🦭Sappy Seals and Other NFT Communities Band Together in ‘Pixelverse’ and Take on Giants

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today:

News

• Cosmos Connects to Ethereum Via the Osmosis DEX
• New Entrants Follow Compound’s Lead to Offer Fiat Savers Juicier Yields
• Aave Cranks Up Institutional Play With Launch on Layer 2 Networks
• POAP Raises $10M for NFTs Recording Celebrations and Events
• Multichain Recovers Some Stolen ETH After Hit by $1.9M Exploit

Defiant Feature

• Sappy Seals and Other NFT Communities Band Together in ‘Pixelverse’ and Take on Giants

Podcast

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

Video

• First Look: Get Paid to be a Loser with Dopex Rebates

Links

• Gemini acquires crypto trading platform in push to offer prime services: The Block
• Google Pay hires PayPal exec to head up crypto payments push: CoinTelegraph
• Liquidity Mining Is Dead. What Comes Next?: CoinDesk
• Unlocking Cross-Chain Smart Contract Innovation With CCIP: Chainlink
• With #Cardano now entering the Basho optimization phase, ongoing enhancements to the core node will perform a key role: Cardano
• Today on After Dinner Mints we have @0xRudi and @ClaytonLowery joining us to talk about everyone's favorite subject, taxes!

Trending in The Defiant

• Cosmos Connects to Ethereum Via the Osmosis DEX
• Curve Boosts Layer 2s with Launch on Optimism
• Solana Money Market Solend Offers Developers Incentives to Build on It

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Defiant Feature

🦭Sappy Seals and Other NFT Communities Band Together in ‘Pixelverse’ and Take on Giants

POSSESSIVE We very seldom see collaborations across websites on the normal internet, where different companies are extremely possessive of their visitors. Attention is the currency of the web, and no one gives it away.

IDEALISTIC Perhaps it’s just the idealistic early days of web3, but on Wednesday night multiple leaders of different NFT products with dreams of metaverse collaboration came together on a Twitter Spaces discussion. These teams have joined together under the banner of the project that the Sappy Seals NFT founders are leading. It’s called the Pixelverse, and it is a metaverse for many projects.

PIXELVERSE Unveiled in November, the Pixelverse is a 2D metaverse where different NFT communities interact, create their own worlds, and also enable visits to each other’s worlds seamlessly. Communities joined the call because they have committed to be part of the Pixelverse, and these included the Sappy Seals, BearX, Winter Bears, Axolittles, Chubbicorns, WeAre24Px and Caked Apes. Other communities have also already committed to join (as many as 15), but there has not been a single complete list of the founding communities published so far.

Sappy Seal #9606

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Ethereum Ecosystem

🌌 Cosmos Connects to Ethereum Via the Osmosis DEX

NEWS Ethereum is now connected to the Cosmos network, courtesy of the Osmosis decentralized exchange and the Gravity Bridge.

BRIDGE “The Gravity Bridge marks a major milestone in the interchain vision of Cosmos as we welcome one of the foremost blockchain platforms into the Internet of Blockchains,” said Sunny Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Osmosis Labs, said in a statement released Jan. 19.

PROTOCOL According to Cosmos Cap, the whole ecosystem of interconnected blockchains that can be readily connected through Cosmos’s interblockchain protocol (IBC), has a market capitalization of $163B combined, including chains like Cosmos itself, Crypto.com, Thorchain and Terra.

BOON Direct access to the Ethereum blockchain is likely to be a major boon for many of these markets. At $378B in market capitalization, there’s a lot of value that can now easily move to Cosmos. Osmosis provides much less expensive trades than DEXes on Ethereum, making it easy for investors from Ethereum to come to Cosmos and try out its opportunities.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DeFi Savings

🏦 New Entrants Follow Compound’s Lead to Offer Fiat Savers Juicier Yields

PURCHASING POWER In personal finance, there’s nothing more depressing than the savings account. It has always been the least glamorous, most conservative place to stick money. But once upon a time it did something for your financial health. In recent years, it’s been a slow way to lose ground. he average savings account rate is 0.06%, according to Bankrate. That might as well just be zero. In fact, in a time of high inflation (like now), it’s worse than that — you’re losing purchasing power by leaving cash in savings accounts.

HACKED Anyone in decentralized finance (DeFi) knows that higher rates can be attained through its various opportunities, but of course those things are riskier because smart contracts get hacked, the market is small enough for external events to have serious consequences and regulators loom. Even worse, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get there. That’s why many companies, starting with Compound Labs, have been building ways for people to access DeFi returns without an Ethereum Wallet.

DEPOSITS The broad idea is simple: set up a relationship with a company that has clearance to touch people’s bank accounts, allow people to deposit their fiat into a high yield savings account, the DeFi partner converts all those deposits en masse into crypto (usually a stablecoin like USDC or DAI) and then invests all that somewhere in DeFi.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Layer 2s

⚙️ Aave Cranks Up Institutional Play With Launch on Layer 2 Networks

NEWS Aave’s institutional deployment, Aave Arc, will launch on leading Layer 2 rollup networks Optimism and Arbitrum after receiving resounding support in a governance snapshot.

SO WHAT Until now, much of the narrative surrounding L2s has focused on unburdening retail DeFi users from the soaring fees associated with transacting on Ethereum’s mainnet. But Aave believes the improved performance and scalability offered by Layer 2 could also prove vital to onboarding institutions to decentralized finance.

DEPLOYMENT Governance proposals supporting the L2 deployments of Aave’s v3 iteration have received widespread support from the protocol’s community. The snapshots on Jan. 18 showed that 583,000 or 99.99% of voters support Arc on Arbitrum, and 431,000 or 100% back its deployment on Optimism.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

NFT Fundraising

🎉 POAP Raises $10M for NFTs Recording Celebrations and Events

FUNDING POAP Inc., the company behind the Proof-of-Attendance Protocol, has closed a $10M funding round featuring participation from Delphi Digital.

COMMUNITIES While 2021 saw NFTs explode in popularity, much of the sector remains characterized by the speculative bubble surrounding cartoon social media avatars. POAP hopes to change this by showing NFTs can be a tool to unite and organize communities, commemorate events, and celebrate achievements.

VENTURE FIRMS The raise was co-led by Archetype and Sapphire Sport, also featuring participation from crypto-focused ventures firms Delphi Digital and Libertus Capital. POAP announced the round on Jan 19.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Exploits

😬 Multichain Recovers Some Stolen ETH After Hit by $1.9M Exploit

NEWS Multichain, the cross-chain bridge formerly known as Anyswap, has suffered a seven-digit exploit, the project’s team reported on Jan. 18.

STOLEN FUNDS The team further tweeted on Jan 20 that 602.7 ETH (roughly $1.9M) has been stolen, with the damages falling after about 259 ETH were returned by a white-hat hacker. The sum of stolen funds has increased from 445 ETH two days ago, despite the team’s efforts to notify users of the vulnerability.

SCALABLE FUTURE While many pundits believe a multi-chain dapp ecosystem holds the key to unlocking a scalable future for crypto and decentralized finance, the complexity of cross-chain applications has proved vulnerable to hackers so far. Multichain suffered a separate exploit worth $8M in July, and cross-chain DEX THORChain has been hacked multiple times since launching last year.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Sponsored Post

Former Merrill Lynch CFO joins the first Decentralized ETF as Advisor

The Decentralized ETF, an ERC-20 based exchange-traded fund established to simplify and enable investors broad exposure to the crypto market.

The D-ETF is completely self-operating by a DAO, which automatically executes the successfully voted proposals. Token holders can suggest token swaps, and participate in voting in token proposals.

Besides being a price speculative asset, the D-ETF protocol offers a 1.5% accumulating yield to token holders, coming from all daily transaction volume. Another 1.5% is added to a treasury to purchase more intrinsic value. These percentages are generated from transaction fees, incentivizing token holders to stay in the protocol and generating passive yields without locking up their tokens.

The D-ETF protocol has already started to add intrinsic value, with familiar tokens such as WOO Network, Fantom, Wrapped Luna, Chainlink, Wrapped Bitcoin, and ThorChain.

The D-ETF team has recently onboarded former Merrill Lynch CFO Peter Olden to assist the team with reaching better FIAT on-ramp opportunities via traditional fund structures to onboard institutional clients.

The D-ETF has not officially launched yet, but their tokens can be purchased pre-IDO on their website.

The Tube

📺 First Look: Get Paid to be a Loser with Dopex Rebates

Links

🔗 Gemini acquires crypto trading platform in push to offer prime services: The Block

Crypto exchange Gemini continues to put to work its war-chest of capital, acquiring trading platform Omniex to offer more institutional services to its clientele.

🔗 Google Pay hires PayPal exec to head up crypto payments push: CoinTelegraph

Google has hired a former PayPal executive to help bolster Google Pay, with plans to expand into the crypto space.

🔗 Liquidity Mining Is Dead. What Comes Next?: CoinDesk

Liquidity mining is dead, and trying to figure out the best way to replace it is the focus of one of crypto’s hottest subsectors.

🔗 Unlocking Cross-Chain Smart Contract Innovation With CCIP: Chainlink

CCIP is the application of Chainlink’s highly secure consensus mechanism—that helps secure over $75 billion and has operated successfully for multiple years—to the problem of cross-chain communications.

Input Output @InputOutputHKWith #Cardano now entering the Basho optimization phase, ongoing enhancements to the core node will perform a key role. We’ve packed node v1.33.0 full of new features & improvements, upping Cardano’s expressiveness & the chain’s ability to do more

bit.lyThe beating heart of a fast-growing network - IOHK BlogAt the core of the Cardano network lies the node. Here’s how this integral technology will play its part as we scale Cardano during 20222:16 PM ∙ Jan 19, 20222,264Likes495Retweets

Art Blocks @artblocks_ioToday on After Dinner Mints we have @0xRudi and @ClaytonLowery joining us to talk about everyone's favorite subject, taxes! Join us for a DAYTIME discussion on our weekly livestream show that kicks off at 11am PT/2pm ET:

youtu.beEpisode 33: Art Blocks After Dinner Mints w/ Andrew RudnickAfter Dinner Mints - Episode 33 - 22.01.19Interview with Andrew Rudnick & Clayton LoweryArt Blocks website: www.artblocks.ioJoin us on discord: discord.gg/ar...2:30 PM ∙ Jan 19, 202229Likes5Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• Cosmos Connects to Ethereum Via the Osmosis DEXEthereum is now connected to the Cosmos network, courtesy of the Osmosis decentralized exchange and the Gravity Bridge.
• Curve Boosts Layer 2s with Launch on OptimismCurve, a leading decentralized exchange specializing in stablecoin swaps, has launched on Layer 2 rollup network Optimism.
• Solana Money Market Solend Offers Developers Incentives to Build on ItSolend, a money market on the Solana blockchain, announced today that it will share proceeds from loan origination fees with the developers of applications that drive loans on the platform.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr)