Oct 25th, 2022: Weekly Web3 Newsletter by Sujith Godavarthi

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This Week in Web3

Let’s begin the show…

1. DeGods Royalties = 0%

One of the most famous Solana NFT collections, DeGods updated their royalties from 9.99% to 0%. Tweet.

Here is what Frank has to say about that. This move got an equal amount of love and backlash from the web3 community. Anyways, what do you think?

2. Bitcoin Mining Difficulty hits ATH

Bitcoin mining difficulty hit a new all-time high of 35.6 trillion (these are the number of guesses miners have to do with their machines to earn the right to add the next block of transactions to the chain) on Monday.

Source: Decrypt

3. Finally ETH Turned Deflationary..

ETH finally turned deflationary and all thanks to XEN Crypto.

Many expected that $ETH will turn deflationary (the total supply of $ETH will be reduced because of issuance reduction by 90% and burnt gas fee) post-merge. But that didn’t happen until before last week. As of October 10th, $ETH total supply decreased by 0.02% in the past 7 days.

Source: [Tweet]

4. Google loves Web3?

Remember when google added the merge countdown?

Now, crypto addresses are searchable on Google. You can search your wallet address on Google to see the balance. Note: Searching on google doesn’t increase the funds in your wallet.

That’s not it! Google to allow some customers to pay for cloud services with crypto early next year via Coinbase.

5. Gary is Back!

Gary Gensler (Chairperson of SEC) is back, but not with Kim Kardashian this time. Yuga Labs it is. The creators of the BAYC collection and the buyer of the CryptoPunks Collection face SEC investigation over unregistered offerings.

6. Mango Market Hack

Solana Defi trading protocol, Mango Markets was hacked for $100+ million. The hacker manipulated the price of the MNGO token draining all of Mango’s liquidity and leaving the protocol with $100M+ in bad debt. Here is a thread on that.

That’s not it. As per a tweet, the hacker is trying to blackmail governance into awarding him/her $70M of the $116M stolen as a “bug bounty” if they return the stolen funds, along with “dropping any criminal investigation pursuits or freezing of funds.”

Update: The hacker returned $67M

7. Mark Got Legs!

Meta’s Horizon avatars will be getting legs. Sometime later next year, Meta will let you add legs to your avatars on VR, which were previously only a floating torso.

Source: Tweet

8. Kanye With Satoshi Hat

Kanye West supports Satoshi!!

Kanye, the hiphop icon, businessman, and a past intern of mine was spotted wearing a hat with Satoshi Nakamoto written on it.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. Now, before making that appearance, his corporate bank account was shut down by JP Morgan Chase. Is Ye (that’s how every one is calling him now) going non-custodial?

9. 1.8 Billion Freaking Dollars

According a report by Galaxy Digital, NFT Creators on the Ethereum Blockchain have received over $1.8B in royalties.

Another interesting find from the report is that, the average royalty percentage paid out to creators on OpenSea, the platform that has paid out the most royalties to creators by far, has doubled from 3% to 6% over the past year.

Source: DailyHODL

10. Reddit NFTs

Do you know that Reddit secretly onboarded more users to NFTs than Opensea. Over 3 million people have created a wallet through reddit VS 2.3 million people that have ever interacted with Opensea.

What are these Reddit NFTs?

Reddit tricking users to get into NFTs, without them even realizing it is such a chad move! (Reddit calls them Collectible Avatars, not NFTs and users paid with their credit cards to buy these avatars)

Quick Bites

Binance delists multiple Helium (HNT) token pairs.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon tells CNBC the Federal Reserve will “push the US into a recession 6-9 months from now”.
Police Complaints(FIR) on blockchain powered by Polygon.
America’s Oldest Bank, BNY Mellon, rolls out crypto services and will allow investors to hold crypto.
OpenSea adds support for Avalanche NFTs. It now supports NFTs on 7 different blockchains.
TempleDAO was hacked for $2.3m, Rabby Swap was hacked for $200k, and Paraswap was also hacked.
On October 9, OpenSea recorded $8.4M in daily volume, a number that marked a 15-month low.
Uniswap raised $165M in Series B funding.
Azuki partnered with Chiru Labs to sell 8 NFT-backed skateboards for $2.5m.
El Salvador has lost around $60 million on its bitcoin bet one year into a nationwide crypto experiment. On the other side, the tourism is up 40%+.
zkEVM public testnet is here! One step towards Ethereum scaling.
Bloomberg Economics projects a 100% chance of a US recession over the next 12-months.
Formula One has filed 8 trademarks for “F1”.
As per Messari, Avalanche’s total revenue dropped by 94.1% in Q3 of 2022.
U.S Metamask users can now buy crypto directly from their bank accounts.
“We are working on turning Bitcoin and crypto into an everyday way to pay” – Mastercard
Binance launches $500M lending pool to support bitcoin miners during market downturn.
Samsung will utilize blockchain technology (Knox Matrix is what they are calling it, the product) to upgrade security protocols for all of its smart devices.
Steve Aoki says he has made more money from NFTs last year than he made from a decade of music royalties.
Former MEP Nigel Farage thinks Bitcoin is the ultimate freedom as it can give people control over finance, making it untouchable by the governments.
Due to the latest sanctions by the European Union, crypto wallet provider blockchain.com ceased to provide services to Russian Nationals.
US investigates Three Arrows Capital, the bankrupt crypto hedge fund.
Ethereum number of addresses holding 1+ ETH hit an ATH.
A house sold for $175k as an NFT. Owning the house gives you ownership to the actual house.
Azuki introduced a physical backed token (PBT), an open-source standard that ties a digital token to a physical item. The token will allow decentralized authentication and tracking of the ownership of physical items.
Since The Merge, Ethereum has added around 90,000 new unique addresses daily (from Sep 15 – Oct 14).
On October 18th, a Bitcoin whale transferred a total of 47,848 $BTC ($935M). Moving 100s of millions on the blockchain. Another fun fact about this whale: His/her average cost of holding $BTC is $11,279.
Ethereum number of addresses sending to exchanges just hit a 2 year low.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says there is a good chance of a recession. And Jeff Bezos seems to agree with that. We are gonna get rekt?
UK inflation reaches 10.1%, the highest it’s seen in 40 years.
PolkaDOT founder Gavin Wood steps down as CEO.
77% of Salvadorans Want Nayib Bukele to Stop Buying Bitcoin.
Nigeria is the world leader in Google searches for “how to buy bitcoin”

Numbers Of The Week

12,000

That’s the number of Brazilian companies that declared crypto holdings in August. The largest amount ever recorded. [Forbes India]

$29M

That’s the amount Crypto exchange Bittrex has to pay as a penalty to U.S. Treasury Department. [Reuters]

$718M

The amount that has been stolen from DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks, a record month (October) in 2022. [Tweet]

-42.5%

That’s how much my portfolio is down.

44

Of the top 100 companies based on their market cap, 44 are actively integrating blockchain technology. [Tweet]

Interesting Tweets

People are overestimating how important virtual reality will be to the metaverse I think. [punk6529]
What a day. Google is accepting crypto. CNN rugged. The SEC is probing cartoon images of apes. Meta announced legs. SushiSwap price begins to recover after reports of their founder having inappropriate relations with a horse. Never a dull moment in Web3. [rpnickson]
Criticism of blockchains : “Imaginary use cases”. Ans: Blockchains are (mostly) NOT solving any new problems, they improve how we have solved those problems previously. Money, finance, assets et al are not new problems being solved, they are just being solved better. [sandeepnailwal]
Decentralization is the point. If we sacrifice DeFi for legislation, we’re throwing away the opportunity. [RepTomEmmer]
lizard brain take. reddit NFTs prove everyone loves being an insider to a new thing that gives them status and makes money. ppl don’t actually hate NFTs or crypto they hate that people who aren’t them get status and wealth from it because they think they deserve it more. [Melt_Dem]
Cryptocurrency is for everyone. For your barista, accountant, driver & lawyer. For gamers, collectors, artists & scientists. It can be cute or serious, light or dark; it can be what you want it to be. Economics touches all aspects of life, encompassing all of our hopes & dreams. [Justin_Bons]

Interesting Reads

Do You Know?

In 2009, a Norwegian guy named Kristoffer Koch bought 5000+ Bitcoins for 27$.

Those Bitcoins are now worth $67M. Of course, he sold some of them for a profit in 2013 and probably have been HODLing some, so…

“I didn’t sell everything. I still have a foot in it, so it’s still exciting to follow all the innovation that’s still going on in Bitcoin. It’s infrastructure. It’s like watching the internet in the 1990s, trying to explain to your mother why this is important.”

Meme Of The Week 😂

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and always do your own research.