🧟 Dead Brands Attempt Resurrection With Crypto

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

News

• Polkadot Upgrade Locks in Parachain Messaging
• Coinbase NFT Draws Fire as a ‘Web3 Instagram’
• Ribbon Finance Gives Half its Protocol Revenue to Stakers

Feature

• Dead Brands Attempt Resurrection With Crypto

Research

• IntoTheBlock: Diving into Optimism and the Promise of Layer 2s

Podcast

🎙Listen to our exclusive interview with BoredElonMusk here:

Video

• Hot Stuff: BendDAO Degen Strategy - Franklin's Big Bet

Elsewhere

• Chainlink set to power Latin American real estate platform: CoinTelegraph
• Gucci to accept crypto in leap for luxury industry: Vogue
• Solana Pay Adds Customized Transaction Request for Merchants: CoinDesk
• Big Ben is ticking down to Ghosts & Frens, a Web3 meetup in London hosted by the Aave Companies: Aave

Trending in The Defiant

• Soaring Gas, Simmering Suspicion, and 50,000 NFTs: Inside Yuga’s Zany Metaverse Mint
• Yearn Keeps Chugging With V3 of Vaults Aggregator
• SEC Signals Crypto Crackdown with Beefed Up Enforcement Arm

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Crypto Branding

🧟 Dead Brands Attempt Resurrection With Crypto

Blockbuster Video Reborn as a DAO in Nostalgia Play

By Jason Levin

NOSTALGIA My journey into the world of crypto’s nostalgia for the ’90s started with a simple tweet. A few months back, I tweeted out “nostalgia-as-a-service”. At the time, I was referring to Spotify charging me $6.99 a month to listen to ‘90s grunge-punk bands like Nirvana and Green Day.

A HAUNTING But now I realize nostalgia-as-a-service is so, so much more. Over the last two years, we’ve been swarmed by zombie companies. RadioShack and Blockbuster Video, left for dead long ago, have somehow come back to life to haunt our consumer dreams once again.

MUSIC NFTs The catch? They’ve gone crypto. The latest: Limewire, the defunct website known for distributing free music, raised $10.4M in April to build a music-focused NFT platform. Monetizing the familiar is rapidly becoming a web3 play.

A DRUG “Nostalgia is a hell of a drug,” Greg Isenberg, founder of web3 design firm Late Checkout and advisor to Reddit, told me. “Nostalgic IP strikes an emotional chord in people and makes it a community-owned brand. This trend is just beginning. Every day new brand owners are reaching out to us looking to leverage web3 with the trust they’ve built over years.”

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Parachains

📨 Polkadot Upgrade Locks in Parachain Messaging

Major Step Forward for Multi-chain Interoperability

By Samuel Haig

MULTI-CHAIN Polkadot’s parachain network has now become a fully interoperable multi-chain ecosystem. On May 4, Polkadot completed an upgrade allowing parachain-to-parachain messaging via the XCM “cross-consensus messaging” format.

MASSIVE “This is a massive innovation not only for the Polkadot ecosystem, but for the entire crypto industry,” Dan Reecer, the chief growth officer at Polkadot’s first parachain winner, Acala Network, told The Defiant. “It marks the first time a multi-chain ecosystem has ever been connected with unified security and native, trustless interoperability.”

SUBSTRATE DOT and other Polkadot assets can now be transferred between parachains, while smart contracts, dApps, and other modules built using Polkadot’s native Substrate framework can also communicate with one another across Polkadot parachains. As such, Polkadot’s parachain ecosystem is now fully interoperable.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

NFT Marketplaces

🤔 Coinbase NFT Draws Fire as a ‘Web3 Instagram’

By Jason Levin

SKEPTICS After two weeks in private beta, Coinbase NFT launched to the public on May 4. Straight away skeptics weighed in with concerns the platform’s embrace of social media functionality might backfire.

COMMENT Coinbase has built a platform that’s part OpenSea, part Instagram. On Coinbase NFT, users can follow each other and comment on their favorite NFTs. It features a discovery feed and trending collections.

INSTAGRAM “Coinbase didn’t launch an NFT platform, they launched a web3 Instagram,” quipped Jason Yanowitz, the co-founder of Blockworks, on Twitter..

LAUNCH Because of Coinbase’s global brand and the ability to buy NFTs with credit cards on the platform, many users believe the platform has the potential to introduce countless new users into NFTs. Yet after its first two weeks in beta, Coinbase NFT’s results were modest. Before today’s launch, there were only 1,246 transactions and 153 ETH traded.

Moonbird #7 sold for 17.7 ETH on Coinbase NFT.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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DeFi Staking

💸 Ribbon Finance Gives Half its Protocol Revenue to Stakers

By Samuel Haig

NEWS Ribbon Finance, a decentralized protocol offering structured crypto products, is now redistributing half of protocol revenue to stakers.

SUPPORT On May 3, Ribbon activated the RGP-13 upgrade to provide stakers with funds generated by the protocol after the proposal received widespread support from the project’s community.

REVENUE “As protocol revenue grows, users become more incentivized to lock RBN,” the team wrote. They say the cycle will create a “supply sink for RBN” that could boost the token’s value and attract further staking.

STRATEGY Ribbon’s revenues are derived from a 10% performance fee and 2% in management fees on positions held via its structured products. Structured products refer to pre-packaged investment strategy products based on a particular asset.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Research: Layer 2s

👨🏻‍🏫 IntoTheBlock: Diving into Optimism and the Promise of Layer 2s

By IntoTheBlock

On-Chain Markets Report by Pedro Negron, IntoTheBlock

AIRDROPS Optimism’s release of the OP token has led to an increase in activity in the network, as speculation grows about its price and future airdrops. By looking at other Layer 2 tokens and sidechains, this piece examines the potential growth and valuation of Optimism following the release of the OP token.

ROLLUP TECH Boba Network and Metis Andromeda are two competing universal Ethereum Layer 2 chains which use optimistic rollup technology. Both Layer 2 chains have already launched their governance tokens and recorded a significant increase in their total value locked (TVL).

VALIDATION Similar scenarios happened with Ethereum Virtual Machine sidechains. Since their tokens were already live due to validation purposes, the sidechains bootstrap liquidity by offering liquidity mining incentives. The chart below shows a historical comparison.

Source: IntoTheBlock & DeFi Llama

INCENTIVES Despite their similarities, sidechains and Layer 2s are not apples to apples. Due to the lack of historical data on token airdrops and incentives campaigns on Layer 2 ecosystems, these comparisons in particular bring meaningful data, even though they may not paint the full picture.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

The Tube

📺 Hot Stuff: BendDAO Degen Strategy - Franklin's Big Bet

Elsewhere

🔗 Chainlink set to power Latin American real estate platform: CoinTelegraph

Chainlink is set to automate rental payments to property owners of a Latin American real estate platform, adding a new blockchain use-case for the sector.

🔗 Gucci to accept crypto in leap for luxury industry: Vogue

The pilot, which will start in five stores later this month, is a significant step toward Gucci blending its Web3 and physical communities.

🔗 Solana Pay Adds Customized Transaction Request for Merchants: CoinDesk

Solana Pay will facilitate transaction requests between merchants and users with a feature that went live on the protocol this week, according to a post by Solana developers.

Aave @AaveAaveBig Ben is ticking down to Ghosts & Frens, a Web3 meetup in London hosted by the Aave Companies 👻🌿 Join the Aave Fam on May 31st from 17:30-20:00 at the Century Club for drinks, panels, and great chats! Password: ghostsandfrens Register below👇 eventbrite.com/e/london-x-web…

eventbrite.comGhosts & Frens (London): A Web3 meetup hosted by the Aave CompaniesEventbrite - The Aave Companies presents Ghosts & Frens (London): A Web3 meetup hosted by the Aave Companies - Tuesday, May 31, 2022 in London, Greater London. Find event and ticket information.2:53 PM ∙ May 4, 202267Likes18Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• Soaring Gas, Simmering Suspicion, and 50,000 NFTs: Inside Yuga’s Zany Metaverse MintUngodly hype creates ungodly expectations. That’s what happened when Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, launched the balleyhooed mint of their Otherside NFTs on May 1.
• Yearn Keeps Chugging With V3 of Vaults AggregatorYield aggregators are a strange breed. They generate earnings by pushing capital strategically through DeFi protocols and they have largely fallen out of the limelight in a crypto world engulfed by Bored Apes and multi-chain ecosystems.
• SEC Signals Crypto Crackdown with Beefed Up Enforcement ArmGary Gensler means business. That’s the takeaway from the news yesterday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is increasing the headcount of its newly formed Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit to 50 positions from about 30.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, Jason, Levin, 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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