Artisan – #25 Weekly: Mar 27 – Apr 2 | Web3 Narratives

Wen NFT mass adoption? 6 catalysts for Ethereum’s mass adoption in 2023, Polygon bullrun? LSDs to see continued growth and stability throughout the year, ssv.network’s last step before mainnet, Tron v2, AI-focused crypto protocol Fetch.ai, Uniswap v4, Ledger raised $109M…

🤔 Analysis & Thoughts

What NFTs need to unlock true mass adoption (Read more)

• Brands entering the space doesn’t mean mass adoption. Brands are really trying to generate revenue, build a community (especially a younger one), and incentivize customer loyalty
• NFTs can unlock this but they need to create better engagement experiences first by building games, social hubs, immersive universes that people want to spend lots of hours on, like Roblox and Fortnite
• Until NFTs can compete with the web2 giants and deliver with the same speed, quality, easy to use, the real mass adoption will come

Six major catalysts in 2023 that will bring Ethereum and its L2s closer to mass adoption (Read more)

• EigenLayer: any project from L1s and L2s to even oracles and bridges could leverage Eigenlayer’s technology to boost their economic security
• Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade: the upcoming Ethereum upgrade will enable ETH staking withdrawals and spark a huge interest in liquid staking derivatives
• Optimism Bedrock Upgrade: users should expect average transaction fees on Optimism to be reduced and faster deposits and enable Optimism to incorporate ZK proofs, which are considered more secure
• Arbitrum Stylus Upgrade: Stylus will allow the deployment of programs written in the most popular programming languages
• zkEVMs: developers can directly deploy Ethereum smart contracts on these scaling solutions
• Proto-danksharding: it will introduce a new kind of transaction type to Ethereum, which will drastically lower transaction fees on L2s

Will Polygon be the next bull run’s biggest narrative (Read more)

• Polygon zkEVM is a new Layer 2 solution that aims to solve Ethereum’s scalability issues while maintaining EVM equivalence. The mainnet is set to launch on March 27th
• Aside the ambitious bytecode-level approach to EVM compatibility, Polygon zkEVM stands out from its competitors as it implements a new type of consensus mechanism called Proof Of Efficiency (POE) that enables improved decentralization & increases network security
• Polygon has one of the largest ecosystems with more than 7000 active dApps. And Polygon is the chain that onboarded the most web2 companies to its ecosystem over the past years

Bitcoin: this is the moment you’ve been waiting for (Read more)

• We now have greater clarity about where the price is relative to the bottom, and more importantly, that the trend for the next ~2 years will (almost certainly) be positive
• Bitcoin has had three halvings in its 14-year lifetime – in 2012, 2016, and 2020. And, in the 12-18 months that followed each of those events, Bitcoin has seen its major bull markets
• The next Bitcoin halving will absolutely happen in Spring 2024, when the 840,000(th) block in Bitcoin’s blockchain is added, currently projected to happen on April 27, 2024

Most important takeaways from co-founder of Tangent Ventures (Read more)

• ETH bottomed last year and it will flip BTC if crypto continues to take hold of the younger population
• The US had made its stance on crypto very clear. The East is going to have its time of day, capital and adoption coming out of Asia is going to increase. Although regulation is a headwind, technology will always triumph regulation
• Crypto is almost entirely narrative driven. Narrative investing is most powerful when you match a particular narrative with adoption acceleration
• The L2/ZK space is fiercely competitive and eventually, the ZK powerhouses will take over. Stablecoin is still the biggest pie that hasn’t been eaten yet and self custody is the biggest pain point

Decentralizing machine learning (Read more)

• Computing power is becoming a bottleneck in the AI industry as the computations required for large-scale AI systems continue to double every few months. Additionally, the cost of training AI models has been increasing at a rate of around 3100% per year over the past decade, emphasizing the pressing need for more efficient and cost-effective training solutions
• Numerous crypto-based projects have emerged to address the inefficiencies and bottlenecks that exist in AI
• Gensyn is a decentralized compute network designed specifically for machine learning, which aggregates distributed idle GPU resources to facilitate decentralized and verifiable model training
• Bittensor is a machine learning protocol and marketplace that incentivizes knowledge production and addresses inefficiencies in machine learning. The protocol allows researchers to train AI models while exchanging information with other models, accelerating learning and transforming collaboration

IBC outside of Cosmos: the transport layer (Read more)

• Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) is a battle-tested messaging protocol that has been successful in the Cosmos ecosystem, but its adoption outside of Cosmos has been limited
• Building a bridge involves tradeoffs between trustlessness, general message passing, and compatibility. A modular approach allows bridge developers to focus on a few components and effectively let apps customize their end bridge stack
• Polymer aims to standardize IBC as the transport layer for the multichain world, where apps can achieve true composability and optimized user experiences across chains

LSDs to see continued growth and stability throughout the year (Read more)

• The increase in the staking rate of Ethereum will lead to an increase in the overall fees of LSD protocols. As the staking rate of Ethereum rises to 29%, 44%, and 58%, the corresponding LSD protocol fees increase by 1.31 times, 1.55 times, and 1.76 times respectively
• After the Shanghai upgrade, the relative market share of LSD protocols may change. In the medium term, there should be focus on the current leader Lido and the Frax as high-yield LSD protocols, and on the Atlas upgrade of Rocket Pool in the short term. Currently, SSV, Obol, and Diva are DVT products that are positioned as important infrastructure for Ethereum staking going forward
• Ethereum staking may give rise to lsdETH with a market of 100 billion

🌍 Layer 1/2s

ssv.network introduced Jato, the last step before mainnet (Read more)

• Ssv.network has introduced Jato, the latest iteration of the public testnet, bringing an end to 2+ years of public testnets
• Jato represents the culmination of countless hours, lines of code, and contributions to make the final updates before mainnet

TRON releases TRON stake 2.0 (Read more)

• Stake 2.0 is now available on the Nile test net, everyone is welcome to try out and test related features of Stake 2.0
• It will significantly improve the flexibility of resources and vote management on the Tron Network

AI-focused crypto protocol Fetch.ai raises $40M in funding (Read more)

• The funding came purely from DWF Labs at a $250M valuation, and will be used to deploy decentralized machine learning, autonomous agents and network infrastructure on Fetch.ai’s platform
• Fetch.ai deploys bits of code it refers to as “autonomous economic agents”, which create connections between a network of independent parties and with real-world systems and devices with the purpose of generating economic value for its owner, be it through acquiring knowledge, sharing predictions or conducting trades

💰 DeFi / CeFi / NFTFi

Developers will be free to fork Uniswap v3 after April 1 (Read more)

• The DEX’s Business Source License (BSL) will expire two years after its launch, making Uniswap v3’s code fully open source and available for anyone to use without restrictions
• PancakeSwap, the biggest exchange on the BNB Chain, has already announced that it will release v3 in the first week of April, which is speculated to have been developed using Uniswap’s v3 protocol

Crypto exchange Gemini is looking to launch an international cryptocurrency derivatives exchange (Read more)

• The platform would specifically offer perpetual futures, a type of derivative that is banned in the U.S. for retail traders as it doesn’t have an expiration date and can be traded with sizable leverage, and is therefore considered a highly risky product

Injective launches Cascade, the first ever interchain Solana SVM Rollup for the IBC ecosystem (Read more)

• The integration will bring the Solana Sealevel Virtual Machine (SVM) into the broader Cosmos world, enabling Solana developers to rapidly deploy their Solana contracts and dApps onto Injective
• Cascade is now live on the Injective testnet with a migration to mainnet planned in the near future

Orderbook protocol Econia Labs raises $6.5M in Seed funding (Read more)

• The round was led by Dragonfly, and featured participation from Lightspeed Faction, Wintermute Ventures, Aptos Labs, Hudson River Trading, and Flow Traders
• Econia provides a settlement engine at the base layer of Aptos DeFi, which enables other dapps to tap into their orderbook infrastructure and a common trading venue

Sentiment launches Makima (Read more)

• Sentiment is a lending protocol that aims to solve capital inefficiencies by providing a primitive-based solution to enable permissionless undercollateralised onchain credit
• Makima boasts an upgraded platform with a cleaner interface, mobile support, dashboards and tracking tools to improve user experience

Numoen announces Liquid Staking Boost (Read more)

• Numoen is a custom AMM and money market that expands upon power perpetuals, allowing users to gain asymmetric upside with a capped downside with no liquidation risk
• The protocol’s newest product Liquid Staking Boost allows traders to boost their yield by speculating on staking rewards

Notional Finance announces v3 (Read more)

• Notional’s v3 introduces a new variable rate lending market, improving yields for variable-rate lenders and LPs, better UX for fixed rate borrowers, leveraged interest rate trading, and open term leverage vaults
• The v3 upgrade has just entered into a 7-week audit with Sherlock and will undergo testing before mainnet launch in June pending a successful security review

Hardware wallet provider Ledger raises $109M in Series C funding (Read more)

• The extension round placed Ledger’s valuation at $1.4B, and featured participation from VaynerFund, Cité Gestion SPV, True Global Ventures and Digital Finance Group
• The funding will be used to expand the company’s distribution network, increase production, and develop new products

🖼 NFT / 🎮 Gaming / 🎭 Metaverse

Gucci and Yuga Labs partner to bring luxury digital fashion into the metaverse (Read more)

• The two companies have signed a multiyear partnership to collaborate within Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse and its 10KTF collection, with a goal of exploring joint opportunities between Web3 fashion and entertainment
• The two have previously teamed up to collaborate on the Gucci Grail collection, using 10KTF creator Wagmi-San’s designs for the collection

Web3 social platform So-col raises $4.5M in funding (Read more)

• The funding was spread across two rounds, a $1.5M round from DWF Labs and $3M round led by Blockchain Capital at a $100M valuation
• The Ethereum-based platform that lets creators and brands use NFTs as a basis for memberships and exclusive contentaims, will utilise the funding to multichain and expand their offerings to other L1s and L2s, including StarkWare

Unstoppable Domains offers AI-generated avatars that can turn into Polygon NFTs (Read more)

• The company unveiled a feature that allows people to not only create AI-generated avatars but also mint one of the photos as an NFT on the Polygon blockchain, and even sell them on the open market

Why Pirate Nation is leaving Polygon and setting sail towards Arbitrum Nova (Read more)

• Pirate Nation is a role-playing game (RPG) with a boxy voxel-art aesthetic and dynamic NFTs, and is almost entirely on-chain
• Proof of Play co-founder and CEO Amitt Mahajan said that they needed to move to a more affordable and scalable platform. Despite what some might think about scaling networks, he said, those Polygon transaction fees really do add up

Otherside introduces Legends of the Mara (Read more)

• Legends of the Mara is a collection-based 2D strategy game with its own companion collection
• Each Otherdeed holder will be able to claim one Vessel, which can grow into apprentices known as Mara, and under the right conditions with the right catalyst, can evolve into more skilled Kodamara

Andy Warhol artworks to be offered as tokenized investments (Read more)

• Freeport, a soon-to-be-launched platform that allows people to invest in fine art, is offering an exclusive four-piece collection of prints from pop artist Andy Warhol
• Freeport will utilise Vertalo to first tokenise the artworks so they can be bought and sold on DeFi platforms, and then fractionalize shares of fine artworks in the form of security tokens on Ethereum

🏢 Institutional Adoption / DAO / RWA

State of DAO funding (Read more)

• As DAOs have evolved, many have adopted the working group structure to distribute internal labor
• Amongst the 10 DAOs covered, over $100 million was allocated to internal DAO labor in 2022. Of this $100 million, 55% went to product and development initiatives
• To remain competitive with traditional organizations in attracting and retaining top talent, DAOs should explore innovative funding methods

🧑🏻‍⚖️ Regulations

U.S. and South Korea requests extradition of Terra co-founder Do Kwon (Read more)

• Authorities from both countries have made efforts to have Do Kwon extradited to their respective countries following his arrest in Montenegro
• According to the Montenegrin justice minister, Do Kwon used allegedly forged passports while in Montenegro and may serve time in the country related to those charges if convicted before any extradition is granted

Voyager Digital’s sale to Binance.US halted by District Court (Read more)

• A federal judge granted the U.S. government’s request to temporarily halt Voyager Digital’s bankruptcy plan, putting the crypto lender’s proposed sale to Binance.US on hold

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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.