much fanfare, crypto is racking up adoption milestones that would’ve fueled spectacular rallies in the 2021 macro environment…with all of this going on, prices are essentially unchanged since midsummer & do not yet reflect the shifting macroeconomic, political, geopolitical, and micro/fundamental winds…the impact of this has yet to be felt, but as we’ve seen from previous cycles, strong adoption narratives can lead to parabolic rallies…current r/r feels meaningfully asymmetric.“
around the ecosystem:
Knower article, “Scaling, modularity and the question of blockchain longevity”
0xsmac with his usual topical “best things I read this week”
Degen Sensei covering all things Arbitrum & protocols to watch
Ben Roy with a good rundown of top reads over the past few weeks
tweets:
