What I’m Watching by Lark
The markets still feel stuck in the doldrums with fears around the FED and a coming correction in the equity markets weighing heavy on crypto investors. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that there are no opportunities in this market! Because we have seen many coins performing well recently and new opportunities are popping up all of the time!
The slow rise of competition to Open Sea is under way. Open Sea while being the OG of NFT markets has left a sour taste in the mouth of many frequent users with frequent site outages, non-existent customer service, slow roll out of new features, centralization and censorship issues, among a host of other problems that have led to calls for better competitors. While we already do have some good competitors like Rarible and Super Rare none of them have managed to attract the kind of user base that Open Sea has. We are starting to see the rise of centralized exchange competitors which I believe will really put the pressure on Open Sea. FTX, Coinbase, Binance, and basically every other top exchange is launching or has launched an NFT market place. These services should prove to be quite popular in the long run since people won’t have to leave Coinbase to get everything they want. It will be a one stop shop experience.
We have also seen a lot of niche market places popping up like Ethernity which only lists vetted exclusive NFTs. Or Quidd which works with a big range of brands on their NFTs. But many in the market seem to want a decentralized Ebay of NFTs, basically Open Sea, but better. Which is where we see new initiatives like Looks Rare popping up, which airdropped 12% of their supply to Open Sea users. In total 75% of the tokens will be given to users via staking and incentives. The fees generated on the platform will go to token holders, whereas fees generated on Open Sea go to VCs. Volumes have spiked on Looks Rare with lots of wash trading happening, but still it has sparked interest amongst the disaffected Open Sea user base. Will a platform like this really be able to compete with Open Sea? Well, as we have seen many many times, it is hard to unseat an incumbent, even if that incumbent has problems. People like to stay with what is familiar. But one thing I am certain of is that I welcome more competition in the NFT space. Oh and the staking rates are straight fire!!!
In other news the general hype around Fantom has really been taking off! The ecosystem on Fantom has absolutely been exploding! The entire Fantom ecosystem is up over 600% this week as we see users piling in chasing the new coming release by Andre Cronje which will be dropped to users of the top Fantom dapps. However it is not just Fantom that has been picking up steam. We are seeing an explosion of interest in ecosystem coins across the board for layer one coins. Early buyers are doing very well with previously obscure coins like Platypus doing 10X in a week.
You can check Coingecko’s Categories Page for a non-exhaustive list of different ecosystems and the coins in them. We are still so early that you can be early too. Many of these blockchains’ tokens will undergo a similar cycle to what we have seen with the most prominent chains now. Getting involved farming the decentralized exchanges of a new chain like Near, Fantom, or Oasis early on or getting involved in different tokens on those chains by just buying them could work out very well in the long run. Assuming that those chains pick up and retain users. That of course is the real challenge to overcome, and not all chains will make it long term. The big ecosystem incentive funds are great, but guerilla capital for the most part will move on when those incentives end, meaning that the teams had better build something good during that time.
Defi updates
- Yearn Finance on Fantom has some very juicy rates! Right from majors like Bitcoin, to stablecoins, and defi staples like Curve. Check it out HERE
- Solana based Solend has some sweet rates for UST now. HERE
- If you want to get involved in Looks Rare, the news NFT marketplace, then they have great farming and single sided staking rates HERE *** please note that this platform has not been audited
- Avalanche’s Platypus Finance has some good stablecoin rates with boosters for those staking the Platypus token. HERE
- Solaflare is an early mover in the Moonbeam space with an active farm now open with good rates HERE. Also native Moonbeam DEX Demodyfi is launching their liquidity mining program “soon”. HERE
- There is going to be a big shake up in the token model for Wonderland’s Time. HERE
- GRO has some interesting stablecoin rates in their labs on Avalanche. HERE
Top Trending Coins This Week by Rebecca
Here are my key takeaways from the trends this week, and whilst it’s been another volatile week in the market, there’s still plenty of development happening behind the scenes.
1 – Railgun is a privacy token built on Ethereum that has this week been teasing the upcoming announcement of a new partnership. They are also working on a development update to both the web and mobile apps.
2 – Hector DAO is a rebase project on Fantom that’s announced they’ll receive the Fantom Foundation Incentives Grant from February, totalling $480K a month and $5.75M in total.
3 – Smooth Love Potion is an ERC-20 token earned by playing Axie Infinity. Axie Infinity have announced a major update coming within a few months and the development team is also working on supporting in-game trading of items.
4 – Wonderland (TIME) is a rebase coin that’s trending for all the wrong reasons after price falls over 40% in the last week.
5 – Olympus DAO is a community-owned decentralized financial reserve through its protected treasury. Price has tanked this week as a whale triggered a cascade of liquidations leading to a 44% crash in OHM’s price within an hour.
6 – Telos is an L1 smart contracts blockchain that’s shared their 2022 roadmap this week. It includes a dApp incentive program, EVM 2.0 and the launch of Satoshi tokens (SATs).
7 – Fantom is a L1 blockchain for DeFi, that’s continuing to perform well due to its rapidly expanding ecosystem. FTX and Binance US now supports Fantom mainnet and DEX SpookySwap has reached $1.8 billion in total valued locked (TVL).
8 – Insure DeFi is an insurance play that’s featuring in a Q&A session this week with Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) to discuss nano world and nano tech.
9 – Cardano has flipped Solana this week to become the fifth-largest crypto by market cap, ahead of the release of their first DEX mainnet launch, SundaeSwap, on 20 January. Charles Hoskinson has been active on Twitter to promote the launch.
10 – Crypto.com coin (CRO) is the utility token for the crypto exchange. Crypto.com have announced a multi-year partnership with Australia’s Football League in a $25M deal. They have also listed Moonbeam (GLMR), CVX and IDEX, and the first UFC NFT drop of the year.
11 – Binance Coin (BNB), is the utility token for the crypto exchange. Binance completed its 18th quarterly BNB burn this week, burning $795M USD or 1.6M BNB. They also supported the Polygon EIP-1559 upgrade this week and completed the wXRP integration.
12 – LooksRare is a new NFT marketplace launched on 10 January to rival OpenSea, that has already broken sales records since launch. It’s surpassed $1.8 billion in sales compared to OpenSea’s $965 million for the week.
13 – Moonbeam has finally gone live on Polkadot, to become the first fully operational parachain on the network. Within 24 hours of the network going live, StellaSwap launches as the first DEX on Moonbeam with its native token STELLA.
14 – Baby Doge Coin is a meme coin that hit a new all-time high this week, with its fast-growing community campaigning for a Binance listing. It surpassed Ethereum to become the most traded token among the richest 1000 BSC wallets on 10 January.
15 – Polygon (MATIC), an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution has launched its EIP-1559 upgrade this week, including an annual burn initiated on 0.27% of its total MATIC supply.
Final Notes
Thank you so much for your support, and I truly hope that today’s issue will give you insights needed to help you master your wealth.
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See you next time!
Lark and the Wealth Mastery Team
Legal Disclaimer
TCL Publishing ltd (director Lark Davis, owner of Wealth Mastery) is not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is TCL Publishing registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. TCL Publishing is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.
