Bitcoin Price: US$ 42,535.94 (+1.15%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 2,929.75 (+2.04%)
DAO Insights – The Blood of Moloch and Ve-Everything
- APWine, due to a lack of quorum in the first vote, is voting again to add a treasury-fee to their AMM. The entirety of the .05% swap fee would go to the APWine treasury, which is governed by APW holders.
- Balancer is currently voting on modifying their protocol fees. With the transition to veBAL now occurring, the DAO is considering increasing their protocol fees from 10% to 50%. According to the proposal, this will increase earnings for those for veBAL holders, which should encourage more locking. Detailed projections can be found here.
- Fei Protocol is edging closer to releasing their new product Turbo. This proposal ear marks funds for the Codearena security audit of the new product and is required for release. The review will start in a month.
- Frax Finance, continuing its frenetic governance pace, is voting to add a new veFXS gauge for a VST <> FRAX pool on Arbitrum Curve. Vesta Finance uses a Liquity-like model to mint and issue an algo-stablecoin VST. Vesta has also announced doing their own token incentives for this gauge, so liquidity providers can expect FXS, VSTA, and swap fees for providing liquidity in these pools.
- GnosisDAO is voting on a proposal to partner with Tornado Cash. Gnosis DAO is strategically partnering with protocols that it feels would be good additions to their new chain. As such, this proposal begins the groundwork for launching Tornado on Gnosis chain. Additionally, as part of the partnership, GNO will add 13k GNO and Tornado Cash will add 165k TORN to a Uni v3 pool.
- Nexus Mutual is currently voting on two proposals.
- wNXM Allocation: Due to Bancor increasing space in the BNT <> wNXM pool from 2m to 10m BNT, Nexus Mutual is deciding on whether or not to allocate 70k wNXM to it. The wNXM for this proposal would come from the community fund and any yield would go back to said fund. Yields on this pool have varied between 2%-15% according to the proposal.
- MEV Protection: Nexus is voting on granting funds to BootNode to build MEV protection for the mutual. If the mutual needs to pay an insurance claim, they may need to sell assets to do so. This creates an opportunity for the mutual to become the victim of MEV. BootNode would leverage Gnosis’s CowSwap to enable the mutual to sell assets without losing value to MEV.
- Paraswap is voting on the launch of their new Gas Refund Program. This program allows PSP stakers to receive a gas refund for their trades. Additionally, the roadmap also contains plans for a staked-PSP renting market where traders can rent staked-PSP tokens for a gas refund, and then pay a fee to PSP stakers.
- Continue on Delphi
Celebrating Valentine’s Day With The Revamped Delphi Daily
- The year started with a booming NFT market as high-profile projects like BAYC generated headlines from rapid celebrity adoption. However, the party seems to have slowed down somewhat, with volume and unique buyers trending lower over the past week.
- Other major chains have also seen total NFT sales slide over the same period, including Solana, Avalanche, and Flow. However, Ethereum is still the dominant chain for most NFT activity by a long shot.
- The following are key levels on both the upside (if BTC keeps grinding higher) and the downside (in the case of a pullback).
- Resistance at $46-$48K: This is the daily, weekly and monthly supply zones that will likely be a heavy level of resistance. Above this level and we likely see a squeeze towards $50K+
- Support at $40-41K: If the structure is indeed shifting from a downtrend into a more bullish market structure, we would like the first level of support to hold and for buyers to front run our lower levels. This means we want to see $40K hold. We also have confluence with the white VWAP line, which is anchored to the 2022 Yearly Open.
- Support at $38.5K: Should we lose $40K, the next level of market structure is at the $38.5K area, as it previously acted as resistance, and has since become support. Should we lose this level, we’d expect prior lows to be revisited once again.
- Land prices in both Sandbox and Decentraland have risen considerably since the Meta (Facebook) announcement on Oct 28, which sparked a buying frenzy into metaverse-related assets including $SAND and $MANA.
- Sandbox land prices increased ~445% between October 2021 and January 2022. A significant part of this is related to $SAND token price appreciation ($SAND +320% over the same period) since new public land sales are denominated in a fixed amount of $SAND (1,011 $SAND for a regular 1×1 land plot).
- Decentraland land prices increased ~36% during the same period. Interestingly, land price is lagging behind token price appreciation ($MANA +175% over the same period). All land has been minted and can only be purchased via secondary sales.
- Sandbox land has consistently higher trading volumes than Decentraland (more than 3X in the last 3 months), which is an indicator of relative interest between the 2 projects; Sandbox is the most popular virtual land metaverse currently.
- According to a new report published by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis on Monday, approximately 74%, or over $400 million USD, of ransomware revenue last year were funneled into high-risk wallet addresses that are likely to have been based in Russia. The report analyzed ransomware hacks throughout 2021 and determined their affiliation to Russia through three key characteristics:
- Traces of Russia-based cybercriminal organization Evil Corp being behind a given breach; the group has alleged ties to the Russian government.
- Ransomeware programmed only against victims of non-former-Soviet countries.
- Ransomware strains that share documents and announcements in the Russian language.
- In addition to the selection criteria, it appears that web traffic data confirms the vast majority of extorted funds are laundered through Russia. Another 13% of funds sent from ransomware addresses to services went to users who were likely in Russia — more than any other region. Such ransomware strains typically infect a user’s computer via a program exploit, or when downloading unknown files, etc. They then encrypt the victim’s files and demand payment through, most often, Bitcoin (BTC) or Monero (XMR) to a wallet address to make the files accessible.
Ether investment products register first weekly inflows in 10 weeks
- Inflows into cryptocurrency investment funds rose sharply last week, with Ether (ETH) products breaking a nine-week spell of outflows in the latest sign that institutional managers were re-accumulating assets.
- Digital asset investment products registered $75.3 million worth of cumulative inflows last week, data from CoinShares revealed Monday. Bitcoin (BTC) investment products saw $25.1 million worth of inflows, while Ether products attracted $20.9 million worth of capital.
- Positive inflows were also reported for multi-asset funds with exposure to several cryptocurrencies. Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT) and Ripple (XRP) products were also net positive for the week.
- Crypto asset flows have now risen for four consecutive weeks, offering signs that the massive drawdowns of late 2021 were beginning to reverse course. Over the four-week stretch, crypto funds collected $209 million.
SEC hits BlockFi with a $100 million penalty, gives 60 days to comply with a 1940 law
- On Feb. 14, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, announced actions against crypto lending company BlockFi over its failure to register high-yield interest accounts that the agency deems to be securities.
- New Jersey-based BlockFi will pay $50 million in settlement to the SEC and another $50 million to 32 U.S. states that brought similar charges. These are some of the heaviest penalties ever imposed by a U.S. federal regulator on a cryptocurrency service provider. The firm also agreed to stop onboarding new customers to the unregistered service, BlockFi Interest Accounts, and attempt to bring it into compliance with the Investment Company Act of 1940 within the next 60 days.
Polygon and Cere network to launch Web3 media platform, DaVinci
- The layer 2 scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) and Cere Network, a decentralized data cloud platform, or DDC, announced the launch of their joint venture Web3 media platform, named DaVinci. Their stated mission is to store nonfungible token (NFT)-backed assets more securely, and ensure verifiable and truly decentralized data.
- DaVinci is a direct content monetization platform for NFT-backed experiences that aims to facilitate both decentralized data transfers and nonfungible token, or NFT, value transfers. Powered by Cere’s DDC, the platform enables personalized content streaming to NFT holders via smart contracts. And it leverages Cere Freeport, the NFT mining platform deployed on Polygon, to mint and sell functional NFTs that provide access to exclusive content.
