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Onwards and upwards!

Crypto industry progress is chugging along this week, and the competition is heating up. Things are moving especially fast when it comes to stablecoins and prediction markets. 

Coinbase and Citi are working on making stablecoin payments happen, and Circle’s launched Arc’s testnet. 

Separately, the new Binance-backed prediction market Opinion became invite-only after it saw over $208 million in volume. The traffic reportedly crashed its site.

Today we’re looking at the future of AI agents — and how Ethereum could play a part in shaping autonomous economies. 

If we’re heading toward a future where agents handle everything, we’ll need some better ways to find, deploy and share feedback on the best ones.

Together, we’ll approach an inevitable fork in the road that crypto more broadly is also facing: Do we recreate what Wall Street and Big Tech already made to maximize profit, or will we build something more transparent and resilient to censorship? 

Step aside, Hugging Face. You always had a creepy name anyway.

— Kate Irwin

Ethereum’s AI store 

How will we find new AI agents to use in the near future? What could a decentralized, more open AI ecosystem look like? And how will AI agents make payments for us?

ERC-8004, a new Ethereum technical standard first unveiled this summer, aims to be an answer to all that. The standard is being peer-reviewed and its smart contracts were launched on the Ethereum testnet this month. MetaMask AI Lead Marco de Rossi, Ethereum Foundation AI lead Davide Crapis, Google engineer Jordan Ellis, and Coinbase Developer Platform engineering lead Erik Reppel co-created the protocol, which also incorporates feedback and contributions from a slew of other crypto companies and projects.

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ERC-8004 lets builders and users mint AI agents like they’re NFTs and delegate them using those ERC-721 rails. It makes AI agents discoverable, and can hold agent reputation scores onchain. The AI agents can use x402, a new open payment protocol developed by Coinbase. 

Agent developers could ultimately charge for access to their tools and agents, who could be deployed for a range of use cases around user productivity, trading, payments or even reshape consumers’ subscription diets. 

“Maybe it’s early to think about the business model fully, even if x402 is clearly the best monetization source for AI agents, but we should focus a lot on use cases and not just on the infra,” De Rossi told me in an interview.

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The agents themselves aren’t being stored on Ethereum because, as De Rossi explained, running AI agents in such a way is very complicated and would require “a lot of overhead.” 

So it’s not going to be that decentralized. But there’s definitely a middle path that 8004 unlocks for developers between a completely closed ecosystem and something completely open and decentralized. 

In this vision, users or companies host their own AI agents on their own devices or servers. Then, they use the blockchain, via 8004, as an open app store of sorts to share their models with others and receive ratings and feedback. AI agents could even hire each other to complete different tasks.

For this to have broad consumer appeal, AI agent explorers of sorts — pretty frontends with checkout integrations — would have to be built for humans. De Rossi said that roughly half a dozen teams in crypto are already working on making something to this effect a reality.

“The current situation is that you see stuff on the [block] explorer which is totally unusable,” he said. 

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Building something that anyone can use can be a difficult line to walk, though, if various platforms decide to restrict the visibility of certain types of AI agents.

But maybe this will happen in a more organic way if the crypto community is able to, collectively, give agents feedback and therefore shape their reputations. Agents with better reputations could get more visibility, while questionable agents with lower scores fade into the background (but remain accessible). 

“The bad outcome is we have many different silos, like app stores, [and] that’s it,” De Rossi said of the future of AI agent discoverability. “That’s just worse for consumers.” 

“If we want to make this happen in an interoperable way, there are two possibilities, probably. The US government,” De Rossi said with a laugh, “or the infrastructure owned by nobody, which is the blockchain.”

Pushing some vague ideals of whatever “Web3” is supposed to be isn’t going to spur blockchain adoption in the AI industry, De Rossi argued.

“Who cares? The point is, how can we have an infra that is neutral, and this is understandable to everybody. It’s public infrastructure.”

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It’s Monday, and prices are largely up in the past week. 

There’s a lot going on right now: Bitcoin protocol Beyond is enabling the bridging of bitcoin assets to Base, and Zelle is going global by adding stablecoin payment functionality. 

We’ve come so far. The real question is: Are we still early anymore?

— Kate Irwin

BAYC’s next moves

Over three years later, the Apes live on.

At the fifth Apefest over the weekend, there was poker, there was bling, there was a marriage proposal, there was merch, and there was news: Yuga Labs is building an IRL “clubhouse,” developing an animated series, and selling digital avatars on Telegram as part of a deal with Snoop Dogg. 

It’s like 2022 never ended. 

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg “Garga” Solano took the stage at the event to drop the deets about the planned Miami space, which is expected to include a library-inspired room for coworking during the day and a rooftop bar for knocking back whiskeys at night.

In this vision, it’s a dark, moody space with a check-in desk where BAYC NFT holders get access cards to verify their NFT ownership and grant them access to members-only areas of the clubhouse. 

To me, what’s been revealed of the Miami clubhouse aesthetic resembles the look of the West Hollywood Soho House, which also leans into a dark social library feel with some of its seating areas, and has a rooftop garden restaurant with trees and a glass top.

The BAYC NFT collection, which has seen over $3.3 billion in all-time sales, is also apparently getting its own namesake animated series. That’s thanks to a co-production between Yuga Labs and Jeffrey Huang, an entrepreneur who goes by “MachiBigBrother” online and has been tied to a slew of past crypto projects. 

It sounds like news straight out of the NFT bull run years ago — back when The Red Ape Family was a thing and Coinbase announced, and then killed, a BAYC-inspired series of its own. In case you forgot, that year Snoop Dogg and Eminem also tossed their BAYC NFTs into a music video, and Reddit’s co-founder tweeted out this extremely cringe clip promoting a reality show with NFTs as its stars try to “put the FUN in non-fungible.”

For what it’s worth, Snoop Dogg still owns his leopard-print Bored Ape all these years later. In fact, he’s continuing his association with the IP by selling BAYC avatar packs on TON via the new Telegram mini app Mint. 

Snoop previously sold Telegram gifts back in July, netting $12 million in sales across nearly one million assets. Obviously, there’s some cash to be made selling limited edition items on Telegram.

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Mint CEO Jack Booth told me in an interview that all BAYC, MAYC and Otherside NFT holders will be automatically allow-listed for the upcoming Snoop x BAYC Telegram drop, which consists of randomized packs of Telegram avatars with different rarities that can be opened digitally. 

Allowlisted wallets can buy at least five packs per wallet. Each pack will cost 30 TON, Booth said, which is roughly $66. We don’t yet know how many packs will be for sale in total, but the quantity may be adjusted based on perceived demand (pretty sure they want these to sell out). The drop is expected to go live sometime next week.

“There’s a massive opportunity here to bring IPs and just walk them, hand-hold them, into the platform, because they all want to grow their channels and their subscriber bases on other channels, but they also want to monetize,” Booth said of Telegram.

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In the gaming space, Yuga’s also made progress with its Bathroom Blitz game within its Otherside platform. Otherside will also be promoted on Amazon Gaming, and Yuga hopes to onboard new players to crypto through the collab that’ll bring an Amazon box-inspired character to the upcoming social game. 

Yuga’s also finally given Otherdeed holders a reason for hanging onto their assets besides waiting for a promised resource-related game, which is slated to launch next year.

Each Otherdeed holder will also get access to the Otherside Development Kit to build out their own experience, according to Yuga Labs Chief Product Officer Michael Figge. 

“The ODK is a set of tools that allows you to build in Unreal Engine to create next generation blockchain experiences,” Figge said. “Our vision is for you to be able to drag and drop, upload and go live.”

Despite all this news, the floor price for a BAYC NFT remains down in the past month — and a far cry from their all-time high of over $350,000 apiece over three years ago.

Since their inception, I’ve watched the apes with curiosity. Despite being undeniably cringe in many respects, there’s a dogged determination they’ve held onto all these years. 

It’s very possible Otherside may turn out to be a costly passion project that doesn’t churn out revenue. It’s also possible its Miami clubhouse could ultimately be a losing business, too. 

All that said, it’s still fun to see Yuga push forward with its IP instead of leaving it in the dust and riding off into the sunset with their fortune. 

So regardless of what you think of the apes — at least they’re still in the game.

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Robinhood’s CEO confirmed to me that he is indeed cryptopilled, and wants everything to be tokenized. 

That means more RWAs could be on the roadmap. Will Robinhood try to tokenize all the TradFi instruments it currently offers, plus other parts of its app? That would be massive for the future of consumer crypto.

Robinhood is much more likely to be a first mover compared to the big banks — and may set the new standard for what’s possible in the US market. 

This week, Ava Labs Chief Strategy Officer Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo said during an X Space that “banks are going to be the last to move” in crypto because they’re highly regulated and have the least amount of incentives to adopt the tech.

DeMeo emphasized that stablecoin adoption is currently taking place outside of the US (much less so within its borders) and predicts US banks “will be late” to adopt crypto payments and stablecoins.

He suggested that banks may try tokenizing deposits to avoid losing customers.

Unlike banks, Robinhood is incentivized to tokenize everything so it can ultimately offer its traders the ability to buy or sell any financial instrument or idea their heart desires at any time, long after the market closes.

Tokenization opens up the possibility of more international choices at any hour of the day or night, which would inevitably be a big plus for Robinhood’s bottom line.

— Kate Irwin

• Coinbase One Amex card launches for US consumers

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: This card, first announced back in June, is partly a loyalty product to keep Coinbase One subscribers hanging onto their monthly memberships and get new signups. But it is a competitive card. Having an Amex comes with a unique set of perks that’ll appeal to the status-chasing crypto jetset crowd, and earning 2-4% BTC back on all purchases with no cap is a critical benefit too. For card nerds: This one weighs about the same as the 17g Amex Platinum card.

  • Coinbase says early users of the card have already spent over $100 million in purchases, with an average of $3,000 spent per month per card. That means cardholders are getting an average of $60-$120 worth of BTC per month. This more than pays for the $5 a month “Basic” plan (or $50 annually) or the $30 a month standard Coinbase One subscription required to get the card.

  • Coinbase also promises an extra $200 worth of BTC if you spend at least $3,000 in the first three months of having the card (those who spend less get less, but there’s a $50 minimum BTC bonus).

  • Coinbase is seen by many as a trusted “premium” American company, as is Amex, so the collab here makes a lot of sense even if Amex doesn’t align with crypto’s cypherpunk ideals. The reality is that even if Coinbase clings (or performatively clings) to cypherpunk ideals, those ideals don’t align with corporate capitalism and Coinbase making the most money possible. 

  • I bring this up because CT has been debating, again, whether crypto has lost its way, departing from bitcoin’s core values for the sake of mass adoption. Jack Dorsey recently declared that bitcoin “is not crypto” (classic maxi take), presumably because much of “crypto” is centralized, permissioned or otherwise controlled by groups of people or companies. Coinbase is part of that, as is Dorsey’s own Block.

  • The reality is, everyone in this industry is a hypocrite to some extent. But that doesn’t mean the industry shouldn’t move forward at all. Maybe such purity tests aren’t helpful or productive. Or, maybe the industry can take smaller actions to support its founding ideals.

  • Ben Shen, senior director of product at Coinbase, told me via email: “The Coinbase One Card embodies the transformative power of crypto, both symbolically — with its design inspired by the Bitcoin genesis block — and tangibly, with each purchase helping users earn the best performing asset of the past decade.”

  • So maybe it doesn’t matter if crypto products are centralized, as long as consumers leverage those products to ultimately accumulate more bitcoin. 

• Farcaster acquires Clanker

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • Farcaster just did a li’l logo update and announced that it’s snagged Clanker, the AI trading agent and token launchpad that uses Base and Arbitrum. CLANKER is up 140% in the past day since the news.

  • My hot take: This is great for Farcaster. It aligns with its crypto-native focus and open ethos, and will probably drive more users to Farcaster.  

  • Some builders are hyped about it. Tim Reilly, who’s behind the AI sports app Bracky and whose Bracky token was launched via Clanker, sees it as a way to level up his app.

• Coinbase CLO advocates for federal CEX regulation, no DeFi regulation

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️

  • I was not expecting Paul Grewal to call for federal regulation over state-based regulation, but here we are. The CLO argued on Thursday that sports markets (betting and prediction markets) should be overseen by a single federal authority instead of “an uneven patchwork of 50 state gaming commissions.”

  • In a separate post, he also said centralized exchanges should be regulated at the federal level, and that DeFi products should not be regulated.

  • My hot take: Putting my thinking hat on here — is he afraid of a Mamdani win? Trump would certainly be more favorable to Coinbase for New York access. Blanket federal regulation in the way Grewal is suggesting could allow Coinbase to essentially go over the heads of state regulators as Trump uses, well, the Trump card. Not sure how Nevada would feel about that!

  • Other big crypto players, like Mike Novogratz, are trying to remind America that crypto shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I of course agree with this take, because it will make the industry resilient in the future.

  • Grewal’s statements are what’s best for Coinbase’s financial future. A single set of rules and regulations around gambling, betting, prediction markets and crypto at the federal level would certainly make setting up shop in America easier for crypto companies. But that would also be a MAJOR change, and I’m not sure such a shakeup is going to happen anytime soon.

  • On the DeFi point, I largely agree: It doesn’t make sense trying to regulate or ban DeFi (or open-source) products. But this stance is ultimately part of the Tornado Cash debate around how to stop financial crimes. Jury’s still out on whether there’s a path forward where we can have our decentralized cake and eat it without fraud, too.

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This week is blazing by like a car on fire, though the markets really aren’t looking so hot right now. 

CS2 skin traders are losing their minds, and their colorful digital knife portfolios, as Valve makes the most Valve decision ever.

This should be surprising to no one. But it appears to be causing a meltdown among a slew of guys who put four- to six-figures into a centralized shooter game’s virtual items, I guess.

In the crypto markets more broadly, prices are fizzling as BTC, ETH, SOL and other top tokens remain down from a week ago.

Limitless, however, has seen more dramatic price action since its TGE yesterday.

— Kate Irwin

The limits of Limitless

Limitless, a prediction market that uses Base, is facing some controversy around the launch of its token yesterday.

Shortly after TGE, LMTS peaked at a $95 million market cap before quickly falling to $40 million within two hours. 

As of Thursday morning, its price remains down 31% in the past day, at a $34 million market cap with an FDV of $264 million, per GeckoTerminal data.

Within minutes of TGE, however, a wallet that has since been tied to the Limitless team began selling the token. 

Image: LMTS market cap since launch, from GeckoTerminal

Limitless co-founder and CEO CJ Hetherington said that the team-affiliated liquidity wallet intended for market-making is being used “to ensure two-sided liquidity” and token buybacks.

That wallet contains about $1.9 million in crypto assets on Base, with about 85% of that being in the LMTS token and about 15% in USDC as of Thursday morning.

Hetherington said that the wallet “will maintain range trading and two-sided liquidity with both BUYING and SELLING.”

Some traders are either unsure about this strategy, or don’t trust it. 

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Hetherington nevertheless emphasized that Limitless is playing a longer game here. 

It’s an uphill battle to convince anyone in crypto that selling your own token is ever not bad, even if you say you’re planning to buy more of it back at some point.

At what point does “market-making” become price manipulation? 

And, perhaps more importantly, at what point does crashing out on the timeline impact your reputation and trustworthiness in crypto? 

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Crypto tends to reward the feverishly passionate. But such an aggressive defense isn’t the best way to convince people that you’re doing the right thing.

Zoraganda

In their current state, Zora creator coins don’t have inherent utility beyond acting as a donation vector or being flipped for profit.

But a channel dubbed @propaganda, which was granted early access to Zora’s livestreaming feature, has built out a simple trading game of sorts using their creator token and livestreams. Ex-Base employee Bobby Thakkar is behind the project.  

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Traders can “enter” the game by buying or selling Propaganda’s creator coin. Each trade counts as an entry into a raffle that happens every 10 minutes, where one lucky trader is sent 100 USDC. The last four digits of every Propaganda token trade is a ticket number. The game continues until the pool of funds is gone.

The stream yesterday featured an endless loop of tickers below an endless loop of 90s ads that really were a sight to behold. I forgot that ads used to be so joyful, funny and strange, and not just blaringly loud and overly manicured like they are today. But yes, 90s ads were also blatant propaganda for America and its cultural values, too.

The Propaganda game doesn’t shy away from the quick trading aspects of Zora. Instead, it adds an extra layer of stakes on top because you’re incentivized to trade the token and you can also maximize your chances of getting a bonus through a basic probability-based raffle.

It’s a fun premise that uses mechanics traders already understand, but I probably wouldn’t have written about it if there hadn’t been all those hilarious ads. 

Crypto’s consumer layer does need to do more than just give traders money. It needs to entertain us, too.

The token’s market cap hovered around $5.7 million during the stream on Wednesday, and it’s now the second-biggest creator coin on the platform, at about $5.1 million.

If we’re being honest, the stream is ultimately propaganda for Zora, whose aesthetic hinges heavily upon pushing Y2K nostalgia ironically for Gen Z. 

Gen Z’s interest in the 90s and early aughts continues to surprise me, considering they weren’t even an idea in their parents’ minds at the time. I was also an idea/infant/child for most of the 90s, but at least I actually used CDs and remember the first time low-rise jeans were cool. 

Y2K nostalgia + gambling + mild entertainment = Zora.

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With the team behind Kadena closing up shop and OpenSea volume already crashing after its first wave of rewards, there’s never a dull moment in cryptoland.

OpenSea’s recent surge in activity was driven by farmers grinding its rewards campaign, as I wrote earlier this week. Specifically, it was due to general token trading — and not due to a resurgence of interest in NFTs. 

Daily OpenSea token trading volume fell 97% immediately after its first wave of rewards ended, according to this Dune dashboard. 

A week later we’re still seeing much lower volume, even though the second wave of the rewards campaign is already underway. 

Some traders perhaps felt they did not get ROI from the whole farming experience and may now be taking a break. We also saw multiple winners of higher-value NFTs confirm that they were indeed required to provide a US tax form in order to claim their prizes, so those uninterested in doing this may also be opting out of the next wave.

I still don’t think OS’s sudden surge this month will be its new normal. 

But it’s very possible volume may spike again as we approach the end of the second wave of chest rewards, which ends Nov. 15.

— Kate Irwin

Prediction markets aren’t just gambling

Prediction markets are taking over. They’ve become mainstream, and now gambling giants are getting in the fun.

DraftKings is prepping its own prediction market, DraftKing Predictions, which will launch as a mobile app that lets users bet on topics across “finance, culture, and entertainment,” a notable departure from its reputation as a sports betting platform. This week DraftKings announced its acquisition of event contracts firm Railbird Technologies to make it happen.

Web2 financial apps are also prediction market believers. Robinhood has made big gains with its Kalshi integration this year, and last week said it was adding over 100 new event contracts, including some around politics. 

This morning, we also learned that the NHL has struck deals with Polymarket and Kalshi.

Image: Politics remains one of Polymarket’s biggest categories

Prediction markets are even spreading across crypto apps. This week, Polymarket became available as a mini app within the World Network app. Kalshi previously released its own World mini app back in May.

Crypto wallets like MetaMask and Rabby are integrating Polymarket, too.

Coinbase, if it was so inclined, could possibly integrate Limitless, which uses Base (and which published the tokenomics for its upcoming coin this week). Or, Coinbase could build its own bespoke prediction market from scratch or via an acquisition.

Image: Polymarket daily volume has more than doubled in recent months

But not everyone’s a fan of the prediction market takeover.

This week, a Kalshi display in NYC showing traders placing bets on who will be the next mayor of the city ruffled some feathers. 

“Everything looks and feels like gambling now. We are cooked,” wrote ad agency exec Michael Miraflor, whose LinkedIn states that he works on Airbnb projects for EssenceMediacom.

“It looks and feels like gambling because it is gambling,” Tribute Labs investor Max Siegman responded. 

Product designer Devon Frohne took it a step further, jokingly suggesting that we’ll vote by rolling dice in the future. 

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But within our capitalist economic system, is voting with your dollar on who will win an election just another form of democracy at work? 

In our democracy, we vote to elect leaders, and then watch them do (or not do) their jobs. Often, we’re waiting for an outcome that may or may not happen. You can choose to write to your officials when they fail you, take to the streets in protest, or you could profit off their failures by wagering against them in a prediction market.

Perhaps prediction markets are just another way to participate in our democracy by voting on what outcome we believe is most likely, or our favorite. It’s certainly another way to participate in free financial markets. 

“All they have to do is pick a side,” Limitless CEO CJ Hetherington said of prediction markets in a recent interview. “Picking a side is a fundamental human behavior. We love to pick a side.” 

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev doesn’t feel it’s accurate to write prediction markets off as just gambling, even if that may be their primary function.

“Like any new innovation, they don’t fit neatly into any one category,” he said. 

“The disruptor need not be the same animal as what's being disrupted — in fact oftentimes there are significant differences that make the disruptor better and worthy of a new category,” he continued.

“For example, the car disrupted the carriage without being a carriage.”

Image: The majority of Polymarket wallets are trading less than $10,000 each in total volume. Recently, there’s been an increase in wallets trading less than $100.

I’d argue prediction markets are a new type of gambling. But they’re one-upping a dice roll at the casino with another layer of real-world stakes by being tied to real events. 

More knowledge can equal more power, but there’s also the risk that certain bets may be subject to insider trading. 

Gambling more broadly is on the rise via sports betting, which has sparked concerns about a spike in gambling addictions, especially among younger individuals. 

Psychiatrists warn that betting impacts your brain’s dopamine levels. Dopamine is actually released regardless of whether you win or lose, making the whole experience addictive.

But the line between Web2 financial apps, crypto and gambling will likely continue to blur. Prediction markets are raking in the cash. There’s already obvious overlap between crypto trading and gambling, and now we’re seeing traditional financial trading merge with crypto, too, via things like stablecoins and what Robinhood’s exploring with stock tokens. 

Kraken’s even trying to poach US stock traders by offering USDC rewards for migrating over to its trading app.

The rise of prediction markets signals more than just a rise in gambling — it’s confirmation that TradFi, crypto and gambling companies are perhaps all, to varying degrees, one and the same.

Fidelity investor Peter Lynch once shared a TradFi investment approach that echoes what prediction markets have ultimately become:

“You have to say to yourself, ‘If I’m right, how much am I going to make? If I’m wrong, how much am I going to lose?’ That’s the risk/reward ratio.”

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While the news week is just getting started, we’ve already seen some big announcements from Coinbase and some more info around Binance’s listing process. 

Today we’re looking at the new Trezor hardware wallet, focusing on two key parts that make it interesting: its quantum concerns and its open chip.

— Kate Irwin

Trezor’s latest is all-wireless and ‘quantum-ready’

Crypto hardware wallet firm Trezor has just unveiled its latest product: the Safe 7.

The $250 device maintains the same shield-like shape of its predecessors and comes in three color options. It has an aluminum body, a large touch screen and uses Tropic Square’s Tropic01 chip (Trezor and Tropic Square share the same parent company, SatoshiLabs). 

Preorders are slated to begin shipping around Nov. 23 when it becomes fully available.

Quantum curiosity 

The Trezor Safe 7 is “quantum-ready,” but that doesn’t mean it’s equipped today to face a powerful supercomputer from the future. 

For years, Big Tech firms like Apple have been thinking about and preparing for a “post-quantum” future, where supercomputers may be able to crack current encryption and cryptography. 

While quantum computers don’t appear to be there yet, we’ve seen machines inch closer to that possibility as scientists put them to work and develop new chips and tech. 

For what it’s worth, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t think quantum computers will have much utility for at least another 20 years. 

What “quantum-ready” means in the case of the Trezor Safe 7 is that the device could be upgraded in the future to handle post-quantum cryptography — after blockchains are leveled up to a PQC state. 

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Maybe that’s a nice-to-have for those more concerned about the quantum threat, or for those planning to stash their wallet away for decades to come. But it’s far from a guarantee of safety because it would require future user action ahead of the threat.

Not everyone’s as unconcerned about quantum computing as Huang, though. Just this week, Mysten Labs’ chief cryptographer argued in an op-ed that it’s time for the crypto industry to take the quantum threat seriously.

A Deloitte deep dive into quantum computing’s threat to bitcoin from October 2024 concluded: “Presently, about 25% of the bitcoins in circulation are vulnerable to a quantum attack.”

“If you have bitcoins in a vulnerable address and believe that progress in quantum computing is more advanced than publicly known, then you should probably transfer your coins to a new p2pkh address (don’t forget to make a secure backup of your private key),” the Deloitte writers added.

Last week, a quantum company said it’s determined a “quantum-resistant Bitcoin implementation.”

So there’s hope the industry will find more solutions before the threat becomes real.

Opening up the chip

The Safe 7’s Tropic01 chip, which itself was released in February, is not closed source and includes some security features that may appeal to traders and hackers alike. 

Image: The Trezor Safe 7

The Tropic01 is being referred to as an “open” chip because it is auditable and its developer, Tropic Square, wants third-party security experts to try to white hat attack its chip. 

Trezor has historically kept its source code open-source, as well.

If you’re a developer or security expert and want to test the new chip for yourself, you can request chip samples or a developer kit from the manufacturer. 

“Trust in technology must be earned through a user’s ability to verify what’s beneath the surface,” Tropic Square CEO and co-founder Jan Pleskac said in a statement. 

“TROPIC01 does that by allowing device makers to truly see what’s inside their devices and to continuously adapt to new threats. A line of defence that is impossible under closed, proprietary models.”

Of course, the average person won’t be able to meaningfully test and verify that their Trezor is as safe as the company says it is, but perhaps additional crowd-sourced, third-party verification could help buyers make more informed choices.

In the Safe 7, the Tropic01 chip comes with a feature called MAC&Destroy that’s intended to thwart brute-force attacks before they can happen by “irreversibly limiting PIN attempts and destroying authentication tokens after repeated failures,” a release for the chip explains.

Users will have to regain access to their wallets by restoring via backup if their device is locked due to too many incorrect PIN attempts — so a backup is critical here.

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In his talk introducing the wallet, Trezor CEO Matěj Žák explained the issue with using closed-source components: “If we as a company find any vulnerability with that specific chip, we cannot truly talk about it with you, our customers or with anybody else in the industry.”

Trezor CTO Tomas Susanka also shared a story about how they had tested another closed-source chip and found security issues, but claimed the manufacturer had “zero” interest in sharing the flaw publicly or warning its customers. 

In crypto, transparency doesn’t always exist because it’s a double-edged sword. If open manufacturers publish information about their projects’ flaws while closed competitors don’t, some might view the “open” company as inferior even if it’s just not a fair comparison.

Sometimes, being fully transparent opens a company up to more criticism and scrutiny because it’s possible to do so, while those who stay silent might be similarly exposing their customers without that realization becoming public.

Ultimately, transparency is something our industry desperately needs more of, but it might not always seem good for business. 

Part of what makes crypto special is those core ideals of permissionlessness, decentralization and trustlessness. 

These days, I often feel like those have been cast to the wayside in the name of revenue, growth and mass adoption.

But maybe — just maybe — this industry doesn’t have to compromise.

I watched this video so now you have to, too. Volume up if you want to scare your coworkers:

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It’s Monday, and we’re back with another edition of The Drop. Did you get enough sleep this weekend?

I know Coinbase makes a lot of investments, but I was surprised to learn that the exchange has acquired over 40 companies, as confirmed by its head of corporate development. 

This morning, some of us were reminded that Base uses AWS, meaning that when AWS experiences an outage, transactions may not work and Base infrastructure is impacted. 

Not such a decentralized experience, after all. 

For what it’s worth, Avalanche also encountered an issue with its “data processing infrastructure” this morning. 

Downdetector also shows that users have reported issues accessing Amazon’s website, plus Venmo, Reddit, Robinhood, Zoom, Microsoft 365, Verizon, Apple Music, Adobe Creative Cloud and numerous other services this morning. 

Talk about a rough start to the week!

Today we’re talking about OpenSea’s comeback, which is in no small part due to the upcoming TGE of SEA.

It’s really been dragging out this launch. But as OpenSea’s own CEO said: “You only get one TGE.”

— Kate Irwin

OpenSea wants to be a one-stop trading shop

In the wake of Pump’s success, OpenSea has been transforming from an art-forward NFT marketplace into a token-trading aggregator supporting 22 blockchains. 

OpenSea has gained over $25 million in token trading revenue and roughly $5.6 million in NFT trading revenue in the past month, marking a sudden surge in activity after what has otherwise been a slow year for the platform.

“There’s a huge opportunity in the app layer for a company to hyperfocus on building an experience that combines the best of what a centralized exchange experience has to offer in terms of Web2-type usability, and [what] DEXs have to offer,” OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer told me in an interview. “No one has really done that.” 

OpenSea’s own data on Dune shows the marketplace has seen about $45.8 million in revenue this year so far. That means that the past month alone currently makes up over 66% of its annual revenue, which is a staggering stat.

It saw 202% month-over-month revenue growth, with over $520 million in 30-day NFT volume and $3 billion in 30-day token volume. 

What gives? Well, the OpenSea Foundation — which OpenSea has been very tight-lipped about  — is gearing up to launch the SEA token sometime in Q1 next year. OpenSea has repeatedly emphasized that the foundation is separate from the company, but has largely dodged my requests for more information. Back in February, the company told me that no OpenSea board members or staff members work at the foundation, and that OpenSea’s legal team didn’t set it up, but OpenSea has not yet shared who is actually running it. 

On its platform, OpenSea has been incentivizing traders with a reward pool of NFTs and tokens, distributed via “treasure chests.” Traders are also buying and selling various assets in hopes that they’ll SEA a big payday when the token finally launches. 

So the farmers are keeping busy. 

We also now know that half the token supply will be allocated to “the community,” which suggests there may be lots of SEA up for grabs for power-traders. 

This long-awaited token, plus other types of rewards including various NFTs, is likely what’s driving traders and farmers back to the platform. 

OpenSea had over 73% of the Ethereum NFT trading market share last week, with Blur coming in second with over 22%. 

“We don’t even really think of Blur as a primary competitor these days,” Finzer said. “We’ve expanded our vision to trading everything.” 

OpenSea will also be building on that vision to become a one-stop shop for crypto traders by adding perps trading, which Finzer confirmed in his post last week. 

The marketplace is overhauling its mobile app to further compete in the trading app space, and is looking at more ways to simplify the user experience even further by quashing existing friction points (one of my personal gripes I hope it’ll fix is that wETH is still required to make offers on OpenSea). The mobile app rework is currently in closed alpha.

“There’s ETH on Solana, there’s ETH on all of these different chains,” Finzer said during our conversation. “For a user, they just want to understand it as a single ticker. They just want to be able to buy and sell ETH, regardless of where it is, wherever the best liquidity is. And so we’re going to abstract even that layer away from people, so that [they] can actually use this in a way that feels natural to them, without having to worry about the different chains.”

“If you want to know under the hood, we also provide that functionality for people who are more advanced, but the point is you don’t have to. And so I think this is really the next layer of abstraction for really great consumer apps,” he continued. 

Twitter tweet

The marketplace is doling out over $12.2 million in NFT and token rewards to traders who used its platform in the first wave of its gamified engagement campaign that’s been ongoing for much of the year. 

Some traders in OpenSea’s Discord server, however, are concerned that they might have to KYC, or divulge their locations and government IDs, in order to claim rewards. Some appear worried they might be spending to maximize their rewards, only to receive a reward that they might not even be allowed to ultimately claim. 

While we don’t have firm confirmation from OpenSea yet on what rewards might require this, one OpenSea Discord community mod said that winning “select NFTs” would require recipients to KYC.

Back in February, OpenSea confirmed to me that SEA will be available to US residents. 

It’s still unclear, though, whether OpenSea will reward past users of its platform — or whether only those grinding its rewards campaign will be eligible to claim any amount of the upcoming token.

From @multichain_sid on X

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Are you ready for Hot Take Friday?

The crypto markets are down in the past week. Maybe don’t look at your wallet if you bought the top?

I’m glad the weekend is almost here — it’s cozy szn.

Today we’re talking about Coinbase, ICM, Uniswap and more.

— Kate Irwin

• Coinbase releases embedded wallet offering

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • Key context: Coinbase is making its B2B embedded wallet-as-a-service offering publicly available. It’s offering up to 3.85% interest rewards in USDC across developers’ embedded and server wallets. The pricing is pay-as-you-go with no tiers or minimums. There’s also a free tier to try it out. 

  • My hot take: This will be in competition with other wallet-as-a-service products out there, mainly Stripe’s Privy. Privy has over 1,000 crypto clients, including big players like Pumpfun, OpenSea and Hyperliquid.

  • There’s money to be made if Coinbase can disrupt Privy’s dominance. This is good for crypto because Coinbase and Privy both have some of the best UX in the business, and it’s likely the competition will encourage both parties to keep improving and not rest on their laurels. 

• Base enables any ERC-20 for gas, lets Base app users launch Zora creator coins

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: The gas announcement is a really key quality-of-life improvement for users, especially for those newer to crypto or with smaller portfolios or many wallets. It reduces friction and makes crypto make more sense from a user standpoint. Overall, Base is doing a very good job of being consumer-friendly, and they get flowers for that.

  • The Zora creator coins news is less exciting, but means that Base is deepening its ties with Zora. As I mentioned this week, I’m not the biggest fan of how Zora currently has its “content coins” set up because of how it disincentivizes smaller creators, and therefore mass adoption. I made a long post about my thoughts on Zora here, and Zora’s co-founder Jacob responded with some good context (that ultimately doesn’t resolve the issue I have with it). 

  • Right now, Zora’s making a lot of assumptions about future social media users that I’m not sure will come true. I think there needs to be more baked-in utility and room for customization that takes some of the burden off creators and also makes it harder for creators to rug anyone. 

  • I do think there’s something to the “creator coin” concept more broadly, though, as a new metric beyond just staring at someone’s follower count and monthly impressions. 

• Crypto startup-focused platform Star.Fun adds STAR staking

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • Key context: I wrote about Star back in June, detailing how it’s letting crypto entrepreneurs crowdfund investments to build their dream projects. Now, it’s letting stakers of their STAR token get exposure to all projects funnelled through their platform. Projects have to allocate 2% of their token supplies to STAR stakers.

  • My hot take: This is an interesting take on ICM. It’s also cool that Star is trying to democratize access to funding and help small crypto projects get a leg up without needing VC access. I’m just hoping no one gets burned here.

• Uniswap adds Solana support

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • Key context: Uniswap’s lead engineer for trading explained the decision to expand to Solana is simply because there are lots of tokens there that users want to trade. It’s using Jupiter for routing. 

  • My hot take: This is great for crypto. It shows devs and app execs are finally realizing that the future of crypto will be multichain, not exclusive to just one blockchain’s ecosystem. Crypto’s tribalism has long been its weak spot, and while it’s perhaps unrealistic (for now) to suggest that every crypto app will support every blockchain, supporting EVM + SVM is an important foundation. Give people what they want! 

  • As I mentioned this week, siloing yourself to just one blockchain, even if it’s an Ethereum L2, makes you vulnerable to external chain decisions or price action out of your control that could one day cripple your product. I personally don’t think many “only-build-on-our-chain” grants are worth that potential risk down the line. Put your app’s users first. 

  • Also cute: SNS’s head of growth said they’ve reserved uniswap.sol for the team. I’d consider that a warm welcome.

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

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Some traders are not happy about the Believe app’s decision to effectively sunset their current token, LAUNCHCOIN, for a new token, BELIEVE.

Their explanation for the “upgrade” is vague, and some are upset that the team plans to collect and then mass sell the old token. 

Believe now has an “untrusted” score on Ethos, the community-based platform where CT reviews projects and each other based on trustworthiness, execution and overall reputation.

But not everyone sees the move as all bad. Blockworks’ Head of Research Ryan Connor told me: “I see pros and cons. For cons, obviously no one wants to be diluted. On the pro side, I like that rewards will have vesting. I’m shocked that more teams don’t experiment with vesting for contributors.”

— Kate Irwin

Becoming crypto’s app store

No, Farcaster is not trying to replace Crypto Twitter.

But Farcaster’s Ecosystem Lead Linda Xie is laser-focused on the crypto-native audience.

The crypto social app isn’t gunning to be the next Instagram or TikTok, either. Instead, there’s a built-in wallet, financial rewards up for grabs for building a Farcaster mini app, and a leaderboard for top posters that mimics more degen trading platforms.

“The team has spent five years building out a social graph in the crypto space, and that’s really, really tough,” Xie told me in an interview. “And so now we’re at the point where we’re going from social to adding the wallet.”

The social media app ecosystem is pretty crowded, with so many options to choose from. The wallet world is also crowded: Lately we’ve seen a surge in more established apps like Robinhood and the Coinbase Wallet adding social elements, plus a slew of new startups trying to reimagine crypto trading from a social-first perspective.

With so many options and so little time, traders will be forced to pick a few to focus on that reward them the most. 

What makes Farcaster different, I’d argue, is that it’s effectively an Apple- and Google-approved crypto ecosystem hosting its own mini app store within the app itself.

Farcaster can help early crypto builders find their first 100 or 1,000 users, with a core audience that already likes and understands crypto. 

“You’re able to do things that just aren’t even possible on Twitter,” Xie said of Farcaster’s permissionless ecosystem. “You can iterate really quickly, put things out there, have people try using it and see what happens.”

She noted that builders don’t have to pay Farcaster or get its permission to build and distribute a mini app there. 

“As a builder, it’s crucial to be gaining distribution off the bat,” Xie said.

By the numbers

On CT, you might see a lot of joking and troll-posts about how Farcaster has “no users.” 

But such claims aren’t accurate when you look at the data. It’s not on the level of Twitter, of course, but it has its own community.  

On Monday, Xie told me that Farcaster’s number of daily active users varies a lot, but said that number is in the “tens of thousands” of users per day.

“What we’re really focused on looking at is the number of funded wallets, especially the ones with meaningful balances,” she said.

Xie added that Farcaster has seen over 100,000 total wallets funded so far.

After our conversation, Farcaster saw a spike in iOS downloads this week, Appfigures data shows, which may be due to Farcaster’s decision to reward some users who deposit USDC on Base into their Farcaster wallet with a match of up to 10%, or up to $500. 

Crypto loves free money, of course, but it does seem like the world of Farcaster mini apps has a lot of rewards up for grabs that some CT diehards might be leaving on the table by not exploring the app.

To me, Farcaster’s app ecosystem feels like a more refined, user-friendly version of the Telegram crypto mini app world.

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Appfigures estimates that Farcaster has seen over 65,000 iOS downloads this year, and over 25,800 Android downloads this year.

Google data shows Farcaster has seen over 500,000 total downloads on Android, and Appfigures’s algorithm suggests Farcaster has seen at least 400,000 iOS downloads in total.

Going forward, the Farcaster team is continuing to support features its crypto-native audience actually wants.

Xie said Farcaster is looking into adding “more privacy features” long term, and has continued to add support for more blockchains. Most recently, they added BSC support, perhaps in part due to the recent surge in memecoin activity on that chain. 

She added: “We want to be the place where crypto people are talking, where they’re transacting, and it’s like, regardless of which chain it is, like, we just want the user to have the best experience.”

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

IMO, Zora creator coins don’t represent a creator’s value at all and aren’t a helpful metric in their current form. Right now, they represent how much a creator has shilled their token:

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Stripe unveiled a new feature to its digital payments flow that lets you pay for recurring subscriptions with USDC by connecting a self-custodied wallet like Phantom or MetaMask.

The company says 30% of its millions of business clients rely on recurring payments or subscription-based charges as part of their revenue models. 

Subscriptions are key for software companies as well as AI companies, meaning this could help Stripe and its clients tap into more revenue by enabling convenient stablecoin payments.

But the new option isn’t just for fun or the novelty of paying in stablecoins: Stripe says stablecoin transactions cost half as much as other cross-border payment methods.

Today we’re looking at another emerging crypto trend: tokenized livestreaming.

— Kate Irwin

Peeling back the layers of crypto livestreaming

Crypto’s seeing renewed interest in livestreaming right now. But who will last long term — and who will fizzle out? 

If you’re not looking at X, Twitch, YouTube, Kick, or other Web2 options, Pumpfun, Zora, and The Arena are probably the best contenders for a crypto-powered alternative these days. There’s also Abstract, but you have to be invited or apply to stream with them. 

So far, Pump appears to be winning. But the rise of BNB memecoin platforms like FourMeme has lately stolen some of its spotlight, and Pump’s token is down 50% in the past month.

From a quick glance alone, I found over two dozen Pump livestreams with market caps over $100K. Streaming there can indeed be profitable for creators. 

Pump saw about $55 million in total revenue last month, which is slightly higher than its summer totals but still down significantly from its surge early this year.

Pump has also seen $98.65 million in total creator fees since its inception in early 2024, per Blockworks Research, and over $982 million in total revenue since it began. 

While not a perfect comparison, Twitch reportedly saw about $1.8 billion in revenue in 2024, according to Business of Apps.

This means that Pump is still smaller than Twitch from a revenue standpoint, but it’s punching well above its weight considering Twitch has been around for 14 years and is owned by Amazon.

Pump has seen roughly $578 million in total revenue this year so far — which is nearly double Twitch’s total revenue in 2017. 

Could others take Pump’s crown as the ultimate crypto platform for livestreaming? 

I’m not so sure any rivals will see enough of a surge to beat Pump’s revenue numbers anytime soon — but it’s not for lack of trying. 

Zora’s livestreaming push

ZORA has surged more than 83% in the past week since its Robinhood listing, with a market cap of roughly $400 million and an FDV of over $987 million. 

And while a livestreaming feature has been hinted at previously, ZORA’s up 15% since the team confirmed two days ago that a livestreaming function is indeed coming soon.

Zora co-founder Jacob Horne explained that the Live feature is currently invite-only as the team tests it. 

Twitter tweet

Zora’s revenue is still far behind Pump. Its highest month ever was Q3 this year, where it saw over $2.7 million across a three-month period. 

Can you compare Zora “content coins” and “creator coins” to Pump memecoins? I think so. The two are basically interchangeable in terms of form and function, with most Zora coins representing little more than a meme, an idea, or a way to support a person. 

In terms of activity, Zora has been consistently seeing around 10,000 accounts posting daily on its platform, Blockworks Research data shows. This suggests Zora’s active user base is at least that, though it’s unclear how many more traders it has than creators.

I’d argue that Zora really needs livestreaming to help it stay in the game. Sure, it has a friendlier, slightly more aesthetic and slightly less degen vibe than Pump, but it’s still competing with Pump for attention. 

Of the top 12 most valuable Zora posts by market cap as of Wednesday morning, three were created by either Horne himself or Base. Only one or two actually represent art, suggesting art itself is not what’s appealing to traders on the platform. 

Interest in starting a new Zora account fell dramatically in September after its August surge. Over 57,000 new creator coins were launched, which is an indicator of the number of new accounts created that month. 

When considering this number alongside Zora’s roughly 10,000 daily active posters, it looks like many users may be coming to Zora to set up shop but not really sticking around to post. 

So are these inactive Zora users waiting for an incentive to come back — or are they just too busy on other platforms?

Enter The Arena

The Arena is another crypto social platform where creators are effectively tokenized (you can buy a creator’s “tickets”) and livestreaming plays a big role. This one uses its own token plus AVAX, neither of which have been doing so well these days. 

The Arena began as StarsArena, a Friendtech-like tool. 

It saw spikes in activity in early 2024 and late 2024 as Crypto Twitter found novelty in trading “shares” or “tickets” of one another. 

Creators have made over $1.8 million from The Arena since its inception, per Dune data, a far cry from Pump’s $98 million in total creator fees. 

What I like about The Arena right now is that it’s basically a Twitter dupe that lets you post to both The Arena and Twitter with the click of a button, and discoverability appears high right now as it’s not all that saturated with creators like Twitter and other platforms. 

While The Arena is a small fish in a big pond, it appears to have carved out a small corner of crypto for itself, catering to AVAX holders and smaller creators. 

While SOL is up 25% in the past year, AVAX is down roughly the same amount. 

To use a chess metaphor, Pump is the king on the board — a status I doubt it’ll cede anytime soon.

But Zora, as perhaps the bishop, has the chance to make big moves quickly and could swipe more of Pump’s audience. 

In this metaphor The Arena is the pawn, taking smaller steps forward against token price adversity. But it’s also the underdog, if you prefer to think of it that way. 

While there are other crypto streaming platforms out there, I think these three are the ones to watch.  

Will this livestreaming trend last? I think so, considering Twitch’s continued growth and the broader continued rise of independent creator platforms like Substack, Beehiiv, Patreon, OnlyFans and others. 

But things can change fast. It’s crypto, after all.

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

DAS LONDON: Tune in live at @blockworksdas

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This morning, the Monad claim check portal caused frustration for traders who just couldn’t seem to get their wallets to pop up.

The high volume of traders trying to connect at once caused an outage with Stripe-owned wallet infra provider Privy. The outage appears to have occurred almost immediately after the claim window opened at 9 am ET. 

Privy said that the Monad event “put pressure on database capacity, and we're actively working to scale accordingly.” The issue was resolved by 11:30 am ET, though some managed to connect earlier.

Traders won’t even know how much they’ll get until Nov. 3, so there was really no need to rush. 

But in crypto, getting into the current “thing” is part of the fun.

— Kate Irwin

We are the 3%

At Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) this week, Mastercard’s SVP of Crypto Christian Rau and WalletConnect CEO Jess Houlgrave agreed that crypto still has to improve its user experience before the next wave of adoption can occur.

“For me, the bar in terms of user experience is really a tokenized debit card on my iPhone,” Rau told Blockworks’ Bennett Holloway. “The industry needs to mature and go in this direction.”

Houlgrave added that “we need an awful lot of investment” into crypto UX to make such improvements happen.

Rau shares my stance on the future of true crypto “mass adoption,” which is that most everyday people are never going to get behind the way the tech works and feels today. 

He thinks maybe only 3-5% of people are willing to have a “crypto-first mindset” to deal with things like bridging assets or other crypto friction points that can spark confusion or incur wait times or extra fees depending on what’s being used. 

For him, we’re still in the “mp3” phase of crypto UX — a place where technical glitches happen more than they should, in the time before the iPod really changed things for music. To an extent, I think he’s right. 

“The user experience needs to be more at the center of discussion, and I feel that this is really what the industry is also recognizing,” Rau said. 

But crypto UX has already improved massively since the 2021 bull cycle. We’ve seen MetaMask, once the clunkiest of wallets, take UX seriously. We’ve seen single sign-on wallet tech emerge as an easy way to quickly log in and create a custodied wallet using just an email address or a social media account. 

Twitter tweet

There are also places where I’d disagree with Rau. Because he’s an exec at Mastercard, he does have faith in the current payment rails that exist. 

“If we embed this almost as a new engine into traditional financial services that work very very well, I think that can be a very potent mix,” he said of blockchain tech.

I just wouldn’t go that far in saying that TradFi systems work “very very well.”

Domestic wire transfers typically take less than one business day, while international wires can take up to five business days. These also won’t happen on holidays, and even during the week, some banks may stop taking transfers a few hours before they close.

Existing TradFi rails cost consumers more fees than they should, and they take longer than they should. This is partly due to regulation, but it’s also partly due to the existence of middlemen who slow things down.

Crypto can fix this — though I’m concerned that TradFi’s big push into stablecoin payments could ultimately result in crypto for the masses becoming more of the same. 

Some crypto natives might like to harp on about how fees are essential for propping up validators. Sure, that’s true. But there are a whole lot of TradFi players looking to get in on crypto payments as middlemen who may charge their own extra set of fees on top. 

I’m a bit worried, long-term, that this new era of TradFi coming into crypto will result in many of the same problems consumers already face in traditional banking. 

Instead of TradFi leaving their old ways behind, they may bring their problems to us.

Or, those fees could balance out if they offer yield to users.

But as Houlgrave said during the panel, the crypto industry seems to be really good at solving one problem, only to create a few more for itself.

If the fees just get too damn high in whatever new system is coming our way, it’ll be up to the 3% to remind everyone that peer-to-peer payments exist — and they can be faster.

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

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Tune into the DAS livestream, presented by Solana Company (HSDT) backed by Pantera Capital, to catch all the alpha, debates, and announcements.

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Crypto’s global market cap has been volatile in recent days. It’s recovered slightly, and is up by roughly $300 billion since Friday’s crash, to a total global market cap of $3.99 trillion.

While the Nasdaq and S&P 500 also took a hit, bitcoin took more of a hit as the markets responded to Trump slapping heavy tariffs on China. 

Unsurprisingly, gold (seen by some as a hedge against economic uncertainty) outperformed crypto and equities during the crash as the crypto industry flipped to “fear” mode. 

At its worst, $850 billion in total crypto market value was wiped out, per Blockworks Research. 

Coinbase, Binance and other platforms reported performance issues as users rushed to their platforms.

To me, the technical issues pose a number of obvious concerns. It means that post-FTX, crypto’s not ready to cope with any kind of “bank run” event from a liquidity perspective. 

It doesn’t seem ready to scale for global demand, either.

— Kate Irwin

Uniswap site remains blocked in Ukraine

Six years ago, the Ethereum Foundation declared that “eth2 should be capable of surviving World War 3.”

But its app layer is clearly not. 

Uniswap Labs’ front-end is still blocking Ukraine-based IP addresses, according to multiple user reports and my own test with a VPN set to the country.

Ukraine IP addresses are able to see the Uniswap site, but any attempt to select assets results in an error message, which does not occur when using a US IP address.

Artem Chystiakov, head of Solidity at Distributed Lab, is based in Ukraine and believes Uniswap has misinterpreted US sanctions. 

“It is clearly stated that no goods, services or technology must be provided to both the so-called DNR/LNR and the Crimea regions of Ukraine. Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities/regions are not mentioned whatsoever,” Chystiakov wrote.

Twitter tweet

OFAC’s website states: “The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) does not maintain a specific list of countries that US persons cannot do business with.” Instead, it details specific programs and sanctioned persons and companies.

In the open letter, Chystiakov told Uniswap Labs: “This is absurd. Ukraine, being in the middle of the war, fighting for freedom, and you are limiting the availability of your service on some false regulatory claims.”

Chystiakov shared a screenshot response from Uniswap Labs’ support team, indicating the issue has been ongoing since at least as early as February this year: 

The date of the response, plus user reports and the date of a Change.org petition, suggests Uniswap Labs has been blocking Ukrainians’ access to its DEX via its front-end for at least a year now.

Traders suggested using an aggregator instead, though using a VPN would also in theory work to get around the restriction.

The Uniswap support team’s response from February suggests they’ve taken a blanket approach to adhering to sanctions by blocking entire countries via “third party providers.”

But Cloudflare, for example, does offer ways to block only certain parts of a country. Posts from the Cloudflare team and community show that Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk can be blocked individually using specific subregion codes. But a Cloudflare Pro, Business or Enterprise plan is required. 

Uniswap Labs appears to be using Cloudflare, based on ICANN Lookup data, NsLookup, and Cloudflare’s website. 

It’s unclear whether the issue is due to a policy choice, issues with Cloudflare or a financial decision. Data suggests Uniswap Labs saw $118 million in revenue in 2024. The Uniswap Foundation reported $1.11 million in revenue in that same period. 

Error message encountered when using a Ukraine-based IP address

It’s ironic, of course, that Uniswap’s website bears the slogan “Swap anytime, anywhere,” when that is not really the case.

Uniswap Labs blocking Ukrainians from using its web app is additionally ironic considering it added a function for users to easily donate to the Ukrainian government via Uniswap back in 2022. Upon checking today, that donate link appears to have since been taken down.

I’ve reached out to Uniswap Labs for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

Some speculation around how the Polymarket Nobel prediction might have occurred:

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Not at DAS: London? Not a problem.

Tune into the DAS livestream, presented by Solana Company (HSDT) backed by Pantera Capital, to catch all the alpha, debates, and announcements.

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No surprise here: New data suggests gaming tokens are dead and have overwhelmingly flopped this year. 

Other recent data has found that over 76% of 1,788 crypto games tracked have been discontinued, with 67currently in development. 

Today we’re looking at two of the biggest crypto games being built right now. 

While the most potential upside in crypto gaming may still be lower-risk GameFi-focused indies and mobile games, EVE Frontier and Reaper Actual are among the very small handful of higher-budget PC titles that could make a splash.

— Kate Irwin

• EVE Frontier picks Sui for all its blockchain elements

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: Sui needs EVE more than EVE needs Sui. Both will benefit from this deal, and I think it’s good they chose each other. The truth is, this game could have used just about any blockchain with smart contracts for its crypto elements. They could have chosen Solana, Base, an Avalanche L1, or their own Arbitrum chain, or chosen from a slew of other options and made it work. But Sui really needs a breakout game to cement itself as a chain with games, and EVE Frontier will do that.  

  • This is still good for crypto overall despite the fact that even if EF is a smash hit, it’s unlikely its “normie” players onboarded via the game will venture outside the game’s borders to the rest of crypto. Sui is not EVM or SVM compatible, and is more of a siloed ecosystem. 

  • But the most successful games from a revenue standpoint are the ones that suck you in and make it hard for you to imagine playing anything else (the “stickiness” factor). EF could be one of those, but for crypto gaming. 

  • EVE Frontier was previously using Redstone, an EVM L2 I hadn’t heard of before my conversation with CCP a few months ago. 

  • Sui could be paying EVE Frontier to use their chain, not unlike how Ronin is getting financially rewarded for using Optimism, but we don’t have specifics either way. A Sui rep (unsurprisingly) told me they aren’t currently providing any info around the monetary amount of the deal, but hinted that more news is coming soon.

  • Sui has positioned itself as a gaming chain in the past, but it’s got about 74 DeFi projects with $2.4 billion TVL across them plus other protocols like Walrus for other use cases like decentralized storage. So IMO it’s not really a “gaming chain,” just a chain with some games (and now EVE Frontier).

  • EVE Frontier is one of the very small handful of crypto games I’m actually excited about. The CCP team is smart, experienced and hardcore about building out massive, complex galactic game economies. The big question is: Will their existing fanbase come around to crypto? 

• Sorare is moving to Solana

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️ 

  • My hot take: I had forgotten Sorare existed, but from a naming/brand standpoint, Sorare really should have always been on Solana. Moving to Solana will help them, but doesn’t do much for the rest of crypto. Also notable is data showing both Sorare and Football.fun are seeing the same amount of daily sales volume right now (both saw a surge in August).

    • Sorare 24-hour volume: $584,785

    • Football.fun 24-hour volume: $539,074

• Reaper Actual launches Alpha Bundles, big YouTuber streams the game

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️ 

  • My hot take: It’s great to see this game’s development is moving along, but I’m against making players pay a premium for early access to an unfinished game as a revenue strategy. Selling $30-$75 packs isn’t enough revenue to outweigh the cost of the potential players lost here, or those disappointed by the look of the alpha.

    • Asking players to fork up for an unfinished game that costs more than the cost of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (preorders are $70 on Steam) doesn’t make sense to me. 

    • Normie gamers are not going to buy these. This is effectively a push for sales from crypto-natives and traders, who expect ROI, which puts further pressure on the team to “deliver.” 

    • Gamers outside of crypto want to try before they buy, and the “freemium” model used by other shooters like Fortnite can lead to a lot more revenue in the long run. 

    • As others have pointed out, Reaper Actual paying big FPS influencers like TimtheTatman to play an early version of the game isn’t necessarily a good idea, either. Many viewers compared the game to a mobile game in the comments section, and others even called it “Temu Tarkov” or “Temu CoD.” 

    • It might have been better to just wait until the game was more polished before showing it off to Web2 audiences, who are very critical of new releases and will inevitably (and unfairly) compare this game to those with quadruple its budget.

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

My take on what game devs should be thinking about right now:

Twitter tweet

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The BNB hype isn’t slowing down just yet.

BNB is apparently now the third-most staked asset after Ethereum and Solana, when sorted by market cap. Its price is up 18% in the past week. 

As Blockworks Research points out, BNB’s share of total network revenue is also up, and the chain has been seeing a wave of interest via BNB-based Aster plus memecoins. 

Yesterday YZi Labs, formerly known as Binance Labs, announced a staggering $1 billion developer fund for those building in the BNB ecosystem.

Read that again: $1 billion. Did we teleport back to 2021? 

They consider trading, RWA, AI, DeSci, DeFi, payments, and wallets to be the most important categories at the moment and want to see founders working on projects in those areas. 

Today we’re looking at a chain-agnostic GameFi protocol that’s starting on Solana but plans to expand to EVM, existing wallets, and beyond.

— Kate Irwin

OGP wants to pair any token with any game

Could “Gaming Capital Markets” spur interest in crypto gaming?

Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron is behind the upcoming launch of the Open Game Protocol, a chain-agnostic app layer that aims to reward players of any game in any token and reward developers with tokens, too.

“We think the most important thing for players is that they get rewarded, and even more so, that they believe in the rewards they get. And the most important thing for developers is that they get more players, and that at the end of the day, they can make a living making games,” Waldron told me in an interview.

But it’s not exactly easy for game developers — who are not blockchain engineers — to reward players with any token already on the market because that would involve buying large amounts of that token upfront and then writing smart contracts to distribute it.

“For most game developers, all that stuff is a non-starter,” Waldron said.

Conflicting incentives

Crypto gaming has had an identity crisis for years as disparate genres like narrative games and casino games are lumped together. Many crypto game developers, investors, and influencers have touted the importance of “good games first” before all else.

But perhaps they failed to realize why anyone would play a crypto game in the first place: a player can win something of real financial value. Otherwise, big-budget games like Fortnite and League of Legends — backed by multibillion-dollar studios — offer a better gaming experience overall.

Some indie devs have realized that crypto gaming’s advantage is the financialization that makes it different, but we’ve yet to see any title break out into the mainstream. This year, we’ve seen casino games, hypercasual titles, and “Ponzi-esque” titles come and go, all trying to tap into a more token-forward approach. 

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Marketing around crypto games has emphasized what blockchains are being used, touting them like big-name brands. This is often because it’s the L2s themselves who are doing the marketing.

But L2 blockchains’ motivations and interests may actually be in opposition to what game developers actually need. 

“Their own incentives are kind of getting in the way,” Waldron told me. “They’re like, ‘I want to drive a certain type of TVL and transactions on my chain.’ So they’ve become less aligned with the games that they’re working with, to some extent.”

How it works

Waldron likened OG Protocol to Stripe because any game developer can get token rewards set up for their game as quick as setting up credit card payments.

But there’s also a community component, and tokens can be staked.

“We built a system to create these reward pools so that the token communities can decide which games get how much rewards,” he said. “Instead of the games making the assets, it’s assets pairing with existing games.”

Traders are able to support the tokens and games they like. 

All of this is possible because of what Waldron calls “gamecoins,” which are attached to existing tokens. He used FARTCOIN as an example. 

“The FARTCOIN gamecoin is not used inside of the games. Actually, it’s a governance token that just determines where the rewards of FARTCOIN go. And so it’s a way of speculating on how big is the game ecosystem for FARTCOIN going to become.”

Game developers outside of crypto might ultimately use the protocol for their non-crypto games as an alternative to traditional advertising, Waldron suggested.

“It becomes like another way to acquire users that’s cheaper and more effective than ads,” Waldron said, adding that developers could also buy gamecoins and stake them against their own titles.

The OG Protocol is using Solana to start, but plans to expand to EVM chains in the future. It’s being incubated by ICMrun, a Solana-forward group focused on applications for tokenization.

At some point, OG Protocol hopes to offer its app layer as an integration for existing crypto wallets via a “play button” of sorts that lets traders see any token and then have “play” beside it as an option to play games that use that token in addition to existing wallet options like buy, sell, or swap. 

“We probably have 30 or 40 wallet partners that are already interested in doing it,” Waldron said.

This could certainly help crypto wallets achieve their super-app dreams.

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

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Watching Crypto Twitter parade its vague associations to Polymarket via crusty screenshots from 2021 is pretty funny. 

Everyone wants you to know that they are associated with the current valuable thing!

Besides prediction markets, tokenization continues to surge thanks to favorable crypto regulation and interest in launchpads. Today we’re looking at a crypto-native incubator focused on educating teams on how to launch tokens and navigate the current startup landscape.

— Kate Irwin

Opening the ICM box

A Solana-focused startup incubator wants to help projects cut through the noise on Crypto Twitter and deploy tokens in a way that sets teams up for long-term success.

ICM.run is focused on Internet Capital Markets-related projects, which ICMrun’s founder, who goes by Mercy, sees as “an evolution of the ICO era.”

The incubator counts Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz and others from the Meteorite Collective, Seedify, and ProtoKOLs among its list of 20 mentors. 

ICM recently announced the first project it’s incubating is Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron’s Open Game Protocol (more on this tomorrow!). 

“ICM is a normie-coded term for tokenized utility products onchain,” Mercy told me in an interview. “ICM’s just the evolution of the 2017 ICO era that got over-regulated in 2018. All the onchain capital moved to off-chain venture capital to create this kind of gray zone for projects to get tokenized.”

“That black box of off-chain capital [has] created a parasitic environment,” he added. “Most of these Web2-to-Web3 advisory firms are so parasitic.” 

The incubator believes the crypto startup scene desperately needs an open-source approach where information is a public good. But strategies on how to launch a token are being withheld by gatekeepers who profit off selling that information. 

Other teams may simply be going the launchpad route, releasing tokens via Pump or Believe, without having a clear gameplan.

Source: Very few new tokens released via launchpads pass the $1M MC mark each week, but Pumpfun sees the most

“Web2 teams are just succumbing to the Crypto Twitter gauntlet,” Mercy said. “Because they didn’t understand what was going on, or they didn’t have access to information, real-time information, they just succumb to the Crypto Twitter gauntlet, which is holder demands.”

ICMrun has been building out its own community of believers with a token and an NFT collection.

The ICM token has a market cap of roughly $18.5 million as of this morning, and its Milady-inspired NFT collection has a floor price of 3 SOL ($666 each). 

ICM plans to have a DAO at its core. Projects accepted to the incubator have to commit 1-5% of their total token supply to the DAO’s treasury. 

Ultimately, the goal is not to keep information siloed to those accepted by the incubator. 

“Big crypto does not care about indie onchain,” Mercy said. “But I don't judge our incubator success by the market cap or projects we incubate. I judge our success by the projects we never interact with that get access to our research information, and are able to go to market better because of it.”

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

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BTC has hit a new all-time high. The TradFi excitement’s in the air — can you feel it?

Polymarket is now apparently worth $9 billion, thanks to a hefty $2 billion investment from the Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE, which is also (awkwardly) known as ICE. 

Polymarket’s US launch also appears to be imminent.

CEO Shayne Coplan’s message to founders is a simple one, but it’s one I’d give too, if asked: Be different. 

“If I learned one thing, it’s that bold ideas are everywhere, hidden in plain sight. It just takes someone crazy enough to spend their life willing it into existence,” he wrote.

Playing it safe in crypto means you’ll show up late to the party. Risk is inevitable.

— Kate Irwin

Why gaming must play into the current cycle

In screenwriting there’s a famous structure, or beat sheet, called Save The Cat! that writers often follow. It telegraphs the basic three-act structure that can be found in most Hollywood films, and further breaks it down into 15 beats. 

To put it very simply, it looks like this: Act One sets up the story, stakes, and conflict. Act Two explores the fun (and challenges) further by delivering on “the promise of the premise.” 

At the end of Act Two, something big happens to raise the stakes, and there’s a “downhill spiral” moment. The hero then reaches an “All Is Lost” moment, which is their lowest point, which helps spur a “Dark Night of the Soul” or the “Dark Decision” moment where the hero must learn something (typically the story’s lesson or message) and consider what they’ve lost. 

Act Three is the finale, which, according to this structural model, involves a new realization, a new plan, and executing the new plan.

Crypto gaming is having its Dark Night of the Soul moment — and the new plan has yet to emerge. 

I think crypto gaming has to learn something important: Our industry is about money first and foremost, and you can’t escape that fact even if you’re building a “good game” (which many are not). 

Crypto gaming has spent so much time trying to acquire users with airdrops and other tactics, and not enough time refining its revenue structures. 

While you might still see some relentless optimism from the “maxis” on the timeline, they’re absolutely the exception, not the norm, and they aren’t looking at the broader state of gaming token prices, funding, and releases overall when applying their stance to the sub-sector.

But there is hope.

Ronin remains one of the biggest players in crypto gaming. I’d argue their Axie Infinity franchise is the most successful crypto gaming IP ever, and they’re continuing to develop their upcoming mobile-first Axie MMO.

Twitter tweet

Their blockchain’s validators — which includes the likes of Google, Nansen and startups focused on the Ronin ecosystem — recently voted to transform the Ronin sidechain into an Optimism L2.  

But the Sky Mavis team is also exploring how best to fit into the current institutional cycle. 

“I’d say gaming is definitely a bit lost in the wilderness right now,” Ronin and Sky Mavis cofounder Jeff Zirlin told me in an interview. 

The price of Ronin’s native RON token has struggled this year. It’s down almost 75% in 2025, per Blockworks Research data. 

Twitter tweet

Ronin recently announced RON buybacks as part of its plan to refocus on its token.

They’re also looking for institutional investors — and see the shift as necessary across all of crypto gaming. 

“What we saw last cycle was that gaming and NFTs; they did well at the end of the cycle,” Zirlin said. 

“Crypto gaming will kind of need to find a way to tap into Wall Street this cycle. It’s gonna be tough, but I think there’s a path forward.”

There are indeed options. Besides looking at new ways to adapt their tokens, larger gaming projects could explore building out DeFi arms, put their treasuries to work in different ways, or otherwise look to gamify trading and investment in their ecosystems. 

And while it certainly feels like crypto gaming has been shrinking lately as some studios pivot to AI or shutter entirely, that correction is actually a good thing.

In screenwriting, it’s at the hardest moment in the story where most who attempt the challenge don’t survive.

It’s the reckoning, where teams have to seriously look at themselves and reflect on whether they have the strength to move forward — and find new paths for revenue. 

Zirlin is also optimistic about the contraction. 

“You’re seeing a lot of teams drop out, which I think will help consolidate attention and capital around the remaining solid teams,” he said.

As we enter Act Three, crypto gaming is ready to enter the final beats of Save The Cat: Gather the team, make the plan, and execute on that plan.

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

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Too little, too late: As part of a years-long class-action lawsuit, a federal judge in California has ruled that Bored Ape NFTs aren’t securities.

That’s certainly good news, though one ruling doesn’t automatically extend to all NFTs and won’t send the NFT space back to the frothy bubble it once was.

— Kate Irwin

0xResearch returns to its analyst roots. Daily alpha and insights now coming directly from our research team. Investment research, market commentary, and unfiltered data-driven takes in your inbox.

In America, it’s Robinhood vs Coinbase

This year, Robinhood has been winning the consumer finance race — if its stock price is any indication.

Robinhood stock is up over 273% YTD, giving it a current market cap of $131 billion and a new all-time high.

COIN, by comparison, is up 50% YTD, with a market cap of roughly $99.8 billion.

The past five years can also help put this growth into context: HOOD is up over 318%, while COIN is up just 13%.

Ex-Coinbase 1confirmation founder Nick Tomaino suggests that prediction markets will be the thing that could take Coinbase to the next level, and get it closer to Robinhood-level gains. 

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I’m inclined to agree that it’d be the best way to drive revenue in the current market.

Adding smaller features like sending USDC to anyone using just a phone number is certainly useful. But this approach is unlikely to move the needle for Coinbase, which now competes with the likes of PayPal and Venmo for crypto users as well.  

Last week, we looked at how prediction markets are surging again and Kalshi has flipped Polymarket. Kalshi saw over $260 million in volume on Sept 27 alone, with roughly $3 billion in monthly volume in September.

Much of Kalshi’s activity, however, is coming from its deal with Robinhood. One Piper Sandler analyst said that 25-35% of all Kalshi activity occurs on Robinhood, which has now seen its prediction markets integration become a $200 million value-add.

For what it’s worth, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev remains very bullish on prediction markets.

“We’re already seeing prediction markets disrupt sportsbooks, reshape how news is reported/consumed, and give traders a native tool to price expectations. The shift is underway,” Tenev wrote on Friday.

Polymarket, which is built on Polygon, also continues to see substantial volume, with over $1.3 billion in volume traded in September alone.

Coinbase is obviously missing out — and leaving money on the table.

Limitless, which uses Base, would be the obvious integration if Coinbase didn’t want to build out its own markets feature.

(Notably, Tomaino’s 1confirmation led Limitless’s $3 million seed round last year.)

But Limitless remains much smaller than its rivals. In the last week of September, Kalshi saw far more weekly volume than Limitless: 

Could Coinbase launch its own prediction markets to stay competitive, and tap into the multibillion-dollar prediction market economy? Or, at the very least, integrate Limitless like the way Robinhood uses Kalshi?

“I think prediction markets are very exciting, and I actually would love to see prediction markets come more on-chain,” Brian Armstrong said earlier this year during COIN’s Q2 earnings Q&A.

For Coinbase, expanding to prediction markets is certainly possible, given its status as a multibillion-dollar financial firm with the capacity to ship fast and US political donations that have surely improved its standing in the Trump White House. 

Watching Robinhood and Coinbase battle for volume during the Super Bowl would certainly be worth the watch.

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

$30M in tokens

Joe Lubin has shared more details about the MetaMask token — and says you should start using your wallet again if you want a piece of the pie.

“Long-time users will see meaningful benefits, not only through Season 1 of Rewards but also through the upcoming MetaMask TGE,” Lubin wrote Sunday night. “If you haven’t transacted with MetaMask in a while, now’s the time.”

The first rewards season is valued at $30 million, some of which will be in the LINEA token. 

“We’re designing an experience that rewards people for how they already use MetaMask through meaningful incentives, perks, and referrals,” Lubin said. 

Of course, crypto loves free money — and crypto companies love printing it. Multimillion-dollar airdrops don’t always foster a loyal user base, though. Free tokens aren’t a long-term strategy because they create sell pressure and generate a whole lot of marketing and hype that doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term revenue. 

After an airdrop, a product that’s better than your competitors’ is essential. 

But MetaMask says their rewards scheme is “not a farming play” and will be more structured, with “yield referral rewards, mUSD incentives, exclusive partner rewards,” tokens, and other perks, which sounds more sustainable for long-term incentives than a simple airdrop. 

We’ll see whether Consensys plans to incentivize holding or buying the MetaMask token, or whether it will be little more than an expensive tool to try to keep traders off Coinbase and Phantom.

OpenSea continues pivot away from just NFTs:

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TGIF. This week we dove into a licensing minefield on Story protocol, a big-picture take on SAND getting its own creator economy-focused blockchain, why Kalshi flipped Polymarket and how in the future, you could make trades using only your mind. 

What’s cool about this current cycle is that new consumer apps keep coming. Today, we’re talking about a few of the latest, plus what’s going on with Zcash.

— Kate Irwin

Clear writing isn’t just about words — it’s about clear thinking. That’s why Blockworks’ Byron Gilliam (author of The Breakdown newsletter) put together a free guide on how to write about crypto.

It’s not a list of “10 hacks for better headlines.” It’s hard-earned lessons from someone who’s been making sense of markets for years.

Download the guide here.

• Zcash surges 170% in a week — why?

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: It’s nice to see that some in crypto still care about individual and financial privacy as a concept, but I’m not so sure that buying Zcash is the answer. There’s a lot you can do in your Web2 life first to increase your personal privacy and security — like using a VPN on all devices, E2E encrypted messaging apps, private web browsers and search engines, and generally avoiding ChatGPT convos and products from Google and Meta. For the more hardcore, there’s also privacy-focused OS options, burner phones and other tools.

  • One Zcash supporter in my DMs (who’s worked at various crypto companies) says the price spike may be because some woke up and decided Zcash is “privacy bitcoin.” Others suggest Zcash is at a “social tipping point,” and argue that its fundamentals have improved in the past year.

  • If you’re curious, Blockworks just released a Zcash-funded report that suggests Zcash could be an ideal privacy option for institutions interested in adopting crypto. 

• Exclusive: World Network increases developer app rewards

  • TLDR: World is raising weekly Dev Rewards by 4x to $100,000, saying there are now over 500 Mini Apps on World app. Existing apps are rewarded based on usage and other metrics.

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: This is good regardless of what you think about Worldcoin and its eye-scanning orb. Funding experimental crypto-powered apps that are gaining traction will absolutely help evolve the emerging crypto consumer ecosystem, which right now mainly consists of trading apps, prediction markets and memecoin launchpads. It’s also a cool way to reward developers with more money to keep iterating without making them quite so reliant on other sources of funding that may come with distracting incentives or conditions attached.

• Exclusive: World announces World Build 2 winners Fram3s, Valor, and Whole World Catalog

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: Some interesting crypto x AI projects in here could ultimately help solve various issues with AI today. Fram3s is offering a gamified video-clipping app to provide AI data, Valor is rewarding human-verified users with a token for providing “hyperlocal” retail price data, and Whole World Catalog is building a collection of cultural references where human-verified World app users can select, rank and be compensated for contributions.

• Dupe launches open beta on Solana to trade CS:GO skins using crypto

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️ 

  • My hot take: This is like DMarket (where you have to KYC), but with an “anonymous” option. You can either sign up with a Solana crypto wallet or your Steam account. If you go the anon route, though, Dupe won’t let you custody your purchased items. You’ll “own” them, but it’ll hold them for you. That’s certainly one workaround to provide user privacy while complying with regulation — just compromise on decentralization!

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives and rate markets as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

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