Compiled by: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
1. What important events have occurred in the past 7 days?
1. The US government releases a roadmap to mitigate cryptocurrency risks
On January 27, local time, the White House official website released the "Roadmap for Mitigating Cryptocurrency Risks". The government recognized the improvement of payment efficiency, cost, and security of encryption technology. The first framework has been formulated, including separating risky digital assets from the banking system, announcing the priorities for digital asset research and development in the coming months, and Congress will expand the power of regulators, strengthen transparency and disclosure requirements for cryptocurrency companies, and provide funds for strengthening law enforcement capacity building.
2. Aptos price surges, total number of on-chain addresses exceeds 3 million
Aptos token APT has risen rapidly from $6.7 on January 19 to over $20, and is now trading at around $18. According to OKLink multi-chain browser data, the total number of addresses on the Aptos chain currently exceeds 3 million, reaching 3,095,124 in total. The total number of transactions on the Aptos chain has exceeded 77 million, with a TPS of 6.38 transactions per second.
3. FTX discloses a complete list of institutional creditors, including companies such as Apple, Netflix and Coinbase
FTX's financial advisors disclosed a full list of the company's institutional creditors in a court filing. The more than one hundred-page document is listed in alphabetical order and includes publicly traded technology companies such as Apple and WeWork, as well as numerous digital asset companies such as Coinbase, Binance Capital Management, Chainalysis, Yuga Labs, Doodles, and Silvergate Bank. In addition, some of the mentioned corporate instances may be related to payments owed for goods and services by FTX. Pharmacy CVS is listed as one of the exchange's corporate creditors, along with Netflix and Comcast.
4. dYdX postpones the unlocking of $156 million of investors’ tokens from February to December
Decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX has postponed the unlocking of its tokens for investors from February 3 to December 1. dYdX was originally scheduled to release 150 million tokens ($282 million) to investors, community members, and project libraries next month. According to the new schedule, 30% of them will be unlocked on December 1, after which 40% of the total tokens will be unlocked monthly over the next six months, followed by 20% in the next year and 10% in the year after that.
5. Amazon may launch an NFT project focused on games
According to Blockworks, citing sources, Amazon is setting up a digital asset company whose business will involve Layer 1 blockchain, blockchain-based games, and trading platforms, with a focus on blockchain-based games and related NFT applications. Amazon customers will be able to participate in its crypto games and get free NFTs. Sources said the plan is still moving forward and Amazon may make it public in April this year.
6. Xiaohongshu has integrated Conflux Network, allowing users to display Conflux-based NFTs in “R-Space”
Xiaohongshu announced the integration of Conflux Network, allowing users to display NFTs minted on Conflux on their profile pages in the digital collection section called "R-Space". It is reported that this is the first public chain linkage function supported by Xiaohongshu in addition to linkage with private alliance chains.
This move once again strengthens Xiaohongshu's Web3 ambitions. Previously, Xiaohongshu launched a limited edition digital collection of Winter Olympics snowflakes based on Tencent Zhixin Chain, and also participated in the NFT interactive platform Shil.me. Xiaohongshu's R-Space laboratory partner Azuki Chinese community "Azuki Red Bean Garden" also officially settled in Xiaohongshu recently.
7. Following last year’s Spring Festival Gala altcoin DogeKing, the “Shen Teng” concept coin Keng and others are coming again.
Last year at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Shen Teng's words "Doge King" caused a copycat project of the same name to increase 800 times overnight, making headlines on social media. Now that the Spring Festival Gala is approaching, the "Shen Teng" concept coin is coming again. The skit performed by Shen Teng's team in 2023 is called "The Pit". A series of copycat projects named "keng" have emerged, mainly concentrated on the BSC chain. According to ave.ai data, more than 50 projects with the same name as "keng" have been counted.
8. Electric Capital: 80% of wallets’ first transactions in 2022 will be related to NFT, far exceeding DeFi
According to the 2022 Electric Capital Developer Report, 80% of wallet first transactions were related to NFTs in the past year, which is far more than DeFi. In addition, the number of monthly active developers in the NFT field reached 929 in the past year, with a clear growth trend.
9. Adidas established the Web3 studio "/// Studio", which will be responsible for the development and delivery of Web 3.0 activities
According to Adidas' NFT project Indigo Herz on social media, the well-known sports brand Adidas has established the Web3 three-stripe studio "/// Studio" (Three Stripes Studio), and the three stripes represent innovation, collaboration and culture. The studio will be responsible for the development and delivery of all Adidas' global Web 3.0 activities, and is committed to defining and building brand strategies, partnerships, communities, activities and products.
2. Which ecological opportunities should not be missed?
1. Sei, a DeFi public chain based on Cosmos
Sei, a Cosmos-based DeFi Layer 1 blockchain project, has received a total of $70 million in ecosystem funds in just eight months since its inception. Co-founder Jayendra Jog said that since the Terra incident and the bankruptcy of FTX, Sei has begun to see an influx of teams from different ecosystems. Currently, there are more than 100 projects in the ecosystem, and Sei hopes to continue to expand the Asian market because it is optimistic about the technological progress and high usage of cryptocurrencies in the Asian region, as well as the presence of excellent developers.
2. Canto, an EVM public chain based on Cosmos
DeFiLlama data shows that the total TVL of the Canto chain has been showing a rapid growth trend since 2023, with an increase of 20.36% in the past 7 days and 93.53% in the past month. Its TVL has grown from US$66 million at the beginning of the year to US$132 million at present. CoinGecko data shows that the price of Canto has risen by 30% in 24 hours to US$0.386, while the price was only US$0.08 on January 1 this year.
On January 22, Canto announced Contract Secured Revenue (CSR). CSR is a fee-sharing model for the Canto network that enables contract developers to earn revenue by taking a percentage of the transaction fees paid to the network when users interact with the contract.
3. Public chain Injective
On January 25, Injective, a public chain optimized for DeFi, announced the launch of a $150 million ecosystem program to further encourage developers to build new applications on its chain. Well-known institutions across Web3 and traditional finance have joined the program, including Pantera Capital, Kucoin Ventures, Jump Crypto, IDG Capital, Gate Labs, Delphi Labs, Flow Traders, and Kraken Ventures. The Injective Ecosystem Fund is also one of the largest funds in the Cosmos community.
In August last year, Injective gradually became a first-layer blockchain from a decentralized derivatives protocol plan. Since then, projects such as Wormhole and Frontrunner have been integrated into Injective.
4. Public Chain Sui
Sui Network recently launched Sui Testnet Wave 2, which will focus on testing the epoch management, token economics, and equity staking of the Sui network, allowing builders to publish, test, and share their applications on the testnet, and anyone can run a full node. It is reported that Wave 2 will test its token economics epoch management and gas mechanism through two test games, Frenemies and Validator Game.
5. Public blockchain Celo
On January 27, Celo announced the Celo 2.0 roadmap in its official blog. Celo stated that it will deeply align with the Ethereum roadmap; achieve horizontal scalability by making Celo a rollup-friendly chain; make Celo the fastest EVM L1; improve the CELO token economics and reward contributors, and will explore the repurchase and destruction of CELO to optimize its value; provide a top developer experience; and build powerful wallet and application building blocks.
DeFiLlama data shows that the total TVL on the Celo chain has been showing a rapid growth trend since 2023, with an increase of 11.12% in the past 7 days and 70.45% in the past month.
3. These articles are worth reading
1. "Ten thousand words long article: How to divide the four levels of Web3 ecological architecture?"
Web3 has developed to date, and the ecosystem has taken shape. If we abstract the current Web3 ecosystem architecture from a bird's eye view, it can be divided into four layers from bottom to top: blockchain network layer, middleware layer, application layer, and access layer. This article will explain in detail what each layer has.
2. Vitalik’s new book: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses
One of the biggest challenges in the current Ethereum ecosystem is privacy. By default, anything that enters a public blockchain is public, which means not only assets and transaction activity, but also ENS names, POAP, NFTs, and soul-bound tokens. Using a range of Ethereum applications means that much of your activity is open for anyone else to see and analyze.
We need to improve this situation. However, to date, the discussion about improving privacy has primarily centered around one specific use case: privacy-preserving transfers of ETH and major ERC20 tokens. This post will describe the mechanics and use cases of a different class of tools that can improve the state of privacy on Ethereum in many other contexts: the concept of “stealth addresses.”
3. "Wang Feng's New Year's Eve Dialogue with Tim Gong: About Information Sorting, Entropy, and the Future of Web3"
Today, the most talked-about topics around us are AI and Web3. Regardless of whether ChatGPT is overrated or not, how much of the Web3 concept is marketing? A unique atmosphere in the field of Internet technology is emerging, which seems to indicate that the next information age is coming. Tim Gong, a successful VC investor and partner of SIG China in the Web2 era, had a conversation with Element founder Wang Feng on the eve of the Chinese New Year. The two bigwigs had a wonderful exchange on topics such as the development of the Internet, the public chain ecology, and Web3.
4. "Pantera Capital's Letter to Investors: 2022 Review and Future Outlook"
In a letter to investors, Pantera Capital summarized the major events and development trends in the crypto industry in 2022 and made an outlook for the market in the coming year. But most importantly, Pantera Capital used solid data and speculation to give a shot in the arm to the market that was hit hard in 2022 in early 2023. The article mentioned: "We believe this is an excellent time to start a company in the blockchain field. Compared with previous cycles, talents are more educated and more enthusiastic about the industry. In the first half of 2022, $121 billion was raised from the entire VC industry and is waiting to be deployed."
5. "A&T Capital: Looking at the Pain Points and Opportunities of the Cosmos Ecosystem from ATOM 2.0"
Cosmos officially released the ATOM 2.0 white paper in September 2022, which comprehensively reformed Tokenomics. However, due to the community's concerns about inflation and depreciation caused by the massive issuance of ATOM in the early stage planned in the new white paper, Cosmos officially released a revised white paper (v1.2) on October 25, 2022, adjusting the ATOM issuance plan, but it was still strongly opposed by Cosmos founder Jae Kwon.
The ATOM 2.0 proposal ended in a phased failure, but it is of great significance, reflecting the current pain points and trends of Cosmos. Its proposal and rejection are both manifestations of the metabolic vitality and decentralization purpose of the Cosmos ecosystem. This article describes the changes in Cosmos ecological data, analyzes the significance and controversy of the ATOM 2.0 proposal, tries to summarize the current pain points and segmented track opportunities of the Cosmos ecosystem, and lists the current investment logic and financing suggestions of the Cosmos primary market.