🧐 LooksRare Team Reaps $31M Windfall as Token Plunges 70% From All-Time High

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today:

News

• LooksRare Team Reaps $31M Windfall as Token Plunges 70% From All-Time High
• Reversal in NFT Market Triggers Plunge in Ethereum Burn Rate
• How to Guide: Buying Real World Assets By Leveraging Crypto

DeFi Primers

• The Ultimate Beginners Guide To The Axie Infinity Game and Marketplace

Podcast

🎙Listen to the exclusive interview with Vitalik Buterin:

Video

• Tutorial: Maximising Stablecoin Yield - Safe or Degen?

Links

• A DAO that funds students to attend crypto events loses half its budget to risky management: The Block
• ARK Analysts call $1M BTC, $180K ETH | Bullish Crypto Price Predictions: Bankless
• SEC Enforcement Against Wonderland Could Mean Trouble for DeFi: CoinDesk
• Why Larry David was the perfect 'anti-sponsor' of FTX's Super Bowl ad, according to Jeff Schaffer: The Block
• Hey #LUNAtics, let’s prepare for the upcoming launch of @SuberraProtocol, Recurring Payments Protocol for Web 3.0 built on @terra_money: Terra Daily
• Looks like a dope community-run celebration - stoked for the new mega!: Bored Ape Yacht Club

Trending in the Defiant

• Gas Prices Slam Buyers in Cool Pets NFT Drop as Transaction Fees Soar 7,000%
• SushiSwap Struggles to Overcome Lack of Management and Nixed Frog Nation Deal
• Zero Knowledge Proofs Can Save the Metaverse From Becoming a Dystopian Surveillance State

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NFT Marketplaces

🧐 LooksRare Team Reaps $31M Windfall as Token Plunges 70% From All-Time High

TRANSFER LooksRare’s rise has been so meteoric that in just a few weeks its trading volume has outpaced mighty OpenSea. Now it appears the LooksRare team transferred roughly 10,500 wrapped ETH (wETH), worth more than $31M, to personal wallets, according to Zodd, who works for the NFT exchange. The wETH came from LooksRare’s 2% exchange fees, all of which go to LOOKS stakers.

PLUMMETED So what’s the issue? Partially it’s just that the team has made a lot of money in a short amount of time while the LOOKS token has plummeted 43% in the last week and has lost 70% of its value since its all-time high on Jan. 20.

RESPONSE “Think $500k per team member per month is a little much for the start of a project,” tweeted 0xb1, a well-known crypto investor, in response to Zodd’s explanation about the team earning so much wETH. Perhaps put some back into your token price.”

Token release schedule of tradable LOOKS tokens. Source: LooksRare

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Ethereum Burn Rate

🔥 Reversal in NFT Market Triggers Plunge in Ethereum Burn Rate

NEWS Declining activity in the NFT markets led to a plunge in Ethereum’s burn rate in February, according to Ultrasound Money, a data aggregator tracking activity on the Ethereum network.

MINTING Surging activity in the NFT markets has been a major catalyst for the recently record-breaking burn rate on Ethereum. Whenever complex tasks take place on the Ethereum network — minting NFTs, for instance — ETH is eliminated or burned in accordance with the EIP-1559 upgrade.

BOOM A recent boom in the popularity of NFTs has seen the sector’s leading marketplace, OpenSea, dominate Ethereum’s burn rankings in recent months, consistently representing more than 15% of all ETH destroyed. LooksRare, a recently launched rival, also contributed to the high burn rate, ranking fifth by ETH destroyed less than one week after launching.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Crypto Purchases

🏡 Buying Real World Assets By Leveraging Crypto

This article was sourced via PubDAO, a decentralized newswire.

REAL WORLD A lot of people say crypto has no “real-world use cases”. “What can you buy with it?” someone will ask, at which point the other person will shrug back “JPEGs on the internet?”

ASSETS The truth is, you can use crypto to buy anything you wantin the material world. You can even enjoy the same tax perks used by the wealthy when they buy things, by borrowing against your assets instead of selling them.

PURCHASES In this article, I’m going to show you how you canuse all sorts of crypto assets to make real-world purchases while staying invested, minimizing your tax bill and generating cash flow. Does it really work? Yes, it does, and I’ll show you how.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DeFi 101: GameFi

🎮 The Ultimate Beginners Guide To The Axie Infinity Game and Marketplace

In this primer, Kurt Ivy unpacks Axie Infinity’s gameplay, use of NFTs, and tokenomics.

ECOSYSTEM The Axie Infinity game is one of the biggest and most well-known Web 3.0 platforms, built on a blockchain and making use of Non-Fungible Tokens (‘NFTs’). The use of the Axie Infinity ecosystem has skyrocketed in recent times.

DISPLACEMENT The platform actually provided residents of the Philippines with a means of earning an income due to job displacement from the Covid-19 pandemic. They earned so much that the government declared that revenue generated from this platform was subject to income tax.

PLAYERS With nearly three million daily active players and $3.6 billion traded through its in-house NFT marketplace (as per its official webpage), it’s worth looking into Axie Infinity for the gameplay andthe potential return on investment.

MARKETPLACE Axie Infinity is a Play-To-Earn game, built on a distributed ledger (aka a blockchain), where Axies are represented as NFTs, which are stored on a blockchain. Axies can be sold through the in-house peer-to-peer marketplace. The Axie game is built on the Ethereum blockchain, and the Axies are priced in ETH, the native cryptocurrency for Ethereum.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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• Liquidity pools and pairs
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The Tube

🔗 Tutorial: Maximising Stablecoin Yield - Safe or Degen?

Links

🔗 A DAO that funds students to attend crypto events loses half its budget to risky management: The Block

Padawan DAO has lost half of its budget allocated to funding students to attend blockchain events through a risky approach to the management of the funds.

🔗 ARK Analysts call $1M BTC, $180K ETH | Bullish Crypto Price Predictions: Bankless

We like it when ARK Invests is bullish crypto. In their seminal 'Big Ideas' report for 2022, the ARK team predicts the price of $1M for Bitcoin.

🔗 SEC Enforcement Against Wonderland Could Mean Trouble for DeFi: CoinDesk

When is DeFi truly decentralized? That question could soon be at the center of an SEC investigation.

🔗 Why Larry David was the perfect 'anti-sponsor' of FTX's Super Bowl ad, according to Jeff Schaffer: The Block

FTX knew that if it was going to cough up the cash for a Super Bowl spot it had to check a few boxes: represent its growing brand, reach new users and, oddly specifically, include comedian Larry David.

Terra Daily 🌖 @TerraLUNADaily🎉 Hey #LUNAtics, let’s prepare for the upcoming launch of @SuberraProtocol, Recurring Payments Protocol for Web 3.0 built on @terra_money . 👉 Learn more about them though their introduction article: medium.com/suberra/introd… $LUNA #Terra

9:39 AM ∙ Feb 11, 202238Likes10Retweets

Bored Ape Yacht Club @BoredApeYCLooks like a dope community-run celebration - stoked for the new mega! 🧪🦍

0xb1 @0x_b1Official #ANN *M3 Mutant Serum Reveal Ceremony* w/ original animation from @TitmouseInc feat. @0x_b1 & @TheChainsmokers Presented by @mutant_cartel & @FODLfi Hosted by @Herb_Castillo & @lior_eth 2.22.22 ~23:00 UTC ++Special Guests @BoredApeYC @ohhshiny @machibigbrother https://t.co/OAogLnIFJA5:41 PM ∙ Feb 15, 20221,110Likes206Retweets

Trending in the Defiant

• Gas Prices Slam Buyers in Cool Pets NFT Drop as Transaction Fees Soar 7,000%Demand for NFT avatars is showing no signs of slowing down.
• SushiSwap Struggles to Overcome Lack of Management and Nixed Frog Nation DealSushiSwap doesn’t just need leadership, it also needs to sort out where all its keys are.
• Zero Knowledge Proofs Can Save the Metaverse From Becoming a Dystopian Surveillance StateWhen it comes to the metaverse, one thing is clear: Big tech players are aggressively trying to grab market share.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, 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)