🦍 CyberKongz’ 13,000x Leap Spurs ‘Own to Earn’ NFTs But Regulatory Scrutiny Looms

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,

News

• CyberKongz’ 13,000x Leap Spurs ‘Own to Earn’ NFTs But Regulatory Scrutiny Looms
• Divergence Ventures Returns 702 ETH to Ribbon Finance After Gaming Airdrop
• Rari Capital Launches Permissionless Lending Pools to Become Uniswap of Lending

Research

• Axie Infinity is Up 223x This Year: Here’s the Skinny on What’s Propelling AXS

Video

• The Defiant Guide to Pak - Part III
• Quick Take: Will Abracadabra overtake MakerDAO? And Hollywood is here for their cut

Podcast

🎙Listen to this week’s podcast episode with Yam Karkai of WoW:

Links

• FTX US launches marketplace for trading Solana-based NFTs: The Block
• Coinbase Co-Founder’s Venture Firm Raising $1.5B Fund, Document Shows: CoinDesk
• OpenSea delists DAO Turtles project citing financialization concerns: The Block
• Traders at banks fear missing out on the crypto party: The Financial Times
• The Reasonable Revolutionary, the marketplace behind NFT mania is just getting started: OpenSea

Most Read on The Defiant

• XRP Holders to Get Huge Airdrop of New Blockchain Songbird
• Axie Infinity is Up 223x This Year: Here’s the Skinny on What’s Propelling AXS
• MakerDAO Chases ‘Real World’ Deals and Assets in Major Test for DeFi

We’re excited. We’re getting ready to launch The Defiant Terminal, a platform for investors and analysts to track all DeFi data in one place. Join the waitlist today to be notified as soon as it’s live. You’ll want to be the first to get your eyes on that alpha.

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🙌 Together with:

• Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at this link.
• Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
• Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.

NFT Boom

🦍 CyberKongz’ 13,000x Leap Spurs ‘Own to Earn’ NFTs But Regulatory Scrutiny Looms

COMPLIANT TOKEN The lines are getting blurred between NFTs and DeFi. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the Ethereum-based NFT collection that exploded over the summer, has announced that it will issue a “legally compliant” token in the first quarter of 2022.

CHEAPEST APE The move is intended to “thoughtfully craft dope utility and governance, benefit our club members, and bring the BAYC ecosystem to a much wider audience.” As popular NFTs like Bored Apes surge in value – the cheapest Ape is currently listed for sale at 38 ETH, or $131K – the teams leading these projects are constantly looking for new ways to incentivize holding and community participation.

MODEL The runaway success of Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn model has inspired a wave of “own-to-earn” NFT projects. Axie NFT owners must use a combination of AXS and SLP tokens in order to breed their Axies to yield the next generation of Axies, which can then be sold or rented out to other players. The model is clearly working as Axie is on track to hit annualized revenue of $2.4B.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Airdrops

🎀 Divergence Ventures Returns 702 ETH to Ribbon Finance After Gaming Airdrop

NEWS DeFi venture fund Divergence Ventures tried to game the airdrop of Ribbon Finance, one of its own portfolio companies, and it worked — but it’s returning the tokens.

SO WHAT The fund, which put $25,000 into Ribbon Finance, returned 702 ETH today after extracting as much from the protocol’s airdrop. At 1:07 PM, Divergence Ventures, which was founded by Compound’s Calvin Liu and serial investor George Lambeth, posted a thread on Twitter explaining part of the operation.

TACTICS “One of the goals of Divergence Ventures is to make money. Making money in crypto is generally like playing a game,” the company wrote in the thread. “In playing this game, we try many tactics, all the time. Most fail. This one ‘worked,’ and obviously worked in a relatively big way.”

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

DeFi Protocols

🏊🏻‍♀️ Rari Capital Launches Permissionless Lending Pools to Become Uniswap of Lending

BIGGEST PRODUCT Rari Capital, the DeFi protocol created by teenagers, has shipped perhaps its biggest product to date — permissionless lending pools. The new feature allows anyone to create a lending and borrowing pool on the open interest rate protocol, meaning anyone can create a pool for any asset, thereby expanding DeFi possibilities.

ILLIQUID Projects like NFTX, which creates liquid markets for illiquid NFTs by pooling them together and offering a token which represents a claim on one of the non-fungible assets, have already taken advantage of the new functionality on Rari.

PUNK The project deployed a Fuse pool which includes PUNK; PUNK representing a CryptoPunk deposited in NFTX. This opens up the ability for users to now effectively borrow against one of the most valuable NFTs.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Research

🚀 Axie Infinity is Up 223x This Year: Here’s the Skinny on What’s Propelling AXS

On-Chain Markets Update by Juan Pellicer, IntoTheBlock

TLDR Since our last in-depth analysis of Axie Infinity almost two months ago the price of their AXS token has increased over 100% within a few weeks. The rally has multiplied the value of AXS by 223 times since January. The catalyst behind this latest bull-run may have been the Series B funding round of $152M led by a16z.

FUTURE Behind the scenes the Axie Infinity team have made a series of recent updates that have also caught the attention of investors. The moves are reinforcing a positive investment thesis on the future of the game and its AXS coin.

Dashboard of Axie Infinity marketplace.

HIGH INCENTIVE At the time of writing Axie’s staking contract is offering more than 150% annual returns, quite a high incentive considering that it is 10 times bigger than the usual staking yields that major cryptocurrencies offer. These rewards come from the initial coin allocations, where 29% of the total supply was reserved for this purpose. The rewards account daily for 64516 AXS, or the equivalent of almost $8.5 million.

CURRENT YIELD Interestingly their coin unlock schedule has in their plan to triple the net amount of these staking rewards after three months, and to slightly reduce them until the 5.5 years plan is accomplished. The current yield is based on the total amount of AXS that is staked, so it could change over time. But if in three months more supply will be added as staking rewards, it would mean that the stakers would receive even a bigger yield than the actual one.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

🧑‍💻 🦄 🌈 NYC DeFi Hub: The Defiant has just launched Colony, a co-working space in Dumbo for teams building DeFi and Web3 to join and find a community. There are 20 desks in an open floor plan at a reformed factory building. Fill out this form if you’re interested in working there or sponsoring the space.

Video

📺 The Defiant Guide to Pak - Part III

📺 Quick Take: Will Abracadabra overtake MakerDAO? And Hollywood is here for their cut

Links

🔗 FTX US launches marketplace for trading Solana-based NFTs: The Block

Crypto exchange FTX.US has fully launched its NFT marketplace, which will support trading for a range of Solana-based NFTs.

🔗 Coinbase Co-Founder’s Venture Firm Raising $1.5B Fund, Document Shows: CoinDesk

Paradigm, the cryptocurrency venture capital firm led by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, is looking to raise a $1.5 billion fund for startup investments, according to documents seen by CoinDesk.

🔗 OpenSea delists DAO Turtles project citing financialization concerns: The Block

OpenSea, the online marketplace for NFT trading, has suspended trading in a pixelated turtle project claiming it broke rules related to carrying out financial activities.

🔗 Traders at banks fear missing out on the crypto party: The Financial Times

Banks have a growing cryptocurrency problem. Internal trading desks and a broadening array of clients are pressuring senior management at large banks to launch services around cryptocurrencies.

OpenSea @openseaAn interesting read.

readthegeneralist.comOpenSea: The Reasonable Revolutionary | The GeneralistThe marketplace behind NFT mania is just getting started.8:21 PM ∙ Oct 11, 2021400Likes70Retweets

Most Read on The Defiant

• XRP Holders to Get Huge Airdrop of New Blockchain SongbirdNot only is DOGE a very good boy, its coin is about to be very smart, too — as in, smart contract-ready.
• Axie Infinity is Up 223x This Year: Here’s the Skinny on What’s Propelling AXSSince our last in-depth analysis of Axie Infinity almost two months ago the price of their AXS token has increased over 100% within a few weeks.
• MakerDAO Chases ‘Real World’ Deals and Assets in Major Test for DeFiSociété Générale’s request for a $20M loan from MakerDAO is just one of several real-world deals that the DeFi protocol has coming soon.

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🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Bailey Reutzel, DeFiDad and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr