Uniswap Launches NFT Trading, Terra Arrests & Government Snooping
Daily Bullets: Wednesday, November 30th
Market's have been looking better and we're seeing some interesting developments come with it.
Uniswap is getting into the NFT trading game, starting off with a $5M airdrop to past users of Genie, claims that users can save up to 15% on gas fees, and gas rebates for the first 22,000 new users. Will this be enough to entice new users?
The Terra saga is also heating up with South Korean prosecutors requesting arrest warrants for 8 people including the former cofounder who apparently left Terraform two years ago before the Terra-Luna collapse, and has no ties with the failure. Plus engineers and investors.
Lastly, London's High Court ordered ordered 6 exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken to disclose client information to trace a $10.7M hack from 2020
We've seen past moves by governments requesting exchange client info and we should be cautious of these precedents.
Daily Bullets:
- NFT trading goes live on Uniswap with a $5M airdrop to past users of Genie NFT aggregator
- South Korean prosecutors requested arrest warrants for 8 people related to Terraform Labs
- BlockFi has $355M frozen on FTX
- Genesis creditors organize in bid to forestall bankruptcy
- London's High Court ordered six crypto exchanges to disclose client information to trace hack
- Kraken intends to cut staff by 30% - amounting to 1,100 people
- SBF called to a Feb. 2 hearing to answer claims from a Texas regulator
- BlackRock invested $24M in FTX before its collapse
- Creators selling NFTs on OpenSea collectively earned $1.1B in royalties this year
- FTX Group’s solvent unit LedgerX to allocate $175M for the group’s bankruptcy proceedings
- Animoca Brands to debut a fund of up to $2B to invest in metaverse companies
- GMX surpassing Uniswap's in daily trading fees for the first time on record
- Jack Dorsey's project TBD backed out of plan to trademark “Web5”
- Secret Network resolved a security issue
- Huobi will form a "strategic partnership" with Poloniex
Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day for those who like details and sources:
Crypto News:
- Crypto lender BlockFi has $355M in digital assets frozen on FTX
- Genesis creditors organize in bid to forestall bankruptcy move. Law firms Proskauer Rose and Kirkland & Ellis are said to be involved in discussions with creditors
- Some investors are trying to acquire CoinDesk, the cryptocurrency news website owned by DCG, at a price of $300M
- After community backlash, Jack Dorsey's project TBD backed out of their plan to trademark the term “Web5”
- BlackRock CEO Larry Fink specified that the asset management giant had invested $24M in FTX before its collapse
- Shipping company Maersk and IBM are withdrawing their blockchain-enabled supply chain offering, TradeLens, and discontinuing the platform. Did not reach the level of commercial viability necessary or meet the financial expectations as an independent business
- The developers of Layer 1 blockchain Secret Network resolved a security issue flagged by researchers who highlighted a vulnerability posed by Intel hardware the network used to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts
- The Ton Foundation set up a "rescue fund" with a soft commitment of $126M to support projects experiencing liquidity problems as a result of the FTX fallout
- Crypto custodian Casa will offer customers the ability to store ETH
Economic/Government/Regulatory:
- South Korean prosecutors have requested arrest warrants for eight people related to Terraform Labs for the alleged fraud. Includes Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin, three Terraform investors, and four engineers
- Ex-FTX CEO SBF has been called to a Feb. 2 hearing to answer to claims from a Texas regulator that FTX US offered unregistered securities products through its yield-bearing service
- London's High Court ordered six crypto exchanges, which includes Binance, Coinbase, Luno and Kraken, to disclose client information to help trace $10.7M that was stolen from a U.K.-based exchange in 2020
- Crypto providers will have to report details of their EU clients’ transactions to national tax authorities under a bill set to be proposed by the European Commission
Exchange News:
- Crypto exchange Kraken intends to cut staff by 30% - amounting to 1,100 people
- FTX Group’s solvent unit LedgerX is set to allocate $175M for use in the group’s bankruptcy proceedings - could be used to repay creditors
- Huobi will form a "strategic partnership" with Poloniex a week after denying rumors that the two firms were planning to merge
- Binance has entered Japan by acquiring the locally licensed exchange Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC) - marks Binance’s first license in East Asia
- Gemini reveals $601M GUSD backing and 45+ licenses in a new “Trust Center” to display a breakdown of funds held on the platform
- Coinbase has added Aavegotchi (GHST) and Litentry (LIT) to its roadmap
- Gemini continues expanding in Europe with new regulatory approvals in Italy and Greece
DeFi News:
- GMX earned $1.15M in trading fees, surpassing Uniswap's $1.06M for the first time on record
NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:
- NFT trading goes live on Uniswap with $5M airdrop to past users of Genie. Allows trading across OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Sudoswap, Larva Labs, Foundation and NFT20 marketplaces using the platform’s NFT aggregator tool
- Creators selling NFTs on OpenSea collectively earned $1.1B in royalties this year, with 80% of that amount allocated to collections outside the top 10
- Art Basel Miami Beach offered a “generative” NFT mint on the Tezos blockchain. Only 2,500 of the NFTs will be minted during the week
Fundraises:
- Web3 gaming and software giant Animoca Brands is set to debut a fund of up to $2 billion to invest in metaverse companies
- Introducing Algorand Ventures
- Digital asset market maker Keyrock raised $72M in a Series B funding round led by Ripple. Six Fintech Ventures and Middlegame Ventures also participated in the round
- Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, raised $18M to its Series A, bringing its valuation to $300M. Includes funding from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. Blockchange Ventures, Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund and C2 Ventures also participated in the round
- FrankieOne, a Melbourne-based startup that provides an API platform for identity verification and fraud detection, closed its $15.4M Series A+ investment round led by AirTree Ventures and Greycroft
- Finery Markets, a leading multi-dealer electronic marketplace for institutional participants and a trading solutions provider for crypto markets, raised a $5.5M seed funding round co-led by G1 Ventures, gumi Cryptos and Shima Capital
- Catapult raised $5M in a seed round to improve DAO coordination led by Blockchain Capital. Investors in the round also include Eden Block, Orange DAO and Reverie
- Lyra, a protocol for options liquidity built on Ethereum, raises $3M strategic round led by Framework Ventures & GSR
- Daylight, a software solution for aggregating web3 perks, raised $3M in a seed round co-led by Framework Ventures and Chapter One. Other backers in the round include 6th Man Ventures, Spice Capital and OpenSea
- India-based startup with global web3 game discovery & wallet app, Glip, raised $2.5M in a funding round led by Hashed Emergent
Early Stage Projects:
- BitDAO, which has a treasury worth over $1.7B, launched a modular Ethereum Layer 2 chain called Mantle
- RNS.id, a digital Web3 identity platform developed to support the application and issuance of sovereignty-backed IDs, is integrating with zkSync for on-chain KYC
- Blockchain protocol Komodo has launched AtomicDEX Web – a wallet, cross-chain bridge and DEX
- StarkNet Mainnet alpha upgraded to v0.10.2. Expect an improved TPS + Performance Roadmap
- BracketX is now live on Arbitrum One Mainnet
- Espresso Sequencer Testnet 1 - Americano - released to the public
Data:
TL;DR: Uniswap is jumping into NFT trading. Looking at their previous volume, unique active wallets and transactions: volume has stayed fairly stable even during the bear, with UAWs and transactions trudging up and to the right. We’ve also seen a recent boost in weekly commits and active developers. Fees collected are currently on the lower end. Will NFT traders be interested in Uniswap versus other options like Blur?
Weekly Commits & Active Developers:
Fees:
Research/Reads:
- QCP - Crypto Circular #8: 50 Shades of Gray - source
- Hedging Sanctions Risk: Cryptocurrency in Central Bank Reserves - source
- Under-used DefiLlama Features - source
- Web3’s Wallet Opportunity - source
- Part 1: Can We Kill Moloch? ZK Basics and Virtual Machines - source
Crypto Twitterverse:
Intern notes from SBF interview on:
- FTX backdoor 🚪
- Bahamian withdrawals 🇧🇸
- $1/1 for US, $0.25/1 for Intl. 🇺🇸Wild quotes and much more!
@SBF_FTX <> @TiffanyFong_
— CMS intern (@cmsintern)
Nov 29, 2022
The notion of "governance rights" as a narrative for why a token should be valuable is pathological. You're literally saying "I'm buying $X because later on someone might buy it from me and a bunch of other people to twist the protocol toward their special interests"
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin)
Nov 29, 2022
The apparent stabilisation of bitcoin’s value is likely to be an artificially induced last gasp before the crypto-asset embarks on a road to irrelevance. #TheECBblog looks at where bitcoin stands amid widespread volatility in the crypto markets.
Read more ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/dat…— European Central Bank (@ecb)
Nov 30, 2022
There's extreme rate differences among lending markets rn, making people heavily overpay for their loans
From current rates for USDT borrows against ETH:
- Compound 2.7x more expensive than aave
- Protocols paying >10% to borrow??🧵 on why that happens + how you can use this
— 0xngmi (aggregatoor arc) (@0xngmi)
Nov 30, 2022
1/ New blog post:
10 positive (adoption) charts from crypto apps/protocols.
Highlights in the thread 🧵
mhonkasalo.substack.com/p/a-collection…
— mhonkasalo.lens (@mhonkasalo)
Nov 29, 2022
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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