Week of Aug 1, 2022
Highest NFT Sale of the Week
CryptoPunk #7622
260 ETH ($ 429K)
Overview of Fundraisings of the Week
FC Barcelona announces US$100 million deal for 24.5% of Barca Studios
Web3 Infrastructure Startup Kurtosis Raises $20M In Series A Funding
Advanced Blockchain Incubation Quasar Successfully Raised $6M in Seed Funding
Atato Announces a $6 Million Series A Raise Led by AlphaLab Capital and FEBE Ventures, for its Multi-Party Computation institutional grade custody for any blockchain or token
OrBit Raises $4.6m From Matrixport, Brevan Howard Digital to Develop Exotic Options and Structured Products in Digital Assets
Banking Platform Galoy Raises $4M for Bitcoin-Backed Synthetic Dollar
Dragonfly Capital led $3.5M Funding Round For Debt DAO
Gatenox Announces $2.5m Seed Funding Led by C3 VC Fund to Challenge Existing AML/Sanctions Solutions for Corporate Clients
Bits Crypto Raises $1.2M to Facilitate Gradual Investments in Crypto
Meet Kunji, a startup simplifying crypto investments via digital asset managers
Fundraising Trend Since the Beginning of the Year
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ⬇️ $68.64B
Top 3 Apps: MakerDAO ⬆️($8.68B), Lido ⬆️($7.55B), AAVE⬆️($7B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬇️($39.56B), BSC ⬇️($5.89B), TRON ⬆️($5.87B)
Top 7D Change 📈: Omnichain money market- Radiant Capital (+83.11%, $98m)
DeFi News
[Arbitrum Nitro Soon] Arbitrum announces the launch of Nitro on August 31st. Once the upgrade goes live, the Odyssey campaign is expected to resume.
[Solana Wallets Hack] After investigation of the Solana wallets hack, devs reveal that hacked addresses “were at one point created, imported, or used in Slope mobile wallet applications”. Slope may have logged seed phrases on their own centralized servers which led to the exploits.
[Nomad Bridge Hacked for $190M] Nomad bridge did a routine upgrade and marked the zero hash as a valid root, which had the effect of allowing messages to be spoofed on Nomad. Attackers abused this to copy/paste transactions and removed all of the bridge’s $190m in TVL.
NFT
7D SALES: $123,389,672
7D CHANGE IN SALES: -10.57%
7D NUMBER OF SALES: 933,871
NFT News
Aug. 5, Instagram NFT launches in 100 countries.
Aug. 4, NFTs.com domain sells for $15 million.
Aug. 3, Pearson plans to sell textbooks NFTs.
Aug. 2, Magic Eden announces Ethereum expansion.
Aug. 2, NETGEAR’s NFT display frames Meural partners with SuperRare.
GameFi & Metaverse
[InfiniteWorld acquired Super Bit Machine to bring immersive cross-platform gaming to Web3] InfiniteWorld, a Web3 and Metaverse infrastructure firm announced its strategic acquisition of Super Bit Machine, an independent gaming studio and Armajet developer. This acquisition signals the continued crossover between blockchain and gaming platforms and connects traditional gamer experiences that are delivered through mobile devices, PCs, and consoles with dynamic Web3 functionality.
[Playstudios to venture into Web3 with blockchain division and a $10M fund] The mobile gaming platform and developer Playstudios is launching a new blockchain division and starting a $10 million investment fund to back companies in the Web3 gaming space. The studio stated that they’re diving deep into Web3 with a new blockchain division with playBLOCKS and this division will be focused to bring real-world gamified rewards to players.
[Next generation move-to-earn project SNKRZ closed investment round led by game developer Wemade] SNKRZ, a Move-to-Earn (M2E) platform developed in South Korea announced its partnership with the leading game developer Wemade. Wemade became SNKRZ’s biggest investor. SNKRZ is a M2E fitness platform that allows users to exercise with their NFTs (3D sneakers) and earn rewards in coins. Users are incentivized to reinvest their earned coins back into the platform to repair the shoes, level up, and even breed new NFTs.
[Animoca Brands help Highstreet redefine metaverse life through home sales] Highstreet users will be able to buy the residences, representing the next development in the formation of Highstreet World’s metaverse and carrying forward the goal of further Web3 ecosystems. The Animoca Archipelago, an area in Highstreet World with intricate implementations with gameplay from Animoca Brands’ ecosystem, is made public as part of the IHO, offering new opportunities to join a sizable, interconnected gaming community.
[KuCoin launches immersive Metaverse office in ERTHA] KuCoin has partnered with Ertha, a metaverse with mass-market appeal. Players who log in to Ertha’s Early Beta will be greeted by a state-of-the-art and fully functional KuCoin Office. The KuCoin Office is located in the first playable ERTHA NFT Land plot. ERTHA’s Play-And-Earn mechanics present NFT owners with a real opportunity to earn income from their land.
[Yeeha Games seeks breakthrough in the gaming industry] Yeeha Games, a $50 million-funded GameFi platform, has announced its entry into the world of Web3 gaming. To bridge the gap between traditional gaming and GameFi, Yeeha Games will be releasing a number of blockchain games over the next 18 months. It currently has 11 games in the pipeline, with subsequent game releases planned in the future.
[KuCoin Labs invests in PlayZap Games to boost GameFi] KuCoin Labs led the seed round investment in PlayZap Games, an Asia Web3 Game console. Arcanum Capital, Prime Block Ventures, and Oddiyanna Ventures were some of the additional investors who participated in the round. On the Google Play store and computer internet platforms, PlayZap will launch the first version of their application soon.
[MetaPocket enters into strategic partnership with Salad Ventures] One of the top GameFi wallets, MetaPocket, has announced its new move to partner with Salad-Ventures-backed Arcaden. Despite the recent GameFi value crash, millions of tokens are still being held by people around the world, with nowhere to spend while odds- based crypto games are still growing strong. In response to the market trend, MetaPocket is now teaming up with Arcaden, a placed solution for this current market.
DAO
[Ethereum POS merge led to a possible fork of ETHW ] Approaching the big merge date, there are people who support a fork of PoW version of ETH to sustain the hardware miners, however, many core developer has expressed how pointless to fork a chain when miners can relocate to ETC.
[Harmony summarized the Horizon Bridge hack incident due to a phishing attack ] After carefully investigating all traces, Harmony reported the incident of losing $100M. They came to the conclusion that the attacker employed a phishing scheme to install malicious software on one software developer, thus enabling attackers to read chat threads to understand how to gain access and operate the bridge, and finally to perform the hack by gaining backdoor access to one or more servers.
[AfricaDao is seeking a $20M investment from BitDAO] AfricaDAO initiated a proposal to seek $20M funding request from BitDAO to accelerate Africa and turn it into a web3.0 hub. According to the proposal, Africa has a growing mobile phone usage but reported a poor infrastructure from the banking system, Thus it is well positioned to have hundreds of millions of people embrace the crypto.
[Rocketpool initiated Protocol DAO Governance Phrase 0] Protocol DAO is laying the foundation for a DAO governance, ultimately there are two decentralized DAO over the protocol, which are the Protocol DAO and Oracle DAO. However, at phrase 0 the Protocol DAO will have no direct on-chain power until it has built a mature and stable DAO structure.
Regulation & Adoption
Aug 1 (🌍) Binance loses 90% of users after implementing KYC. earlier in July 2021, Binance made the decision to reduce the maximum amount of Bitcoin that customers without Binance KYC account may withdraw from 2BTC to 0.06 BTC.
Aug 1 (🌍) Crypto market saw inflows totalling record $474 million in July.
Aug 2 (🇺🇸) Microstrategy CEO, Michael Saylor, steps down as CEO
Aug 4 (🇺🇸) Instagram adds NFT integration in over 100 countries
Aug 5 (🇦🇷) Binance and Mastercard to launch prepaid crypto cards in Argentina.
Aug 5 (🇺🇸) Every US crypto exchange is under investigation by the SEC. This comes after a series of SEC actions asserting the regulator’s domain over the crypto industry and a reaction from the US CFTC.
Macro
- Russia’s Central Bank extends restrictions on foreign cash withdrawals until March.
- Belgium freezes €50.5 Billion of Russian funds.
- US job openings fell in June to a 9-month low, suggesting tightness in the labor market is easing somewhat amid growing economic pressures.
- The Bank of England (BoE), raised interest rates by 0.5% as expected to 1.75%.
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