Mergers and DAOquisitions

December 22, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey are not fans of “Web3.”

• Ethereum released the Kintsugi testnet to the public on Monday.

• Cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX is launching a token, dubbed BMEX.

• Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe’s biggest telecom company, is running Polkadot nodes and invested in a “significant” amount of DOT.

• The US DOJ is attempting to recover $154 million stolen from Sony and converted to BTC.

• Under Armour and Steph Curry dropped a collection of NFT sneakers last night.

• Kraken acquired Staked, a crypto staking startup.

• 27% of BTC is held by 10,000 wallets.

• Binance signed an agreement with a Dubai Authority to establish crypto regulations.

• SEBA, a digital-asset focused bank in Switzerland, wantsto become a whitelister on Aave’s institutional platform.

• Ubisoft is partnering with Aleph.im to store its in-game NFTs.

• The Discord channel for Fractal, an NFT project, was taken over by a rogue bot, resulting in the loss of $154,000 in SOL for users who clicked a bad link.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

A Near Billion Dollar DAO Merger

Yesterday, the communities of Fei Protocol and Rari Capital, two decentralized autonomous organizations, voted to merge into one entity. 93.15% Rari Capital’s token holders and 90.75% of Fei Protocol’s token holders voted yes on the proposition.

As of 6:00 pm ET, this is nearly a billion-dollar merger, as the market capitalization of FEI is roughly $735 billion, and RARI’s market cap is $263 billion. In terms of total value locked, the protocol combine to bring $2.11 billion in total value locked (TVL) to the merger, according to data from DeFi Llama.

In essence, Fei is purchasing Rari Capital. As part of the merger, Rari’s RGT token holders will be able to swap their tokens at a rate of 1 RGT for 26.7 $TRIBE, the governance token of FEi Protocol. RGT holders who are against the merge will be allowed to cash out for a proportional share of Fei Protocol’s treasury during a three-day period ending on December 26th called a “ragequit.”

From there, the two DAOs will now begin the process of rebranding to $TRIBE, which was previously used as Fei Protocol’s governance ticker. The new $TRIBE token will now govern both Rari’s yield farming technology and Fei Protocol’s algorithmic stablecoin system.

“I personally believe in the vision of this joint action and I’m optimistic of the endless possibilities to come. The unification of these two dynamic teams with the combination of Fei’s infrastructure + treasury and Rari’s unique product ecosystem will be transformative,” wrote Justin Yu, a Rari Capital cofounder.

Interestingly, however, Justin decided to abstain from the vote. He cited “qualms” within the Rari community about the $RGT token price in the merge. “That being said, it would be disingenuous if I didn’t recognize those with qualms…As a team, we do not think or work around token price. However, I feel these users have earned the right to be heard and respected. The fact that they have not jumped ship and remain active is a testament to their dedication and loyalty to the community/protocol.”

Price disappointment aside, it appears that the overall sentiment is optimistic regarding the “FeiRari” merger. In the lead-up to the final vote, Rari’s Jai Bhavani explained, “FeiRari will enable us to build some seriously cool shit as we usher in the next generation of DeFi, and, ultimately, empower us to make a difference for humanity as a whole.” Jai specifically is looking forward to leveraging the merger to usher in unprecedented network effects, “supercharged” contributors, and protocol synergy.

Recommended Reads

• @archon_0x on crypto predictions for 2022:

• Tascha Che on why she is not here for the tech:

• Decrypt on the top 15 most influential crypto cities:

On The Pod…

The House of Lobkowicz has managed thousands of pieces of art and cultural artifacts, such as hand-annotated manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven, for hundreds of years. Their collections were confiscated under Nazi and Communist regimes but were returned roughly 30 years ago. Now, the family intends to preserve, study, and share the collection with the world — and is using NFTs to make that happen. Hear how Will Lobkowicz, director of digital media & innovation for House of Lobkowicz, and Michelle Choi, NFT strategist, used NFTs to raise funds to maintain and preserve this collection. Show topics:

• the Lobkowicz story of how a Bohemian noble family ended up in charge of a 20,000-piece collection spanning 100 different locations
• how William and Michelle started working together
• what effect COVID-19 had on the House of Lobkowicz’s preservation efforts
• how Michelle and William formulated their plan for NFCastle from Michelle’s garage
• what Michelle and William learned from interviewing hundreds of people in the NFT space
• why Michelle thinks blockchain is an improvement upon the traditional art world’s use of physical ledger systems
• William and Michelle’s favorite NFT projects from NFCastle
• what projects the money raised from NFCastle will restore for the House of Lobkowicz
• what William and Michelle learned from hosting NFCastle
• how NFCastle went about determining royalties for secondary sales for their NFTs
• what’s next for NFCastle

Book Update

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians