25 August 2023
The Weekly Market Highlights is an initiative from the Binance Research team to round up the week, summarizing key market events and views from the team.
🔎 Macro/TradFi
U.S. 30-year mortgage rates soared to the highest level since December 2000, touching 7.31% this week. This has driven U.S. mortgage applications lower, dropping to an almost three-decade low, as the residential real estate market reals from the spike in borrowing costs.
A group of developing nations known as BRICS currently comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is expected to grow in size after inviting six new countries to join. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the UAE and Ethiopia, are set to join BRICS next year.
🔎 Crypto
L1/L2:
Base’s transaction per second (“TPS”) reached a new high of 15.88 this week, surpassing Ethereum, Arbitrum, OP, and other L2s. This has largely been driven by activity on social application Friend.tech.
Coinbase has released a plan to decentralize the Base network, focusing on multiple technical updates such as implementing fault proofs and using diverse client software to ensure no single entity has control.
DeFi:
Total value locked in restaking protocol, EigenLayer, has tripled from US$78M to more than US$240M after it raised its liquid restaking cap to 100K ETH, signaling continued demand. It has also launched an NFT collection called Eigen Worlds, which enables “community members to mint their own names and visual emblems in the EigenLayer ecosystem.”
Decentralized exchange PancakeSwap has launched on Ethereum Layer 2 Linea network, as it continues its multichain expansion.
Decentralized exchange Balancer identified a critical vulnerability in certain liquidity pools, leading to the execution of emergency mitigation procedures to secure a majority of TVL. Some funds remain at risk and users are advised to withdraw from affected pools.
NFTs:
OpenSea Pro will impose a 0.5% platform fee to all OpenSea listings and offers created on OpenSea Pro starting August 31.
NFT marketplace, Rarible, reaffirmed its commitment to supporting royalties. This follows OpenSea’s announcement last week that they will move to optional creator fees. Rarible further stated that they will no longer aggregate orders from OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2.
Stablecoins:
Circle, the organization behind USDC, has announced that they will be launching the stablecoin on 6 new blockchains. This includes Polygon PoS, Base, Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism and Cosmos.
Others:
Social application friend.tech has generated over US$5.5M in fees over the past seven days, ranking it as one of the top five projects in fees collected, and surpassing numerous other projects.
Solana Pay has integrated with e-commerce giant Shopify, allowing users to pay with USDC.
Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol, is migrating from Ethereum to the OP Mainnet Layer 2 network.
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About Binance Research: Binance Research is the research arm of Binance, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange. The team is committed to delivering objective, independent, and comprehensive analysis and aims to be the thought leader in the crypto space. Our analysts publish insightful thought pieces regularly on topics related but not limited to, the crypto ecosystem, blockchain technologies, and the latest market themes.
General Disclosure: This material is prepared by Binance Research and is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast or investment advice, and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities, cryptocurrencies or to adopt any investment strategy. The use of terminology and the views expressed are intended to promote understanding and the responsible development of the sector and should not be interpreted as definitive legal views or those of Binance. The opinions expressed are as of the date shown above and are the opinions of the writer, they may change as subsequent conditions vary. The information and opinions contained in this material are derived from proprietary and non-proprietary sources deemed by Binance Research to be reliable, are not necessarily all-inclusive and are not guaranteed as to accuracy. As such, no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given and no responsibility arising in any other way for errors and omissions (including responsibility to any person by reason of negligence) is accepted by Binance. This material may contain ’forward looking’ information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections and forecasts. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Reliance upon information in this material is at the sole discretion of the reader. This material is intended for information purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell in any securities, cryptocurrencies or any investment strategy nor shall any securities or cryptocurrency be offered or sold to any person in any jurisdiction in which an offer, solicitation, purchase or sale would be unlawful under the laws of such jurisdiction. Investment involves risks.
