Bitcoin Price: US$ 40,426.08 (+2.47%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,006.62 (+2.93%)
Frax Wants BTC, and Squads Hits a Milestone
- Aavegotchi is voting on two proposals.
- Lending Limit: This proposal would limit Gotchi lending to a single Gotchi. The proposer points to large accounts lending their numerous Gotchi’s and not using them to play as the motivation for this proposal.
- Land Sale: Aavegotchi has scheduled their third land auction and raffle for June. The auction will occur within the first two weeks of June. Aavegotchi will auction 5600 land parcels and raffle the remaining 2400.
- Gnosis is currently voting on a grant proposal for Erigon. If passed, this proposal will grant the Erigon team 2m DAI and 24k GNO vested over three years. Erigon, previously Turbo-Geth, is working to “re-architect” Ethereum to make it faster and more modular.
- Osmosis is running five votes to choose their canonical Eth bridge. OSMO holders are deciding between Axelar, Wormhole, Nomad, and Gravity bridges. Holders could also choose to adopt none of the proposed bridges. So far, Axelar is in the lead, with 69.73% voting to approve the protocol for the bridge.
- Secret is voting on two proposals at the moment.
- Foundation Tax: This proposal intends to reduce the Foundation Tax from 10% to 0%-4%.
- Community Proposal for Cover: Secret is also voting on a funding proposal from Cover. Cover is a P2P lending platform for Secret NFTs and other Secret network tokens. The proposal hints at a bond market and fractionalized bond markets for NFTs.
- Terra is voting on a proposal to refresh incentives across various L1 and L2 DApps. This proposal allocates $1.5m incentives for Orca ($432k), Solend ($550k), C98 ($30k), and FantonMaker ($500k).
- Uniswap is running an on-chain vote to deploy v3 on Celo. The proposal was submitted by Blockchain at Michigan, the Celo Foundation, and Celo Climate Collective. Celo will use Uniswap to create ‘green asset’ pools for tokenized carbon credits and ‘nature-backed assets’ like tokenized land and forests.
- Continue on Delphi…
LooksRare Volume Soars, Crypto vs IPOs, & Managing Merge Expectations
- LooksRare has gained significant organic volume recently, reaching a new high of $28M over the weekends. LooksRare’s daily volume now matches 14% of OpenSea’s daily volume encroaching on OpenSea’s market dominance.
- LooksRare received a lot of flack when it first launched as most of its volume was generated from wash-trading 0% royalty NFTs to farm $LOOKS rewards. At its peak, wash-trade volume accounted for 99.5% of all volume on LooksRare. However, ever since rewards were halved, the wash-trading volume has reduced significantly, as it has become less profitable to wash-trade.
- There are a few catalysts for this event:
- Gem.xyz, an NFT Marketplace Aggregator, has been gaining traction, and users of it are platform-agnostic. NFT buyers will always go for the cheapest available option, regardless of the platform. Update: OpenSea announced today that it acquired gem.xyz.
- As LooksRare gains reputation, sellers are incentivized to use LooksRare as its 2% fee is cheaper than OpenSea’s 2.5% fee. Furthermore, sellers also receive $LOOKS tokens for sales.
- LooksRare now allows you to earn $LOOKS by listing on their platform. Check out this thread on LooksRare’s NFT Listing Rewards.
- The Merge: PoW -> PoS
- While the nomenclature around the project has changed over the past few years, “The Merge” refers to the Ethereum mainnet transitioning from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system. This change will improve Ethereum’s energy efficiency, scalability, and decentralization. After The Merge, miners will no longer be needed to validate transactions, as that responsibility will shift to validators who have earned the right to participate by staking ETH.
- In order for The Merge to be completed, the current PoW mainnet (i.e. ETH 1.0) will be combined with the Beacon Chain, introduced earlier under ETH 2.0, to create a new chain that utilizes PoS moving forward while maintaining the prior history of the Ethereum network.
- The actual date of The Merge is still unknown, but based on the rate of progress and some expert opinions we expect to see The Merge occur around late Q3 or early Q4 of this year (2022). A go/no-go decision on performing The Merge or postponing it is set to take place on April 29th during the Ethereum All Core Developers call. If it is cleared to proceed, the real Merge would be planned for the aforementioned period.
- The change from PoW to PoS will drastically alter Ethereum’s economics. Miners will be completely cut out of revenue generated by the Ethereum network and that value will be returned primarily to ETH stakers/validators in a few different ways.
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B — crypto industry reacts
- In the hours and days before Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s purchase of social media giant Twitter, discussions on free speech were common among many online users both in and out of the crypto industry.
- Twitter announced on Monday that it will become a privately held company following its board of directors accepting a bid from Musk to purchase the firm’s stock for $54.20 per share in cash — roughly $44 billion. Though the transaction is expected to close in 2022, it is still subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders as well as certain regulators.
- Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of the meme-based token Dogecoin (DOGE), which Musk has often pushed on the social media platform, called the acquisition a “hostile takeover” antithetical to the idea of freedom. Bitcoin bull Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano congratulated the new Twitter owner, while crypto lending firm BlockFi seemed to take more of a comical stance, posting a mashup photo of the Dogecoin dog and Twitter’s logo.
- MicroStrategy founder and CEO Michael Saylor did not comment directly on the acquisition, instead replying to Musk with the text of the first amendment of the United States Constitution in a tweet, suggesting he supports the move. House of Representatives member Jody Hice, who has supported false claims of fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, lauded the transaction as a win for the first amendment as well.
Meta will open physical metaverse-themed store in San Francisco Bay Area
- Social media giant Facebook’s parent company, Meta, will be opening a retail store in the San Francisco Peninsula offering hardware for the virtual reality space.
- In a Monday announcement, Meta said it would be opening a retail store in Burlingame, California on May 9 aimed at providing interactive demos for the company’s hardware products, including virtual reality headsets, video communications displays and smart glasses. The store, which will be located on the Meta campus — its headquarters is in Menlo Park — will feature a wall-to-wall curved LED screen that displays what users see using Meta headsets.
- “The Meta Store is going to help people make that connection to how our products can be the gateway to the Metaverse in the future,” said Martin Gilliard, the store head. “We’re not selling the Metaverse in our store, but hopefully people will come in and walk out knowing a little bit more about how our products will help connect them to it.”
New York legislators to vote on PoW mining moratorium this week
- New York’s legislature might ban proof-of-work (PoW) crypto mining in the state for at least two years, citing environmental concerns.
- Over the past weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, several crypto advocacy groups — including the Blockchain Association and Crypto Council for Innovation — rang the alarm over the upcoming vote in the New York Assembly. The state Senate’s official webpage did not indicate a specific date for the vote.
- The bill, S6486D/A7389C, seeks to establish a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining that utilizes a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. It would amend the existing environmental conservation law to comply with the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which implies a 40% greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2030. As the co-sponsors of the bill believe, PoW mining stands in the way of reaching this goal. Hence, they propose a moratorium on mining permits issuance and renewal.
- The bill offers some important reservations, though. As one clause goes, “the department shall not approve an application to renew an existing permit […] if the renewal application seeks to increase or will allow or result in an increase in the amount of electric energy consumed or utilized by a cryptocurrency mining operation.” This could mean that mining businesses’ applications seeking to preserve the existing capacities already licensed by the state would not be subject to new restrictions.
- Another important caveat is that both moratorium paragraphs are aimed at the “electric generating facilities” that “utilize a carbon-based fuel,” meaning that the proposed legislation would not extend to the operations that use renewable energy in mining. It would, however, cover facilities like Greenidge Generation’s converted natural gas power plant near Seneca Lake, which has been at the center of court battles in recent years.
Decentral Bank Launches $USN: a NEAR-native Stablecoin
- Decentral Bank announces the launch of its first semi-algorithmic stablecoin, $USN. $USN is a NEAR-native stablecoin soft-pegged to the US Dollar, backed by a Reserve Fund that contains $NEAR, along with $USDT initially. $USN’s core stability mechanisms consist of on-chain arbitrage and a self-balancing Reserve Fund based on the Currency Board Principle. Combining the growth potential of $UST and the strong peg defense of $FRAX, $USN is positioned to be one of the most effective ways to bootstrap liquidity in the NEAR ecosystem; all while adding a new layer to $NEAR’s utility as a token.
- The Decentral Bank DAO manages all the aspects of the Reserve Fund and main smart contract operations. The DAO can also vote to stake the $NEAR part of the Reserve Fund and distribute the staking rewards to the users of the protocols that integrate $USN. At launch, Decentral Bank will receive a grant from Proximity Labs to bootstrap initial liquidity for $USN on CEXs and DEXs.
- $USN’s peg to the US Dollar is secured through on-chain arbitrage and a self-balancing Reserve Fund. $USN maintains its peg through a smart contract which allows for the exchange of $NEAR<>$USN with 0 slippage and minimal commissions. As soon as $USN loses its peg, arbitrageurs will exploit the price difference between the on-chain smart contract and the exchanges until $USN returns to its peg.
- Yield Guild Games (YGG) has partnered with Wildlife Studios, a leading mobile game developer and publisher, as it incorporates NFTs within Castle Crush, its free-to-play unique strategy game with over 75 million downloads and a playable version for PC currently in development. Players who choose to engage with the Avalanche blockchain layer of the game will coexist with the current player community.
- This partnership will enable YGG members to dive into the world of a tower defense style, card collectible game, and experience it in a whole new way with the integration of NFTs, which will give players ownership of the assets and value they generate in-game.
- YGG has acquired 500 NFT Founder Cards and 1,500 NFT Ascended Cards worth US$500,000 for the community to participate and play with.
Label Foundation joins Polygon’s Ecosystem!
- LABEL is an unparalleled NFT infrastructure built on top of Ethereum Network, powered by LBL utility and governance token with a unified goal to establish a fair profit-sharing ecosystem with the permissionless integration of IP rights. LABEL provides a decentralized P2P incubating platform to invest in world-class entertainment-education content through the DAO voting system to further allow contributors to claim profits through the NFT shareholding mechanism.
