🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of Dec. 5

Whoa. Just when you think the NFT story couldn’t get any crazier, or more interesting, along comes a week like this one. It was a nova of NFT news. Right at the top, you have to read Brady Dale’s story on the intellectual property split that’s riven the space between Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. We always suspected copyright would become a big issue, and now it has with two of the most popular NFT offerings on the planet.

Meantime, Sam Haig covered the latest episode in the astounding saga of Ross Ulbricht, the early Bitcoin enthusiast who descended into the dark web to create a crypto-fueled emporium for contraband and is now serving not one but two life sentences for his crimes. A DAO devoted to releasing Ulbricht from his “disproportionate sentence” made a $6M bid for his jailhouse NFT art.

And Owen Fernau reported on how the NFTs from the Wizards & Dragons game has skyrocketed. There was more: An analysis of OpenSea data showed how a tiny elite was scooping up most of the profits in the secondary market. On the research side, DappRadar fired in with the definitive treatise on the metaverse and its cross-pollination with NFTs and blockchains.

On the tutorial front, the indefatigable Robin Schmidt and his crew produced invaluable primers on market volatility and how to get into DeFi. And in The Real Vision v. The Defiant episode this week the debate focused on stablecoins and what might happen on the regulatory front. Whoa indeed. Enjoy!

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📬 Inbox Dump #35

Hello Defiers! Welcome to Inbox Dump where we include the updates and announcements that flood our DMs each week and didn’t make it to The Defiant’s content platforms. Sometimes announcements here didn’t meet the bar to become a news story, sometimes they may have slipped through the cracks, or they came late and we haven’t had a chance to cover.

At The Defiant we cover the most important DeFi-related news and developments but we know many of you are hunting for projects before they are fully developed and before they are newsworthy. Our goal with this installment of the newsletter is to help you find them. Look at this as the starting point to DYOR.

We also include a compilation of DeFi and crypto funding rounds in the past week so you have these in one handy place.

Keep in mind these have been unedited. With that —here we go!

[This post is exclusive to subscribers]

The Tube

📺 The Defiant Weekly: How to get started in DeFi

📺 Keeping it Real: Striking the right balance between regulation and innovation

📺 First Look: Interoperability the way it should be? LayerZero certainly thinks so

📺 Tuesday Tutorial: Crush market volatility using big boy Delta Neutral strategies

📺 Quick Take 2: Congress gets Crypto'ed feat. SBFs laces, MongooseCoin and Ritchie's Ping Pong

📺 Quick Take 1: Miami Gush, Bitcoin Crash, Sushi in Crisis?

Weekend Read

🦍 Bored Apes’ Generous Copyright Approach Besting Stricter CryptoPunks

In which Brady Dale plumbs the intellectual property landscape in NFTs and reports on the bifurcation of the space.

Is the Bored Apes Yacht Club coming for CryptoPunks? On Monday’s seven day table on NonFungible.com, Bored Apes had posted $59.1M in sales versus CryptoPunks $17.5M. Worse, the vaunted floor price — which follows the lowest price of the most common NFTs in a set — for both projects looks as though it might converge, with Apes rising and Punks falling. The Punks floor sat at 68.69 ETH on Monday, down from 90 ETH on Nov. 8.

Meanwhile, Bored Apes’ floor price was 52 ETH, well up from 30.5 ETH on Nov. 6. What’s behind the change? Prices are always anyone’s guess, but it seems like part of Crypto Twitter believes it’s because the Ape’s creators, Yuga Laps, conferred something on their holders of true and enduring value: the intellectual property (IP) rights to the underlying artwork of the NFT.

Punk4156, one of the creators behind NounsDAO, tweeted, “It’s not about copyright vs no copyright, it’s about making the pixels as censorship resistant as the token they’re attached to.” He wrote that the IP rights ultimately caused him to turn away. “I love punks, but the copyright issue kind of broke my heart,” he tweeted.

Research

🌆 DappRadar Exclusive Report: The Metaverse May be an Old Idea But It’s Just Getting Started

In latest exclusive report for The Defiant, DappRadar describes how economics, blockchain, currencies, and citizens work and play in the emerging metaverse.

Ever since Facebook, the sixth most valuable company in the world, announced its corporate rebranding to Meta, the metaverse concept has gone mainstream. The truth is that the metaverse is nothing new. The author Neal Stephenson coined the term almost 30 years ago in his seminal sci-fi novel Snow Crash. The idea of a parallel virtual reality where individuals can play and socialize remotely was further popularized by Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg turned into a blockbuster movie in 2018.

But what exactly is the metaverse? How will the blockchain-based metaverse differ from a traditional metaverse? Why are virtual lands and cryptocurrencies like SAND and MANA exploding to all-time highs? And what impact might the blockchain metaverse have in our current way of living?

The metaverse is an abstract concept, one that has different meanings for every individual and even every organization. Nonetheless, there are some elements that we can all agree a metaverse must include.

First, it’s a digital place, a parallel virtual augmented reality that expands beyond the physical world. Also, it is a place where people gather to socialize and share immersive experiences that range from building your own museum to showcasing digital art to assisting a virtual concert or even playing one of the games that are being developed.

Somnium Space VR experience. Source Somnium Space

Opinion

👨🏻‍⚖️ The Case for Why DAOs Should Register as Legal Entities

In this guest column, Mark Lurie argues that DAOs are indeed reinventing corporate structure but they should take care not to expose their members to unlimited liabilities.

The latest explosive trend in DeFi is distributed autonomous organizations, commonly known as DAOs. Hundreds of them have popped up in the last few years, and today they collectively control around $12 billion in assets and govern products with $98 billion in total locked value.

This innovation laid the groundwork for a transformative new form of human organization. The breakthrough is that DAOs ensure adherence to monetary and governance rules without the need for a judiciary or central government to enforce compliance.

The implications of this shift are hard to overstate. All established businesses and organizational structures — LLCs, corporations, partnerships, non-profits, and so on — require the threat of governmental force to ensure compliance with laws, contractual terms, and financial regulations. DAOs, on the other hand, enable coordinated, collective financial activity free from the oversight of a functioning judiciary or law enforcement body. This may seem like a minor development to those of us living under the rule of law, but it represents a sea-change for much of the world.

Friday

News

Artists Cry Foul Over Sold Out NFT Drop of Stormtrooper ImagesThe Art Wars Collection, a series of NFTs depicting painted Stormtrooper helmets from the Star Wars franchise, has come under fire for launching without the consent of the artists who created the original works.
FreeRossDAO Makes Winning $6M Bid for NFT Art by Silk Road Convict UlbrichtFreeRossDAO has won the auction for NFT art created by Ross Ulbricht, the convicted criminal mastermind behind the Silk Road darknet emporium.

Links

Thursday

News

0xMaki Says he “Won’t be Returning” to SushiSwap as it Wallows in a Leadership CrisisSushiSwap has been mired in drama recently, with accusations flying, factions reportedly forming in the team and its CTO resigning. One of token holders biggest hopes throughout — as price and volume slips — has been that core developer 0xMaki would return. Those hopes may be dashed.
Balancer DAO’s Treasury Is Rapidly Diversifying Across DeFiThe Balancer community has begun integrating itself with other decentralized finance protocols by trading its governance tokens for those of other DAOs, also known as treasury swaps.
Sudoswap to Test a DEX for Swapping NFTsIn a plan that may advance the idea that NFTs are tradable assets, Sudoswap, a marketplace for nonfungible tokens, plans to launch an automated market maker (AMM)-based decentralized exchange for swapping NFTs.
NFT Game Launches Encrypted Messaging for Ethereum WalletsThe team behind Parallel, an NFT-based sci-fi card game, launched an end-to-end encrypted messaging service for Ethereum wallets called inb0x on Dec. 7.

Links

Wednesday

News

Exclusive: Enso Finance Plans Vampire Attack on Six Major Index ProjectsEnso Finance, a social trading platform, is planning a vampire attack on six major index products in the crypto space. Enso’s intended victims are Index Coop, Tokensets, PieDAO, dHEDGE, Powerpool, and Indexed. The attack will begin on Dec. 9, according to a teaser video released on the protocol’s Twitter.
Powerful International Bank Body Urges ‘Systemic Regulation’ of DeFiCalling DeFi’s decentralization “an illusion,” the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) urged policymakers worldwide to apply “systemic regulation” of the rapidly growing industry and the broader non-bank financial sector.
New NFTs Will Let Virtual Museum Show Art Across the MetaverseThe metaverse is vast, but it’s not yet interoperable. A new series of NFTs dropping early next year could bridge its many universes, at least for art curators. The Museum of Crypto Art (MOCA) has a plan to show artwork in as many corners of the metaverse as it can.

Links

Tuesday

News

Wizards & Dragons NFTs Leapfrog Bored Apes in Latest Play-to-Earn RallyNFTs for Wizards & Dragons, a new project, has shot to the number two slot in the OpenSea weekly volume rankings at 8650.59 ETH as of Dec. 6. That’s quadruple the volume than the migrated form of Wolf Game, which Wizards and Dragons forked. It’s also leapfrogged Bored Apes Yacht Club and CloneX NFTs.
Tiny Minority of OpenSea Users Scoop Up Most NFT Profits: ReportOnly 5% of OpenSea users are scooping up the bulk of the profits in secondary trades executed on the NFT platform, according to Chainalysis, a blockchain intelligence firm.
DAO Raises $5M for NFT Art by Silk Road Convict Ross UlbrichtRoss Ulbricht, the incarcerated founder of the criminal darknet market Silk Road, has attracted millions of dollars worth of bids for his nonfungible token (NFT) art.

Links

Monday

News

Market Dispatch: Metaverse and GameFi Sectors Drop 30% in Crypto SelloffIn a stretch when the crypto market suffered a heavy selloff, the GameFi, metaverse, and Play-to-Earn categories were among the hardest hit, with each shedding more than 30% of their value amid heavy drawdowns from widely-held names such as Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and Decentraland.
Uniswap Defends Sharing Wallet Addresses with Research Firm as ‘Common Practice’Uniswap, the leading decentralized exchange by both total value locked (TVL) and volume, has been criticized for its partnership with blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs.
Artist Behind Bored Ape Yacht Club to Unveil New NFTs at Art BaselSeneca, the lead artist behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the most celebrated NFT projects, will be debuting five NFTs on Saturday at Art Basel in Miami.

Links

💜Community Love💜

Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!

Jimmy Wales @jimmy_walesThis is fascinating:

thedefiant.ioBored Apes’ Generous Copyright Approach Besting Stricter CryptoPunks - The DefiantIs the Bored Apes Yacht Club coming for CryptoPunks?1:41 AM ∙ Dec 8, 202143Likes13Retweets

WeAreZelus @WeAreZelusIf you own the NFT, should you be able to use it however you want? @DefiantNews discussed the difference in IP ideology between two NFT collections: @BoredApeYC & CryptoPunks. Web3 is reliant on exploration & expression. We need to create using what we own, that includes NFTs.

The Defiant @DefiantNews👩‍🎤🦍 @BoredApeYC are beating CryptoPunks sales in the past week, according to https://t.co/Y49jYo0HXU, and the vaunted floor price for both projects looks as though it might converge. Some speculate the move comes down to IP rights, @BradyDale 👇 https://t.co/KXeSHhEOuD https://t.co/RIF58Eddpq 4:29 PM ∙ Dec 9, 20219Likes4Retweets

👁 👁 👁 seneca @allseeingseneca “What I made for Art Basel is just the start for me” I had a great chat with @DefiantNews about my debut collection and future projects. Keep an eye(s) out 💙 👁👁👁 And see you tomorrow at the show. thedefiant.io/seneca-bored-a…

thedefiant.ioArtist Behind Bored Ape Yacht Club to Unveil New NFTs at Art Basel - The DefiantSeneca, the lead artist behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the most celebrated NFT projects, will be debuting five NFTs on Saturday at Art Basel in Miami.7:06 PM ∙ Dec 3, 202159Likes15Retweets

Suna Said @suna_saidWe’ve seen #DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) grow a lot over the past year. Their impact has been widespread, influencing the #DeFi space as a whole. Read this article on DAOs, aggregation, and culture coins from @DefiantNews:

thedefiant.ioDAOs are Looking to Solve the Problem of Aggregation in Culture - The DefiantThe problem of aggregation, where rational actions at the individual level lead to an irrational outcome at the collective level is prevalent in macroeconomics and financial markets.5:51 PM ∙ Dec 9, 202112Likes5Retweets

Bryan Pellegrino @PrimordialAAPretty cool to see this stuff pop up organically (I’ve never spoken to @DefiantNews). You absolutely love to see it 🙌. Thanks for taking the time to unpack @IamSuperMassive https://t.co/195T0ySvj6

The Defiant @DefiantNews⛓️@LayerZero_Labs is an omnichain interoperability protocol that unites decentralized applications (dapps) across disparate blockchains. @IamSuperMassive takes a #FirstLook👇 https://t.co/93KiGPAuvQ 10:12 PM ∙ Dec 8, 202138Likes3Retweets

Audrey Mouse @TheAudreyMouseCheck out our founder @rebeccareid9 on the @DefiantNews with @ShayliHarrison @emmajane1313 @nirmala_shome Digital Fashion is going to blow everything else out of the water!

youtube.comDigital Fashion is going to blow everything else out of the waterFashion is evolving. What used to be a world of threads and textiles is moving to pixels and augmented fitting rooms. Now, designers are creating more realit...12:28 AM ∙ Dec 9, 20219Likes5Retweets

halfironman.eth @NftUtility In all the @muratpak mania, here is a documentary to clear some of the fog for all new comers (brilliantly made by @DefiantNews): Part1: youtube.com/watch?v=0G4h9I… Part2: youtube.com/watch?v=JIkOEk… Part3: (watch until the end) youtube.com/watch?v=AsdLlB… #massfollowmass #ashfollowash

youtube.comThe Defiant Guide to Pak - Part IIIHere we are again. Part 3. And still so much to say. Thanks for sticking with us through what has probably felt like a ping pong battle between present, past...1:00 PM ∙ Dec 9, 20219Likes3Retweets

Mike Masnick @mmasnick So if you kneejerk hate anything NFT related, skip this tweet, but I find the interplay of copyright and NFTs here absolutely fascinating, and how people are saying that "CC0" NFTs are more valuable than copyright protected ones. 👀thedefiant.io/bored-apes-yac…

thedefiant.ioBored Apes’ Generous Copyright Approach Besting Stricter CryptoPunks - The DefiantIs the Bored Apes Yacht Club coming for CryptoPunks?11:06 PM ∙ Dec 7, 2021129Likes29Retweets

Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult @forgottenrunes“The whole community wins!” - @dotta & @ElfJTrul gave their two cents about the IP rights to the underlying artwork of the NFT with @DefiantNews

thedefiant.ioBored Apes’ Generous Copyright Approach Besting Stricter CryptoPunks - The DefiantIs the Bored Apes Yacht Club coming for CryptoPunks?2:47 PM ∙ Dec 8, 202132Likes5Retweets

Nexus Protocol (Ψ,Ψ) @NexusProtocol S/O to our friends over at @DefiantNews for the coverage ✅🔥 We are glad you are excited about our upcoming @mirror_protocol vaults 😉 youtu.be/jm-3xRi0Xtc

youtu.be📈 Crush market volatility using big boy Delta Neutral strategiesDelta neutral is a portfolio strategy utilizing multiple positions with balancing positive and negative deltas so that the overall delta of the assets in que...6:55 PM ∙ Dec 7, 2021153Likes22Retweets

Alison McCauley @unblockedfutureHow will DAOs collide w/ legal systems in the regions where they operate? We'll experience some bumps in this journey, but also innovation that supports a #DAO with not-fun-but-critical risk management. Here's perspective from @MarkLurie @DefiantNews:

bit.lyThe Case for Why DAOs Should Register as Legal Entities - The DefiantThe latest explosive trend in DeFi is distributed autonomous organizations, commonly known as DAOs. Hundreds of them have popped up in the last few years, and today they collectively control more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency and govern products with an estimated $100 billion in locked value.12:34 AM ∙ Dec 7, 202113Likes5Retweets

Clipper @Clipper_DEX Why will DAOs have such a massive impact? Why is it a bad idea for DAOs not to incorporate as a legal entity? What are the hurdles that we need to overcome? All that and more in @MarkLurie's latest oped in @DefiantNews 👀 thedefiant.io/daos-unlimited…

thedefiant.ioThe Case for Why DAOs Should Register as Legal Entities - The DefiantThe latest explosive trend in DeFi is distributed autonomous organizations, commonly known as DAOs. Hundreds of them have popped up in the last few years, and today they collectively control more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency and govern products with an estimated $100 billion in locked value.5:43 PM ∙ Dec 6, 202152Likes16Retweets

Cristobal Pereira @cristpereirag #Domingo de #Recap de la semana #DeFi en español gracias a @DefiantNews 🙌 Esta semana @NexusMutual y el hack a @BadgerDAO, @Uniswap y la propuesta para migrar la liquidez a L2, subasta de #CloneX con problemas. 👉 defiantes.substack.com/p/-recap-defi-…

11:39 PM ∙ Dec 5, 202126Likes6Retweets

DFINITY Foundation @dfinity 1/ @allseeingseneca, the lead artist behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, will debut five NFTs at ICONOCLAST, an art exhibit hosted by DFINITY at #ArtBaselMiamiBeach2021. "The NFTs will be minted on #ETH, but hosted on the #InternetComputer." thedefiant.io/seneca-bored-a… by @DefiantNews

liz yang ∞ (🇵🇷,🇵🇷) @whizwanglead artist of @BoredApeYC @allseeingseneca featured in @DefiantNews 😱 seneca's new art will be featured at ICONOCLAST gallery on sat dec 4th 🧿 art is ERC-721s w assets on the internet computer by @dfinity. meaning artists can mint NFTs that are multiple GBs in size & more 👀

👁 👁 👁 seneca @allseeingseneca“What I made for Art Basel is just the start for me” I had a great chat with @DefiantNews about my debut collection and future projects. Keep an eye(s) out 💙 👁👁👁 And see you tomorrow at the show. https://t.co/wcKQ10hime 7:27 PM ∙ Dec 3, 202165Likes11Retweets

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Sanuel Haig, Bailey Reutzel, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of Dec. 5

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