🧪 Anything But Smooth: Axie Infinity’s Love Potion Token Whipsaws Game Players

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

News

• Twitter Goes Full Crypto With Bitcoin Tips and an NFT Avatar Tool
• Decentralization Now: Coppola Studio Brings Blockchain to the Movies
• New York’s Downtown Art Scene Embraces NFTs with Online Auction Site

Weekend Read

• Anything But Smooth: Axie Infinity’s Love Potion Token Whipsaws Game Players

Research

• IntoTheBlock: Exploring the Multi-Chain Universe Amid Incentives & Upgrades

Video

• SuperMassive NFT Show ft. Josef Rakich & Treasure

Podcast

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

Links

• China Orders Renewed Crackdown on Crypto Mining and Trading: CoinDesk
• Reflections on the DAO movement - Ameen Soleimani and Alex Naphery: YouTube
• Big investors pivoting from Bitcoin to Ether futures: JPMorgan: CoinTelegraph
• Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Explains City-Based Cryptocurrency MiamiCoin: YouTube
• Ex-Employer of GameStop Trader ‘Roaring Kitty’ Fined for Lack of Oversight: New York Times
• Democratic public goods funding for the 21st century: Gitcoin
• UTA Signs NFT Art Projects CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs: Hollywood Reporter
• Hot off the heels of the Auto Router launch, we’re excited to share some new product updates!: UniSwap

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Social Media Crypto

🐥 Twitter Goes Full Crypto With Bitcoin Tips and a NFT Avatar Tool

NEWS Twitter is going big into crypto starting today. Twitter is making two major updates that will make cryptocurrency integral to its product, with more likely to come.

NFT Tipping on Twitter is expanding globally today to everyone on Apple’s iOS, and there will now be an option to tip in Bitcoin. Second, Twitter is going to create a way for its users to authenticate the fact that he or she owns the NFT that they use for their profile picture.

FANS “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation,” Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product at Twitter, said today during a video press conference. “We’re focusing on turning followers into fans, and fans into funds.”

TIPS Twitter released tipping in May, but the number of people who could use it has been limited. Everyone will be able to send and receive tips starting today, on iOS, though the team plans to roll out on Android soon.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Hollywood Crypto

In this special report, R. D. Danes explores the intersection of blockchain technology and the creative arts in a groundbreaking project backed by the family and studio that produced Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders and numerous other favorites.

🎬 Decentralization Now: Coppola Studio Brings Blockchain to the Movies

TLDR After four years of development, Decentralized Pictures — a new project from Frances Ford Coppola’s fabled American Zoetrope production company — is preparing to go live.

BETANET The project is just what it sounds like — a decentralized platform leveraging blockchain and digital tokens to select films for financing and production support. It is now wrapping up the beta run of its democratic film-financing application and is weeks from launching the betanet of its underlying blockchain platform. It is the first 501(c)(3) nonprofit to issue digital assets under the Securities Act of 1933.

TEST BED Blockchain has been touted as a tool for opening up and leveling fortressed institutions of all kinds. The motion picture business — an insular world where the path to a theater release often opens through personal connections, introductions and insider knowledge — may prove a revealing test bed.

COPPOLA Decentralized Pictures, or DCP, was co-founded by Roman Coppola, Francis’ son and the writer of critically acclaimed films such as Moonrise Kingdom and the forthcoming The French Dispatch. Co-founders Michael Musante, American Zoetrope’s vice president of production & acquisitions, and Leo Matchett, the Emmy Award-winning film engineer join Coppola in the project. DCP’s website states that its mission is to support “burgeoning independent filmmakers and filmmakers from underserved and underprivileged communities.”

Decentralized Pictures co-founders from left to right: Roman Coppola, Michael Musante and Leo Matchett

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

NFT Auctions

👩🏽‍⚖️ New York’s Downtown Art Scene Embraces NFTs with Online Auction Site

HIP-HOP If Jean-Michel Basquiat were still alive, he probably would have loved NFTs. And the American painter who captured the hip-hop, graffiti zeitgeist of 1980s’ New York probably would have been all over a new venture called ArtOfficial.

SO WHAT Backed by serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and developed by art dealer Vito Schnabel, the venture is billed as the first online art auction platform set up by a commercial gallery. It’s set to begin auctioning NFTs of original works by the likes of Francesco Clemente, Gus Van Sant, and Mason Beats. And it comes with the imprimatur of one of the most famous names in the Downtown scene that’s shaped the contemporary art industry over the decades.

ECLECTIC Schnabel, the proprietor of eponymous galleries in New York and another in St. Moritz, Switzerland, is the son of famed New York filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel. His galleries showcase work from an eclectic mix of revered artists, from Laurie Anderson to Man Ray to Dan Flavin.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Weekend Read

🧪 Anything But Smooth: Axie Infinity’s Love Potion Token Whipsaws Game Players

In which Owen Fernau, fearless writer for The Defiant, risks the peril and unpredictability of Smooth Love Potion and Axie Infinity to report on the volatile tokenomics of the blockchain-based game.

SMASH Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game that’s become a smash hit with crypto users. It allows players to earn real money, and lots of it, surpassing the monthly salary for many in the world’s poorest countries.

MASSIVE It’s a massive game, sporting 1.5M daily users, according to its most recent development update. That’s more than Bitcoin’s all-time high of 1.36M active wallets on Apr. 15, according to data provider Glassnode. Earlier this year, Axie grabbed a lot of headlines for its torrid growth.

CRISIS But Axie Infinity is suddenly experiencing a crisis: Smooth Love Potion (SLP), one of its internal tokens and a key instrument in the tokenomics of the game, has been suffering extreme volatility, even by crypto standards. After peaking in May and again in July, it’s lost more than three-quarters of its value, though this week SLP has stabilized at around $0.081.

Axie Infinity’s Smooth Love Potion token has lost three-quarters of its value since July.

REAL WORLD For Axie Infinity players who earn the SLP token in-game and sell it to pay real-world bills, the torque is wreaking havoc. It raises significant questions about the potential of games and NFTs to truly create sustainable economies, a rising hope this year as the DeFi community — and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — prepare for the Metaverse.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Research

⛓ Exploring the Multi-Chain Universe Amid Incentives & Upgrades

In the latest installment of IntoTheBlock, Lucas walks us through the latest performance dynamics in DeFi. Read and learn

On-Chain Markets Update by Lucas Outumuro, IntoTheBlock

PERFORMERS Smart contract platforms’ tokens have been amongst the top performers of 2021. While Ether has recorded a remarkable 330% return year-to-date, newer platforms such as Solana, Avalanche and Terra have seen their tokens grow over 1,000% in 2021.

SCALABILITY The rise in these platforms has been driven initially by their lower fees and more scalable blockchains, but more recently sizable incentives programs have also buoyed their tokens. At the same time, Ethereum is pushing further with upgrades improving its proposition as a store of value and scalability. As so-called “Ethereum killers” have quickly grown, it is worth taking a step back and analyzing the evolution of the space to better understand how the multi-chain universe is unfolding and creating opportunities for both users and investors.

VALUATION In terms of market cap, the top 10 smart contract platforms reached an all-time high in early September with an aggregate valuation of over $750 billion.

ALL-TIME HIGHS The recent run-up in valuations has been driven by platforms such as Cardano and Solana hitting new all-time highs. While Ethereum has remained below its May high, Luna, Avalanche, Solana, Cardano, Algorand and Cosmos reached new heights in late August or early September. This has resulted in Ethereum’s market share dropping in terms of valuations.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Video

📺 SuperMassive NFT Show ft. Josef Rakich & Treasure

Links

🔗 China Orders Renewed Crackdown on Crypto Mining and Trading: CoinDesk

Chinese authorities ordered a fresh crackdown on crypto mining and trading Friday, according to a statement from the People’s Bank of China and another from the National Development and Reform Commission.

🔗 Reflections on the DAO movement - Ameen Soleimani and Alex Naphery: YouTube

Ameen Soleimani was the one that summoned Moloch DAO, the DAO that sparked the whole DAO movement in early 2019. Interviewed by long standing MetaCartel OG Alex Napherys, they will be going deep into the origins of Moloch DAO.

🔗 Big investors pivoting from Bitcoin to Ether futures: JPMorgan: CoinTelegraph

American multinational investment bank JPMorgan has revealed that institutional investors are starting to shy away from Bitcoin futures in favor of Ether derivatives.

🔗 Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Explains City-Based Cryptocurrency MiamiCoin: YouTube

MiamiCoin (MIA), listed exclusively on crypto exchange OkCoin, is the first CityCoin. It's a way to support the crypto-friendly city of Miami by holding its coin and potentially helping raise funds.

🔗 Ex-Employer of GameStop Trader ‘Roaring Kitty’ Fined for Lack of Oversight: New York Times

The insurer MassMutual will pay a $4 million fine as part of a settlement with Massachusetts regulators involving the conduct of Keith Gill, a former employee and online trader known as “Roaring Kitty” whose relentless cheerleading for shares of GameStop was at the heart of the meme-stock mania earlier this year.

🔗 Democratic public goods funding for the 21st century: Gitcoin

Gitcoin grants sustain web3 projects with quadratic funding.

The Hollywood Reporter @THRUTA Signs NFT Art Projects CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs (Exclusive)

thr.cmUTA Signs NFT Art Projects CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs (Exclusive)The CryptoPunks are going Hollywood. The red-hot NFT crypto-art project from Larva Labs has signed with United Talent Agency for representation across film, TV, video games, publishing, and licensing. UTA will also represent Meebits and Autoglyphs, two other crypto-art projects created by Larva Labs…3:37 PM ∙ Aug 31, 20211,094Likes346Retweets

Uniswap Labs 🦄 @Uniswap1/ 🚀 Hot off the heels of the Auto Router launch, we’re excited to share some new product updates! uniswap.org/blog/product-u…

uniswap.orgUniswapUniswap Product Update #28:00 PM ∙ Sep 21, 2021283Likes71Retweets

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Owen Fernau, R.D. Danes, and Brady Dale, and edited by Edward Robinson and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was 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.