Season of Project Updates and Announcements
Sushi DEX aggregator, Polygon zkEVM, Aave V3, Yuga Labs Sewer Pass, Fundraise Flurry
Daily Bullets - Tuesday, January 17th
Today we see an uptick in the amount of fundraising announcements and teases for upcoming events such as Sushi’s 2023 roadmap, Yuga Labs BAYC Sewer Pass mint and teases for Polygon’s zkEVM Mainnet and Aave V3. It’s natural for projects to want to wait for more favorable market conditions to capture as much market mindshare as possible versus launching during bearish conditions. Get ready for the wave if the market can hold.
Daily Bullet Highlights
Sushi's protocol's 2023 roadmap will focus on user experience, release its DEX aggregator in the first quarter, optimized tokenomics, launch decentralized incubator: Sushi Studios
BNB Chain completed the 22nd Quarterly BNB Burn via BNB Auto-Burn of over $500M worth of its native tokens
Polygon successfully completed a hard fork designed to reduce instances of spiking gas fees and disruptive chain reorganizations known as reorgs
Yuga Labs BAYC Sewer Pass mint
Polygon zkEVM Mainnet launch soon teased by co-founder
Aave team member teases Aave V3 could launch this week
The European Parliament’s final vote on the comprehensive Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has been postponed to April, stalling the implementation process
Filecoin Foundation will deploy IPFS aboard a Lockheed Martin spacecraft this year to test use cases for decentralized storage in space
Digital currencies, such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins, are the natural evolution of money and payments, Bank of America said in a research report
Binance Custody will allow institutional investors to keep their collateralized crypto used for leveraged positions, off the platform in cold storage
Analysis
Crypto Narrative: DeFi Prediction Markets:
This is an interesting narrative to keep an eye on. Crypto is inherently speculative and these types of speculative marketplaces that allow users to make and trade predictions on real-world future events have potential. Similar to sports betting and gambling which are massive industries. It taps right into human psychology and could be another hot sector during the next cycle. Think how fan tokens did well going into the World Cup.
Crypto News
Data provider CryptoSlam and crypto news site Forkast.News have combined to become Forkast Labs, a web3-focused media company
Crypto-focussed bank Silvergate reports Q4 loss of $1B
Ethereum validators numbers 500,000 ahead of March’s scheduled Shanghai upgrade
TaxBit, a crypto tax and accounting software provider, acquired rival Tactic to expand its offerings and boost its expansion plans
The Ethereum Foundation grants to support Ethereum-related academic work. Up to $1M in total available funds. Proposals due February 27th
Crypto Exchanges
Binance Futures will launch BUSD-margined AGIX perpetual contracts with up to 15x leverage
Fidelity-backed crypto exchange OSL is cutting staff and reducing overall costs by about a third
DeFi
Option Liquidity Pools live on Dopex
Solflare, a wallet on the Solana network, brings 'priority' gas fees to Solana
NFTs/Gaming/Metaverse
Yuga Labs BAYC Sewer Pass mint
Nat Geo Genesis NFT Collection - GM: Daybreak Around the World - Primary Sale begins January 17th on Matic Network
Uniswap airdropped .01E to everyone that purchased an NFT on Uniswap from Nov 30-Dec 14
Synergy Land, a web3 action role-playing game currently in development, will move from the Solana blockchain to Polygon
South Korea is bringing Seoul to the metaverse, launching a virtual replica of the city with a goal of improving its public services
Fashion brand YVES SAINT LAURENT has filed trademark applications for NFTs and virtual goods
Early Stage Projects
Masa Finance launched the first soulbound identity protocol for the Ethereum mainnet
Premia’s upcoming V3 launch
Introducing Hyperlane V2 - The permissionless and modular future of interoperability
Flux Protocol rebrands to Seda Protocol, a new standard for data transmission across web3
Timeless Finance - $LIT LBP concluded - Over $2.47M committed by 600 community members
Economic/Government/Regulatory
The digital yuan (e-CNY), a digital token issued by the Bank of China, has been used to buy securities for the first time
Crypto lender Nexo sued the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority to reverse its rejection of Nexo's application to register as a virtual asset services provider (VASP)
Four U.K men sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraudulently obtaining and laundering bitcoin and other crypto worth ~ $26M from an Australian crypto exchange
Bradesco, Brazil's second-largest private bank, launched its first tokenized bank credit note
Fundraises
Crypto investment firm HashKey Capital closed its third fund, HashKey Fintech Investment III by raising $500M - @HashKey_Capital
Mobile games publisher Carry1st raised $27M to advance its publishing and digital content creation platform in Africa. Type: Strategic. Sector: Web3 games. Investors: Bitkraft Ventures, a16z. TTV Capital, Konvoy, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, Kepple Ventures - @carry1st
Web3 infrastructure provider Parfin raised $15M in a bid to dominate the Latin America region. Type: Undisclosed. Sector: Web3 infrastructure. Investors: Framework Ventures, Alexia Ventures, Valor Capital Group, L4 Venture Builder - @parfin_io
Ethereum startup Obol Labs raised $12.5M to decentralize validators. Type: Series A. Sector: Infrastructure. Investors: Pantera, Archetype - @ObolNetwork
SYKY, a next generation luxury fashion platform, raised $9.5M. Type: Series A Sector: Digital Fashion. Investors: Seven Seven Six, Brevan Howard Digital, Leadout Capital, First Light Capital Group, and Polygon Ventures - @the_SYKY
Crurated, a membership-based wine community, raised $7.2M. Type: Strategic. Sector: Real World Assets. Investors: Private - @Decanter
House of Blueberry raised $6M in seed funding for its digital fashion business in the metaverse and interactive entertainment. Type: Seed. Sector: Digital Fashion. Investors: Makers Fund, Everblue Management - @WearBlueberry
Diva raised a $3.5M seed round to build a decentralized liquid staking protocol and compete with Lido and centralized exchanges. Type: Seed Sector: DeFi Liquid Staking Investors: A&T Capital, Gnosis, Bankless, OKX Ventures, Metaweb, DCV Capital, Alphemy Capital, Very Early Ventures and Stake.vc - @divalabs
Trusta Labs raised $3+M. Type: Seed. Sector: Web3 security infrastructure. Investors: SevenX Ventures and Vision Plus Capital. HashKey Capital, Redpoint China Ventures, GGV Capital and SNZ Holding - @TrustaLabs
DeFi protocol Elixir raised $2.1M to allow anyone to participate in crypto market making. Type: Seed. Sector: DeFi Investors: FalconX, Commonwealth, OP Crypto, ChapterOne and Bitmex founder Arthur Hayes - @ElixirProtocol
Research/Reads
Circle - State of the USDC Economy - source
CoinGecko - 2022 Annual Crypto Industry Report - source
Alchemy Q4 2022 report - source
Modular Design and the Two Blockchains - Replacing a monolithic codebase - source
How to resurrect the ‘Metaverse dream’ in 2023 - source
Complete Knowledge - source
WuBlockchain on TON ecosystem - source
Immutable’s outlook for blockchain games in 2023 - source
Twitter
2022 Echo Bubble - Full thesis:
Wassie Lawyer analysis on new GTX/3AC exchange:
