🐧 Pudgy Penguin Holders Eye Coup Amid Acquisition Talks

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

News

• Fire on the Iceberg: Pudgy Penguin Holders Eye Coup Amid Acquisition Talks

Markets

• ETH Burn Rate Surges Amid Market Chaos and Record NFT Volume

Video

• The Defiant Weekly: Everybody's wrong about Web3

Year in Review Report

• Paid subscribers, download The Defiant’s 2021 Year in Review report!

Links

• Today’s Arbitrum Sequencer Downtime: What Happened?: Offchain Labs
• Bitcoin Approaches Death Cross as Goldman Foresees 4 Fed Rate Hikes This Year: CoinDesk
• Bored Ape Yacht Club is a huge mainstream hit, but is Wall Street ready for NFTs?: CoinTelegraph
• Whether Ether is a security: Preston Byrne
• Latest Week in Ethereum News!: Ethereum Foundation
• We're vibing with our first community call of the year: Monday Jan 10 @ 4pm ET!: Aave

Trending in The Defiant

• Axie Infinity to Release Land Gaming Mode in Bid to Maintain Dominance
• Sunflower Game Throws Wrench in Polygon’s Gears
• Vitalik Cheers NFTs, Layer 2s, and Previews Ethereum 2.0 in Podcast

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NFT Drama

🐧 Fire on the Iceberg: Pudgy Penguin Holders Eye Coup Amid Acquisition Talks

DEAL It’s getting hot inside the igloo. Pudgy Penguin owners are revolting against the team of four that created the cute penguin profile picture (PFP) NFTs, known collectively as 309Labs. This weekend, Luca Netz of Netz Capital held a Twitter spaces event suggesting his team was very close to closing a deal to acquire the Pudgy Penguins project for 750 ETH, but official confirmation of that has not come out on an official penguin channel.

HUDDLE Meanwhile, frustrated penguin owners (who refer to themselves collectively as “the huddle”) have an alternative course of action. With the help of the team at Metadrop, a startup that helps launch new NFTs, community members now have a smart contract on Ethereum that gives them an option to wrap their penguins in a way that allows owners to stay liquid but deny the project’s creators of royalties from trades. The idea here is that doing so would show the creators that they have lost the support of penguin owners and should turn the project over to the community.

Taco Tuesday, Penguin style.

COMMUNITY NFTs started as a way for creative types to find new revenue streams but they have evolved into the seeds of community, most visibly in the profile picture (PFP) trend, and the penguins have been one the most recognizable such brands, alongside Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Market Action

🔥ETH Burn Rate Surges Amid Market Chaos and Record NFT Volume

BURN RATE Ethereum’s burn rate has seen a dramatic resurgence this week amid market volatility and renewed NFT volume, averaging 8.58 ETH every minute for the past seven days.

LOWEST LEVEL The spiking burn rate has come at a cost for Ethereum holders, with the asset losing 7% of its value to trade at its lowest level since September 2021. The heavy losses sustained by many leading DeFi tokens likely contributed to the burn rate too, as traders rushed to reduce exposure to many mid-cap crypto assets.

VOLUME OpenSea was the largest source of burned ETH by far, with 15,507 destroyed for 18% of the network’s total. (OpenSea posted a new record for daily volume on Jan. 9 according to Dune Analytics, with $261M worth of NFTs changing hands).

Leading networks by DeFi TVL

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

The Tube

📺 The Defiant Weekly: Everybody's wrong about Web3

Links

🔗 Today’s Arbitrum Sequencer Downtime: What Happened?: Offchain Labs

Earlier today, we experienced Sequencer downtime, which made the Arbitrum One network temporarily unavailable.

🔗 Bitcoin Approaches Death Cross as Goldman Foresees 4 Fed Rate Hikes This Year: CoinDesk

They call it bitcoin’s “death cross” – a bearish indicator which appears when the 50-day moving average (MA) dips below the 200-day MA.

🔗 Bored Ape Yacht Club is a huge mainstream hit, but is Wall Street ready for NFTs?: CoinTelegraph

Within months after its launch in April 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has become one of the main reasons Wall Street should take the emerging nonfungible token (NFT) market seriously, thanks to its recent sales turnover of over $1 billion.

🔗 Whether Ether is a security: Preston Byrne

I am often asked, directly, whether I think this coin or that one is a security (and thus required to be registered with the SEC before being offered to the public) or not. Virtually every time I demur.

Week in Ethereum News 🪟 @WeekInEthNews⟠ Latest Week in Ethereum News! 🎯 @VitalikButerin multidimensional EIP1559 📺 @Samsung 2022 TVs to include NFT platform 👷 @austingriffith challenges for web2 devs weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethere… Thanks to @CelerNetwork for making this issue possible 🙏2:11 AM ∙ Jan 8, 2022160Likes86Retweets

Aave @AaveAaveCalling all newts!🦎

Newt (🦎,🦎) @wearenewtWe're vibing with our first community call of the year: Monday Jan 10 @ 4pm ET! Come join us on Discord 🤝 https://t.co/Q3aPQZIp8W https://t.co/UmPWJ2RLRM11:13 PM ∙ Jan 6, 2022114Likes19Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• Axie Infinity to Release Land Gaming Mode in Bid to Maintain DominanceAxie Infinity is entering another dimension. It’s not going to just be a sort of Pokémon game any longer.
• Sunflower Game Throws Wrench in Polygon’s GearsFees on Ethereum scaling solution Polygon are surging to record highs. The cause? A game.
• Vitalik Cheers NFTs, Layer 2s, and Previews Ethereum 2.0 in PodcastVitalik Buterin is just like everyone else — he digs NFTs, too. That was just one of the observations made by the co-creator of Ethereum in an appearance on Bankless’ podcast on Jan. 4.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ 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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