October 19, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
What’s Poppin’?
Voyager Sale Proposal Contains Settlement With Executives Over Alleged Missteps
The sale plan proposal for Voyager Digital includes plans to settle with executives over their potential missteps in the loan to bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
Aptos Reveals Tokenomics And No One Is Happy
by Samyuktha Sriram
The Aptos Foundation is facing heat from the wider crypto community that is largely unhappy with the project’s token distribution.
Hacker Steals $8.4M From DeFi Protocol Moola Market
by Samyuktha Sriram
DeFi lending protocol Moola Market was hacked for $8.4 million in what one blockchain security researcher has called “an incredibly simple attack.”
In Other News… ✍️✍️✍️
- Three crypto trade groups filed an amicus brief supporting Grayscale’s lawsuit against the SEC over the rejection of a spot Bitcoin ETF.
- A hacker stole $1 million in BNB tokens from BitKeep and moved the funds through Tornado Cash.
- The European Union is set to develop an energy efficiency label for blockchains.
- A survey from fintech company Plaid revealed a race gap in crypto adoption.
- Crypto venture fund Paradigm joined the Ooki DAO case arguing the CFTC should properly serve its members instead of the DAO as a whole.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- Bicycle, a playing card brand, acquired a Bored Ape NFT for $187,000 to create and sell physical ape cards.
- A house in South Carolina was sold as an NFT for $175,000.
- Lemon, a crypto exchange in Latin America, partnered with TravelX to facilitate airline ticket purchases as NFTs.
The $$$ Corner…
- Stardust, a gaming infrastructure platform, raised $30 million in a funding round led by Framework Ventures.
- Layer 1 blockchain Shardeum closed a $18.2 million seed funding round at a $199 million valuation.
- ChainSafe, a blockchain research and development studio, raised $18.8 million in a Series A round.
- Web3 Builders Inc., a crypto startup focused on security, garnered $7 million in seed funding.
- Ego Death Capital, a new VC firm on the Bitcoin ecosystem, is raising $30 million for its first fund.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
- 1confirmation newsletter on purists and tourists in crypto
- Porter Smith and Miles Jennings on Maker DAO
- drew on Web3 identity landscape
On The Pod…
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Host Haseeb Qureshi partnered with Zhuoxun Yin, cofounder of Magic Eden, to debate Unchained host Laura Shin and Li Jin, cofounder at Variant Fund, on the topic of NFT Royalties. Show highlights:
- What NFT royalties are
- Why Laura believes zero NFT royalties is a bad business decision prioritizing short-term needs over long-term ones and that it will turn creators off from the industry
- How charging royalties is not sustainable, according to Haseeb
- Why royalties are the best mechanism to align incentives between creators and holders, according to Li
- The technical limitations of NFT royalties on a general-purpose blockchain like Ethereum or Solana
- How to align incentives between NFT creators and holders
- Why the prices of NFTs would go up if royalties are not enforced
- Whether the NFT market will change in the future
- Whether it is possible to create a standard that enforces royalties in a smart contract
- The creators’ reaction to Magic Eden moving to optional royalties
- The possibility of a bifurcation of the NFT market
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
