Artisan – #23 Weekly: Mar 13 – 19 | Web3 Narratives

Abitrum ecosystem and airdrops, Ethereum Shanghai hard fork has official target date, Astroport launches on Injective, Synthetix announces v3, MakerDAO passes proposal for a $750M increase in US Treasury investments, Salesforce taps into NFTs through suite of new Web3 products, Starbucks Odyssey releases its first limited edition NFT collection……

🤔 Analysis & Thoughts

Top 5 tech trends to watch in 2023 (Read more)

• Ethereum’s major upgrades, like Shanghai upgrade and Cancun upgrade, which enable the opening-up of the ETH withdraw and Proto-Danksharding. Other key agendas include MEV, regulation and anti-censorship, etc.
• Staking-related techs, products and services like liquid staking, decentralized staking, restaking, DVT, and stabilizing staking yields.
• Modular blockchains’ improvements like data availability layer, more flexible and efficient execution layer, L2 optimization solutions, and App-specific Rollup developments like L3s.
• Other non-scaling applications of ZK like ZK Bridges through changing the verification of validators’ signature on the light client to ZK proof or implementing the PoS in ZK.

A bird’s eye view of the entire Arbitrum ecosystem (Read more)

• Both DEX and option volume have been up only on Arbitrum, especially in times of panic. Perp volume increases, which results in increased GMX activity. DEX volume is out due to arbitraging of USDC and USDT. The TVL of Arbitrum also flies to an ATH of $2B.
• Fee market share on arbitrum is overwhelmingly dominated by GMX at 70%, while Gains Network already owns 7% after launching in late December. Other players include Arbitrum 11.25%, Hegic 3.5%, and MUX 1.31%.
• Lyra, Zyberswap, and Arbitrum also stand out since their high monthly changes, 276%, 556%, and 114% respectively compared with the past month.

The introduction of Interchain Security v1 (Read more)

• Interchain Security is a form of shared security where Cosmos chains secure each other, v1 is replicated security, v2 is opt-in security, and v3 is Mesh security.
• Replicated security is the v1 version of security where the consumer chain will be secured by the full validator set of the Cosmos Hub and have the same security at the Cosmos Hub.
• 25% of the inflation and fees (can be changed) generated by the consumer chain will be sent to the provider chain (Cosmos Hub) over IBC and distributed to its validators & delegators. Current consumer chains include Stride, Neutron, etc.

One new risk factor from SVB collapse (Read more)

• After the 2008 financial crisis, regulators created a framework to ensure all banks were verifiably sound, which included capital and liquidity ratios and the concept of risk-weighted assets.
• New technology, particularly social media, has created a new risk factor called “social media risk” that was not considered in the previous framework.
• The speed and awareness of events like the recent situation with Silicon Valley Bank were made possible by social media, which led to a quick response and potential overreaction by investors.

“All for One and One for All” – An on-chain distribution model for the Arbitrum community (Read more)

• The Arbitrum Foundation, in partnership with Offchain Labs, has just announced the airdrop of the first governance token for Arbitrum, one of the leading layer 2 blockchains
• Offchain Labs, The Arbitrum Foundation, and Nansen have worked together on designing a token distribution model that bases eligibility for Arbitrum community members on their organic participation in the Arbitrum ecosystem
• This distribution model relies on Nansen on-chain data and labels, allocating eligibility points to wallets according to their past on-chain activity, with wallet addresses gathering at least three points to gain eligibility to the airdrop
• Protocols that have a community-governed treasury that have been pushing the Arbitrum ecosystem forward were also invited to participate in the distribution of a portion of the tokens for their own communities

🌍 Layer 1/2s

Arbitrum announces ARB (Readmore)

• ARB helps to enable Arbitrum’s shift towards DAO governance, becoming the governing body of the Arbitrum Security Council.
• The token will be airdropped to Arbitrum users that have met certain eligibility criteria for usage of both Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.

Ethereum Shanghai hard fork has official target date (Read more)

• Ethereum developers are targeting slot 6209536, which will occur on or around April 12, for the Shanghai upgrade.
• This date is to be voted on by developers and confirmed via GitHub in the coming future.

Soul Wallet raised $3 million in a seed funding round to offer an online, self-custodial Ethereum wallet built on top of ERC-4337 (Read more)

• Investors that participated in its latest “party” round include Struck Crypto, Game7DAO, NGC Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Alchemy, Ankr and Signum Capital.
• Soul Wallet is currently undergoing internal testing and is scheduled to launch in Q3 or Q4 after a series of stringent audits.

Why Optimism Bedrock upgrade will come to fruition in the near future (Read more)

• The introduction of the OP stack untethers users from the bootstrapping and technical requirements typically necessary to stand up a chain and allows for experimentation via its highly modular design, resulting in the proliferation of novel L2 deployments.
• As more developers introduce modified deployments of the OP stack via their own chains, further cohorts of developers will be incentivized to use the OP stack. This cyclical feedback will feed a flywheel effect.
• The Bedrock upgrade also lays the groundwork for the Superchain vision. OP chains with shared infrastructure will inherit stronger security assumptions, better tooling, and new sequencing models that open up a massive design space for innovation.

💰 DeFi / CeFi / NFTFi

Astroport launches on Injective (Read more)

• Astroport is an AMM that enables users to swap or LP their assets with multiple pool types, including Curve-style stableswap pools and Uniswap v2 constant product pools.
• This marks Astroport’s first interchain deployment since its initial launch on Terra.

Synthetix announces v3 (Read more)

• Synthetix v3 is designed to be a generalised and modular foundation for onchain financial products, creating a permissionless derivatives liquidity platform.
• The revamp provides an increased range of pools and vaults, allowing stakers to allocate their capital based on their preferred market exposure and rewards, and protocols to collateralise new derivative markets.

MakerDAO passes proposal for a $750M increase in US Treasury investments (Read more)

• The bonds will be purchased with equal maturities, biweekly and over a six-month period, totaling 12 slots of $62.5 million each.
• The strategy is expected to deliver a net annualized yield of 4.6% to 4.5% after custody, with Maker’s revenue stream potentially being boosted by trading costs.

Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC (Read more)

• Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors.
• Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.

🖼 NFT / 🎮 Gaming / 🎭 Metaverse

NounsDAO approves proposal for NFT movie (Read more)

• The proposal links up with Atrium, a network of independent Web3 artists and creators, to continually produce a series of episodic content via consecutive proposals.
• The pilot will be revealed in 90 days, after which the DAO will decide whether to continue funding the project.

Salesforce taps into NFTs through suite of new Web3 products (Read more)

• The suite of new products will help companies build, manage, and integrate NFTs into their businesses.
• The platform will also include support for Web3 technologies through its customer service product Customer360.

NFT trading activity at the lowest since 2021 (Read more)

• According to data from DappRader, the industry clocked its slowest day in terms of active traders since Q4 2021 with only about 12,000 NFT traders on Ethereum on Saturday.
• Despite this, Polygon sales volumes have spiked more than 60%, on pace to equal last month’s trading volume of $30M.

🏢 Institutional Adoption / DAO / RWA

Saudi Arabia’s first NFT marketplace Nuqtah raises Seed funding (Read more)

• The funding will be used to scale up Nuqtah’s business over the coming year in the areas of product development, marketing, talent acquisitions, and other operations.
• The round was led by Animoca Brands, and featured participation from Polygon and other regional investors.

Starbucks Odyssey releases its first limited edition NFT collection (Read more)

• The 2,000 item collection sold out in 18 minutes at a mint price of $100, reaching a $520 floor price on the secondary market.
• The Web3 loyalty program is, however, still in invitation-only beta and not open to public.

Animoca Brands and Planet Hollywood launch Club3 (Read more)

• Club3 is a private physical club for the global Web3, NFT, and open metaverse communities, set to open in its first location in H2 2023.
• Membership will be gated by mintable NFTs, which users can currently reserve their place on the waitlist for.

Santander, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, others still willing to serve crypto clients after banking failures, DCG says (Read more)

• Santander (SAN), HSBC (HSBA), Deutsche Bank (DB), BankProv, Bridge Bank, Mercury, Multis and Series Financial are still willing to connect with crypto .firms, according to the memo.
• DCG’s efforts come after recent bank failures in the U.S., which left a lot of crypto firms and tech startups stranded and hunting for new banking partner.

🧑🏻‍⚖️ Regulations

Gensler suggests proof-of-stake tokens are securities (Read more)

• Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler suggested Wednesday that tokens using staking protocols could be considered securities under U.S. law.
• Gensler suggested that the returns token holders see from staking indicate that those tokens are securities and would need to be registered as such under U.S. law.

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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.