September Recap
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September Recap
token updates, NFTs, news, product developments, and funding across September
as always, thanks for reading and follow me and terv to reach out!
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).
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