Highest NFT Sale of the Week
CryptoPunk #7756
1,000 ETH ($3 M)
Overview of Fundraisings of the Week
Top 10 Fundraising Events
Lego and Sony pump $2B investment into Epic Games
Circle Raises $400M as BlackRock Explores USDC
Voyager Innovations Raises US$210M to Expand the Financial Services Ecosystem of PayMaya and Maya Bank
Avatar ecosystem company Genies announces $150M in Series C funding
SoftBank leads $70 million round for DeFi infrastructure firm BloXroute
Fasset raises $22 million, plans expansion in Indonesia, Pakistan
Nomad raises $22.4 million to address the growing need for more secure blockchain interoperability
Civitas raises $20M in funding to develop a 4X strategy game on the blockchain
Web3 ‘follow’ app Context announces $19.5 million seed round
Fundraising Trend
Money raised this week surges as Lego and Sony invest 2,000 M in Epic Games, which accounts for 65% of all the funds raised.
DeFi
Weekly TVL
Gross: ⬇️ $255.6B
Top 3 Apps: AAVE ⬆️ ($21.93B), Curve ⬇️ ($21.04B), Anchor ⬆️ ($17.72B)
Top 3 Chains: ETH ⬇️ ($144.92B), Terra ⬆️ ($29.06B), BSC ⬇️ ($16.73B)
Top 7D Change 📈: Risk management marketplace for DeFi-Risk Harbor (+1434%, $215.18M)
DeFi News
[ERC721R]ERC721R, an NFT refunds standard that allows collections to decide how large of a refund they would like to give, and for how long the refund period is open.
[Polygon Buys Carbon Credits]Polygon announced it will reach carbon negative in 2022 by partnering with carbon currency project KlimaDAO and buying BCT & MCO2 carbon credits to reduce CO2 emissions.
[Arweave Live on Avalanche]Information storage network Arwaeve is now natively live on Avalanche. Users can now pay for permanent storage using Avalanche wallets and AVAX tokens.
[Ronin Hack Update]The US government alleged that North Korean hacking group Lazarus is tied to the Axie Ronin bridge exploit which led to a $600m of fund loss.
NFT
Key Metrics
7D SALES: $705,966,795
7D CHANGE IN SALES: 17.84%
7D NUMBER OF SALES: 1,064,272
NFT News
Apr. 15, Punk6529 launches Open Metaverse project with NFT Museum District.
Apr. 15, The Cool Cats NFT project revealed its metaverse called Cooltopdia.
Apr. 14, The top bid for Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet NFT (bought for $2.9M last year) ended at $277.
Apr. 14, SuperPlastic and Bored Ape Yacht Club are collaborating to make SuperBored art toys.
Apr. 13, NBA creates new “official Web3 home for the NBA” NBAxNFT twitter account.
Apr. 12, Coinbase is creating The Degen Trilogy with Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Apr. 7, Lego and Epic Games team up to create a metaverse safe for children.
GameFi & Metaverse
[Bandai Namco Entertainment launched Web 3.0 fund] Bandai Namco Entertainment 021(zero-to-one) fund was just established and backed by the leading game publisher in Japan. The new fund’s main objective is to kick off with new opportunities that might shape the future of entertainment including startups utilizing technologies such as blockchain, VR/AR/xR/A, etc, and are engaged in Web 3.0 and metaverse businesses.
[Amazon reveals potential NFT line] Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, revealed to CNBC that Amazon might add NFT to its e-commerce lines as a promising digital asset. Regarding integrating crypto into the payment, he denied the possibility of adding crypto in a foreseeable future but then envisioned “crypto will become bigger”. In terms of NFT, Amazon is working closely with Wax Blockchain including investments in its ecosystem in 2021.
[Emirates to launch Metaverse] The leading airline company, Emirates unveiled its plans to build its signature brand experience in the metaverse, and their collective and utility-based NFT project is expected to launch in the coming months.
[Apple leveraged rivalry towards Meta] The spokesman Fred Sains commented on Meta’s plan of charging 47.5% commission for the purchase of digital assets made within the metaverse, said meta is trying to earn more on creators compared to other platforms, and criticized the behavior “reveals Meta’s hypocrisy”.
DAO
[Ethglobal announced finalists for DAOHacks] There are 128 submissions participated and 10 projects made it to the finalists of DAOHacks. Most of the projects are tooling focused on cash, expenses, and treasury management.
[OlympusDAO’s lawsuit: defrauding early investors?] A lawsuit was filed in the U.S District Court for Connecticut against the co-founders of the Olympus DAO for defaulting 4 million in OHM tokens to an early investor, Jason Liang. According to Jason, he signed a 50,000 $DAI private funding agreement in exchange for 4M $pOHM(1 pOHM:1 OHM), and later the Olympus team has rendered his smart contract for minting $OHM with pOHM because they found out Jason is selling the OHM token. Although the entire team of Olympus is anonymous and used pseudonymity to cover their identity, the legal team were able to identify one of the cofounders using reverse lookup on a phone number.
[Metamask institutional’s push for DAOs] Metamask institutional announced to formed partnerships with Gnosis Safe, Hex Trust, GK8, and Parfit to R&D crypto custody requirements for DAOs. The institutional arm of Metamask was launched in December 2020 to fulfill institutional-grade requirements with Ethereum-based applications, targeting users like crypto funds, market makers, and trading desks. It has a built-in tech stack to tailor large organizations' custodian needs, in 2021, it has integrated with Bitgo, Qredo, and Cactus custody to further strengthen its ecosystem.
Regulation and Adoption
April 10: (🇦🇪) According to Abu Dhabi Global Market, Binance received an IPA(in-principle approval) from the ADGM Financial Services Regulator Authority.
April 12: (🇮🇳) Crypto trading volume plummeted after the new crypto tax took effect on April 1.
April 13: (🇺🇸) Former Ethereum developer, Virgil Griffith, was sentenced to 63 months in prison for assisting North Korea to use blockchain technology.
April 13: (🇨🇳) China’s Internet Financial Association, the China Banking Association, and the China Securities Association warned about the potential risk of investing in NFTs.
April 13: (🇺🇸) The judge of the SEC vs. Ripple case denied the SEC’s motion to review certain documents, which is considered a victory for Ripple.
April 15: (🇺🇸) US President Joe Biden selected Michael Barr, a former advisor to Ripple, as the next nominee for the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision. He will need Senate approval to confirm.
Macro
- US stock market lowered this week with S&P500 down 2.39 while tech-heavy Nasdaq down 3.93%. The fixed income market suffered from the high inflation and continue to slide. The volatility index climbed 5.34% while commodity prices soared.
- Inflation is still untamed in March. CPI in March came in at 8.5% YOY is a 40-year high and the PPI was at 11.2% YOY, an all-time high. The drop in energy price in April could have some downward pressure on the inflation but the trend is still remained to be seen.
- The US corporate earnings season officially kicked off. Major banks reported better than expected earnings but expressed caution for the US and global economy going forward. One exception is JP Morgan, which missed the consensus, and its price dropped afterward.
Elon Musk VS. Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging and social networking platform established in 2006. Envisioned with openness, the town-square-liked platform has 329 million users (surged after Donald Trump’s account was banned) and yielded annual revenue of over $5B. Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter was firmly a bitcoin missionary, thus Twitter is the go-to social media platform for Crypto startups and communities.
Elon Musk, a heavy user of Twitter and one of the wealthiest men on earth, now has the intention to take the $34.4B market worthed company private for $43 Billion, as he saw himself unlocking twitter’s potential as the “inclusive arena for freedom of speech around the global”. Following his submission to SEC, Musk revealed his plans to make Twitter source code open-source on GitHub to avoid third-party editing on tweets. Another top priority is to eliminate spam bots to avoid crypto scams. In regard to the “editing fuzz” that Twitter has, Musk confirmed that it should be done with some extra work but the retweets and responses would reset to avoid controversy and scams.
Setbacks
[Vanguard Group] April 8: Regulatory filings showed that asset-manager Vanguard Group reported on April 8 that it actually has a 10.3% stake in Twitter, which means Musk isn’t the biggest shareholder anymore.
[The Board] April 9: Musk declines Twitter’s board seat offer. He was actually supposed to officially join the board that day but instead chose not to join that morning, according to Twitter’s CEO.
[Twitter Investors] April 12: A group of Twitter shareholders is suing Elon Musk for allegedly failing to disclose he had bought a significant stake in the social media company in the right timeframe.
[The Offer] April 14: Musk tweets that he made an offer to buy Twitter. The offer is for $43 billion, and Musk wishes to take the company private. Specifically, he wants to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share — that is his “best and final offer.”
[Stock Price] April 14: Not long after Musk’s Twitter takeover bid was announced, Twitter’s stock fell.
[Poison Pill] April 15: Twitter announced that its board of directors would be employing a “poison pill” deterrent against Musk’s takeover bid.
Follow us on Twitter:
