Markets are still ranging however with ETH price action looking much better than Bitcoin. Seems like bulls are getting excited and active. We got a busy news day filled with all types of interesting developments - particularly in DeFi. Andre Cronje came out of hiding with a new article (although his lawyer wrote the piece? Who is Megan?), Near’s stablecoin being shut down, Maker, Aave, Compound, Ribbon proposals. Everyone keeps talking about Reddit Polygon NFTs with their “3M” wallets - oh and btw, we’re rebranding NFTs as digital collectibles now /s. We should be in for some interesting times.
⛓ Crypto News:
- Smartphone manufacturer Vertu revealed its latest device, Metavertu - a Web3 phone that can run its own blockchain node and turn photos and videos into NFTs with a single click
- Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest made its first purchase of Coinbase stock since June this year, along with more Block and Robinhood shares
- Klaytn Foundation Buyback Announcement - continued efforts to achieve an optimal and sustainable Klaytn ecosystem
- Mastercard signed a partnership with BitOasis to offer cryptocurrency-linked cards for customers in the MENA region
- Layer 2 Community Grants 2022. The Ethereum Foundation offers a pool of $750,000 in grants that will help scale the network while preserving decentralization and public goods
- Sui Foundation announced the launch of a developer grant program, which will grant grants to eligible on-chain developers ranging from $10,000 to $100,000
👨‍⚖️ Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- South Korean prosecutors are asking the court to sentence Lee Jung-hoon, the owner of South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb, to eight years in prison on charges of fraud worth about $70M
- Australian regulators are suing BPS Financial (BPS) for alleged misleading statements about its crypto asset Qoin that claimed it was regulated
đź’¸ Exchange News:
- Alexander Höptner is departing from his role as CEO of crypto exchange Bitmex. Stephan Lutz has been appointed as Interim CEO
- ​​Coinbase will list Axelar (WAXL)
- Euler (EUL) Gets Listed on KuCoin
🏦 DeFi News:
- PancakeSwap and the CAKE token will be deploying on Aptos shortly
- MakerDAO community approves proposal to place up to $1.6B in Coinbase's custody platform, Coinbase Prime, where it will earn a 1.5% reward
- Community members of MakerDAO voted to move forward with founder Rune Christensen’s plan to overhaul how the protocol works and make it more decentralized by breaking up into smaller, allegedly more decentralized units called MetaDAOs
- Aave has launched a Lido Staked Ethereum, or stETH, earn strategy through Oasis.app
- NEAR Protocol’s stablecoin, USN, is being shut down after it began to exhibit risky characteristics similar to those observed with TerraUSD. The Near Foundation opened up a $40M fund to protect investors and help them cash out of USN with equal amounts of wrapped Tether (USDT.e)
- Aave Proposal to deploy Aave v3 on zkSync v2.0 Testnet
- Compound Finance has approved “proposal-131,” which will prevent users from being able to lend relatively illiquid assets on the protocol - 4 protocols: 0x (ZRX), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Maker (MKR), and Yearn Finance (YFI)
- Ribbon Finance considering a second round of lending pools for its DeFi lending product Ribbon Lend - considering onboarding a new set of institutional borrowers
- Struggling Bitcoin miners are flocking to Maple Finance’s $300M DeFi lending pool. A pipeline of 10 mining firms will make up the first cohort of borrowers, with some 25 on the waitlist
- Vesta Finance - following recent efforts to improve borrowing experience, removed the 30 VST liquidation reserve - borrowers will be less penalized in case of liquidation and liquidators are not over-compensated anymore
đź–Ľ NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- Apple updated its App Store policy to restrict apps from using NFTs to incentivize users to purchase items or features to avoid 30% App Store fees. NFTs are allowed to exist within apps on the App Store but they can’t unlock additional features or content
- Reddit NFTs - Polygon-based avatars trading volume hits all-time high - last week that over 3 million Polygon wallets created by users to collect the NFTs
- Gaming blockchain Oasys has taken the final steps towards debuting its mainnet, with 21 initial validators. There will be three initial phases followed by a public token listing. Square Enix, Ubisoft and Sega among its initial node validators
- Meta partnership with makeup brand L’Oréal and French business school HEC Paris backing a new startup acceleration program for creativity in the metaverse
- The Singapore High Court has ruled that NFTs can be considered a form of property - the first injunction issued in Asia to protect an NFT
- Web3 ticketing company YellowHeart is launching a metaverse music venue – a move it hopes will drive changes in how artists, teams and event organizers release tickets and engage with fans
đź’° Fundraises:
- African cryptocurrency exchange Yellow Card has concluded a $15M Series A financing round led by Valar Ventures, Third Price and Castle Island Ventures
- BNB Chain, one of the world's most actively used blockchains by daily active users, has introduced a $10M fund to help projects with user acquisition and growth
- The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) $5M Enterprise Fund investment in Wave, an African mobile money app which endeavors to make Africa the first cashless continent
- Crypto-centred fund UpsideDAO $5M fundraising to invest in web3 projects approved by its community members
- Synota, a startup that wants to bring energy payments to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, has raised $3M in a seed round led by Ego Death Capital
- Binance Labs led the pre-seed funding round for Ancilia, Inc. in its latest step toward fortifying the security of the Web3 ecosystem
- Sealance Seed Funding Round - the world's first blockchain-based Trust Platform for cryptocurrencies and based on advanced mathematics, cryptography, and zero-knowledge proofs
👶 Early Stage Projects:
- Canto Online Hackathon winners
- Paraswap - PSP 2.0 Renaissance - Social Escrow, Fee Redistribution, and Fairdrop
- Curio - Announcing: Phase 1 Completion - A game engine, whole new game design, and plans towards truly composable games
- Minima and Minipay pilot blockchain-based retail payment system
- ​​BlockPI Alpha-net, Your Reliable Web3 RPC Service Provider
- Scoville Testnet Phase 4 - CAYENNE is live. Introducing the Chiliz Chain 2.0 Developer Guide & GitHub repo
- Introducing Hegic Herge protocol upgrade: live on Arbitrum
- DeBank Hi, the messaging app for web3 natives, is now online
- Fire is live - tool that shows you a preview of what will enter and exit your wallet, before you sign a transaction
đź“Š Data:
TL;DR: Today we got a wee bit o’ smart money flowing into WETH (opposed to larger perp buys ~ $500M)) followed by stables TUSD, USDT. Outflows from the day primarily from USDC and WBTC. Weekly showing a move into stables USDC and USDT with flows out of WBTC and Aave WBTC. Digital Collectible volumes still pretty low - R Planet mint highest project of the day. ETH on exchanges keeps falling post Merge spike.
- Nansen Smart Money Holdings Token Inflow and Outflows: Tracking what the whales are up to...
- Inflow (1D):
- Outflow (1D):
Weekly:
- Inflow (7D):
- Outflow (7D):
- Nansen NFT Hot Contracts:
Following a large spike on the day of the Merge, which presumably was ETH flowing onto exchanges to be sold, we’ve seen a sharp drop off
🎓 Research/Reads:
- Andre Cronje - The Crypto Winter of 2022 - source
- The State of DeFi Options - DeFi? Options? We're not there yet - source
- The Crypto Story - Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters - source
- GMX, A Can-Be-Evil “AMM” - source
- Polygon ZK Roundup: Q3 2022 - source
- Messari - State of Hedera Q3 2022 - source
- ​​Messari - The Telecom Cowboys of the Decentralized Wireless Movement - source
- What drives fundamentals in Crypto? - source
- Decentralized Social Media Primer - Lens Protocol - source
🌍 Crypto Twitterverse:
Did we miss anything or is there anything you want to discuss? We’d Love to hear your feedback and engage with the community! Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the Crypto market!
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