📈 Weekly Recap: Market Momentum Continues

In this week’s alpha newsletter, our resident DeFi degens walk you through how to earn up to 8.3% APY staking SOL on Marinade Finance.

This week's podcast features a number of interviews we conducted in Romania, during the xDay conference hosted by MultiversX. In this podcast, we will hear from members of the MultiversX team, the Romanian Minister of Digitization, executives from venture capital firms, and the co-founder of Osmosis. Our guests discuss the current state of MultiversX and its transition from Elrond, the state of crypto adoption in Romania, and all the latest upcoming trends and narratives defining the web3 narrative.

Justin Banon is the Co-Founder of Boson Protocol discusses why even Web3 commerce first-movers are headed for disruption and what they can do about it.

Banon argues most of corporations' adoption of crypto isn't truly Web3 and that the majority of these major brands have retained Web2 business models, merely incorporating blockchain technology and, of course, NFTs. Furthermore, almost all implementations of the technology lack the core principles and user benefits intrinsic to authentic Web3.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko talks about the major features of Solana and its most recent developments during a live interview at the Breakpoint conference.

• SNB To Test Tokenized Bond Transactions Using CBDC The Swiss National Bank announced a pilot project issuing a wholesale CBDC via distributed ledger technology. Swiss francs using distributed ledger technology on Six Digital Exchange. Six local banks will support the pilol.
• Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty On All Counts Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and former CEO of FTX and Alameda Research, will face up to 115 years in prison after being found guilty of seven charges including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.

• Crypto Rally Fizzles As ETF Euphoria Fades Crypto markets have given up some ground after rallying sharply to start the week on optimism that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved sooner rather than later. The consolidation comes after Bitcoin hit a 17-month high of $35,900 on Nov. 1
• Aragon Association Dissolves and Returns $115M to ANT Holders The Aragon Association, the legal entity which oversees the Aragon project and DAO, is shutting down. Users holding its ANT token can redeem their assets for $115M worth of ETH — comprising 87% of Aragon’s non-native treasury assets.
• Disney And Square-Backed Games Tap Immutable And Polygon For Ethereum Scaling Immutable said more than a dozen web3 game developers have committed to building on its upcoming Polygon-powered Layer 2 rollup, Immutable zkEVM. The cohort of titles include games backed by Disney China and Alibaba Cloud.
• PayPal Subpoenaed by SEC Over Stablecoin PayPal received a subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission requesting documentation on its PYUSD stablecoin, the payments giant said in a filing to the SEC. PayPal said it is cooperating with the request.
• EigenLayer Launches Voting Contest To Onboard New LSTs EigenLayer, the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol, launched a contest for liquid staking token issuers hoping to secure an integration on the platform. Whitelisted users can vote on one of nine Ethereum LSTs with a supply exceeding 15,000 ETH.
• GBTC Discount Narrows To 23-Month Low On ETF Conversion Hopes The price of GBTC, shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, has tripled this year, outperforming Bitcoin by 50%. The move comes after GBTC was trading at a more than 40% discount compared to BTC, with investors betting the fund’s bid to convert to a spot Bitcoin ETF will soon receive approval.

• Solana's SOL Token Soars to 14-Month High Amid Breakpoint Conference Solana's native token is soaring to an 14-month high as the Layer 1 blockchain's largest conference gets under way. SOL climbed by over 20% to as high as $45.3 Wednesday, the highest level since August 2022.
• Sushi CEO Reviews First Year In Office Jared Grey, the Head Chef of the veteran decentralized exchange Sushi, published a retrospective on his first year leading the project. Grey highlighted the project's administrative overhaul, budget restructuring, and deployment of cross-chain swaps under his oversight.
• Pyth Network Unveils Retrospective Airdrop Pyth Network, a decentralized oracle network, revealed plans for a future airdrop allocating tokens to DeFi users engaging with protocols secured by its service. Users can check for eligibility, but can't yet claim the tokens.
• Hashflow Turns On ‘Fee Switch’, Redistributing 50% Of Revenue To Stakers The Hashflow decentralized exchange launched trading fees alongside a fee-sharing mechanism. HFT stakers will receive 50% of revenue, with 20% of fees supporting the Hashflow Foundation, and 30% funding HFT buy-backs.
• Ethereum Mainnet Reclaims Dominance From Layer 2s Ethereum is reclaiming dominance relative to its Layer 2 ecosystem. According to L2beat, combined Layer 2 throughput is down 32% since peaking at 64.2 transactions per second on Sept. 14, while Ethereum throughput is up 1.6% over the same period.
• Updated U.S. Sanctions Prompts WalletConnect To Block Russian Users WalletConnect, a popular open-source bridge facilitating connections between web3 dApps and cryptocurrency wallets, has blocked Russian users from accessing its service. WalletConnect said the move was in response to updated sanctions guidance from the U.S Treasury Department.

• Gary Gensler Posts Halloween-Tinged Wishes for Bitcoin White Paper Anniversary Gary Gensler, the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, took to the social media network formerly known as Twitter to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Bitcoin Whitepaper. However, Gensler's tweets quickly devolved into thinly veiled threats aimed at the broader web3 industry.
• USDC Issuer Circle is Shutting Down Consumer Accounts Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, is shuttering its consumer accounts, according to a statement made to The Defiant. "Circle is phasing out support for legacy consumer accounts and has notified individual consumers of this decision," Circle said. 
• Observers Suspect Market Manipulation As SUSHI Rallies 20% SUSHI, the governance token of the popular decentralized exchange, has surged 20% today, outperforming broader markets. However, suspicions have arisen about possible market manipulation driving this sudden increase in value.
• Tron Quietly Becomes the Leading Blockchain for Stablecoin Transfers Anecdotal reports from crypto users around the world and research from a major hedge fund indicate Tron now leads the stablecoin sector by user base. While Tron is a centralized blockchain, users in emerging markets are flocking to the network for its low-fee transactions.
• Aave Floats New Plan To Restore GHO Peg On Oct. 31, TokenBrice, a member of Aave’s Liquidity Committee, unveiled a plan to ‘gently nudge’ Aave’s GHO stablecoin back to its peg using actively managed liquidity on Maverick Protocol and other DeFi platforms. GHO has consistently traded below $1 since launching in July.
• Modular Blockchain Celestia Goes Live With Traders Receiving TIA Tokens Celestia, a new blockchain, successfully deployed its mainnet beta on Tuesday. Celestia airdropped 6% of the supply for its TIA token to active users on Ethereum Layer 2s, stakers on Cosmos Hub and Osmosis, and crypto developers.
• Top Avalanche Block Explorer Snowtrace Is Abandoning Etherscan Snowtrace, the popular block explorer for the Avalanche network, announced it will shut down its current Etherscan-powered iteration by the end of November. The team now plans to replace Etherscan’s EaaS with a solution provided by Avascan, an Avalanche-native explorer protocol.
• BTC Bulls On Parade Amid 15th Anniversary of Bitcoin Whitepaper BTC's market dominance is at a 30-month high, coinciding with the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper. The milestone comes after the price of BTC tagged year-to-date highs of $34,500 on Oct. 30.
• Hacker Ransacks $600,000 From Popular Telegram Trading Bot, Unibot Unibot, a popular Telegram trading bot, has been exploited, resulting in user accounts getting exploited. A code bug allowed the attacker to transfer assets from any wallet with active Unibot permissions enabled, leading to a loss of more than $600,000.

• Andreessen Horowitz Plans to Launch a $3.4B Fund, Axios Says Andreessen Horowitz, the largest venture investor in crypto, plans to raise a $3.4B early-stage and seed-stage fund, according to Axios. Fundraising will launch near year-end, with the aim to hold final closes in the first half of 2024.
• Axie Infinity Tokens Lead GameFi Rally GameFi tokens are rallying, with the sector’s market capitalization surging more than 7% in the past 24 hours. Axie Infinity (AXS) is leading the charge with a weekly gain of 28%, while its in-game currency, Smooth Love Potion (SLP), rocketed an impressive 62% for the week.
• Bridging Protocols Advocate For Open Tech Standards And Condemn LayerZero Connext teamed up with other cross-chain bridging protocols to condemn LayerZero for deploying a bridge for stETH without support from the token’s issuer, Lido, last week. The Oct. 27 tweet from Connext criticized LayerZero for deploying an authorized “proprietary representation” of Lido’s stETH token on the Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Scroll networks.