Week of May 16, 2022
Highest NFT Sale of the Week
Bored Ape #5555
288 ETH ($580 K)
Overview of Fundraisings of the Week
Crypto startup KaJ Labs raises $400 million for the development and adoption of GEM Digital For Lithosphere.
Goldman Sachs co-leads $70M investment in Elwood Technologies.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/17/goldman-sachs-co-leads-70m-investment-in-elwood-technologies/
Voyager digital provides update on closing of $60M private placement of common shares led by leading crypto companies.
N3twork Studios raises $46M to make web 3 games.
Certora Raises $36M for Smart Contract Security Tools.
Coins.ph raises $30M in latest funding to aid Web3 expansion.
SingularityNET, SingularityDAO Receive $25M to Accelerate AI-Backed DeFi.
Twitch Co-Founder Raises $24M for Web3 Gaming Company Metatheory.
FTX, Liberty City Lead $20M Raise for Dev Platform DoraHacks.
Exclusive: Singapore Web3 startup bags $16m from Sky9 Capital.
Fundraising Trend Since the Beginning of the Year
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ⬇️ $113.95B
Top 3 Apps: MakerDAO ⬇️ ($9.92B), Curve ⬆️ ($9.17B), AAVE ⬆️ ($8.9B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬆️ ($73.13B), BSC ⬆️ ($9.17B), TRON ⬆️ ($5.04B)
Top 7D Change 📈: Concentrated & active liquidity management-Arrakis Finance (+56.83%, $759.27M)
DeFi News
[Optimism Bedrock] Optimism introduces Bedrock, an improved rollup architecture that is Ethereum equivalent that brings faster & cheaper transactions. Bedrock will also be the foundation of Optimism’s upcoming fault-proof system Cannon.
[Lens Protocol Live] Built by the Aave team, web3 social platform Lens is now live on Polygon, allowing eligible users to claim Lens handle, mint profile NFT, and start building their profiles.
[Terra Fork Vote Live] Terra community is running the vote for the Terra Revival Plan 2 which is to fork and relaunch a new Terra chain with the existing chain renames to Terra Classic.
NFT
Key Metrics
7D SALES: $284,387,556
7D CHANGE IN SALES: -50.87%
7D NUMBER OF SALES: 1,198,046
NFT News
May 20, OpenSea launches Seaport marketplace protocol allowing NFT bartering.
May 18, Getty Images to launch first NFTs on Palm through Candy Digital.
May 17, Robinhood is accepting whitelist to its non-custodial crypto and NFTs wallet.
May 17, LimeWire is partnering with Universal Music Group for its music NFT platform.
May 16, Spotify is testing musician NFT collection pages.
Gamefi & Metaverse
[Square Enix is planning for token insurance in 2022] The Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider game developing firm, Square Enix revealed in its Q1 earning reports that it will explore NFTs in its game product, and an oversea entity will be established to handle token management.SE has also been working with Animoca Brands to adopt blockchain games.
[Sony is ready for the metaverse] Kenichiro Yoshida, the CEO of the Sony Group Corp commented that sony is well-positioned to play a leading role in the metaverse, with the ecosystem that Sony has created for gaming, music, and movies. Kenichiro also revealed that Sony’s foreseeable goal is “turning the mobility space into a new entertainment space…”
[Bilibili turns on the web3.0 features for its oversea users] After launching the NFT project, Cheers Up Period, the Bilibili App now supports connecting wallet with Metamask so that users will be able to view their Cheers Up collection. Bilibili also allows users to switch their Cheers Up collection as their profile pictures.
[Spotify is testing NFT features] As many artists are actively looking down the Web 3.0 rabbit hole, now Spotify is testing possible embedded NFT gallery feature on the artist’s profile to improve the fan experience.
DAO
[Ropsten is undergoing “the merge” next month] Ropsten, the public testnet of Ethereum, is set really to implement the test merge on June 8th indicating the final preparation stage for Ethereum to shift to POS. Vitalik Buterin also revealed at the ETH Shanghai event that The merge is expected to happen in August if everything is running smoothly.
[Optimism Collective] After token governance has been published, Layer 2 Optimism is releasing Optimism Collective to experiment on governance and identity gated citizen house. The Optimism Collective will be stewarded by the newly founded Optimism Foundation, which will be guided towards carrying out the main goals of Optimism Collective.
[Zcash developer initiating research on shift to POS] The ECC, the developer company behind Zcash, has begun the initial research to provide a transition from PoW to PoS for the Zcash community.
[KronosDAO is revealed to misappropriate the funds in Vault] Revealed by Korean Media Pinpoint, the Defi Project on Klaytn, Kronos DAO, used $6M DAI that users staked in Kronos DAO Vault and traded them for 6M $Kairos Cash. However, the KronosDAO has not yet made any comprehensive explanations to the community.
Regulation & Adoption
- May 16: (🇸🇻) Salvadoran President, Nayib Buyele, announces 44 countries to meet in El Salvador to discuss Bitcoin, mainly countries with developing economies.
- May 17: (🇨🇳) China returns as 2nd top BITCOIN mining hub despite restrictions. BTC miners in China accounted for 21.1% of the total global BTC mining hash distribution as of early 2022, in 2019 China was the world´s largest BTC mining country.
- May 18: (🇪🇺) EU to work on CBDC and may start testing in 202, says ECB Executive Board member Fabio Panetta.
Macro
- (🇷🇺) The Russian ruble strengthened slightly above 63 per US dollar for the first time since February 2020, hitting a five-year high against the Euro on the Moscow Exchange. The Ruble is the biggest gainer with a 12.5% increase against the USD overtaking the Brazilian real, which is up 10.1% on path to becoming the world’s best performing yearly currency.
- (🇺🇸) US retail sales increased, Headline retail purchases rose 0.9% over the month, after an upwardly revised +1.4% gain in March.
- (🇺🇸) US NAHB HMI (Index measuring current and future single-family home sales) Housing index fell for the 5th month in a row to 69 in May 2022, from 77 in April, below market forecasts of 75. Lowest level since June of 2020.
- (🇺🇸) US SP500 Index records 7th consecutive week of losses.
- (🇱🇰) Sri Lanka defaults on debt, for the first time in its history.
Follow us on Twitter:
