Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$ 43,839.99 (+3.44%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,139.77 (+2.78%)

DAO Insights – Maker DAO Talks KYC/AML

• Maker DAO’s SES Core Unit has issued a grant to an individual to research the impact of FATF regulations, serve as a point of contact for compliance questions, and select AML tools for MakerDAO to demo. The mention of KYC/AML in the Maker forum has sparked the ire of many in the community who see this as running counter to the values of DeFi. This ire has even extended to twitter, with some accounts weighing in.
• Aave is going through a governance blitz with six proposals on the docket.
  • Multi-Collateral DAI: Proposed by zxMore_MakerDAO, on behalf of Maker DAO, this proposal is gauging community sentiment for on boarding multi-collateral DAI to Aave’s ARC platform.
  • V3 on Evmos: This proposal signals the willingness of the Aave community to launch Aave v3 on Evmos. Evmos is a EVM compatible chain that connects to the greater Cosmos ecosystem through IBC.
  • Aave-Llama: Proposed by the Llama community, this proposal lays out a comprehensive yield generating treasury strategy for Aave. Key to the plan is consolidating $28.27m in Aave’s v1, v2, and AMM reserve factors, and then deploying them across select DeFi protocols. The specific protocols mentioned are Balancer, Curve, and Convex.
  • Liquidity Mining: If this proposal passes, it will continue the current liquidity mining program on Aave v2 Ethereum, but also add liquidity mining on the Aave ARC market.
  • DPI on ARC: Fairly self explanatory, this proposal will add DPI as collateral on Aave ARC.
  • AVAX Updates: This vote will update the LTV and liquidation threshold parameters for AVAX on Aave ARC if it passes.
• Compound Finance is running a vote to add TUSD as collateral (80% collateral factor), and distribute COMP to TUSD market participants. This vote was deemed a ‘governance attack‘ by some as Justin Sun allegedly borrowed the COMP needed to push this proposal to this stage.
• Lido is currently running a vote to expand their service to Avalanche. Proposed by Hyperelliptic Labs and RockX, this would bring liquid staking to the popular L1.
• Nexus Mutual is running a signal vote to conduct their second wNXM buyback. If this proposal passed, 8000 ETH will be transferred to the Community Fund and used to buyback wNXM (~$24M at current ETH prices).
• Galactic DAO contributed 60k UST to the Prism Protocol Launch Forge event as part of a broad partnership.
• A new DAO, named Plutus, has emerged onto the DAO ecosystem. Although potentially composable or related to Dopex, the specific goal or function of this DAO is still unknown.
• Taking a page from FreeRoss DAO, Assange DAO launched this week. This DAO has the goal of supporting and eventually freeing Julian Assange. For their first purchase they plan to bid on a one-of-a-kind NFT minted by Pak, who collaborated with Assange on the collection. The DAO raised $7.8m to purchase the NFT.
• Following the success of Curve and Convex, Balancer has proposed new tokenomics in their forum to transition their token to a “ve” model.

ENS dumps director of operations in condemnation of homophobic tweets

• True Names Limited, the nonprofit behind distributed domain protocol Ethereum Name Service, announced it would be ending its contract with director of operations Brantly Millegan after many uncovered his previously posted anti-LBGTQIA tweets.
• On Feb. 6, the decentralized autonomous organization of Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, asked users to weigh in on what actions, if any, should be taken against Millegan in regards to a May 2016 tweet in which he said “homosexual acts are evil” and “transgenderism doesn’t exist.” The DAO said some had proposed suspending Millegan from his leadership roles at ENS, voting to remove him as a director of the ENS foundation, and asking him to step down from his position.
• Though the DAO did not officially vote on any resolution as of the time of publication, ENS founder and developer Nick Johnson announced earlier today that True Names Limited had terminated Millegan’s contract given his position was “no longer tenable.” Twitter also deleted the homophobic tweets and suspended Millegan’s account, preventing him from tweeting, liking, and retweeting content. 

Global crypto adoption could ‘soon hit a hyper-inflection point’: Wells Fargo report

• Wells Fargo Investment Institute, the research division of Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management, has released a report highlighting the potential of cryptocurrencies as an investment opportunity akin to the early days of the internet. 
• In a Monday report titled, “Cryptocurrencies — Too early or too late?” the banking giant referred to cryptocurrencies as “viable investments,” but hinted there was no rush for investors to enter the still maturing market. Wells Fargo’s global investment strategy team said it did not subscribe to the idea that it was “too late to invest” in crypto, given that the space is “relatively young” in terms of other asset classes.
• According to the banking giant, the technology behind crypto is following an adoption path similar to that of the internet in the early-to-mid 1990s, when “consumers still needed time to figure out what the technology is, what it can do and how it can benefit them.” However, like the internet, the rising number of crypto users suggests “the world is beginning to embrace the technology — and quickly.” According to a Crypto.com study from July, the number of global crypto users more than doubled from 100 million in January 2021 to 221 million in June.

GALA gains 117% in February as P2E crypto gaming goes mainstream

• One project that has seen its token price climb rapidly in the first week of February is Gala (GALA), a protocol focused on utilizing blockchain technology to give players control of the games they play and the in-game items they acquire.
• Three reasons for the rapid recovery in GALA price are the upcoming launch of several new popular games on the protocol, a series of new partnerships that have helped expand the GALA ecosystem and the growth of the GALA userbase, which continues to hit new record highs.
• A second factor helping to bolster the momentum for GALA has been the addition of new partnerships that are helping to expand the reach of its ecosystem.
• This includes a recently announced collaboration with the 888innercircle community on Twitter, which has a community of more than 205,000 members who are fans of digital art and collectibles.
• As a result of the expansion of the Gala ecosystem and the addition of ways to earn a yield through gameplay or other methods such as running a Gala node, the community has seen a steady increase in the number of users over time, especially since the beginning of December 2021.

XRP gains 30% after Ripple gets permission to explain ‘fair notice defense’ vs. SEC

• Ripple (XRP) price rose by nearly 30% in less than a week amid positive sentiment around the court case, in which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claims that Ripple sold XRP as illegal securities.
• Judge Analisa Torres has granted Ripple permission to respond to the SEC’s Memorandum of Law in support of the Motion to Strike fair notice defense, according to court documents.
• Additionally, Judge Torres also ordered the unsealing of three documents concerning the SEC vs. Ripple case, including Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s email thread and deposition notice and founder Chris Larsen’s email string.

Polygon raises $450M in Sequoia-led funding round

• Layer-2 scaling solution Polygon has raised $450 million in a funding round that was backed by some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds — offering further evidence that major investors are looking to support the future of Web3 development. 
• The investment round was led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from more than 40 venture capital funds, including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global and Republic Capital. Billionaire investor Kevin O’Leary also participated in the raise.
• Polygon will use the funding to expand its scaling solutions, which includes Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge and Polygon Avail, and support mainstream adoption of Web3 applications. The team will also continue to invest in zero-knowledge technology after committing over $1 billion to such initiatives in November 2021.

Tesla held $2B of Bitcoin as of late 2021, SEC filing reveals

• Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker Tesla was holding about $2 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) by the end of 2021, according to official records.
• The “fair market value” of BTC held by Tesla as of December 31, 2021, was $1.99 billion, the company said on Friday in its annual filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
• The filing reads that Tesla sold a portion of its BTC holdings in March 2021, with realized gains of $128 million. The company previously announced a historic $1.5 billion BTC purchase last February.
• According to the filing, Tesla recorded $101 million of impairment losses on Bitcoin in 2021. “Gains are presented net of impairment losses in restructuring and other in the consolidated statement of operations. As of December 31, 2021, the carrying value of our digital assets held was $1.26 billion, which reflects cumulative impairments of $101 million,” the filing notes.

BarnBridge Partners with Optimism to Launch SMART Alpha Pools for Synthetix and Chainlink

• We’re excited to announce that SMART Alpha is now integrated and launched on Optimism.
• One of our key goals is lowering barriers to entry for people looking to hedge or leverage their assets. The high gas fees on Ethereum L1 makes it prohibitive for both the average retail investor to use SMART Alpha and for the costs associated with epoch advancements on current mainnet pools.

Gnosis Safe X ConsenSys: Bringing self-custodial digital asset solutions to enterprises

• Gnosis   Safe and ConsenSys  jointly announce a strategic partnership to build customised enterprise-grade applications and access control permissions on top of the Gnosis Safe.
• ConsenSys, specifically their Professional Services division, will now be the trusted development studio for designing and implementing these bespoke solutions.
• The partnership outlines that ConsenSys will work with enterprises to integrate Gnosis Safe into their operations and build customized solutions. These solutions will be built on top of Gnosis Safe’s industry standard multi-signature functionality.