SocialFi Reconstructs the Creators Ecosystem | SnapFingers Weekly #13

This newsletter will take you approximately 10 minutes to read.

📂 Key Takeaways of the Week

• The rise of SocialFi community platform with projects raised a significant amount of funding in this sector.
• Recap of Ansem’s Newsletter — Quarter IV 2021 Outlook; it is predicted that Bitcoin will usher in a slow rise rather than a parabolic rise like that of 2017.

📂 №1 Potential areas

SocialFi community platform

In September, DeSo, a social blockchain project, completed its $2b funding participated by a16z and Sequoia Capital and announced to launch its decentralized social ecosystem fund of $50m this week to support early blockchain social media projects. At the end of September, another community token platform Roll announced its completion of a $10m A round funding.

The community platform can bring more profits for the authors by introducing a more fine-grained incentive mechanism. So will community platforms become the new norm of social networks? What are the market segments? And how can the platform raise its own value?

1.1 Personal tokens: Personal tokens can rise due to the development of individual creators and bring higher returns for early investors.

Projects:

• DeSo Creator Token

Under the default system of DeSo, each user possesses his own creator tokens. The price will rise as other users purchase the tokens or fall when they sell. The creator tokens can only be purchased using DESO, the native token of DeSo. The total supply of DESO is approximately 10.8 million.

• The personal token of Roll

Roll is one of the old-school social token issuing platforms. Creators can develop their own ERC-20 tokens on Roll, which is also their own personal social tokens. The supply for each creator is 10 million, among which 2 million will be directly given to the creator while 1.2 million belongs to Roll. The rest of the supply will be linearly unlocked monthly in 3 years. In the meantime, ROLL also provides storage and trading platforms.

• The creator token of Rally

RALLY is one of the earliest famous social token offering platforms. It can combine its own native governance token RLY and the social tokens of creators and mint the two into a new personal token. The transition to a personal token must rely on $RLY. This platform covers the whole process of offering, channel, deposit, and trading. Rally adopts a Layer2 solution to optimize mechanisms such as instant trading. Token holders have the right to manage Rally Network.

• RAC: The personal token issued by Grammy-winning artist OurZora.

How tokens increase in value

• Entering early fans group
• Discounts/participating in events, merchandise, NFT
• Community identity
• Potential financial gains for supporting early creators.

1.2 Community tokens: The potential to rise for community tokens is greater than personal ones

Projects:

Whale: a community supported by an NFT group (soon becoming DAO).

$Whale is a famous personal token offered by individual buyer WhaleShark based on Roll. WHALE tokens are indirectly supported by the NFT assets of WhaleShark, which are kept in the address called Vault managed by WhaleShark.

PSG fans token: tokens offered by Paris Saint-Germain on Chiliz Fan. PSG started its collaboration with Chiliz’s social mobile app Socios and use fans' tokens to connect the club and fans.

In August, Paris Saint-Germain Club paid Messi in $PSG fan tokens.

How these tokens raise their own value:

• All profits of personal tokens on the platform.
• DAO governance rights and impact on niche community.
• Lending assets or profits of services provided by the community.

1.3 Social token. The social token offering platform enables creators to build and manage their own token community, while the platform itself gains value by charging fees or offering social tokens.

Tokens:

• $Rally: Rally network governance tokens supporting all creator tokens.
• $CHZ: Social tokens for Socios. Gaining transaction fees and offering new fans tokens while burning CHZ.
• $FYZ: Social tokens for Fyooz market. Used for trading all personal tokens of Stars.

How these tokens can raise their value:

• Governance of social platform
• Trading, the premium charged by the platform or burning mechanism

📂 №2 Quarter IV 2021 Outlook

Recap of Ansem’s Newsletter — Quarter IV 2021 Outlook

Before we read Ansem’s Newsletter, let us go over the trendy topics of the first three quarters of 2021.

• February: booming BSC ecosystem (From Feb 15th, BNB soared from $130 to a maximum of $348 in 3 days, an increase of 170%, and its market value rose to the third place in the global ranking. The rise of BNB is related to 3 reasons: Coinbase is expected to go public, the Binance Smart Chain is getting into the majority and is becoming a substitute for the over-congested Ethereum.
• June: The rise of the Polygon ecosystem, with its market value, exceeded tens of billions.
• July: GameFi summer, with Axie Infinity’s transaction volume and the number of users skyrocketed. Its total revenue in the third quarter was US$781.6 million, an increase of 48 times from the second quarter. In addition, the transaction volume of NFT collectibles increased sharply in July, and the monthly transaction volume of Opensea hit a record high of US$3 billion, a 10-fold increase from June.
• August: Solana Ecosystem Explosion; SOL rose from $45 on August 15 to $210 on September 9.
• September: Total value locked in L1 and L2 continued to grow, a lot of L1 ecosystems launched incentive plans.

What about Q4 referring to Ansem’s Quarter IV 2021 Outlook?

2.1 Layer 1s

• Leaders in the L1 market: Solana/Avalanche/Terra/Fantom/Harmony
• Developer activity/user activity/TVL on L1 will continue to trend up. If that stops for any reason, there will be some re-evaluation.
• AVAX is the strongest Ethereum competitor based on the Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM).

2.2 Resources Behind Major L1s

Every L1 public chain has its own investors and strong founders. In the next few years, we will continue to see new capitals and new talented developers enter the crypto field. They are committed to building their own ecosystems:

• With the lasting influence of FTX/SBF/Alameda, Solana may become the best choice after ETH.
• Emin+3AC behind AVAX
• Do Kwon + Novo behind Terra; Jump Capital stated that it has been participating in the governance of LUNA
• Fantom has received significant support from Andre Cronje. He joined Fantom as a technical consultant in September 2018 and is currently a Defi architect.

2.3 Major Assets Outlook

• The approval of the Bitcoin ETF is like a potential catalyst and the Bitcoin value proposition has been verified by the various types of institutional participants. Institutions participating in investing in BTC are trying to accumulate BTC for a long time; we will usher in a slow rise rather than a parabolic rise like that of 2017. This trend is in the best interest of the agency.
• Ethereum has already implemented eip-1559 and its next major catalyst which is the merge and shift to PoS isn’t scheduled until Q2 2022, but it is increasingly becoming clear that ETH is the main currency in web3.0 and its user base keeps growing.
• Other L1s do have more room to develop for the upside, but because their market shares are smaller and they have undergone fewer actual testings, they need to take more risks in order to get more returns.
• The trend of EVM: multi-chain/”bridge” projects and decentralized derivatives.

2.4 Watchlist

Quarter IV 2021

SnapFingers compiled the top recent headlines, 88 in total.

📂 №1 Market Data

#Bitcoin

• On September 28, the number of bitcoin locked in Lightning Network exceeded 2,900 (exactly 2,943), up 24% in 30 days and nearly 100% compared with mid-June, hitting a new high.

*On Sept 24, Twitter officially launched its Bitcoin “tips” feature.

#Ethereum

• According to the digital asset management report (September) of CryptoCompare, the asset management size of bitcoin fund decreased by 7.8% to $35.1 billion, accounting for 67% of the total size, while the size of the Ethereum fund reached its new all-time-high, accounting for 25.9% of the total size.

#ETF #Fund

• The crypto stock ETF brought by ETF issuer Volt Equity has been approved by SEC and will be listed on New York Stock Exchange. 80% of the fund’s holdings will be invested in companies that hold most of their net assets in BTC or receive most of their income from Bitcoin mining.
• On October 2, SEC postponed the verdict on four applications for BTC ETFs. The earliest verdict date is expected to be November 21.
• The CEO of George Soros Fund revealed that the family office owns bitcoins.
• The portfolio of Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund added SOL and UNI. Up to Oct 1, the portfolio of the fund is as follows:

📂 №2 Project Developments

#Ethereum

• Ethereum 2.0 client Prysm released the official version 2.0, supporting the Altair hard fork upgrade of the mainnet. The Altair Beacon Chain upgrade is scheduled to activate on Oct. 27. The Ethereum PoS may be delayed to next year. The upgrade to take place at the end of this year include only the difficulty bomb delay.
• Up to Oct 6, Ethereum network has destroyed over 450,000 ETH worth over $1.5 billion. The application destroying the most ETH(14.8%) is Opensea followed by Ethereum transfer and Uniswap V2.

#Layer2

• According to data from L2BEAT, the total locked position of Ethereum L2 reached $3b (Oct.7), while the locked position of Arbitrum Network accounts for 55.67% followed by dYdX accounting for 23.99%.
• Ethereum scaling program Optimism announced the deployments of its OVM (Optimism virtual machine) 2.0 on Kovan testnet on Oct 14 and on Ethereum mainnet on Oct. 28.
• The Alpha version of StarkNet, a Rollup scaling program launched by StarkWare will be on Ethereum mainnet in November.
• Connect general cross-chain trading protocol NXTP mainnet is online, supporting Arbitrum, Polygon, xDai, Fantom, and BSC Network.

#Algorithm stablecoin

• Algorithm stablecoin protocol Fei Protocol is about to launch its v2 and FEI will maintain a $1 peg.
• Angle, a stablecoin protocol supported by a16z, is launching its governance token. The protocol supports the issuance of stablecoins.

#DeFi

• DEX aggregator Matcha announced that it will launch the public beta version of Gasless Trading, allowing users to trade on Ethereum without paying any Gas fees while featuring no slippage and no MEV attacks.
• Injective will implement a major network upgrade to allow any blockchain-based on Cosmos IBC, such as Band Protocol and Terra, to interact with Injective.
• DEX aggregator 1inch blocks out US trades in preparation for launching its compliance product 1inch Pro.
• Decentralized futures platform Futureswap partners with NFT index fund NFTX to launch the NFT permanent contract.

#Avalanche ecosystem

• Centralized lending protocol Aave announced its deployment on the public chain Avalanche.
• The stablecoin exchange platform Curve has added Avalanche protocol.
• The DeFi insurance protocol InsurAce announced its deployment on Avalanche mainnet and will be live on Oct.6, launching insurance and mining services in the meantime.
• Avalanche ecosystem DeFi protocol Trader Joe announced its partnership with Avalanche Foundation to launch a $20 million liquidity mining incentive program in mid-October.

#Application #Gaming

• Decentralized blogging platform Mirror is available for creators to publish their work.
• YGG announced that they will buy Star Atlas NFT game assets worth $1 million as part of a long-term partnership between the two projects.
• Axie Infinity surpasses $780 million in Q3 earnings, up 4800% compared with Q2.
• Axie Infinity will launch a decentralized exchange based on Ronin, combining games and DeFi.
• Axie Infinity has launched the Axs Staking Program, distributing 2 million AXS for the first month of the pledge.

#NFT

• Shaquille O’Neal announced his partnership with Ethernity Chain to release his personal collection of NFT.

*Before this, Macy’s NFT artwork, NFT collection authorized by Pele and Muhammad Ali series.

• The CTO of Props and Loot community members co-founded Loot Exchange, which will generate virtual character images according to information in Loot.

#Others #Infrastructure #Insurance #MEV

• The 5G gateway used for HNT (tokens of decentralized wireless communication network Helium) mining is being delivered. The gateway host can implement HNT mining by providing 5G cellular coverage.
• In August, Helium completed its $111 million token funding led by a16z.
• CoinGecko integrated DeFi insurance protocol and InsurAce insurance service. Users can look up the insurance price and purchased capacity for this project provided by InsurAce in token information or purchase-related insurances to protect the asset security via this page.
• Flashbots launched a public beta Flashbots Protect to solve the problem of the trading rush.

#Ecosystem support

• Ripple announced its $250m Creator Fund as an incentive for developing projects relating to NFT creation and market building on XRP Ledger (XRPL).
• DeSo launched its $50m decentralized social ecosystem fund to support early blockchain social media projects.
• EMURGO, the founder company of Cardano, will invest $100m to promote the development of Cardano ecosystem.

📂 №3 CeFi/Large Corporations

#Service #Channel

• Swiss crypto bank SEBA Bank obtained a digital asset custody bank license, allowing it to extend its institutional digital asset custodian services to Swiss mutual funds within the digital asset sector.
• Visa has proposed a universal payment channel (UPC) interoperability solution that enables the interoperability of private stablecoins and public CBDC (central bank digital currency).
• Equity crowdfunding platform AngelList will soon launch a fund supporting USDC.
• Cross-border payments company MoneyGram, in partnership with Stellar, will use USDC to settle transactions. MoneyGram has been working with Ripple in the leapfrog payments space since 2019 and has received Ripple’s 50 million US dollars equity investment.
• Crypto.com Tax, a Tax filing service launched by Crypto.com, is now available to UK users.
• CoinDesk: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a major US banking regulator, is studying whether certain stablecoins are eligible for its underwriting.
• Payment service provider Affirm and the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) have cooperated with plans to allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. It is committed to becoming a super application like Alipay and WeChat.
• Revolut, a British fintech company valued at $33 billion, will launch a crypto token, CoinDesk reported, citing sources.

#NFT+ Cryptocurrency+

• Toy giant MGA Entertainment will launch the LOL Surprise NFT market.
• AMC, the largest theater operator in the United States, accepts cryptocurrency as a gift card payment method.
• TikTok announced the launch of the first NFT series “TikTok Top Moments”.
• Twitter executives posted videos, showing the new feature that users who have not yet posted can set NFT Twitter personal avatars.

#CeFi #Investment and financing

• Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber closed a $260 million Series C round at a valuation of $1.9 billion, led by A16Z and Coinbase Ventures.
• Dunamu, the operator of cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, has raised about 100 billion won ($85 million) at a 10.2 trillion won ($8.6 billion) valuation.
• On October 4, Upbit announced that it would implement its customer verification obligations on October 6 in accordance with South Korean regulations, and suspend transactions and refunds for unverified users from October 13.
• Ramp, A crypto payments infrastructure company, has closed a $30 million Series A financing with a valuation of US$300 million, led by British venture capital firm Balderton Capital. Ramp provides fiat money deposit channels for cryptocurrencies and calls itself the “PayPal of cryptocurrency”. It has become a crypto company approved and registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom.
• BitOasis, a cryptocurrency exchange in the Middle East and North Africa, raised $30 million in Series B round. Jump Capital and Wamda jointly led the investment.
• Colombian fintech company Movii raised $15 million in Series B round, led by Square and Hard Yaka (an investment fund created by Ripple’s chief risk officer Greg Kidd).
• New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange Easy Crypto closed an $11.75 million round, led by Nuance Connected Capital.
• Hex Trust, a digital asset custodian, announced a $10 million funding round led by Animoca Brands.

📂 №4 Project Financing

#DeFi

• Decentralized fixed-income platform Strips Finance raised $8.5 million in funding, with participation from Sequoia Capital India and Multicoin.
• Stablecoin startup Angle Labs completed a $5 million seed round led by A16Z, and is expected to go live on the mainnet at the end of October.
• Cryptocurrency pledge platform Stader Labs raised a $4 million seed round through token sales, led by Pantera Capital.
• THORChain Ecological Transaction Agreement THORSwap raised $3.75 million, led by IDEO CoLab Ventures.
• Blockchain protocol PowerLoom has raised $3.1 million in seed funding, led by Blockchain Capital. The product aims to improve the user experience of DeFi and DApp.

#Layer2

• NFT L2 solution Immutable X completed the token sale (token IMX) on CoinList on September 8, raising $12.5 million. Prior to this, it completed a US$60 million Series B financing on September 14th.
• Layer2 scaling project Nahmii completed $8 million in financing and released the Layer2 solution Nahmii 2.0.

#NFT

• NFT platform Art Blocks raised $6 million in funding, led by True Ventures.
• Eternal, a streaming NFT marketplace, raised $4.5 million in funding, and Mark Cuban and Coinbase participated in the investment.
• NFT fragmentation tool NIFTEX was acquired by an undisclosed party.

#GameFi

• Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis closed a $152 million Series B financing, led by a16z.
• OP Games, a multi-chain game platform has raised $8.6 million in a seed round.
• Merit Circle has raised a $4.5 million seed round to promote the “play to earning” game industry.
• Bloktopia, a virtual reality Metaverse project, closed a $4.2 million private round led by Animoca Brands.
• NFT Metaverse Game Warena announced that decentralized game developer Animoca Brands has become its major investor and partner. The amount of investment was not disclosed.

#Social platform

• Roll, A social token platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding, led by IOSG Ventures.

#Other #Data #Tool #Application

• Zero Hash, a digital asset infrastructure company closed a $35 million Series C round, led by Point72. Zero Hash provides a holistic solution for platforms to buy, sell, receive, send and earn digital assets, and is currently supporting some new banks (such as Wirex) and brokers (such as TradeStation).
• Gelato Network, an automatic execution tool for Ethereum smart contracts, announced the completion of an $11 million Series A financing led by Dragonfly Capital.
• Data ownership project Swash’s private equity round of financing reached $7 million, will launch IDO on October 29.
• Merkle Science, A blockchain data analytics and research company raised $5.75 million in Series A funding.
• Unlock Protocol announced a $4 million funding round led by Betaworks, Cygni Labs, Guardian parent GMG Ventures, and Metacartel Ventures China.

#Crypto fundraising

• Venture capital company NFX has established a new $450 million fund that will focus on crypto, gaming, fintech, and more.
• Japanese financial services company SBI, Swiss crypto bank Sygnum and Italian Azimut Group jointly launched a $75 million venture capital fund in Singapore, planning to invest in start-ups in digital assets.
• Crypto asset manager Arca’s first early-stage venture capital Fund, Arca Endeavor Fund, was oversubscribed for $30 million and focuses on investing in innovative projects across the digital asset ecosystem.

📂 №5 Policy

• The US Department of Justice announced the establishment of a cryptocurrency enforcement team. The team will seek to “strengthen our capacity to disable these financial markets that allow criminals to flourish,” according to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
• Biden Administration Seeks to Regulate Stablecoin Issuers as Banks.
• South Korea to impose tax on virtual assets next year as planned, according to finance minister.
• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell: U.S. has no plans to ban bitcoin and crypto but such activities should be regulated.
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler reiterated his support for a narrow class of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that would invest in futures contracts instead of the crypto itself.

📂 №6 Security/Policy

• A vulnerability that allowed hackers to bypass Coinbase’s multi-factor authentication SMS option has affected at least 6,000 of the exchange’s customers.
• Circle names Devron Drown, former U.S. House Senior Counsel for Fintech, as Director for Global Policy.
• The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that it has imposed a fine of $1.25 million on the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.

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