Celsius to repay users, but there's a catch
Celsius to repay users, but there's a catch
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Welcome to Stay on-chain! Celsius pulled an FTX, pocketing all the uptrend in crypto prices — read along to catch up on the story. Besides that, the market shines with DeFi growing the most. By the way, make sure to join us on Telegram 👾
In today’s edition:
Market performance
News roundup
Extra content from great minds
Farms of the week
Venture Capital
Meme of the week
This week, the market's mood has shifted back to green.
Bitcoin is leading the charge, and the rest of the crypto world is riding the wave with it. However, ETH isn't keeping up as well and is lagging behind Bitcoin in terms of percentage gains, which is also reflected in Bitcoin's increasing dominance. On the other hand, SOL is still the top pick among retail investors when it comes to L1 coins.
The star of the show this week is RNDR. With Apple rolling out its Vision Pro, RNDR has really shown its strength and stood out. On the flip side, JUP, the token from Solana's Jupiter protocol, hasn't been doing too well after its recent airdrop. But don't worry, we'll dive deeper into that story soon.
Everywhere you look, market caps are flashing green, and the fear and greed index is tipping towards a still, slightly positive, market sentiment. It's a good week for crypto, fren!
Celsius ends Chapter 11, but not in a fair way
Celsius, the Ce-Fi platform that went bust last year, has finally concluded its bankruptcy proceedings and executed its reorganization plan. This plan, which received a nod from 98% of the company's account holders and was confirmed by both the Bankruptcy Court of New York and the SEC, involves distributing over $3 billion in cryptocurrency assets and cash to Celsius' creditors and establishing a new Bitcoin mining company, Ionic Digital Inc. By converting all altcoins to BTC or ETH, the total crypto assets set for distribution saw a $250 million increase, which is certainly positive news. Ionic Digital, the new Bitcoin mining biz, will be owned by Celsius' creditors, who will receive common stock equity, ensuring continued returns.
But there’s a but: the method used to calculate the returns for Celsius account holders wasn't exactly fair. “Calculated at the bottom and paid back at the local top.” The valuation is based on crypto market lows, leading to repayments in dollar amounts that significantly undervalue the current worth of these crypto assets, leaving account holders with much less than their current market value.
Jupiter’s JUP launch sparks controversy
Jupiter is no doubt one of the most used dApps on Solana in the past few months; they aggregate liquidity to swap with the best rates, offer perpetuals, and different financial tools as limit orders, DCA, and bridge routes. The long-awaited token generation event (TGE) for its token JUP took place yesterday, and was, well — a mild failure. The token is now trading at about $0.6, while speculators had it priced at $0.7, and everyone expected a spike to $1+ that never happened.
What’s interesting though, is that while some cheered for the fair lunch where no venture capital rounds were involved and single-sided JUP liquidity was provided between $0.4 and $0.7 (meaning you could acquire JUP at those prices in exchange for USDC), others expressed criticism as if the team was dumping on its userbase — did users fail to understand the mechanism correctly and let FOMO lead their decisions, or is the controversy a mere attempt to justify not-so-positive price action?
Aave’s time to shine?
GHO had a hard time maintaining its peg to the dollar since its launch in July this year, though this might come to an end. The Aave Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) put forward a series of protocol upgrades aiming to enhance GHO’s utility and improve its peg: including, but not only, the GHO safety module and the GHO stability module. With Aave being the blue-chip lending market in DeFi and reduced AAVE inflation on the horizon, its future looks bright.
Ripple co-founder got hacked for $112.5M
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen experienced a security breach, with approximately 213 million XRP, valued at around $112.5 million, being stolen from his personal holdings. The theft came to light when Zach XBT, a notable figure in the crypto community and expert in on-chain investigations, identified and shared the address linked to the illicit wallets and the sale of the stolen XRP across several exchanges, including MEXC, GATE, and Binance.
Larsen confirmed the incident, stating that there was unauthorized access to some of his personal wallets, but he reassured that Ripple company's wallets remained secure and unaffected by this breach. In response to the hack, he mentioned that law enforcement is already involved and that steps were taken to freeze a portion of the stolen assets.
Vitalik’s take on Crypto and AI intersection
In a recent blog post, Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on how crypto and AI could best work together. He believes that the decentralized nature of crypto could offset the centralization seen in AI, where just a few have control. While AI is centralized, crypto can add a layer of transparency. He also mentioned that AI needs data, and blockchains are great for storing and tracking this data. The post includes an image that outlines some ways crypto and AI intersect.
Vitalik then went on to discuss several potential use cases for combining crypto and AI, along with the risks involved. He looked at using AI as an actor, an interface, the rules themselves, and as an end goal, highlighting the promises and risks associated with each. He pointed out that the most fascinating yet challenging task would be to develop a single, decentralized, and trusted AI that other applications could rely on.
Whales Market: sell whatever, whenever
So, uhm, decentralized applications forgot how to just launch tokens, painlessly and no questions asked. Instead, we’re seeing everyone integrating points system, to be converted to tokens later in time. And.. it works. Users have a tangible metric to measure their engagement with the protocol and compare themselves thanks to leaderboards, and dApps see huge inflows of TVL and active users — those are all mercenary farmers that probably won’t stick around, but user retention is tomorrow’s problem it seems.
So, who profits the most in a gold rush? Those selling pickaxes. Here comes Whales Market, the secondary market for protocol points (Friend.tech, EigenLayer, Hyperliquid..), airdrop allocations (DYM, Manta, JUP..), and everything else you can think of. The system is pretty basic, both the buyer and the seller are required to post collateral to guarantee their commitment, and at launch the transfer takes place unless the seller runs off forgoing its collateral. Besides, it’s a great tool to see how the market’s pricing in something, proving to be pretty much accurate in past launches. Want to dig more into it? Here’s their documentation.
Avalanche has a new scaling solution to reach 100,000 TPS — Decrypt
Staknet collaborates with Celestia for L3 data availability — The Block
Ethereum Dencun upgrade is live on the second testnet, Sepolia — The Block
Synthetix deployed its latest perpetual contracts version on Base — The Block
Linea releases LXP tokens teasing airdrop — Mirror
PYTH stakers surpass 110,000 as users bet on airdrops for stakers
Sei sold more NFTs than Base, Avalanche, Optimism, and Arbitrum combined — 𝕏/jayendra_jog
Frax’s chain Fraxtal is around the corner, with FXTL points following suit — 𝕏/realworldabs
Mantle rewards users with MNT tokens for using the chain up to Jan 15 — Mantle
Phantom flips Coinbase in App Store downloads — 𝕏/0xjaypeg
Google allows Bitcoin & Crypto trusts to advertise on its platform — 𝕏/WatcherGuru
Solana Mobile to provide Soulbond non-transferable NFT tokens to those preordering Saga 2 — Solana Mobile
The US government files notice to sell $130M seized BTC — Blockworks
Abracadabra finance drained of $6.4M, MIM depegs — The Block
Good advice on getting a job in crypto:
LRTfi narrative:
Vitalik’s reflective post on the end of his childhood:
The Aptos incentives season has begun, got some idle stablecoins? Check out Aries Markets, paying you a 26.11% APY to supply ETH bridged using LayerZero, or 16.20% APY on USDC bridged using Wormhole. Would you rather provide liquidity? Check out Thala, the leading DEX on Aptos offering juicy yields on your LPs.
Jupiter’s JLP token on Solana allows you to be the counterparty for traders using the platform, that statistically lose money over time. The latest APY is 174.94% and JUP incentives are likely to come as well, but make sure to understand the risks first.
Mantle’s at the forefront of innovation, and Init Capital is no less. Set to launch hooks on top of their lending market, and with MNT incentives for borrowers, it’s good to be positioned for a potential airdrop by farming points.
Navi Protocol raised $2M in a round led by OKX Ventures, dao5, and #Hashed. Description: Native One-Stop Liquidity Protocol on Sui, empowering users to participate as liquidity providers or borrowers within the Sui Ecosystem.
PublicAI raised $2M from IOBC Capital, Foresight Ventures, Solana Foundation, and Ever State Capital. Description: Web3 AI Data Infrastructure and a decentralized marketplace for AI data annotations.
imgnAI raised $1.60M in a seed round led by HackVC. Description: crypto-native AI image generation platform that includes the flagship product "Nai," an AI-powered image generation bot available on platforms like Discord and Telegram.
10n8 Little Dragon raised $1.50M from Centauri, Mirai DAO, and others. Description: gamified Bitcoin DeFi accelerator that integrates gamification into its ecosystem, offering Dragon Pools for staking-based yield in selected BRC-20 projects and Gamified Pools for staking and earning in Bitcoin.
Mon Studios raised $1.35M from Animoca Brands, Yield Guild Games, FazeClan, and others. Description: Indie game development studio known for producing Spellborne, a retro-inspired MMORPG where players can catch monsters, craft items, farm crops, and embark on adventures to save the world from mystical guardians.
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Disclosure: Authors may own crypto assets named in this newsletter. Stay on-chain is meant for informational and educational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making investment decisions.