🔵Base Goes Gangbusters: DeFi Week of August 6

This week, Tegan Kline was joined by Erick Calderon, founder of Art Blocks. You may also know him as Snowfro. Erick is not only a talented artist but also a tech innovator and entrepreneur who has redefined the limits of artistic expression in the digital era.

We explore how Art Blocks fosters creativity and community via the platform, Erick's views on why you should even buy art, as well as his passion for generative art and decentralization. We also get into his views on the NFT market fluctuations, plus the community of curators that are curating art on Art Blocks and how you can get involved.

But first, Erick tells us about his crypto origin story and early involvement in the CryptoPunks community.

The widely anticipated Base Mainnet is now officially open to everyone, and the buzz is real. So today, we're diving into the latest news around BASE from grants and prizes to NFT launches, and from partnerships to what this means for the Ethereum community at large.

🌞It’s Onchain Summer - getting started with Base

We recently interviewed Jesse Pollak, the head of protocols at Coinbase, in Paris who was ecstatic about the upcoming launch of Base. So let’s catch up with Onchain Summer, the key details of Base mainnet, and dive into a tutorial on how to bridge, and how to access the grants, drops, and prizes!

• New Social Trading App Attracts 12,000 Users In Less Than Two Days friend.tech asks users to connect their Twitter accounts in order to make “shares” of themselves available for trading on the its platform. It already has over 12,500 individual traders since its Aug. 10 launch and has facilitated over 5,500 ETH ($10M) in volume.
• Base Activity Surges After Public Launch Activity on Base, the freshly-launched Layer 2 network from Coinbase, is at an all-time high after opening its doors to all users earlier this week. Base processed8.76 transactions per second (TPS) on average over the past 24 hours. That makes it the second-most popular Layer 2 network behind zkSync Era with 10.2 TPS.

• 'Krapopolis' To Premiere In September with NFTs and Fan Voting Fox Network’s Animation Domination will expand its lineup with an animated series called Krapopolis, set to debut on September 24, that features a Web3 component that gives fans of the show a chance to connect and participate in the story.
• Aave’s GHO Stablecoin Consistently Trades Under Dollar Peg GHO, the highly anticipated stablecoin from Aave, the leading DeFi money market, launched on July 15 and is now trading at around $0.97. The token has trended downward from its intended $1 peg since launching.
• MakerDAO Attracts $700M In Deposits After Hiking DAI Savings Rate Total value locked in Spark, a lending protocol launched by MakerDAO developers, is up 750% in four days. Deposits rocketed from $57.7M on August 6 to $440M after MakerDAO hiked the DAI Savings Rate (DSR) from 3.3% to 8%.
• Mystery Wallet Burns Digital Assets Worth Over $8M In a move that has left the crypto community scratching their heads, a mysterious wallet formerly known as nd4.eth has performed an act of digital pyromania, burning digital assets worth millions over the past two weeks. The wallet burned $3.6M worth of various tokens including GNS and GMX.
• The Sandbox Token Drops 20% Ahead Of Major Unlock SAND, the native token of the web3 game The Sandbox, is down 20% in around four weeks as investors brace for a major token unlock event on August 14. Roughly $136M worth of SAND tokens will hit the market, equating to 16.6% of the token’s current capitalization.
• Markets Rally As Investors Show Renewed Confidence in Crypto Cryptocurrency markets are showing signs of recovery with Bitcoin and Ether rallying 4% over the past two days. Investors overwhelmingly expect the Federal Reserve to keep rates unchanged at its upcoming meeting in September.
• Web3 Security Experts Launch Telegram Bot For DeFi Hack Victims A new telegram bot, dubbed Seal 911, is an experimental security solution spearheaded by a group of Web3 security experts to provide a hotline in case of crypto emergencies.

• Aptos Rallies 15% On Microsoft Partnership Aptos Labs, the company developing the Aptos blockchain, has partnered with Microsoft to offer Web3 developers and users access to a joint suite of AI-supported tools. “The integration of Microsoft’s AI marks a crucial turning point, bringing an end to the long-standing hurdles to web3 entry,” said Aptos Labs CEO, Mo Shaikh.
• Goldfinch Writes Down Failed $5M Loan To Kenyan Taxi Financier Last week, Goldfinch, an Ethereum-based real-world asset investment protocol, delivered a cautionary reminder of the risks associated with off-chain lending when Tugende, a Kenyan motorcycle company, defaulted on a $5M loan taken out via the protocol.
• Base Opens Mainnet To All Users Base, the highly anticipated Layer 2 network from Coinbase, has opened its doors to all users. More than 100 dApps, protocols, and brands are already live on the network, including Coca-Cola — which will issue digital collectibles on the network,
• Maple Opens Cash Management Pools To Accredited US Investors Maple Finance plans to open up its Cash Management pool to accredited American investors via a Regulation D exemption. The pool launched last April to offer qualified investors on-chain exposure to U.S. Treasury yields while complying with risk and accounting requirements.

• Fed Looks To Increase Oversight Of Banks’ Crypto Activities The central bank unveiled plans to “supervise novel activities in the banks it oversees.” These activities include “technology-driven partnerships with non-banks to provide banking services,” providing custody, trading, or collateralized lending services for crypto assets, and tokenizing securities.
• Yield Guild Games Token Halves In A Day After 500% Rally Yield Guild Games’ YGG token tumbled 55% in a matter of hours on August 7. Major investors seem to be booking profits after YGG rallied an eye-watering 540% in the past 30 days. The token surged from $0.14 on July 9 to almost $0.75 on Aug 7.
• Frax Founder Proposes Expansion Into Real-World Assets Frax founder Sam Kazemian has proposed using a US corporation as a conduit for Frax to custody cash deposits, reverse repo contracts, Treasury bills, and other traditional financial instruments.
• Kenyan Authorities Raid Worldcoin Warehouse In Nairobi Nairobi-based media outlet reported that officials representing multiple Kenyan law enforcement agencies armed with search warrants broke into a warehouse operated by Worldcoin over the weekend. They left in possession of “machines'' believed to store Kenyans’ sensitive information

• Crypto Profits Boosts PayPal Stock After Stablecoin Announcement PayPal’s stock jumped after the payments giant announced it will launch a stablecoin on speculation crypto may help shore up the company’s financials. While Paypal’s shares jumped more than 2%, its stock slumped 9% last week following a quarterly earnings call.
• MakerDAO Jacks DAI Savings Rate To 8% For Spark Protocol Users Investors holding MakerDAO’s DAI stablecoin can now access yields of as high as 8% using its recently-launched sister project, Spark Protocol. Once more users arrive, the rate will go back down,” said Rune Christensen, MakerDAO’s founder.
• OlympusDAO’s ‘Cooler Loans’ Could Mean The End Of A Bull Market Icon OlympusDAO has voted to enable a function, called Cooler Loans, which essentially allows it to wind down. The move follows a catastrophic 95% retracement in OHM’s market cap since its highs.

• DeFi Lender Alchemix Says Vyper Hacker Returned Stolen Crypto The hacker who destabilized DeFi last week returned the stolen funds after impacted protocols offered a reward. “We are extremely happy to announce that all funds stolen by the hacker of the Alchemix @CurveFinance pool have now been returned,” Alchemix tweeted.