World Wide Web3 Market Intel - week of 4/11/22

Market Summary

BTC and ETH walk the tightrope near $40K and $3K. On the heels of the Bitcoin 2022 conference, investors are weighing the impact of various announcements, from regional regulation to commercial partnerships. On Thursday, a pair of territories in Honduras and Portugal shared plans to adopt Bitcoin as 'de facto' legal tender, while Mexican senator Indira Kempis vocalized support for similar legislation in her own country.

Lightning adoption continues to pick up momentum. Jack Maller's Strike has announced an assortment of retail partnerships, from Shopify to NCR, while Robinhood & BitPay have each initiated efforts to integrate Lightning into their flagship platforms. Blockstream & Block are breaking ground on a 3.8 MW BTC mining facility, utilizing Tesla solar panels to prove that mining can "fund zero-emission power infrastructure." While sustainable mining remains a major focus for Bitcoiners, Ethereum continues charging towards a proof-of-stake transition. The network's recent 'shadow fork' test has been lauded as a success, demonstrating that a subset of proof-of-work nodes could successfully merge with the proof-of-stake powered Beacon Chain. Still, lead ETH developer Tim Beiko warned The Merge would be delayed yet again, scrapping the June deadline in favor of a Q3 release.

Consensus drama aside, Web3 enthusiasts have plenty to celebrate. On Monday, DeFi giant Uniswap Labs launched a VC arm, led by the organization's former strategy lead Matteo Leibowitz. CeFi competitor Coinbase is ramping up their focus on NFTs, creating a 3-part film series with characters crowdsourced from the 'Bored Ape Yacht Club' collection. In the stablecoin sphere, Circle is closing in on a $400M funding round, led by multi-trillion dollar asset managers BlackRock and Fidelity. Following yet another hot inflation print of 8.5%, capital allocators are rushing to strike the right balance of risk management and crypto exposure, searching for safe havens in a world with dwindling economic stability.

Market Snapshot

News of the Week

Policy:

• Ethereum dev sentenced to 63 months for North Korean crypto expedition
• Celsius to stop paying interest on new deposits from US

Geopolitical:

• Arthur Hayes: The Q-Trap
• US Officials Tie North Korea’s ‘Lazarus’ Hackers to $625M Crypto Theft

Exchanges:

• Uniswap Labs launches venture unit to invest in web3 projects
• Increasing transparency for new asset listings on Coinbase
• Shiba Inu, Solana, Polygon, and Compound listed on Robinhood

Adoption:

• Billionaire David Rubenstein on Crypto: ‘The Genie Is Out of the Bottle’
• Fidelity to Offer Exposure to Metaverse, Digital Payments With New ETFs
• NFL Teams Test the Waters of Crypto Fan Tokens
• Blockchain.com Teams Up With Dallas Cowboys

Infrastructure:

• Ethereum Devs Now Testing ETH Upgrade on 'Shadow Fork'
• Ethereum Merge Pushed to Q3 as 'Final Chapter' of Proof of Work Looms

Stablecoins:

• USDC Stablecoin Issuer Centre Hires 2 Executives to Oversee Regulation, Operations
• Tether to further reduce holdings of commercial debt in stablecoin reserves

DeFi

• ICHI token price collapses by 99% in latest DeFi debacle
• Terra's Anchor Protocol to Launch on Polkadot DeFi Hub Acala
• Terraform Labs Launches Global Founder Fellowship

NFTs & Metaverse:

• Multiple Indian Official Twitter Accounts Hacked, NFT Content Posted
• Bored Apes Go Hollywood With Coinbase-Produced Movie Trilogy
• Mastercard files for more than a dozen metaverse and crypto trademarks
• Refunds for NFTs? New Standard Sets Give-Back Period for Minters
• Meta to take nearly half of sales made by its metaverse creators as fees
• Solana NFTs Now Heading to Rarible Following OpenSea Debut
• Researchers find security flaw in Rarible: Users could have lost all their NFTs

Deals & Funding

• RockX ($6M) | Asia’s one-stop gateway to crypto finance and blockchains.
• Sky Mavis ($150M) | A technology-focused game studio.
• Civitas ($20M) | A Play & Earn community-driven 4X strategy game.
• TiTi Protocol ($3.5M) | A fully decentralized, multi-asset reserve-backed, use-to-earn algorithmic stablecoin.
• Crurated ($3.2M) | An NFT for every bottle of wine that enters into warehouse.
• Novel ($5M) | A no-code platform for web3 commerce.
• Vovo Finance ($2M) | Grow your crypto with customizable yield.
• Sender Wallet | Your easiest way to tap into the NEAR ecosystem.
• Shrapnel ($7M) | A UGC-driven AAA First-Person Shooter.
• SenseiNode ($3.6M) | A Latin American blockchain infrastructure firm.
• AdHash | A self-hosted advertising platform that allows publishers and advertisers, for the first time, to serve ads, manage campaigns, and collect performance data on-premise.
• Drip Capital | Offering trade financing products targeted toward SMEs in developing markets. Its automated risk assessment model allows rapidly growing SMEs quick and easy access to finance.
• Circle ($400M) | Enabling businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments and commerce worldwide.
• Nomad ($22M) | The future of cross-chain communication is optimistic.
• GOGO Protocol ($2M) | The most user-friendly open source DeFi protocol for asset management and savings.
• Bridge Network ($3.8M) | Decentralized cross-chain hub for the DeFi ecosystem.
• Iskra ($34M) | Web3 game community platform.
• Investin ($1.2M) | Solana’s leading decentralized hedge fund management protocol.
• The Kingdom ($3.6M) | An open-world Metaverse focusing on culture-led experiences.
• The Fabricant ($14M) | A digital fashion house for the metaverse.
• Joyn ($3.5M) | A launchpad for collaborative Web3 media projects.
• LOVO ($6.5M) | AI-backed voice NFTs.
• Cybrid ($3.1M) | The best developer tooling to accelerate their crypto journey from Web2 to Web3.
• Improbable ($150M) | A metaverse technology company that solves the challenges of building virtual worlds and pioneering the path to the metaverse.
• DEFY Labs ($3.5M) | The world's first location-based play to earn game.
• Volt Protocol ($2M) | A lending protocol with a native stablecoin.
• Zenith Chain ($35M) | The most advanced new-age crypto exchange for secure trading.
• Noox ($2M) | On-chain reputation with soulbound NFTs.
• Digital Insight Games ($7.5M) | An independent and fast-growing Web3 games company.
• Taki ($3.45M) | Earn a daily income by simply posting content and chatting with others.
• CertiK ($88M) | A cybersecurity company, using cutting-edge Formal Verification technology on smart contracts and blockchains.
• Novel ($6M) | A no-code platform for web3 commerce.
• Community Gaming ($16M) | Creating a seamless experience for tournament organizers to host grassroots tournaments and for gamers to compete and instantly get paid when they win.
• GOGO Protocol ($2M) | The most user-friendly open source DeFi protocol for asset management and savings.
• Bridge Network ($3.8M) | Decentralized cross-chain hub for the DeFi ecosystem.
• SenseiNode ($3.6M) | A Latin American blockchain infrastructure firm.
• Porter Finance ($5M) | Bonds for DAOs.
• Mysterious ($3.1M) | A web3 native Discord.
• Coin Metrics ($35M) | Cryptoasset market and network data APIs, analytics, and research.
• Binance.US ($200M) | Proudly serving the US with 85+ cryptocurrencies, low fees, and cutting-edge technology.
• NEAR Protocol ($350M) | A blockchain designed to provide the performance and UX to get to mainstream adoption of decentralized applications.

World Wide Web3 is curated by @jackofcrypto. To stay abreast of the latest and greatest in crypto/blockchain/web3, subscribe on Substack and receive these insights directly in your inbox!

Sources: Coin Metrics, Messari, Viewbase, Nansen, Dove Metrics, & more.