Artisan – #31 Weekly: May 8 – 12 | Web3 Narratives

🤔 Analysis & Thoughts

Past traction and future plans of Filecoin (Read more)

• Over the past 2 years, Filecoin has quietly exploded in growth since the launch of its token. Year over year, this represents a 1800% growth in usage
• Filecoin dominates the storage network field. No single Web3 storage network provides remotely as much capacity as Filecoin has in the 2.5 years since its launch
• With the launch of FVM, Filecoin has evolved into a L1 and use cases like perpetual storage are now possible as a feature on Filecoin. One of the newer drivers of usage came from NFTs. Other verticals include games, metavers, streaming, video chat, etc

Data analysis: development of Blend since launch (Read more)

• Blend has now been live for 1 week, and has it been successful? The launch of Blend saw the NFT lending space go parabolic. With a 370.5% loan volume increase compared to the previous week. Of the week’s volume, Blur represents a whopping 74.6%
• So far, Blend has facilitated the loan of 39,112 ETH in a total of 2,387 deals. Giving an average issuance of 16.39 ETH per loan
• Though we’ve seen a very impressive volume this week, it is important to note the amount of unique borrowers and lenders here. Only 574 and 501 respectively. As is often the case in NFTs, it’s a small proportion of users doing the majority of volume
• Milady has been the only collection which has sustained its increased Floor Price. Both Azuki and Punks saw an initial pump before undergoing a significant retrace

Centralized Dapps through tokenized rebates: a modest proposal (Read more)

• Crypto founders face a challenge: Many want to give token ownership to their users from the beginning, but as soon as they do, fear of regulatory action forces them to decentralize and distance themselves from their product
• This post explores an approach that would allow crypto startups to achieve user ownership while maintaining centralized control where necessary: Rebates, pay money now and receive some tokenized rebates back later
• Many web3 companies are already choosing to give away too much value to customers. Rebates would enable them to grant a sense of “ownership” without giving away too much upfront
• A potential downside of rebate tokens is that users may lack psychological ownership if they do not have any governance rights. To mitigate this risk and build engagement, rebate tokens can serve as a product feedback mechanism or confer limited governance control over the company’s charitable giving

Ethereum ecosystem data after Shanghai upgrade (Read more)

• The amount of Ethereum flowing into exchanges within a week after the upgrade did not show a significant upward trend. Although the amount of Ethereum withdrawn exceeded expectations due to Kraken closing its staking service, there was no huge selling pressure
• The latest data shows that the number of nodes queued for staking is 31,500, and the number of exit nodes is 0. After the upgrade in Shanghai, the main parties who unstaked were centralized exchanges and LSP node operators (although Lido has not yet opened the unstaking function). The largest entities in the deposit are independent stakers and Lido
• Overall, the impact of the Shanghai upgrade on Ethereum is positive. The unstaked Ethereum did not generate substantial selling pressure, and it is foreseeable that the staking rate of ETH will further increase in the future

🌍 Layer 1/2s

Canto blockchain set to vote on reduction in liquidity incentives and block rewards (Read more)

• The community members of the Cosmos-based L1 are set to vote on three proposals that would reduce liquidity mining incentives, as well as the issuance rate of block rewards
• If passed, mining incentives for certain liquidity pools would be reduced on average by roughly 38%, while Canto’s inflation rate would be reduced by 15%, to just 4.76 CANTO emitted per block

Litecoin transactions hit record high as Bitcoin fees surge amid BRC-20 frenzy (Read more)

• On May 8, Litecoin executed more than 525,000 transactions in a day, five times the average number of transactions on the blockchain compared to earlier this year, and more than double the previous high at the peak of the bull market in 2018
• The development comes as Bitcoin experienced an extreme level of congestion due to a frenzy of new Bitcoin-based BRC-20 tokens causing transaction fees to peak

Chiliz launches new L1 blockchain, Chiliz Chain (Read more)

• Chiliz Chain is an EVM-compatible, proof-of-staked authority, L1 blockchain that aims to become the home for leading sports brands in Web3, with the door open to Chiliz existing sports network of Socios.com partners
• Chiliz Labs, the $50M accelerator and incubator for early stage sports focused blockchain projects looking to build on Chiliz Chain will aim to drive innovation on the chain

Arbitrum’s DAO to receive over 3,350 ETH in revenue from transaction fees (Read more)

• The funds to be collected are base fees and surplus revenue generated from network transactions
• A revenue breakdown reveals around 582 ETH of surplus funds generated from the L1 fee, nearly 1,308 ETH from base fees and a 1,462 ETH surplus from the L2 fee

Derivatives protocol Vega launches its Alpha blockchain (Read more)

• Built specifically to handle decentralised derivatives trading of financial products, Alpha offers support for a range of market types and assets, including futures, spot swap, options, and perpetuals, allowing users to deploy strategies to profit from their price gyrations
• VEGA stakers can propose and vote on the creation of new derivatives markets, and traders can start trading without paying gas fees

Decentralised wallet developer Odsy Network raises $7.5M in funding (Read more)

• The round that valued the firm at $250M was led by Blockchange Ventures, and featured participation from Rubik Ventures, Node Capital, and FalconX
• Odsy’s decentralised wallets are designed to provide access to different Web3 protocols and platforms through “transferable signing mechanisms” on the Odsy Network with the ability to sign transactions on any other blockchain

Ethereum’s beacon chain suffers brief finality issue, cause still unknown (Read more)

• The Ethereum network suffered a technical issue that disrupted transaction finality for a brief period, and although it has since been restored, a root cause has yet to be determined
• Data sources for Ethereum network activity however, show that the issue was experienced by validators, but will require more investigation

Worldcoin’s new app to migrate from Polygon to Optimism’s ecosystem (Read more)

• As part of a partnership between The Worldcoin Foundation and Tools for Humanity (Worldcoin’s lead software contributor) with Optimism Collective, World App will migrate to Optimism from Polygon
• Worldcoin had worked with the Optimism ecosystem in the past, initially launching the World App beta on Hubble, an optimistic rollup originally started by the team at the Ethereum Foundation

Threshold Network goes live with Wormhole to bridge Bitcoin to 20 blockchains (Read more)

• Wormhole proposed the integration to the Threshold community in mid-April, with the objective of helping threshold Bitcoin (tBTC) become the dominant bitcoin representative token in onchain DeFi ecosystems
• The integration will allow tBTC to be transferred to both EVM chains, such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon, and non-EVM chains like Solana, Aptos, Sui, and Cosmos

💰 DeFi / CeFi / NFTFi

MakerDAO boosts DAI lending capabilities via Spark Protocol roll-out (Read more)

• MakerDAO has unveiled Spark, a DeFi lending platform aimed at improving decentralised borrowing solutions for its stablecoin DAI
• Spark’s first version Spark Lend incorporates a tailored interest rate model, wherein borrowing rates are established by governance members through onchain voting, instead of fluctuating according to supply and demand as found in Aave or other lending protocols

Polytrade introduces its RWA marketplace (Read more)

• The marketplace will allow for tokenising and democratising of RWAs, eliminating of intermediaries, increasing of liquidity, and enabling of asset comparison
• It will also feature fractional ownership and the ability for users to create custom portfolios for diversification and risk reduction

Lido v2 to go live on May 15 (Read more)

• The final onchain vote for the v2 upgrade is scheduled for this May 12, and should no last-minute findings surface and the vote is successful, the upgrade will go live after the vote enactment on May 15
• Following a successful vote, stakers can expect direct in-protocol stETH:ETH withdrawals, and new staking router architecture, paving the way for new staking modules

DeFi broker Prime Protocol introduces bridgeless cross-chain token transfers (Read more)

• The protocol will let users borrow against the value of their entire asset portfolio across several supported blockchains, including Moonbeam, Ethereum, Arbitrum and Avalanche, without the need for token bridges
• Since operating on testnet in September, Prime has already seen more than 51,000 unique users

Introducing the ERC721-C token standard (Read more)

• ERC721-C provides the enforcement mechanism and makes it possible to build novel programmable royalty contracts on top of EIP-2981 (NFT Royalty Standard)
• This allows for building of stronger communities around NFTs and creating of dynamic, equitable, rewarding ways that creators can share royalties with the communities, partners and affiliates

Tether reports $1.48B profit in Q1, reveals Bitcoin and Gold reserves (Read more)

• As of March 31, Tether held $1.5B of BTC on its balance sheet (or about 2% of roughly $80B in reserves) and $3.4B of gold (about 4% of reserves)
• As of the same date, Tether held about $2.44B in excess reserves of the $79.4B Tether-issued tokens in circulation, with all newly issued tokens invested in US Treasury bills or deposited in overnight repurchase and reverse repurchase facilities

Unstoppable Finance to launch Europe’s first ‘DeFi-native bank’ (Read more)

• Most known for its self-custodial crypto wallet called Ultimate, Unstoppable announced that it will be rolling out Europe’s first compliant DeFi-native bank alongside a fiat-backed Euro-pegged stablecoin following MiCA’s guidance

Gitcoin partners with Rocket Pool as a node operator (Read more)

• Gitcoin’s partnership as a node operator and member of the Oracle DAO allows for the mutual benefit of securing the Ethereum network while also funding public goods
• It also exemplifies Gitcoin’s commitment to being good stewards and partners in the space while also finding sustainable funding models for public goods

MakerDAO unveils AI-fueled roadmap to new blockchain (Read more)

• The final stage of MakerDAO’s Endgame will include a new blockchain that has the ability to use hard forks as a governance mechanism, with features that optimise it as a backend for AI-assisted DAO governance processes and AI tool users including smart contract generation, state rent and in-protocol MEV capture

Proposal submitted on Uniswap governance forum to implement protocol fees (Read more)

• The proposal suggests implementing a protocol fee equal to ⅕ of the pool fee across all Uniswap v3 pools (with regular volumes that would generate an annualised income over $10,000 for the protocol) and turning on the fee switch for Uniswap v2
• The scope of the proposal is to implement a fee for Uniswap pools, implement a system to claim earned fees, and trustlessly sell the fees earned for an asset designated by the UNI community

🖼 NFT / 🎮 Gaming / 🎭 Metaverse / Social

Pudgy Penguins raises $9M in Seed funding (Read more)

• The round was led by 1kx, and featured participation from Big Brain Holdings, Kronos Research, the founders of LayerZero Labs, Old Fashion Research, and CRIT Ventures
• The fresh funding will be used to help monetise the brand’s intellectual property through, in part, merchandising

Manta Network enables onchain private identity for Arbitrum (Read more)

• Arbitrum users will be able to mint the ARB Early Supporter zkPass, which is a private verifiable proof of participation as an early supporter within the Arbitrum ecosystem, and a zkSBT from ReadOn
• With this enablement of Arbitrum identity, future zkSBTs for the ecosystem can be released as well in conjunction with other Manta ecosystem activities and projects with Arbitrum

Binance announces Web3 reality show ‘Build the Block’ (Read more)

• ‘Build The Block’ is the first crypto-themed entrepreneurial competitive reality show and marks Binance’s foray into Metaverse-oriented reality shows
• The digital series will feature 12 Web3 startups- Mind Network, Kryptoskatt, SandBags Protocol, Wallet Guard, Notebook Labs, zkPass, PIP, The Harvest, Bracket Labs, dappOS, Hana, and Entropy

Binance announces support for Bitcoin NFTs (Read more)

• The crypto exchange has announced that it will support Bitcoin ordinals on its NFT marketplace in late May, expanding Binance’s multichain NFT ecosystem to include the Bitcoin network

🏢 Institutional Adoption / DAO / RWA

Goldman Sachs, Moody’s and more join Digital Asset’s blockchain network (Read more)

• Canton Network aims to be a privacy-enabled interoperable blockchain explicitly designed for institutional assets, providing seamless connectivity across various blockchain networks in the industry
• The other firms involved include BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Cboe Global Markets, Cumberland, Deloitte, Deutsche Börse Group, DRW, Liberty City Ventures, Paxos, and more

Deloitte integrates KILT to create new markets with reusable digital credentials (Read more)

• The integration will issue reusable digital credentials to support KYC and KYB processes, for regulatory compliance for banking and DeFi, age verification for e-commerce, and more
• Credentials are stored in the customer’s wallet on their own device, remaining under their control at all times, and allowing them to choose with whom they share their credential and which data points of the credential they make available

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The Artisan Narrative is an educational resource intended for informational purposes only. It covers all things Web3 and may discuss assets that the Artisan Collective, ArtisanDAO or writers have financial exposure to. Views are on ours own. None of Artisan Collective, ArtisanDAO, its registered entity or any of its affiliated personnel are licensed to provide any type of financial advice, and nothing on newsletter, website and social media should be construed as financial advice. Artisan Collective, ArtisanDAO, writers might also receives compensation from its sponsor; sponsorship messages do not constitute financial advice or endorsement.