📉Weekly Recap: L2 Fees Plummet After Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade

Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun upgrade went off without a hitch this week, paving the way for a new era of Layer 2 scalability via EIP-4844. Fees across leading L2s have already dropped by between 50% and 98%, readying Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem for mass adoption.

Bitcoin continued to post record highs throughout the week, eventually topping out above $73,500, according to CoinGecko. However, BTC’s weekly gains have since been extinguished amid a flurry of profit-taking, with Bitcoin last changing hands for $68,500.

Memecoins continue to post eye-watering gains, with BOME emerging as Solana’s latest novelty token of choice with a market cap of more than $600 million just a couple of days after launching. Dogwifhat also rallied 20% for the week after its community raised $691,000 to plaster the Las Vegas Sphere with its logo.

GameFi projects are posting gains, with Ronin also jumping 20% in seven days amid the expansion of its gaming ecosystem and Axie Infinity upgrades. Starknet is looking to foster its own vibrant web3 gaming ecosystem, seeding a new Gaming Committee with more than $100 million worth of STK to attract developers and gamers.

Projects in the artificial intelligence segment also continued to outperform, with the combined capitalization of AI tokens up more than 800% in four months.

It was a big week for MakerDAO, with its co-founder, Rune Christensen, aiming to embark on the project’s Endgame overhaul this summer. MakerDAO also hiked its stability fees by more than 140%and the DAI Savings Rate to 15% from 5%, in response to a drop in Dai supply and USDC reserves.

Prominent voices from across web3 are throwing their support behind new legislation in Wyoming recognizing DAOs and Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Associations (DUNAs). The landmark bill established a legal framework for DAOs. allowing them to enter into legal contracts with third parties, allow them to pay taxes, and provide the organizations with limited liability.

Grayscale filed for a mini Bitcoin ETF. If approved, the low-fee exchange-traded fund would be seeded with GBTC — shares in its recently converted spot Bitcoin ETF. The move follows consistent heavy outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

And the liquid restaking sector continues to trend hot, with EtherFi moving its token generation one month and its ETHFI token now set to hit exchanges next week. Thetanuts is the latest project to get in on the booming liquid staking token sector, with the project teaming up with Pendle to offer leveraged exposure to LRTs.

Plus, don’t miss our podcast with Evan Cheng, the co-founder and CEO at Mysten Labs, to learn about the surging Sui Network.

Enjoy!

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Karpatkey is the leader in active on-chain, non-custodial asset management, having developed a strong network of DAO treasuries worth $1.7b+ with dedicated finance working groups for GnosisDAO, Balancer, ENS, COW, Lido, and Aave. We’ve also contributed to Uniswap, Spark/MakerDAO, Safe, and Arbitrum by establishing delegate platforms and conducting research.

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Exploring the Ex-Apple Engineer Led Sui Network

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by Evan Cheng, the co-founder and CEO at Mysten Labs — the team behind Sui Network.

The discussion touches on the objectives for Sui, what differentiates Sui from other Layer 1 blockchains, and its current leading use cases.

VIDEO

Is It Too Late to Buy Crypto? No, Here's Why

The Defiant spoke to Jordi Alexander, the chief alchemist of Mantle Network, to get his take on the current crypto market cycle. Alexanders offers his price predictions and perspective on the impact that the recently launched cohort of spot Bitcoin ETFs are having on the markets.

Crypto Bull Market Sparks Surge in DeFi Rates

In this week’s Crypto With Cami we discuss the rising DeFi rates, MakerDAO’s rate hike, This week's headlines, Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade, AI Token, Memecoins and more.

Product Review

GridPlus Lattice1 Review | The New Standard For Hardware Wallets?

Whether you are a DeFi veteran, a passionate NFT collector, or simply someone who interacts with cryptocurrency transactions regularly, self-custody is critical. We explore the GridPlus Lattice, a hardware wallet billing itself as a digital fortress, to see what all of the fuss is about.

VIDEO

Trade Solana Memecoins Like A Pro (3 DEGEN TIERS)

The absurdly high valuations on Solana memecoins have led to a theory that the lowest IQ strategies will likely perform the best this cycle. We’ve seen misspelled politician and celebrity tokens mooning ahead of elections, and, of course, cat and dog memes with billion-dollar valuations.

Check out our video exploring Solana’s bubbling (but risky) meme token sector.

Friday

• It’s Raining Runestones As Bitcoin Ordinals Project Launches Airdrop The highly anticipated Runestones airdrop began yesterday, causing a flurry of excitement across the Ordinals ecosystem. Secondary markets on show the floor price sitting at 0.018 BTC (roughly $1,200).
• Solana Memecoin BOME Hits $600 Million Market Cap In Less Than Two Days Solana memecoin season shows no signs of slowing down amid the ongoing crypto market volatility. The latest sensation is Book of Meme (BOME), which boasts a $600 million market cap three days after launching.
• Crypto Retraces This Week’s Gains as Traders Take Profits Bitcoin retraced by 4.7%, erasing its weekly gain after soaring to an all-time high of $72,000 earlier this week.
• Axie Infinity’s Ronin Chain Sees Renaissance As Gamers Return Ronin is experiencing a resurgence as the Web3 gaming sector heats up again amid updates to Axie Infinity, an expanding ecosystem of non-Axie games, and the FTX estate’s sizable RON sales coming to an end.
• AI Token NetMind Tanks After Early Miner Suffers Hack The AI token NetMind plummeted earlier today after a wallet belonging to an early-stage miner offloaded large amounts of NMT after suffering an exploit. NMT plummeted as much as 75% before closing the day with a loss of 35%.
• Transaction Fees On Layer 2 Plummet Post Dencun Fees across leading Layer 2s supporting EIP-4844 have fallen by between 50% and 98% following Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun upgrade.
• Zerion Announces L2 Subsidizing Transaction Fees Zerion, a web3 smart account provider, announced plans to launch a Layer 2 network that won’t charge transaction fees to users. The team hopes to generate revenue by onboarding new users to its wallet despite subsidizing fees.

Thursday

• Beyond Blobs: Diving Into Dencun’s Overlooked Upgrades In addition to EIP-4844, Dencun also introduced significant upgrades bolstering block space efficiency, user security, and network validation.
• Thetanuts Finance Launches Leveraged Liquid Restaking Thetanuts, an on-chain options protocol, teamed up with Pendle to integrate its PT-eETH tokens into its lending market
• EtherFi Expedites Roadmap, Will Launch Token In Coming Days EtherFi, the leading liquid restaking protocol, has moved its token generation one month ahead of schedule, with Binance announcing plans to list the token on March 18.

Wednesday

• Ethereum Activates Dencun Upgrade, Ushering New Era For Layer 2 Scalability Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun hard fork is now complete, significantly bolstering the scalability of its booming Layer 2 ecosystem.
• DogWifHat Community Raises $690K To Put Meme On Vegas Sphere The community of booming Solana memecoin, Dogwifhat, contributed $691,000 toward displaying the token’s logo on the Las Vegas Sphere for one week.
• Aevo Airdrop Leaves Some Farmers Fuming as Token Debuts at $3B Valuation Aevo distributed $95 million worth of its freshly launched native token to early adopters, but some recipients are unhappy about coughing up Ethereum mainnet fees to claim and trade the token.
• Tokenized Real Estate Project PropyKeys Announces Public Launch PropyKeys, a tokenized real estate project allowing users to mint digital addresses corresponding to physical properties, opened its figurative doors to the public.
• MakerDAO To Commence Endgame Overhaul This Summer Rune Christensen, MakerDAO’s co-founder, wants the project to begin embarking upon its ambitious “Endgame” overhaul in the coming months.

Tuesday

• Thorchain Thunders Back As Trading Volumes Hit All-time Highs RUNE is up 70% in the past week, while the cross-chain liquidity protocol’s TVL crossed $500 million.
• Grayscale Files Application For Mini Bitcoin ETF If approved, Grayscale would seed the fund with GBTC — shares in its recently converted spot Bitcoin ETF.
• Starknet To Roll Out Suite Of Fee-Saving Measures Alongside Dencun Starknet will begin rolling out a series of upgrades expected the double the fee savings realized through Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade. Starknet will begin subsidizing fees to their projected levels once the upgrades have all been deployed.

Monday

• Bitcoin Goes Into Price Discovery, Skyrockets Past $72,000 BTC surged 3.6% to $72,211 in 24 hours on Monday, marking yet another record high for the largest crypto asset.
• Uniswap Governance Rejects Proposal Enabling DAO To Make Fee Changes Dissenting voters cited the threats of governance attacks and risks resulting from possible frequent changes to its codebase in voting against the proposal.
• Starknet Foundation Creates Gaming Committee With $120M Budget The Starknet Foundation allocated 50 million STRK tokens to the new committee, with the group tasked with incentivizing both developers and gamers to onboard to the network.
• AI Tokens Outperform As Crypto Markets Continue To Post New Highs The combined capitalization of AI tokens is up more than 800% in four months, currently sitting at $28.5 billion.
• MakerDAO Hikes Fees More Than 140% To Prevent ‘DAI Demand Shock’ DAI stability fees were raised from between 6.41% and 7.18% to between 15% and 17.25% after its peg stability module dropped $320 million. The DAI Savings Rate was also upped from 5% to 15% in a bid to incentivize long-term DAI holding.
• Wyoming’s New DAO Act Gets ‘Two Thumbs Up’ Prominent players from across the web3 industry are supporting a new bill in Wyoming that recognizes DAOs as Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Associations (DUNAs).