Last Week’s Top 5 in DeFi/NFT News — April 18, 2022

Weekly DeFi/NFT news is a collection of major weekly events/announcements brought from the most trustworthy data sources, such as The Defiant, Spencer Noon, Week in Ethereum News etc. with comments and extra insight from the Bulldax DeFi labs.

Hop Bridge nears $2b in cumulative transfer volume- OurNetwork newsletter

• Hop is a trustless bridge with support for ETH, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon and Gnosis Chain. To move assets between chains in near instant speed, it relies on market makers (“Bonders”) extending credit to users on the destination chain and relaying on-chain proofs through Ethereum as a message hub, to reimburse Bonders for their short-term credit.
• Although this security model restricts Hop to networks that are anchored to Ethereum, Hop is dominating routes in that zone and nearing $2b in volume.

• The number of large transfers going through Hop has increased significantly over the last weeks, with transfers north of $1m not being a rare occurrence. This is attributable to increasing Bonder liquidity per asset as well as deeper AMMs resulting in less slippage & more active arbitrage.
• one of Hop’s fastest growing chains has been Gnosis Chain (formerly xDAI). One of Gnosis first actions after the merge was to issue $GNO rewards for Hop LPs. This has brought down fees to bridge into GC and shows how important good bridge support is for emerging ecosystems.

Source: https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/ournetwork-issue-117-part-2?s=r

Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes predicts ‘coming crypto carnage’ — The Block

For the full blog post read here: https://cryptohayes.medium.com/the-q-trap-f1a38312f00f

• BitMEX co-founder and former CEO Arthur Hayes said the ailing state of global stock markets might lead to a crypto crash in the second quarter — and he’s buying put options as protection.

• “crypto is moving in tandem with US technology stocks and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will damage them both. While he remains bullish on crypto prices over the long term, he puts forward the view that they’re standing on the precipice of a “calamitous outcome.”
• The premise is based on the idea that if the Nasdaq 100 drops, it will drag down crypto with it.

Bitcoin vs. NDX 10-day correlation

• Hayes writes, “Global growth will decline on higher commodity prices driven by the continuation and possible escalation of the Russia / Ukraine war.” He adds that this will hurt the price of stocks.
• The second argument is that falling interest rates tend to support the Nasdaq 100, while the world is currently seeing higher interest rates in response to inflation.
• The third element is based on looking at the chart for the Nasdaq 100. Hayes says that the tech index failed to bounce significantly on a key technical level, suggesting that it may go lower.
• Put together, he’s bearish in the short term. Hayes estimates that bitcoin could go as low as $30,000 before the end of June, with ether falling to $2,500.

Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/141447/former-bitmex-ceo-arthur-hayes-predicts-coming-crypto-carnage

Bored Apes Go Hollywood With Coinbase-Produced Movie Trilogy — Coindesk

• The Bored Ape Yacht Club is getting its own film trilogy, with crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) behind the camera.

• The films are just the latest boost in what has been a stellar six weeks for a project many now see as the face of the non-fungible token (NFT) sector. That includes the launch of the ApeCoin (APE) token on March 18 and the acquisition of rival blue-chip project CryptoPunks by BAYC’s parent company, Yuga Labs, the week prior.
• The first of three installments for the series of animated short films, titled “The Degen Trilogy,” will premiere at NFT.NYC in June, with the NFT community of apes and non-apes alike having a say in parts of the film’s plot.
• Bored Ape owners are invited to submit their apes for consideration as characters in the trilogy, along with made-up character descriptions that will be reviewed by an actual Hollywood casting director.
• “You can think of this as a love letter to the NFT tech that has provided so much creative liberation for artists,” Swann told CoinDesk in an interview. “We really look to [Bored Apes] as sort of our North Star in the NFT space. They’ve created such a massive and engaging community.”
• Users will have to create a Coinbase wallet before being able to view them. The series will also tie into Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT marketplace, which will be released “very very soon,” according to Swann.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/11/bored-apes-go-hollywood-with-coinbase-produced-movie-trilogy/

Ethereum’s Merge Delayed Despite Successful ‘Shadow Fork’ Test — The Defiant

• Ethereum developers report that the final tests before the protocol’s transition to proof-of-stake are going well.
• A major test called “the shadow fork” was “a huge success,” Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden tweeted on Apr. 11.
• The test aimed to ensure that “The Merge”, which will meld the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain with the Ethereum mainnet, replacing energy-intensive miners with ETH stakers, goes ahead without a hitch. The Merge is scheduled for sometime after July.
• The most recent test processed mainnet transactions on a “shadow fork” — a subset of proof-of-work nodes that had been merged with the Beacon Chain to process proof-of-stake transactions.
• Tim Beiko, who organizes Ethereum developers, said that shadow forks are important when testing changes to the blockchain’s protocol. “[They show] us how nodes react in the harshest possible conditions: when their state and history is large and transactions are the most complex,” he wrote on Github.

• It looks like there will be a delay with the Merge as well — Beiko tweeted on April 11 that the Merge won’t happen in June as previously forecast. He followed up with another tweet on April 12 indicating that the Merge would take a few months.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/eth-merge-delayed/

Traders Move ETH out of Centralized Exchanges and into DeFi — The Defiant

• Traders are pulling their Ether from centralized exchanges and locking them into DeFi smart contracts, suggesting that traders believe that markets may still climb higher.
• Data from Glassnode shows that the number of ETH stored on exchanges is at its lowest level since August 2018, with 20.6M Ether, or 17.1% of Ethereum’s supply, locked on centralized trading venues.
• However, Ether’s supply was lower in 2018, and the 20.6M Ether held on centralized exchanges accounted for 20% of the coin’s circulation. On a percentage basis, Ethereum’s centralized exchange balance is at its lowest level since July 2016 — when ETH traded for just $10.

Number of Ether held on centralized exchanges (blue), ETH price (black). Source: Glassnode.

• The sum of ETH deposited in smart contracts is approaching an all-time high, with 27.5% of supply, or 33.1M Ether, locked in DeFi protocols. The record of 28.1% was posted in late October 2021, just weeks before the recent record-breaking bull market came to an end. Between November 2021 and January 2022, the price of ETH fell 56% from nearly $4,900 to $2,150.
• The share of Ethereum’s supply locked in smart contracts last broke into new all-time highs amid the ‘DeFi summer’ of 2020, which was accompanied by significant price gains for ETH.

Share of Ether supply locked in smart contracts (blue), ETH price (black). Source: Glassnode.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/ether-supply-shock/