💥 NFT Aggregators Scale Trading as OpenSea Treads Water

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

News

• NFT Aggregators Scale Trading as OpenSea Treads Water
• P2E Game Illuvium Preps Auction of 20,000 Virtual Plots
• Ethereum Dev Maps Out ‘Safe and Seamless’ Transition to Proof of Stake
• Gucci and Starbucks Go Crypto to Bond with Customers

Markets

• Crypto Markets Skid After Fed Raises Rates

Podcast

🎙Listen to our exclusive interview with BoredElonMusk here:

Video

• Real Vision vs. The Defiant: Blockchain is broken. Solana and Ethereum busted by NFTs

Elsewhere

• Elon Musk expected to serve as temporary Twitter CEO after deal closes: CNBC
• The Chopping Block: Did Andre Cronje Pull an Epic Crypto Rug Pull?: Unchained
• Unbundling venture capital via DAOs: Medium
• The first LBP auction on #Avalanche is being launched by @FinanceHexagon in a few hours: Do Kwon

Trending in The Defiant

• Dead Brands Attempt Resurrection With Crypto
• Polkadot Upgrade Locks in Parachain Messaging
• IntoTheBlock: Diving into Optimism and the Promise of Layer 2s

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

• Chainalysis, the leading blockchain data platform. Sign up now for access to their free API to quickly screen against sanctioned crypto wallet addresses. Get free access now!
• Hashflow, the first to provide bridgeless cross-chain swaps, lets you trade seamlessly across chains with guaranteed execution, MEV-resistance and the lowest gas fees in DeFi. Try it now!
• dYdX Grants is powering the future of dYdX through community grants. Join us to build on top of the largest decentralized perpetuals exchange!
• Acquisition Royale is an M&A-themed battle royale P2E game by prePO (the pre-IPO & pre-token trading platform). Unlock exclusive prePO items and rewards by playing now!

NFT Trading

💥 NFT Aggregators Scale Trading as OpenSea Treads Water

New Breed of NFT Platforms Crank Up the Volume

By yyctrader

EARLY MOVER If you’ve bought an NFT in the past two years, chances are you purchased it on OpenSea. The NFT marketplace leader leveraged its early mover advantage and now absolutely dominates the sector with an astonishing 95% share of sales.

Source: Dune Analytics @hildobby

UNCHANGED Even so, NFT traders constantly complain about OpenSea. The website goes down at inopportune moments, newly revealed NFTs sometimes take forever to update, and the feature set and interface have remained pretty much unchanged.

AGGREGATORS Most importantly, you still can’t buy or list multiple NFTs from a single page, a feature sorely needed by active traders. Well, things are starting to change in 2022. Welcome to the dawn of NFT aggregators and the scaling of trades in the burgeoning marketplace. This new breed is plying traders with a way to buy and sell NFTs at volume in one go instead of scrolling and picking through reams of offerings.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

🕹 P2E Game Illuvium Preps Auction of 20,000 Virtual Plots

Founder Kieran Warwick Says Sponsors Are Poised for Esports Events

By Samuel Haig

LAND PLOTS Illuvium, the highly anticipated play-to-earn game, plans to sell 20,000 virtual plots on June 2, the venture said Thursday. The sale is part of a push to sell 100,000 lots in the game. Land plots are used to generate in-game fuel and elements. The team writes that “once all land sells, it will never be minted again.”

SKEPTICISM Illuvium’s token, ILV, has a market capitalization of $293M and it’s the 10th largest P2E platform, according to CoinGecko. While Illuvium’s sale has generally been well-received on social media, some onlookers have expressed skepticism.

RED FLAG ArdonLukas commented that “dumping $1000s into land of an unplayed game is [a red flag]. Anyone who did Kickstarter games knows to avoid this stuff. Best case[,] these games turn into a decade-long hype machine like Star Citizen.”

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Sponsored Post

xToken Terminal: Deploy a Uniswap V3 liquidity mining program in minutes, dev free

xToken Terminalis built to be the Markets Platform for Web3, simplifying complex DeFi primitives into a few easy clicks and enabling projects to be their own CFOs and investment bankers.

Want to boost your token’s liquidity on Uniswap V3? Terminal’s Mining app allows projects to permissionlessly deploy incentivized liquidity mining (LM) programs on Uni V3 in less than five minutes -- no dev work or Uniswap expertise required.

Terminal saves DeFi and NFT projects weeks of effort architecting a custom contract, developing a front-end, and conducting audits. Plus, xToken has the Uniswap expertise to help projects get the most out of V3 features like concentrated liquidity.

Liquidity providers also prefer Terminal’s frictionless, end-to-end, and discoverable LM experience.

xToken Terminal is available now on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Begin your Uniswap V3 LM journey today!

The Merge

🧐 Ethereum Dev Maps Out ‘Safe and Seamless’ Transition to Proof of Stake

By Samuel Haig

UPDATE The roadmap to The Merge just became clearer. On May 5, Ethereum developer, Tim Beiko, published a new update detailing what must be completed before the highly anticipated Eth2 chain-merge can be implemented on the mainnet.

FORKS The key: a final batch of tests on shadow forks of Ethereum followed by trials on the network’s public testnets. Shadow forks, which will test how Ethereum’s clients respond to the chain-merge on small-scale forks of the network, will provide highly accurate simulations of how The Merge will look on mainnet and allow developers to spot bugs.

TESTNET Public testnet deployments will also provide much-needed dress-rehearsals for the vast network coordination required to complete the upgrades. In other words, once the chain-merge has been successful on a dozen and a half more shadow forks and on three public testnets, The Merge will be ready for prime-time.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Crypto Marketing

☕️ Gucci and Starbucks Go Crypto to Bond with Customers

By Jason Levin

NEWS The crypto markets may be swooning, yet mainstream companies continue to embrace blockchain technology to deepen their connection with customers.

PAYMENTS The latest converts: Gucci and Starbucks. Gucci, the iconic Italian fashion house, plans to accept digital tokens — Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Shiba Inu, and several stablecoins — in select U.S. stores at the end of May.

NFTs Gucci will allow in-store crypto payments via an email sent to the customer. This email contains a QR code that allows them to execute the payment from their crypto wallet. Previously, Gucci had released an NFT collection called Supergucci as a partnership with animation studio Superplastic and an NFT collection called 10KTF Gucci Grail inspired by Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s new creative director .

LOYALTY Meanwhile, Starbucks, the gourmet coffee giant with 32,000 stories in 80 nations, is launching NFT collections to “allow for access to exclusive experiences and perks.” Translation: the company wants to use nonfungible tokens to strengthen its loyalty programs, a function that’s attracting attention from corporate marketing departments and investors.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Market Action

📉 Crypto Markets Skid After Fed Raises Rates

By Owen Fernau

INTEREST RATES For a second there it seemed like everything was going to be alright. With many investors concerned about a surprise 0.75% hike in policy interest rates by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the market breathed a sigh of relief when the Fed announced a 0.50% increase in a policy statement on May 4.

DROPS While the global market cap of crypto assets jumped 5.6% to $1.9T on May 4, those gains were erased the following day. In early morning trading New York time on Friday, the crypto market cap had slipped to $1.8T. BTC has dropped 8.4%in the last seven days, and ETH is down 6.7%, according to CoinGecko. And every other smart contract platform in the top ten by market cap has fallen at least 4%.

APE Down 13.2%, ApeCoin, the token of Yuga Labs’ ecosystem which had been red hot leading up to the associated Otherdeeds sale, is the second-worst performer in the last 24 hours. STEPN, of the recent “Move2Earn” phenomena, has bled the most among the top 100 coins, shedding 17.3%.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

The Tube

📺 Real Vision vs. The Defiant: Blockchain is broken. Solana and Ethereum busted by NFTs

Elsewhere

🔗 Elon Musk expected to serve as temporary Twitter CEO after deal closes: CNBC

Elon Musk is expected to serve as a temporary CEO of Twitter for a few months after he completes his $44 billion takeover of the social media company, sources told CNBC’s David Faber.

🔗 The Chopping Block: Did Andre Cronje Pull an Epic Crypto Rug Pull?: Unchained

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Robert Leshner, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry.

🔗 Unbundling venture capital via DAOs: Medium

In the past, there have been many attempts at disrupting venture capital.

Do Kwon 🌕 @stablekwonThe first LBP auction on #Avalanche is being launched by @FinanceHexagon in a few hours. You can acquire flake tokens in the launch. Hexagon is incubated by TFL, and will quote every asset and derivative on red chain in $UST. Boots on the ground, one step at a time.

Hexagon Finance 🔺 @FinanceHexagonThe first LBP auction on #Avalanche is right behind the corner. And here are all the details you want to know beforehand 😎 ⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/tuL7DYIX4o https://t.co/wKWDdDSo5k9:24 AM ∙ May 6, 2022281Likes52Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• Dead Brands Attempt Resurrection With CryptoMy journey into the world of crypto’s nostalgia for the ’90s started with a simple tweet.
• Polkadot Upgrade Locks in Parachain MessagingPolkadot’s parachain network has now become a fully interoperable multi-chain ecosystem.
• IntoTheBlock: Diving into Optimism and the Promise of Layer 2sOptimism’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.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ 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.

Subscribe now

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. Signest, 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)