Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$ 44,421.20 (+2.92%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 2,976.33 (+1.90%)

L1s Underperform, DebtDAO, & Web3 Goes to Washington

• Since the BTC bottom around Jan. 24th, most L1s have been underperforming BTC. With BTC recovering recently, most L1 tokens are still underwater even as BTC approaches +20% from its lows.
• LUNA, AVAX, and ETH were the only exceptional ones, with LUNA soaring high over the past two weeks. LUNA’s price action was likely due to key announcements like Luna Foundation Guard raising $1B to form a BTC reserve for UST in addition to Mars Protocol’s Lockdrop event.
• Surprisingly enough, AVAX seems to move with a higher correlation to BTC relative to other L1s.
• FTM has been a surprise underperformer, especially considering the recent TVL spike following the launch of Solidly and Solidex. Solidly is an AMM that was created by Andre Conje, which allows for swaps at 0.001% Fee. Solidex was built on top of Solidly to acquire $SOLID, similar to what Convex is to Curve.
• Debt DAO, a new DAO currently focusing on providing uncollateralized loans to DAOs based on cashflows, has offered a $5m credit line.Debt DAO’s current non-governance token treasury mostly consists of ETH tied up in the ETH<>BTRFLY pool. Terms on the loan are as follows:
  • 6-month loan for up to $5M in FRAX.
  • 9% APR on drawn balance; 2% on committed but undrawn balance.
  • No upfront collateral.
  • Repayment of loan paid by farming fees from cvxCRV, cvxCRV/CRV LP, and vlCVX, paid in farmed tokens to Debt DAO directly.

zkSync 2.0: Public Testnet is Live!

• zkEVM has arrived, the first EVM-compatible ZK Rollup on Ethereum’s testnet.
• Last May, we laid out our vision for zkSync’s zkEVM, a permissionless, Turing-complete ZK Rollup that would allow developers to build and deploy decentralized applications in a low-fee, highly scalable layer-2 environment using Ethereum’s native programming language, Solidity. 
• This system would avoid reliance on human operators to validate and finalize the legitimacy of transactions but instead rely on cryptography. 
• It would be able to directly inherit from Ethereum’s best-in-class security, decentralization, and network effects while providing new functionality that expands the design space for application developers. 
• We preordained for this system to be community-run through a path of progressive decentralization, modeled by the values and ethos of Ethereum.

Rune’s upcoming mainnet launch and Terra (LUNA) integration set off a 74% rally

• 2021 was a roller coaster of a year for THORChain (RUNE), which saw its price top out at $20.31 only to come crashing down below $4 as a series of hacks and declining interest in decentralized finance had the token limping into 2022.
• Data suggests that investors could be taking a closer look at Rune and a few potentially bullish factors could include the protocol’s recent integration with the Terra and Cosmos ecosystem, an upcoming mainnet launch and the attractive yields offered to liquidity providers.
• One development that has excited the RUNE community is the integration of Terra (LUNA) into the THORChain protocol. This integration also enables the platform to support all Cosmos-based projects.
• A second reason for the increased attention to RUNE could be the upcoming mainnet launch on THORChain. This event has been highly anticipated since late 2021 when the launch was originally planned but delayed due to a variety of factors.
• A third factor helping to attract users and liquidity to THORChain is the high yields offered to liquidity providers on the protocol.

Ukraine accepts DOT, founder Gavin Wood donates $5.8 million

• Calls from the crypto community for Ukraine to accept other cryptocurrencies have been answered. The official Ukraine Twitter account shared that it will now accept donations from Polkadot (DOT), while other cryptocurrencies will soon be added. 
• Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Polkadot had previously shared that if the Ukraine wallets were to add DOT, he would personally contribute $5 million. He made true on his promise, donating 298,367.2269896686 DOT, which is roughly $5.7 million, to Ukrainian wallets.
• Total crypto donations for Ukrainian charities, the military and the government have been over $37 million, by Cointelegraph estimates. Wood’s single donation comprises over 10% of the total crypto donations.

FTX to deploy $1B through Future Fund for safer AI, reduced biorisk

• Global crypto exchange platform FTX launched a fund called the FTX Future Fund with an aim to support long-term improvements for humankind. The project will deploy up to a billion dollars to support projects focusing on safe artificial intelligence development, reducing biorisk dangers, effective altruism and more.
• According to the announcement, the team will support both non-profit and for-profit ventures as long as it aligns with the fund’s mission such as protecting future generations by addressing issues such as poverty and environmental problems. The fund also aims to look for projects pushing technological progress forward.
• The firm also underscores that it’s looking to fund projects that are “massively scalable.” It defined this as “projects that could grow to productively spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year.”

Cambridge University launches crypto research project with IMF and BIS

• The University of Cambridge is collaborating with some of the world’s top banking institutions and private companies to introduce a new project targeting cryptocurrency research.
• The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, or CCAF, has launched a research initiative aiming to bring more insights on the rapidly growing digital asset industry, the CCAF announced to Cointelegraph on Monday.
• Dubbed the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme, or CDAP, the project is a public-private collaboration with 16 companies including public institutions like the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub and the International Monetary Fund. The initiative also includes banks like Goldman Sachs, financial giants like Mastercard and Visa, and major exchange-traded fund providers like Invesco.
• Other participants include British International Investment, Dubai International Financial Center, Ernst & Young, Fidelity, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Inter-American Development Bank, London Stock Exchange Group, MSCI and the World Bank.

Layer 2 address activity slows, but Arbitrum bucks the trend

• On-chain activity for the leading layer-2 (L2) networks has been declining recently, however, the Arbitrum platform is bucking the trend, according to recent findings.
• Blockchain analytics firm Nansen has reported that seven-day activity in terms of addresses for many of the leading networks has been in decline. Only the Ethereum L2 scaling network Arbitrum has shown gains for this metric.
• According to its Monday tweet, Arbitrum activity has increased by 12.7% over the past week. It reported that the network has had 46,200 unique active addresses over the past seven days.