🚀 Weekly Recap: Crypto Markets Surge To New 2023 Highs

Mariana Krym, the COO of Vyvo Smart Chain, challenges the web3 sector to work towards greater female adoption. In the United States, just 12% of women own cryptocurrency compared to 25% of men, while just 13% of the sector's startups boast female representation within their founding teams. In light of the situation, Krym offers strategies she believes could bolster female adoption of web3.

The Defiant spoke to Rune Christensen at the Devconnect 2023 conference in Istanbul to discuss MakerDAO's Endgame roadmap and forthcoming rebrand. We also dive into the project's heavy exposure to U.S. Treasury Bills, concerns surrounding Christensen's influence over MakerDAO governance, and the challenges of bridging the gap between crypto-native and mainstream users.

The Defiant sat down with IvanGBI, a core contributor to Gearbox Protocol and LobsterDAO, to discuss the evolving DeFi landscape. The touch on the increasing adoption of real-world assets in web3, the challenge of designing sustainable yield, the rise of decentralized social media protocols, and the latest news from Gearbox.

• Ethereum Now Has More "Hodlers" Than Bitcoin Thanks to Staking Ethereum staking is minting a record amount of "hodlers," with the ratio of long-term owners surpassing Bitcoin's. ETH held by addresses for longer than 12 months is at almost 72% of total ETH holders, the highest since at least October 2018.
• Circle Says It ‘Does Not Bank’ Justin Sun Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has sent a letter to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren refuting claims that the company financed Hamas and other illicit actors. Tron founder Justin Sun was explicitly named in the letter.
• Starknet Airdrop Speculation Surges After Purported Eligibility Screenshot Goes Viral Starknet, the Ethereum Layer 2 network, has attracted attention from the web3 community after a screenshot from a Starknet.io subdomain detailing the eligibility criteria for an upcoming airdrop made the rounds on social media. Starknet later confirmed it has already taken a snapshot determining future airdrop recipients.
• Crypto VC Funding Surges In November November was a markedly bullish month for crypto fundraising, with 98 deals inked worth a combined $1.75B – a $1B jump compared to October. More than half of the money raised went to two relatively unknown Bitcoin mining companies.
• United Nations Taps Algorand To Develop Web3 Education For UN Staff The United Nations Development Programme has commissioned the Algorand Foundation to develop an educational curriculum on web3 for its staff. The UNDP will make the Algorand Blockchain Academy available to its more than 22,000 employees and staff from other United Nations agencies.

• RARI Foundation Launches Layer 3 Blockchain With Embedded Royalties RARI Foundation, the entity behind NFT marketplace Rarible, has unveiled RARI Chain, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain that will enforce on-chain NFT royalties. Creators can set fees for a collection or individual NFTs, guaranteed to be collected from every transaction.
• Disparity Between Bitcoin HODLers and Daytraders Hits Record The Bitcoin ecosystem is observing the largest disparity on record between its long-term and short-term holders. Data from Glassnode show that the share of BTC's supply held in wallets for more than 155 days is at a record high of 15M.
• 'Unhinged' Kyber Hacker Demands Complete Control Over the DEX The attacker behind the recent $48M KyberSwap hack has issued a startling new on-chain message: they want complete control over the decentralized exchange. “My demands are as follows,” the hacker wrote in an on-chain transaction. “Complete executive control over Kyber (the company).”
• Aragon Ships Its Tech To Arbitrum Despite Bitter Project Infighting Aragon is continuing to ship products despite its DAO and association readying to do battle in court. On Nov. 30, the Aragon OSx team announced the launch of OSx, its DAO infrastructure, alongside the Aragon App on Arbitrum.
• OpBNB Leads Superchain Adoption While Base and Optimism Lag OpBNB, BNB Chain’s Layer 2, is enjoying a surge of adoption, with its throughput closely rivaling that of the BNB Chain mainnet. Data shows opBNB hosted an average of 31.5 transactions per second over 24 hours, equal to 48% of Ethereum and its L2 ecosystem combined.
• Stellar Onboards Stasis Euro As Issuer Looks To Alt Layer 1s Stasis Euro, the leading Euro-pegged stablecoin, is now live on the Stellar Network. The Stellar Development Fund announced the deployment on Nov. 29, enabling users to bridge Stasis’s EURS token onto the Stellar network.
• IOTA Surges After Announcing Middle Eastern and RWA Pivot IOTA is the best-performing top 100 cryptocurrency of the past 24 hours, gaining 45% in a single day after the project announced the launch of a new foundation in Abu Dhabi as part of a pivot to focus on real-world assets in the MENA region.

• Polkadot’s Web3 Foundation To Invest $1M In On-Chain Treasuries The Web3 Foundation, the organization behind the Polkadot network, is the latest crypto development team to invest in real-world assets. The entity announced it will make a pilot investment of $1M into U.S. treasury bills brought on-chain via Anemoy, an asset manager on the Centrifuge parachain.
• US Treasury Sanctions Crypto Mixer Sinbad The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Sinbad.io, a virtual currency mixer known to facilitate money laundering activities for the Lazarus Group, the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group.
• Velodrome and Aerodrome DEXs Say Funds Are Safe After Frontend Hack Decentralized exchanges Aerodrome and Velodrome were hit with attacks to their front-ends. The DEXs say that funds are safe and directed traders to use mirrored links to their front ends.
• Wormhole Sells $225M of Token Warrants in 2023’s Largest Crypto Raise Wormhole, a protocol that enables tokens and data to move across blockchains, has secured $225M in funding at a $2.5B valuation. Investors include Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and Breven Howard, a well-known hedge fund.
• DYdX Chain Launches Trading Rewards Program DYdX, the leading decentralized perpetuals exchange, has launched a program to attract users and boost liquidity on its recently launched Cosmos-based appchain, dYdX Chain. Users will receive DYDX tokens as rewards based on their trading activity, with $20M worth of DYDX distributed over six months.
• 'Benevolent Dictator' Succeeds in Bringing Aave’s Stablecoin GHO Near Parity With USD Aave’s GHO stablecoin nearly hit parity with the U.S. Dollar for the first time since July. The almost re-peg is the result of an effort by Aave’s Liquidity Committee, led by TokenBrice — the committee’s “benevolent dictator."

• SEC Opens Public Comments On Franklin Templeton and Hashdex Spot Bitcoin ETFs The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking public commentary on the spot Bitcoin ETF applications from Franklin Templeton and Hashdex in a move cheered on by crypto bulls. BTC posted new 2023 highs in response to the move.
• Uniswap DAO Approves Delegation Of 10M UNI To Active Voters In a bid to combat low participation rates, the Uniswap DAO recently voted to delegate some UNI tokens held by the Uniswap Foundation to underrepresented delegates that maintain an 80% participation rate. 10M UNI worth of voting power was distributed among seven recipients.
• Chainlink Launches Upgraded Staking v0.2 On Ethereum Chainlink, the leading oracle network, upgraded its staking mechanism on mainnet. Existing stakers can now migrate their staked LINK tokens, with a public launch scheduled for Dec. 11.
• Animoca Brands Becomes TON Validator Leading Web3 venture firm Animoca Brands is now the largest validator for The Open Network (TON) blockchain. This collaboration between the TON Foundation and Animoca Brands aims to draw new users to Web3 through Telegram-based mini-apps.
• Stakewise Plans to Launch New Liquid Staking Token and Validator Marketplace Stakewise, a liquid staking protocol, rolled out its third iteration in a bid to compete with Lido Finance. Stakewise V3 includes a new liquid staking token and marketplace for validator services.
• NEAR Protocol Overtakes Ethereum and Bitcoin in Key Activity Metrics NEAR, a Layer 1 network, is beating out Bitcoin and Ethereum in at least two key network metrics. Activity on NEAR has spiked since September, with daily transactions rising to 1.7M and active addresses tagging 830,000 to beat out the two largest blockchains by market cap.
• Contango Taps Spark For DeFi Native Perps SparkLend, the DAI-focussed lending protocol and MakerDAO subDAO, now facilitates decentralized perpetuals following an integration by Contango. Contango users can now enter into leveraged perpetual positions through recursive lending on Spark.
• Vertex Activity Surges With $1.5B In Daily Volume Vertex, the Arbitrum-based derivatives decentralized exchange, is now standing atop the DEX rankings by daily trade for perpetuals. Data from Dune Analytics shows Vertex hosted more than $1.5B worth of trades over the past 24 hours.

• Vitalik Buterin Proposes 'd/acc' Philosophy in Techno-Optimism Post Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin introduced a novel philosophical approach to technology, termed 'd/acc' - Defensive (or Decentralization, or Differential) Acceleration. Buterin advocates for a deliberate and balanced path in technological development, focusing on technologies that ensure defense, decentralization, and human flourishing.
• Web3 Gaming Company OhBaby! Partners With Paramount Web3 gaming studio, Oh Baby! Games, has partnered with media giant Paramount and unveiled an upcoming listing on the PC gaming platform Steam. The studio’s flagship game, “Oh Baby Kart,” recently wrapped up alpha testing and will launch on Steam once beta trials are complete.
• Magic Eden Launches Cross-chain Wallet Magic Eden, a leading NFT marketplace on Solana, has launched a cross-chain wallet to improve the user experience of trading NFTs across multiple blockchain networks. The wallet supports cryptocurrency swaps between Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and Polygon.
• Solana-Based Jito Announces JTO Governance Token and Airdrop for Past Users Jito, the second-largest Solana-based protocol by total value locked, is about to launch a governance token and airdrop part of the supply to past users. Jito will distribute 10% of JTO's 10B token to users who have contributed to the project's development over time.

• Cosmos Co-Founder Wants To Fork The Network After Contentious Proposal Passes Jae Kwon, the founder of Cosmos, is rallying community members to fork the network. On Nov. 25, Kwon urged his followers to join forces and organize a “split” in response to Cosmos governance passing a proposal to reduce inflation from staking rewards for its ATOM token.
• Paradigm Responds To Criticism Levied At Its Portfolio Project, Blast Paradigm, a leading crypto VC firm and the co-lead investor backing Blast, the controversial Layer 2 network, is taking note of the widespread criticism targeting the forthcoming network.