29 March 2022
What NFTs need to unlock true mass adoption, The difference between Farcaster and Lens protocol, Most important takeaways from co-founder of Tangent Ventures
Opinions 🧠
What NFTs need to unlock true mass adoption (read more here)
Brands entering the space doesn't mean mass adoption. Brands are really trying to generate revenue, build a community (especially a younger one), and incentivize customer loyalty
NFTs can unlock this but they need to create better engagement experiences first by building games, social hubs, immersive universes that people want to spend lots of hours on, like Roblox and Fortnite
Until NFTs can compete with the web2 giants and deliver with the same speed, quality, easy to use, the real mass adoption will come
The difference between Farcaster and Lens protocol (read more here)
IDs/Profiles: Farcaster asks people to pay for their profiles to support the Hubs once a year, impacting the mass adoption. Lens allow users mint their handle and will not have to renew it, but the speculation will be a big problem
Social graph: Lens will save everything on-chain and Farcaster allows users to have more flexibility with off-chain solutions. Hubs on Farcaster have a limitation on the size of the delta graph. This graph size has been limited to removing old posts
Extending the protocol: On Lens, users can extend the modules, so the options are endless. On Farcaster, users will have to propose changes to the protocol, and all the hubs should be upgraded to support those changes.
Most important takeaways from co-founder of Tangent Ventures (read more here)
ETH bottomed last year and it will flip BTC if crypto continues to take hold of the younger population
The US had made its stance on crypto very clear. The East is going to have its time of day, capital and adoption coming out of Asia is going to increase. Although regulation is a headwind, technology will always triumph regulation
Crypto is almost entirely narrative driven. Narrative investing is most powerful when you match a particular narrative with adoption acceleration
The L2/ZK space is fiercely competitive and eventually, the ZK powerhouses will take over. Stablecoin is still the biggest pie that hasn't been eaten yet and self custody is the biggest pain point
Mainnet/L2 🌐
ConsenSys launches zkEVM public testnet Linea (read more here)
The launch comes days after competitors Polygon and Matter Labs, came out with their respective zkEVMs, and will look to close out the race for bringing Ethereum-compatible ZK rollups to users
Linea's private testnet had previously processed over 350K transactions in December, with plans to natively integrate MetaMask wallet and Truffle, its developer toolkit in the coming future
Noble is live on Cosmos (read more here)
Noble is an appchain built specifically for native asset issuance in Cosmos and the IBC ecosystem that allows the minting and burning of tokens by multiple entities as well as the freezing and blacklisting of addresses on the Noble chain by asset issuers
A token airdrop will also accompany the mainnet launch, where eligible users and DEXs will receive Noble's native token FRNZ
Saga testnet Cassiopeia is live (read more here)
Cassiopeia offers developers the Saga Platform Chain, a chain-to-launch-chains with a set of supporting features and tools such as a distributed validator set, a command-line interface wallet, onchain billing history, live updates, and dedicated RPC infrastructure for each chainlet
General 📝
Voyager Digital's sale to Binance.US halted by District Court (read more here)
A federal judge granted the U.S. government's request to temporarily halt Voyager Digital's bankruptcy plan, putting the crypto lender's proposed sale to Binance.US on hold
Voyager Digital sends $150M USDC to Circle to redeem for U.S. dollars (read more here)
The transfer is part of a larger strategy of asset offloading, an effort undertaken despite objections from regulators that say Voyager’s plan to sell its crypto may violate securities law
Gaming/NFT 🎮
Huobi launches Dominica Metaverse Bound Token (read more here)
The launch of DMBT is part of the rollout of the Dominica Metaverse Digital Citizen (DMDC), which was authorized by the government of Dominica in collaboration with TRON and DMC Labs
DMBT serves as an onchain identity for users who have completed their Level-3 KYC verification on Huobi and as a credential for verified DMDC members and is a type of soulbound token that is unique, non-transferable, and revocable
DeFi 💱
Developers will be free to fork Uniswap v3 after April 1 (read more here)
The DEX's Business Source License (BSL) will expire two years after its launch, making Uniswap v3's code fully open source and available for anyone to use without restrictions
PancakeSwap, the biggest exchange on the BNB Chain, has already announced that it will release v3 in the first week of April, which is speculated to have been developed using Uniswap's v3 protocol
Polynomial introduces Polynomial Trade (read more here)
Powered by Synthetix and Pyth, Polynomial Trade introduces multiple features, including smart wallets, limit orders, low fees of 5-10bps, up to 25x leverage, deep liquidity, and the use of decentralised oracles
Upcoming updates will include OP rewards for traders, more markets, one-click basis trading, and power perpetuals
Safemoon liquidity pair compromised in $8.9M hack (read more here)
The BNB chain-based exchange was compromised earlier today, according to onchain records, resulting in close to $9 million being drained from its liquidity pool
The hacker was able to artificially raise the price of SFM tokens using a code function, and then sold enough tokens back to the liquidity pool in the same transaction to effectively drain the WBNB from the contract
Funding 💵
Restaking protocol EigenLayer raises $50M in Series A funding (read more here)
The round was led by Blockchain Capital, and featured participation from Bixin Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Electric Company, and more
EigenLayer's core innovation of restaking is a game changer for bootstrapping new cryptoeconomic networks, enabling the usage of staked ETH to increase the security of decentralised services and allow validators to secure other protocols
Web3 social platform So-col raises $4.5M in funding (read more here)
The funding was spread across two rounds, a $1.5M round from DWF Labs and $3M round led by Blockchain Capital at a $100M valuation
The Ethereum-based platform that lets creators and brands use NFTs as a basis for memberships and exclusive contentaims, will utilise the funding to multichain and expand their offerings to other L1s and L2s, including StarkWare
Trading infrastructure protocol Orderly Network raises fresh funding (read more here)
The Near-based protocol raised an undisclosed amount of funds from India's CoinDCX Ventures in a strategic investment round at a flat valuation of $200M
Orderly Network currently offers infrastructure for spot order-book trading, and has plans to support perpetual futures and multiple dApps by the end of April, with multichain support following in the future
Metaverse construction firm LandVault raises $3M in extended Series B funding (read more here)
The extended round featured participation from The Sandbox, Gemini Frontier Fund, HodlCo and Kingsway Capital
The company will use the capital to continue building out its protocol Matera, which puts metaverse builds such as virtual shops or stadiums, onchain
Crypto infrastructure startup Conduit raises $7M in Seed funding (read more here)
The round was led by Paradigm, with funding going towards helping Conduit continue its first product launch and toward its goal of achieving profitability
The Optimism-based startup offers a managed service that helps developers to easily and quickly deploy their applications to Optimism, working with the Optimism Foundation to support developers and its transition to its forthcoming Superchain future
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