Overview of Fundraisings of the Week
Top 10 Fundraising Events
Argo Blockchain Borrows $70M From NYDIG to Buy Mining Rigs
Haun Ventures leads $50M round in NFT startup Zora Labs
Irreverent Labs confirms $40M round funded by Andreessen Horowitz and others
Crypto Industry Leader Bitcoin.com Secures $33.6 Million in VERSE Token Private Sale
Amberdata raises $30M to chase the ‘unlimited opportunity’ of bringing traditional finance into web3
Covalent pledges $25M in funding to bring data verifiability to Web3
Untamed Planet raises $24.3M for nature-oriented NFT games
LootRush Generates $12M in Seed Funding Round Led by a16z
https://www.coinspeaker.com/lootrush-12m-seed-funding-a16z/
Kinetix Raises $11 Million in Seed Funding to Drive User Generated Content in the Metaverse
Decrypt Raises $10M and Spins Out as Independent Web3 Media Company
Blockchain Sector Fundraising Trend since the Beginning of the Year
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ⬇️ $223.06B
Top 3 Apps: Curve ⬇️ ($18.02B), AAVE ⬇️ ($16.09B), Lido ⬇️ ($15.27B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬇️ ($128.02B), Terra ⬇️($24.5B), BSC ⬇️ ($16.73B)
Top 7D Change 📈: Decentralized non-depreciating algorithmic token-MahaDAO (+36760%, $1.84B)
DeFi News
[Alchemix on Fantom] Alchemix is launching on Fantom. Initially, users will be able to use DAI, USDC, fUSDT as collateral to borrow alUSD, and trade tokens/earn LP yields on BeethovenX, Spookyswap, and Spiritswap.
[Algorand x FIFA] Algorand will become the official blockchain platform of FIFA and provide the official blockchain-supported wallet solution.
[Everlend Live on Solana] Everlend is now live on Solana. Everlend uses rebalancing & refinancing algos to automatically optimize lending/borrowing positions for users.
[Yearn V3 Coming] The upcoming Yearn V3 upgrade will bring junior tranches, ERC-4246 vault tokens, contracts written in Solidity, gas optimization, flexible strategies, vault management automation, and many more improvements.
NFT
Key Metrics
7D SALES: $975,100,704
7D CHANGE IN SALES: -39.09%
7D NUMBER OF SALES: 1,151,254
NFT News
May 7, Discord exploit hits OpenSea to promote YouTube NFT scam.
May 7, NFT collective Doodles announces Billboard executive as new CEO.
May 3, Starbucks to launch NFT with ‘unique experiences and benefits’.
May 3, “Spotify Island” is set to launch in Roblox.
May 1, BAYC team raises $285M through Otherside NFT sale while buyers pay $176M in fees alone.
Apr 25, OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator platform Gem.xyz.
GameFi & Metaverse
[Millennium Hotel purchases land in metaverse] The Millennium Hotels and Resorts, backed by the Singaporean billionaire Kwek Leng Beng purchased land in Decentraland and the Sandbox, it also revealed future plan of launching a virtual hotel in Decentraland.
[SCBHK x. Sandbox] SCBHK is announcing a partnership with Sandbox to create innovative virtual experiences for clients.
[American Idol applies for NFT trademarks] The world-famous reality TV show American Idol is applying for trademarks for artworks, photographs, and other forms of content authenticated by NFTs.
[Otherside land] Otherside is finally revealed with rules of 100,000 Otherdeeds claimable for BYAC and MYAC holders and also can be purchased with ApeCoin. There are other 100,000 Otherdeeds that will be rewarded for contributors. However, it has caused a gas war with a total of 55,796.08 ETH burned, the yuga lab has to push off the 21 claimable periods for all the BYAC and MYAC until the gas was back to a reasonable level.
According to NFTgo.io, the overall secondary volume reached $774.07M, and the highest land was sold at 333.33ETH. The floor price peaked at 8 ETH on May 1st and currently dropped at 3.80ETH.
[Walmart bridge NFT in e-commerce?] Walmart-backed e-commerce company Flipkart India Pvt has announced an in-house arm called Flipkart Labs to explore NFT, P2E, and metaverse.
[Lego is recruiting team for a Metaverse Project] Financial Time revealed that Lego is recruiting about 1800 software engineers om 2023 to initiate a Minecraft-liked metaverse for children. Their Lego toy will be integrated with the virtual product to offer brand new innovative experiences to the consumers.
[Dfinity filed a lawsuit against Meta for trademark dispute] Meta’s infinity loop logo is the cause of the legal action raised by Dfinity Foundation, which has a similar logo and its federal trademark was filed in 2018. The Difinity Foundation alleged that Meta is centralized and with potential association with similar logos, which might result in a “loss of revenue” to the foundation.
[Illuvium revealed its land sale plan] the not-yet-released game Illuvium released its land sale plan. The max supply is 100k pieces and the first 20k plots will be available on June 2nd, all the landowners are entitled to approximately 5% of all in-game revenues.
DAO
[Messari: DAO Treasuries have exceeded $11B by the end of 2011] The blockchain research and analytic company Messari revealed that the value held under DAO treasury exceeded $11B by the end of 2021 and experience a 40x increase from last year.
[CityDAO launched land NFT] After successfully purchasing an undeveloped 40-acre parcel in Northwest Wyoming last year, now the citizens of cityDAO will be able to redeem land NFT represent the right of use for visitation and conservation of the real property.
[Hop Protocol airdrop] The layer 2 bridge project Hop protocol announced airdrop and tokenomics for its Hop DAO, 8% of $HOP token will be used to airdrop to early users, and out of 43,058 addresses, there are 10,253 addresses that are deemed as used Sybil attack who targeted the Hop airdrop. Hop also encourages people to report Sybil attack that has not been identified, also the reporters will receive 25% as a reward. However, 60.5% of $HOP is allocated to the treasury and the team and investors yield 3-year vesting with a 1-year cliff.
Regulation and Adoption
- May 2: (🇮🇳) India imposes crypto exchanges to store user data for 5-years
- May 3: (🇦🇷) Argentina’s largest private bank, Banco Galicia, to introduce crypto trading in the country allowing customers to trade BTC, ETH, XRP, and USDC.
- May 4: (🇦🇪) Dubai´s Crypto Regulator establishes metaverse headquarters in the Sandbox metaverse platform, becoming the first government authority to do so.
- May 6: (🇦🇷) Argentina prohibits banks from offering crypto services, just after Argentina´s largest private bank announced the introduction of crypto trading services.
Macro
- US Fed raises interest rates by 50bps, the largest rate hike since 2000, markets expect more raises this year.
- Fed to reduce its balance sheet by a maximum of $47.5bn per month ($30bn treasuries and $15bn in MBS), starting June 1st. Fed estimates to reduce by $95bn ($60bn for treasuries and $35bn for MBS) its balance sheet in the next 3-months.
- Ruble´s exchange rate vs EURO and Dollar hits over 2-year high, best since February 2020. The dollar has been at its strongest position since 2017.
- US labor market shows a new record high of job openings, setting a new record high. US private payrolls have increased by 247k in April, 150k less than expected.
- US trade balance deficit surged to a record high of $109.8 billion in March, the first time hitting a $100 billion deficit in history.
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