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tl;dr: ETH PoS is here, ATOM, & LINK revamps, Doodles raise @ $700M valuation, crypto relative strength, QQL sells out @ 14E, & outlining October catalysts

Tokens & Protocols:

ETH:

• RBN — announces Aevo, a next-generation options exchange built on EVM rollup along with announcing expansion to the credit market with Ribbon Lend

• LsETH — institutional liquid staking token launched by Liquid Collective with foundation including Coinbase, Kraken, Figment, Staked, and others

• COMP launches crypto-backed loans for institutional clients

• Frax Finance (FXS) launches native borrowing and lending market Fraxlend

• Barnbridge (BOND) launches v2 with focus on sustainable fixed interest in DeFi

Cosmos:

• ATOM 2.0 — liquid staking focus while reducing issuance to a constant 300k per month after 36 months along with introducing an Interchain Scheduler & Allocator that generate & distribute revenue for new chains and collaboration

• INJ — announces “Project X” @ Cosmoverse that includes AMMS, strategy vaults for market making/yield, & native launchpad

• Delphi Digital to commit DeFi resources to developing the Cosmos ecosystem (ATOM) after reevaluating chains, teams, & options since LUNA’s collapse

• Carbon announced money market and new stablecoin for Cosmos ecosystem

SOL:

• Helium (HNT) partners with T-Mobile for missing 5G coverage ahead of its Helium Mobile (MOBILE) launch in early 2023; HNT officially migrates to SOL

• HXRO, SOL based DeFi platform, launches weekly, monthly, & quarterly derivatives for BTC with support for ETH and SOL coming soon

• Metaplex, SOL based NFT metadata standard & infrastructure provider, to decentralize protocol through MPLX token airdrop

• SOL — winners of Summer Hackathon & their projects detailed in this thread

Other Protocol Developments:

• LINK — staking confirmed to go live in December along with SCALE & BUILD programs that will result in LINK acquiring native tokens of other protocols in exchange for data feeds and other Chainlink services

• DOT — updated roadmap and developments moving forward

• Urbit (U) announces EVM blockchain with good info on it here

• NEAR Foundation launches $100M venture fund & lab for new initiatives

• Oasys, gaming focused blockchain launching this year, confirms Square Enix to become its 21st validator joining SEGA, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco & others

• SWEAT launches on NEAR & commits to 50% of profits for buy & burn/yield

• Arweave (AR) based software and venture studio Community Labs raises $30M to deploy to AR ecosystem and permanent data storage ventures

• Fuel Labs, modular execution layer focused L2 through FuelVM, raises $80M

• BNB announces zk scaling solution zkBNB & transitions stables to BUSD

• XMON confirming SUDO lock-drop and outlining the tokenomics

Musings:

Heading into September, there were a long list of expected developments to take place across the crypto ecosystem that I previously outlined several times. Below are the updates that have occurred with the obvious highlights being ETH’s successful transition to PoS along with tokenomics revamps/confirmations from LINK, ATOM, & XMON (SUDO).

tolks @_tolks

updates: successful ETH merge, XMON/SUDO tokenomics revealed, ATOM 2.0 revamp announced, CHZ testnet 3 with bridging live, LINK staking confirmed & new programs detailed, CPI a tad hot markets selloff & Arbitrum Nitro live will compile & release October's expected events soon

tolks @_tolks

September should be a fun month filled with opportunities and volatility Am I missing anything? https://t.co/wKlIAvSPUi

8:06 PM ∙ Sep 29, 2022

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8Likes2Retweets

Broadly speaking, crypto displayed some surprising relative strength throughout September as macro markets continued puking into Friday’s Q3 close. The first two trading days of Q4 have resulted in the S&P (+5.55%) and Nasdaq (+5.38%) rallying, giving hope to macro playing nice this month leading to a profitable Uptober where I’ll be mostly monitoring the following developments:

• Backpack & xNFTs development on SOL after recent launch of beta version

• FOLD, flashbots MEV-boost, and developments around censored transactions

• ATOM 2.0 proposal rollout & its bid ahead of Interchain Security launch (Q1)

• Berachain’s launch of upcoming testnet as new, Cosmos SDK crypto native L1

• Potential divergence & strength of SOL/ETH and ETH/BTC as broad indicators

• y00ts reveal (hopefully) and the ongoing strength in volume/users of SOL NFTs

• Further updates regarding stablecoins from AAVE, CRV, and DPX

• APE, BAYC, & Yuga NFTs — been quiet too long after successful Otherside demo

• Continued strength in Arbitrum TVL, users, & transactions ahead of token soon

• CHZ — momentum of token & associated soccer fan tokens ahead of World Cup; launched testnet 3 w/ Chain Swap Chiliz Bridge for CHZ on multiple chains

• zkSync’s mainnet 2.0 launch (and token?) expected October 31st that potentially prompts any response from StarkWare despite atrocious tokenomics

• Appchains — IMO, clear narrative with a ton of competing teams/protocols; previous thought of OP/Arbi, or ZKRs end game of scaling short-sighted — think Fuel VM, Celestial, Eclipse, SOL VMs, Cosmos appchains, Scroll, MATIC, SYN, OP, Arbi, zkSync, StarkWare, Nitro Labs, etc.

• LINK’s bid as staking goes live & monitoring early-stage tokens they acquire (if possible) through new BUILD & SCALE mechanisms announced

• DigiDaigaku updates & influence on cheap/free2own NFT meta that bootstraps communities/holders/evangelists through airdrops

Funding & News:

the below funding and news developments are not a comprehensively list of every announcement, but a selection of the most impactful announcements in September

• Pantera Capital looking to raise $1.25B for second crypto fund

• Mysten Labs, ex-Meta employees new L1, raises $300M @ $2B valuation

• Spice VC to close second crypto venture fund with $250M target in Q4

• Hong Kong VC firm C Ventures raising $200M for new crypto fund

• North Island Ventures launches their second crypto fund with $125M to deploy

• DeFiance Capital raising $100M for liquid token investments

• Singapore based Whampoa group plans to raise $50M for crypto hedge fund and to allocate $100M to crypto venture investments

• Strike, BTC Lightning Network focused payments firm, raises $80M series B

• Voyager, recently bankrupt crypto lender, to sell assets to FTX for bid of $1.4B

• Meta announces all users of Facebook & Instagram in US are able to connect their wallets to display NFTs

• Lightning Labs releases initial code base for Taro protocol that hopes to eventually allow users to issue & transfer assets on BTC

• Circle, USDC issuer, announces cross-chain transfer protocol for USDC along with coming support for USDC on Cosmos, Polkadot, Optimism, NEAR, & Arbitrum

• FTX in talks to raise up to $1B around previous valuation of $32B

• Nasdaq to launch institutional crypto custody service

• Citadel, Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paradigm, Sequoia, and Virtu form consortium to launch digital asset exchange EDX Markets

• Leading derivatives exchange CME group launches ETH options contracts

NFT Review:

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the ongoings in NFT land. These projects are covered in more depth throughout past Page One posts, so find more info on all of these there.

Familiar Faces:

• Azuki peaks at nearly 12Ξ as funding round rumors make rounds

• Grumpls revealed, seemingly completely this goblintown story arc for now

• Kanpai Pandas see volume after minting out five months after release

• Moonbirds announce Mythics collection and $50M funding round

• RENGA tops volume charts and continues higher, now ~3Ξ, after slow start

• Parallel releases Pack Drop V as game beta seemingly gets closer

New Entrants:

• Anomura Mystery Bowls reached nearly 1Ξ in a month full of game NFTs

• Fortunata World Pass brings free-to-own to Dungeons & Dragons

• Hedz saw Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie return with 1,000 new 1/1 avatars

• The Hopeful from Azra Games continues the free-to-own gaming meta

• Nounlets from Tessera create generative fractionalized Nouns

• PoSers claim the title of first on-chain NFT post-merge

• QQL sold out at 14Ξ and saw over 500Ξ in trading volume

• y00ts yet to reveal after one of the most hyped mints in months

Upcoming Projects:

• Art Gobblers, the upcoming project from Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland and Paradigm, has been detailing more about their upcoming project

• Lost Realms onboards collections to their turn-based RPG ahead of launch

• Valhalla is a VC-funded collection of builders bringing eSports culture to crypto

Market News and Announcements:

• OpenRarity, new rarity service built by IcyTools, OS, Proof, launches

• OpenSea launches on-site minting service, supports Arbitrum & Optimism NFTs

• Robinhood rolls out Web3 wallet beta on Polygon

• Starbucks details upcoming NFT loyalty rewards program

• NFT collection Doodles raises $54M @ $704M valuation

• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to auction off $70M in historical masterpieces as MoMA looks to boost digital art reach including potentially buying NFTs

• Epic Games lists its first NFT powered, blockchain gaming title Mythical Games’ Blankos Block Party available in its marketplace