Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$ 41,147.79 (+2.68 %)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,118.28 (+2.99%)

Aave Attracts stETH, The Celestia Vision, & Wallet-Enabled Gaming

• On February 28th, stETH was made available on Aave to be loaned and borrowed. This has attracted stETH holders to deposit and leverage using liquid staking ETH.
• In under two months since it went live, stETH deposits on Aave now hold 22% of all stETH. This makes it the second-largest stETH store held by a protocol, slightly behind Curve’s ETH/stETH LP pool. This could change very soon.
• Given the stability of the ETH/stETH pairing on Curve, stETH has proven that it can hold its peg against ETH. This allows for stETH to be safely collateralized at 70% LTV on Aave.
• The inclusion of stETH in a money market brings new potential to leveraged staking yields. Let’s see how this works:
  • Deposit stETH on Aave
  • Take an ETH loan
  • Use the loaned ETH to purchase stETH on Curve or convert it to stETH on Lido.
  • Re-deposit the stETH on Aave. (You can continue this cycle depending on your risk tolerance.)
• With ETH lending rates only at ~1% and stETH yielding ~4%, you’ll net a +3% yield on your leveraged staking position.
• Furthermore, DeFiSaver, a DeFi management platform, allows you to easily create a “recipe” to do it all in one transaction. One whale levered up a 4,190 ETH position into a 12,390 stETH position in a single transaction!
• This strategy will likely gather more attention post-merge, as yields are expected to increase around 2-3x. With the ability to lever such a position, it may end up being one of the most attractive yield strategies for ETH.
• In a nutshell, Ethereum envisions a Rollup-centric future. Rollups tend to be expensive and less flexible than L1s, but they can share security with each other. In contrast, Cosmos is an ecosystem of interoperable sovereign L1s known as Zones. While Zones can be cheaper and more flexible than Rollups, they can’t share full security with each other.
• Celestia combines the best of these two worlds. As a wise anon once said, “Celestia’s vision is a marriage of Cosmos’ sovereign interoperable zones and a rollup-centric Ethereum with shared security.” 
• Peter Kieltyka is the Co-Founder of Horizon Blockchain Games, a Web3 product and infrastructure company focused on making Web3 fun, simple, and accessible for everyone. We talk about the TCG Skyweaver, the wallet – Sequence – and its key differentiating features, as well as the importance of ERC-1155 tokens in games, and much more. Continue on Delphi..

Akutars, Moonbirds & Anata, Coinbase’s BAYC Casting Call

• Weekly sales volumes on OpenSea remain relatively flat week-on-week, hovering above the psychological $1B mark ($1.27B this week). It is good to see that NFT activity has not fallen off a cliff while the broader crypto markets have been undergoing uncertainty; BTC and ETH prices have fallen by 12% and 10% respectively over the past 7 days.
• Gem extends its lead over Genie through Mar and Apr, with close to 1,000 new addresses using its platform every day (Genie meanwhile is hovering at around 200/day). New features on Gem over the past month include listing analytics that allow you to visualize listings across marketplaces and filter by trait or price. They also added a Rarity Sniper integration. On the other hand, Genie has integrated LooksRare, added rarity filters, and launched its 2.0 platform which caused a spike in transaction volume toward the end of March.
• OpenSea finally launched its beta Solana marketplace on Apr 7 with an interface that is very familiar to most NFT traders. During the beta launch, OS stated that there will be limited collection coverage. The full launch will include a scalable way to expand coverage via the Metaplex collection standard. So far, Solana transaction volumes on OS have been relatively tiny with Magic Eden continuing to dominate on Solana. Will that change in the future once OS fully launches? We shall see.
• Akutars are an upcoming collection of 15,000 3D avatars that will be released on 22 Apr. Public minting will go live on 22 Apr via a Dutch Auction with unique mechanics (details to be released).
• If you are a long-term believer in the project, Aku Chapters will provide holders with future utility and benefits. The prices of several chapters have fallen since the airdrop.
• Anata is an interesting experiment in pseudonymous identity. Today PFPs are mostly static images used by individuals to represent their digital identities on social media and messaging apps like Twitter, Telegram, and Discord. Anata extends this beyond just images: your Anata PFPs are live and use your camera to mimic your movements.

Dozens of VIP backers invest $87M into crypto payment startup MoonPay

• In November 2021, MoonPay announced a $555 million Series A financing round that brought the crypto payment platform’s valuation to $3.4 billion. On Wednesday, the fintech company revealed that $87 million of the total $555 million came collectively from more than 60 public figures and celebrities in the music, sports, media and entertainment industries. 
• While the Series A round was led by firms like Tiger Global Management and Coatue with participation from Blossom Capital, Thrive Capital, Paradigm and NEA, the following household names are also considered strategic investors: Gwyneth Paltrow, Maria Sharapova, Eva Longoria, Gal Gadot, Matthew McConaughey and Bruce Willis. Other “industry VIPs” like Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and Steve Aoki are all already deeply involved within the crypto and nonfungible token (NFT) space. 
• The company shared that this funding and the continued support from investors will enable it to accelerate its international expansion, grow the team and bring in new partners. MoonPay’s longterm mission is to increase cryptocurrency access to the next 1 billion people by 2030.

Regulating crypto firms: ‘It’s important that policymakers are involved,’ says Web3 Foundation COO

• Bertrand Perez, chief operations officer of the Web3 Foundation, one of the firms behind the Polkadot blockchain, said a certain level of regulation was necessary in the crypto space as long as those responsible left room for innovation.
• Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Paris Blockchain Week on Wednesday, Perez said he saw a few areas of concern when it comes to regulating the space, including a recent draft bill from the European Parliament on non-custodial wallets but overall, those in the industry are trying to help policymakers to understand Web3. According to the Web3 Foundation chief operations officer, some lawmakers are still making decisions “too fast or without having education” on the space. However, the Facebook-backed Libra project in 2019 may have been the catalyst many in the EU needed to understand the urgency to move forward with a regulatory framework.
• “We need to be aware that we need to evolve in a world where regulation is not necessarily bad,” said Perez. “You need certain level of regulation for protection, right? The key point is where you draw the line and we try to help drawing the line in a place that makes sense for the regulators so there are enough frameworks and protections from their perspective while leaving innovation growth.”

Brazilian Senate announces incoming approval of the ‘Bitcoin law’

• The bill regulating the cryptocurrency market in Brazil is expected to be approved by the National Congress in the first half of this year, according to Cointelegraph Brazil.
• The approval of the law in plenary will not make Bitcoin legal tender in Brazil as it does in El Salvador.
• The proposed law would allow the Brazilian president to determine a federal entity responsible for establishing rules for cryptocurrencies. The president would either create a new regulator or delegate this function to the nation’s Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) or the Central Bank of Brazil (BC).
• The regulator will be responsible for defining market guidelines and establishing norms in line with international standards to prevent money laundering and the concealment of assets.
• The bill also proposes a penalty of four to eight years in prison, in addition to a fine for those who commit fraud in the provision of virtual asset services.
• Another point highlighted in the bill is a set of incentives for crypto miners to set up shop in Brazil. It proposes to exempt the import of ASICs to the country from taxes. However, this could not be enough to lure Bitcoin miners into the country, provided that energy rates in Brazil are among the highest in South America and about five times higher than in nations like Paraguay and Venezuela.

GuildFi Partners with Crypto Raiders, an NFT-based Dungeon Crawler

• GuildFi is delighted to announce our partnership with Crypto Raiders, an NFT-based Dungeon Crawler built on Polygon.
• GuildFi has invested in Crypto Raiders through purchasing their governance tokens, $RAIDER. In addition to this, GuildFi will purchase Crypto Raiders Character NFTs in order to ensure that our community can enjoy the well-thought out game, and build our Tammy army.

iTokens on Harmony

• iToken is a token standard defined in the Harmony blockchain. It is a read-only mapping of ERC721 tokens from Ethereum to the Harmony blockchain. Any NFT tokens launched on Ethereum can apply for the mapping iToken on the Harmony blockchain. The NFT token holders can use the same account and identity in Harmony to participate in the GameFi and metaverse projects once their iToken was approved/launched on Harmony. The first integration is BAYC with DefiKingdoms. There are 7 mapped iTokens living on Harmony already, including BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, Azuki, Doodles, Meebits, Clone-X.

Facebook whistleblower warns Metaverse will repeat ‘all the harms’

• Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has taken aim at Meta in a new interview, suggesting that its version of the Metaverse will simply repeat all of its past mistakes.
• In an interview with Politico, Haugen said:
• “They’ve made very grandiose promises about how there’s safety-by-design in the Metaverse. But if they don’t commit to transparency and access and other accountability measures, I can imagine just seeing a repeat of all the harms you currently see on Facebook.”
• Haugen isn’t the only one concerned. According to a recent survey, 70% of people don’t trust Meta to handle privacy properly.

The Merge – ETH

• Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation has stated on Twitter that The Merge “won’t be June, but likely in the few months after. No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum.”