Decentralization is a Meme - Uniswap & a16z Whale Games
Institutional Traders Like AI & Uniswap Origins Drama
Theo Delarosa
February 06, 2023
Daily Bullets - Monday, February 6th
Bitcoin is on its 5th red day in a row as momentum has stalled for the orange coin, however AI coins continue to blast off - check the market update section. Check the rumor mill section to catch up on all the various protocols hinting at a coordinated special big announcement plus rumors that the 3AC founders secured funding for their new exchange. All the while, drama continues to reign in the crypto space. Thought that kinda stuff was only for bear markets?
Today we’re looking at:
- A16z Uniswap BNB Chain Deployment Voting Whale Games
- JPMorgan says Institutional Traders Bullish on AI
- How Uniswap Actually Got Started - The Social Network Part Deux
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🐳 a16z Uniswap BNB Chain Deployment Voting Whale Games
What’s Going On? The issue over which bridge provider Uniswap will choose when deploying on the BNB Chain has been riddled with controversy and drama, claims of centralization and calls for a bridge-agnostic deployment.
Which Side is Which? a16z wants to support its own portfolio company LayerZero and Jump Crypto is backing Wormhole.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature - From attacks and accusations between Wormhole Bridge and LayerZero to new outcries over the centralization concerns from big pocketed players with their own agendas and priorities, we can see for the nth time that decentralization is a meme in crypto where whale games reign supreme.
The a16z Centralization Concern: a16z controls 41.5M UNI tokens through 11 wallets which is more than 4% of the supply and can collectively change the outcome of any governance vote.
Significance: Whoever holds the most tokens is able to influence the outcome. There’s a false pretense that decentralization means the community will govern a protocol, however time and time again we’ve seen large entities amass a large share of voting power and have the ability to essentially dictate the course.
Large players have always and will always find a way to amass more control, influence and resources.
📈 JPMorgan says Institutional Traders Bullish on AI
The Backstory: AI related coins have been absolutely skyrocketing, attributed to ChatGPT and other AI-based automation acting as a catalyst.
Crypto is built on the principle of selling an idea of the future to investors and AI is ripe for capturing the imagination of future investors.
JPMorgan Research: More than half of the institutional traders surveyed by global financial services giant JPMorgan said that artificial intelligence and machine learning will be the most influential technology in shaping the future of trading over the next three years.
What Does This Mean For the Future? Does AI as a sector have sustenance? Is there a PMF? The concept of the Metaverse and gaming related token captured the imagination of investors during the 2021 bull market as “he next iteration of crypto.
Many said that blockchain gaming would be the vertical to onboard the next billion users however
Furthermore, respondents ranked access to 'liquidity', 'regulatory change' and 'market fragmentation' as their top market structure concerns in 2023.
🧑💻 How Uniswap Actually Got Started - The Social Network Part Deux
Who wants to hear my story about how Uniswap actually got started?
— Ric.eth (@ricburton)
Jan 31, 2023
The Backstory: Ever seen The Social Network, the movie that tells the story of the drama filled and tumultuous early days of The Facebook? New allegations from Ric Burton, an early supporter and friend of Uniswap founder Hayden Adams details how he was cut out from the initial investment round and is now suing to get what he’s owed.
Why Does This Matter? If you are a founder, builder, team member, or early contributor to something, then it’s in your best interest to get things in writing instead of relying on promises and handshake agreements.
How many companies and relationships have been rocked by early scandals and excluding and cutting out people who were there from day 1? This messy ordeal is another reminder when it comes to separating friendship from business
What’s Next? The accuser has welcomed Paradigm and Uniswap to issue a rebuttal and this will most likely have to be settled in court but if you’re building the next multibillion dollar protocol, then you could stand to learn some tips about what you should and shouldn’t do.
✅ Daily Bullets
- Google Cloud reportedly invested $300M into AI startup firm Anthropic, which also received over $500M in funds from SBF
- Binance Tax launched to prepare crypto users for the tax season - currently in a pilot phase in France and Canada
- Crypto exchange Binance is temporarily suspending U.S. dollar bank transfers
- Visa’s crypto strategy targets stablecoin settlements
- StarkWare plans to open-source the StarkNet Prover to make the technology publicly available and increase the transparency of its code
- Lightning Network reached an all-time high in terms of capacity, or the amount of BTC locked in payment channels
- Justin Sun backs FTX Debt token ‘FUD’ in possible securities law breach
- StarkWare is joining the Chainlink SCALE program, making Chainlink price feeds available on the StarkNet testnet
- Join the Apeiron Guild Wars
- Port3 Network raised a $3M seed round to build a web3 social data portal led by KuCoin Ventures plus participation from Jump Crypto, SNZ, Cogitent, Momentum6
- Options automated market maker Lyra deploys to Arbitrum Network and integrates with GMX perpetuals
- Trader Joe Integrates LayerZero: JOE evolves into an Omnichain Token
- Uniswap community voted in favor of deploying Uniswap v3 on Boba Network's layer-2 protocol on Ethereum
- zkSync 2.0 testnet, the system will undergo a regenesis to prepare for Fair Onboarding Alpha
- Dopex launches on Polygon
- Radiant v2 is going live around February 16
- Aleph Zero wins Polkadot parachain auction #38 and Wormhole bridge is live on Acala
- X2Y2 halving reduces staking rewards by ⅔
📊 Market Update - AI Coins Going Bananas
- Just take a look at how AI coins have been moving over the past 3 months. This sector has captured the imagination of traders and investors and many speculate whether AI will be the next big thing. The rally in price is already reminiscent of gaming and metaverse coins in 2021. What’s even more interesting is that a majority of these coins are available to purchase on retail friendly exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.
Are You Bullish on AI Coins? |
📚 Research/Reads
- Institutional traders shifting attention from blockchain to AI | JPMorgan - The e-Trading Edit - Insights from the Inside - source
- Key trends, people, companies, and projects to watch | Messari - Crypto Theses for 2023 - source
- Market, verticals, and projects that excite us | Moonrock Capital - Bimonthly Report - source
- How DAOs implement their legal and governing structures in the future | Legal expert says Mango Markets exploit case is wake-up call for DAOs - source
- History of DeFi shows that bootstrapping/growing a protocol requires a different strategy | How I changed my mind on the decentralized casino thesis (as a go-to-market strategy) - source
- Saving money when filing taxes | Tax strategies allow crypto investors to offset losses - source
- Roger Ver owes CoinFLEX 47M which led to a liquidity squeeze on exchanges | How Bitcoin Jesus Roger and the Exchange CoinFLEX Collapse - source
- Ordinals NFTs analysis | Innovation or attack? Sorting out the "NFT Big Block" on the Bitcoin Network - source
- Crypto layoffs rose 8 to 13 times above average, in the months after major fallouts | CoinGecko - Crypto Layoffs in the Past Year, By Month - source
- Concern that the builder landscape will become centralized | MEV: Maximal Extractable Value Part 2: The Rise of the Builders - source
🗣 Rumor Mill - Ultra Protocol Collab 3AC Co-Founders Raise
What’s the big announcement going to be? Something big is in the works potentially
Mondays 🤜🤛
Multiple protocols are coordinating
What's happening?
🦅?
👀
— olimpio (@OlimpioCrypto)
Feb 3, 2023
Arthur Hayes is hearing rumors that Kyle Davies and Zhu Su completed their raise for a new exchange
Little birdie told me @KyleLDavies and @zhusu completed their raise. Must be the beginnings of a bull market if these muppets get money less than one year after they torched $18 billion on shitcoins. I ain’t mad at ya, but homeboy needs his money back lift tickets be expensive
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes)
Feb 3, 2023
We hope you find this issue engaging and enlightening. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future issues.
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