Drop the MATIC, just POL
Drop the MATIC, just POL
Celsius is selling its altcoin holdings, Arkham airdrops ARKM, Polygon wants to rebrand, and Synthetix launches Infinex to challenge CEXes.
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In today’s issue:
Weekly market performance
Crypto news round-up
Upcoming catalysts
One tool you should try
Further readings
Arkham airdrops ARKM: the best way to bootstrap a project?
Arkham intelligence, a popular on-chain analytics platform, launched on Monday its token $ARKM through both Binance Launchpad and an airdrop to its loyal users. Its price peaked right after the launch at $0.89, now stabilized around $0.60 — to date, 57750 wallets claimed the airdrop, with an average profit per airdrop received of $308.28. The median of tokens received was higher than the average, making the distribution skewed toward a few individuals that got a lion’s share of tokens.
Currently, the token boasts a $90M market cap, trading about $250M in volume on the day of its launch. Many profited quietly (with 93.8% selling their allocations right after claiming), while others got vocal about their dislike for airdrops, like Dune’s CEO claiming they’re an absurd way to employ capital if the goal is to create long-term value. What’s your take, anon?
Celsius selling altcoins
Last week, both Celsius and its former CEO Alex Mashinsky, were sued by the SEC, alleging misconduct in using customer funds to inflate Celsius's native token.
The company recently received permission from the U.S. bankruptcy court to sell all its altcoin holdings for BTC and ETH. This week, there has been on-chain activity observed for the first time. Celsius moved to FalconX, and probably sold, a total amount of $59.4M in altcoins. Some of the altcoins involved are the following: 1.27 million $LINK ($8.5 million), 2.83 million $SNX ($7.84 million), 12,597 $BNB ($3 million), 4.45 million 1INCH ($2.26 million), 8.53 million $ZRX ($1.9 million), and 439,000 $FTX ($713,000) and 186,149 $BONE ($235,000).
Drop the MATIC, just POL
On an identity crisis spree, Polygon’s governance token MATIC decides it’s time for a rebrand. There’s now a proposal on the table to change the token’s name to POL, as a way to not only better encapsulate the Polygon ecosystem under one name, but to revisit its tokenomics with a multi-chain efficiency-focused scenario in mind.
The POL token validators, which in case of upgrade would be granted 1:1 to MATIC holders, would be able to validate thousands of Polygon chains without sacrificing its security — hence achieving infinite scalability. Coupled with a strong focus on community ownership through the use of governance and the reduction of friction to use the ecosystem, Polygon is ready for its new leap forward. You can read POL’s whitepaper here, and find a summary here.
Synthetix is launching Infinex to take on CEXes
Synthetix is set to launch Infinex, a perpetual contracts trading platform, as a direct competitor to centralized exchanges. Infinex aims to provide the efficiency of centralized platforms without compromising security. It will operate on the Ethereum L2 network Optimism in cooperation with Synthetix, which already has more than $150M in TVL. The platform, being developed by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, will be governed by the SNX governance token holders. Infinex will be released alongside Synthetix V3 later this year, with a current beta testing phase underway and a waiting list available on the Infinex website.
Multichain’s CEO is gone: is this the decentralization we wanted?
After weeks of worrisome silence, the Multichain Bridge announced in a long Twitter post the unfolding of its troubles. Since late May, the platform was experiencing an on-and-off service interruption, with some users seeing their bridged funds frozen for long periods with no end in sight — the reason being the infrastructure wasn’t working properly, and Multichain’s CEO was nowhere to be found. Speculations were, in fact, true — the Chinese police have taken away the CEO of the company Zhaojun on May 21, but no details have been disclosed regarding the case. Operators (other users supporting the underlying bridge infrastructure) got their access revoked, where the whole system was apparently based on Zhaojun’s cloud server account, making it an extremely fragile unique point of failure.
Eventually, part of the user’s funds locked on the platform (to facilitate transfers, and earn a commission from it) have been abnormally transferred to anonymous wallets, while the rest have been saved by Zhaojun’s sister.
Moreover, it’s noteworthy that Fantom’s DeFi was mostly based on Multichain as an on-ramp for assets, with the domino effect causing lots of troubles there as well — here’s Andre Cronje's take.
Multichain’s team decided to cease operation until further notice due to the incident, and since they have no access to the domain account, the website cannot be taken offline by the team, concluding their press release with an incredibly grim sentence that shows how long’s the road for this space still.
Safe Wallet implements Account Abstraction
Safe, formerly known as Gnosis Safe and one of the largest institutional wallet providers, is an early adopter of ERC-4337, an Ethereum feature enabling account abstraction. Safe is implementing it into its wallet infrastructure, by allowing ERC-4337 to exist as a plugin software, known as Safe Core. The update includes a fully audited upgrade that supports ERC-4337 in a modular manner, potentially offering developers a new set of possibilities when building wallet features. To delve deeper into the concept of account abstraction and gain a comprehensive understanding, you can refer to our previously published DeFi Dive.
Account Abstraction was also presented by Vitalik Buterin at the EthCC conference:
Proposal for Celo to transition to an Ethereum L2 — link
Starknet unveils 'app-chains' framework, eyeing multi-chain ecosystem — link
Solana Foundation, Polygon Lead $30M Fundraise for Web3 Firm Cosmic Wire — link
Lens Protocol announcing its V2 — link
In today’s edition, we would like to present you StableFish, a platform designed to track the best yield on stablecoins in the DeFi market.
StableFish monitors over 100 protocols by investing actual funds to track historical and current returns. It showcases the best protocols that offer high stablecoin yields while also highlighting all potential risks, including whether the protocol has undergone auditing, the Total Value Locked (TVL), and other crucial metrics that yield farmers should consider. We hope that StableFish proves to be a valuable tool in helping you make well-informed investment decisions.
José Maria Macedo on the Ethereum L2s narrative — link
Jordi Alexander on a fun game-theory auction experiment, often used in DeFi — link
Knower is bullish on DeFi —
For future founders; on how to navigate crypto legal structuring in 2023
Ignas on why Koreans love crypto, but not DeFi.
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Disclosure: Authors may own crypto assets named in this newsletter. Stay on-chain is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making investment decisions.