SOL's Serum
Good morning. We are kicking off the week with a funding round for a unique DeFi player, further investment in one of Solana's biggest projects, and more!
Bonus Content Coming: I'm targeting early next week the end of the month to have my notes out from Messari's Crypto Theses for 2022. I'll include a link to my notes in this newsletter, however, the full report is definitely worth a read.
Market Update (as of 7:50am ET):
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Top 5:
1. Weekend Update: Bitcoin, Altcoins Rebound Amid Light Trading
Bitcoin prices briefly pushed over the $42,000 mark this weekend before falling back to just slightly under that threshold. Ether slumped to around $3,000 on Saturday before bouncing back to hover around $3,150. Most altcoins in CoinDesk's top 20 market capitalization were up over the weekend, but still down over the last week. Bitcoin trading on centralized exchanges was light, leaving any chance of a stronger recovery uncertain heading into the week.
2. A16z Leads Additional $25M Round for DeFi Credit Protocol Goldfinch
Goldfinch, a decentralized credit protocol, raised $25 million in a Series A extension round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The story sounds a lot like every other round of funding for DeFi protocols, but Goldfinch does things a little differently. The company acts as a marketplace for crypto loans without collateral, and argues that the majority of borrowers in the world can't actually participate in the DeFi ecosystem because of overcollateralization requirements. Over the last year, Goldfinch has doubled active loans in the protocol every two months. The company now has $39 million in loans across 200,000+ borrowers in 18 countries. For more details on the protocol, check out the whitepaper here.
3. PayPal Is Exploring Creating Its Own Stablecoin as Crypto Business Grows
Code in PayPal's iPhone app indicated the company is working on their own, very creatively named, stablecoin product called "PayPal Coin". The code was discovered by developer Steve Moser and initially reported by Bloomberg. The company has been very active the crypto space as of late and confirmed the initial Bloomberg report, saying:
We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators
4. Solana DeFi Major Serum’s ‘Incentive Ecosystem Foundation’ Is Raising $100M
Serum has raised $75 million (of a targeted $100 million) in a new funding round for "The Incentive Ecosystem Foundation". Serum is a decentralized exchange and liquidity infrastructure platform and is one of the largest projects on the Solana blockchain. The Incentive Ecosystem Foundation will manage the Serum Ecosystem Fund and provide contributors to the protocol with salaries and benefits. The foundation will allocation 15% of funds to new projects in the Serum ecosystem, while the remaining 85% will be used for Serum growth initiatives and hiring.
5. My first impressions of web3 - from @moxie
On Friday, Matthew Rosenfeld aka Moxie Marlinspike, laid out his initial thoughts on web3 in a post to his personal blog. Marlinspike is best know as the founder of encrypted messaging service Signal, but despite considering himself a cryptographer admits that he has not been drawn to the crypto industry. The post itself gets a little technical, but I'd like to call out some of my key takeaways:
- People (and companies) do not want to run their own servers. This point will be important, so keep that in mind
- Protocols (decentralized) move much more slowly than platforms (centralized). Ex: Email (a protocol) is still unencrypted, while WhatsApp (a platform) went from unencrypted to end to end encryption in two years
- It is difficult for decentralized applications (dApps) to interact directly with a blockchain via a mobile phone or internet browser. The alternative then is to interact with the blockchain via a node that's running on a server elsewhere
- As we know, people don't want to run their own servers, so companies have emerged that sell API access to ethereum nodes. Almost all dApps utilize one of two companies, Infura or Alchemy, in order to interact with the blockchain
- The APIs aren't using anything to verify the blockchain outputs they receive back from Infura or Alchemy
- web3 is leveraging platforms (centralized) like Infura and Alchemy
- Vitalik Buterin responded to this critique here
Top Sharers of the Crypto Top 5:
1. Jake Y. - Greenville, SC
2. Cameron S. - New York, NY
3. Lauren A. - Nashville, TN
Disclaimer: The information contained in this newsletter shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. I am not an attorney, accountant or financial advisor, nor am I holding myself out to be, and the information provided is not a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.