Weekly Industry Report [June 06,2022]
Abstract
This week, we focus on the following events: 1) Immutable X will start activating protocol fees this week with a 2% fee on all transactions; 2) Blockchain data sharing platform Vendia completes US$30 million Series B financing, led by NewView Capital; 3) HM Treasury publishes consultation paper and proposes measures to reduce risk for stablecoin investors
Project Analysis: Goblintown.wtf is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, and each NFT is a goblin with a grotesque faces and a specific picture or profile on Twitter, Discord, or Instagram. Recently, the sales volume of Goblintown surged dramatically. The following report will analyze the Goblintown project.
1. Industry overview
I. Overall market trend
Bitcoin has shown a volatile upward trend recently. BTC broke through the original shock range, and the highest price hit US$32,279, but it formed an obvious strong resistance mark at US$32,000. After breaking through the high point and callback, the price remained in a slight fluctuation of between US$31,400 and US$31,900.
Ethereum broke the previous high many times, and the highest position touched the first-line pressure in US$2,016 and fell back. The current currency price is running around US$1,990.
Other altcoins also rose in varying degrees. At present, the market shows a relatively strong upward momentum, but the pressure is obvious. It remains to be seen whether there will be further resistance and upward thrust, breaking through the new threshold or peaking and falling back.
From the perspective of the market environment, even in the case of a falling market, the market’s optimism is still sufficient. According to CoinGecko data, listed companies around the world currently hold more than 225,000 BTC, of which MicroStrategy alone holds more than 129,000 BTC, worth nearly US$3.7 billion. Analysts believe that institutional sentiment is different from retail. Institutional investors like MicroStrategy and Block are holding on to investing to hold Bitcoin for the long term, even in the toughest market conditions. Bernegger, co-founder of Crypto Fund AltAlpha Digital, said that as long as Bitcoin remains at current price levels, institutional investor sentiment remains positive due to the company’s long-term strategy. As a result, institutional investors remain optimistic about the outlook even as the market declines.
II.NFT
The “blue-chip” NFT series has seen a decline in both floor prices and market capitalization over the past 30 days, with some of the most well-known projects halving in value on these key metrics. NFTGO data shows that the floor prices of well-known NFT series such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) and Moonbirds have dropped by about 55% within 30 days. Among them, MAYC fell the most, with floor prices down 55% to 17.95ETH. The more popular BAYC fell 47% to 96.95 ETH and CryptoPunks fell nearly 49% to 46.69 ETH. The only series that went up was Moonbirds, up 22%, with floor prices of 21.77 ETH. While Moonbirds’ floor prices may still be rising, its market cap has fallen 44.70% to US$550 million. The market value of other NFTs also fell, with MAYC down more than 37.44% to US$956 million, and BAYC and CryptoPunks down 36.80% and 22.05%, respectively. Despite the drop in metrics, these NFT series still dominated the top NFT sales over the past 30 days, with the most expensive BAYC NFT sold for 410 ETH on May 5, when it was worth around US$1.2 million.
III.DeFi
IV.Layer 2
2. Market news
I. Industry news
Immutable X will start activating protocol fees this week with a 2% fee on all transactions
Immutable X, a second-layer expansion plan for Ethereum NFTs, announced that it will start activating protocol fees this week, and will charge 2% of all transactions (temporarily 1% in June). A portion of this fee will be allocated to Immutable and a portion to the IMX staking reward pool.
Mirror Protocol is attacked again, and the remaining capital pool is at risk of drying up
The DeFi application Mirror Protocol on the Terra blockchain has been attacked again, with more than US$2 million in funds lost, and the fund pools of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polkadot have dried up. The remaining fund pool is linked to stocks. If the vulnerability is not fixed before the market opens at 4:00 EST (16:00 Beijing time), all its token asset pools will be at risk. The Mirror Protocol, which allows users to long or short tech stocks using synthetic assets, runs on the old Terra chain (now called TerraClassic). The problem, said Todd Garrison, founder of validator node BlockPane, is that most validators running nodes on the Terra Classic chain are running outdated versions of price oracles, and those nodes still give Mirror Protocol the LUNC price of 5UST. Todd Garrison said, the LUNC price oracle will need to be fixed, because in a short time, all liquidity pools will be exhausted, Mirror will generate irreparable bad debts, and the system will collapse on its own.
Ethereum Core Developer Tim Beiko Announces Ropsten Merger Announcement
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko released the Ropsten merger announcement, saying that a new beacon chain has been launched, and it is expected that the Merge will be carried out on the Ropsten network around June 8, thereby converting to PoS consensus. There are currently two things that need to be done on Ropsten, first its beacon chain must activate the Bellatrix upgrade scheduled for June 2, and then a total PoW difficulty value, the Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD), will be selected to trigger the consensus switch. The TTD should be chosen by June 2 or 3 to avoid miners disrupting the transition again and will be announced on ethereum.org.
II. Investment and Financing
Blockchain data sharing platform Vendia completes $30 million Series B financing, led by NewView Capital
Vendia, an enterprise-level blockchain data sharing platform, announced the completion of a US$30 million Series B financing. The round was led by New View Capital, with participation from Neotribe Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Sorenson Capital, Aspenwood Ventures and BMWi Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to US$50 million to date. The two co-founders of Vendia are Tim Wagner, the inventor of AWS Lambda, and Shruthi Rao, the former head of blockchain at AWS. Well-known companies such as BMW, Aerotrax and Slalom are among its clients. The company recently launched a new product line around CRM data sharing. Based on blockchain technology, Vendia enables enterprise clients to provide their users with an immutable serverless ledger to ensure data accuracy, provenance and traceability.
Mondu closes US$43 million Series A round led by Valar Ventures
Berlin-based startup Mondu announced the completion of a US$43 million Series A financing led by Valar Ventures, a subsidiary of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, with participation from Cherry Ventures and Fintech Collective. It is reported that the startup seeks to introduce “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) into the B2B business model.
First Digital Trust completes US$20 million financing, with participation from Nogle and others
First Digital Trust, a digital asset custodian under Legacy Trust, a financial services company, announced the completion of US$20 million in financing, with participation from Nogle and Kenetic Capital. First Digital Trust will use some of the new funding to expand into the Singapore, UK and Canadian markets and to develop secondary markets for private equity and digital assets.
III. Supervision
HM Treasury publishes consultation paper and proposes measures to reduce risk for stablecoin investors
Following the recent collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), HM Treasury issued a consultation paper outlining strategies to reduce risk for investors holding stablecoins. The U.K. government has proposed amending existing legislation to give the Bank of England the power to appoint an administrator to oversee the insolvency of failed stablecoin issuers. The deadline for feedback is August 2.
Vice Premier Liu He of the State Council: Strengthen research on network information technology, and attach importance to technological innovations such as blockchain and digital currency
Liu He, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, attended the opening ceremony of the 16th Academician Conference of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and delivered a speech on the morning of May 30. Liu He emphasized that in accordance with the requirements of “the epidemic must be prevented, the economy must be stabilized, and development must be safe”, on the basis of doing a good job in the existing work, we should strengthen research efforts in several aspects. It mentions strengthening the research of network information technology. Ensure the controllability of the network technology system, strengthen the research and development of artificial intelligence technology, and attach importance to technological innovations such as blockchain and digital currency.
South Korean authorities subpoena all Terraform Labs employees for full investigation
The Joint Investigation Unit of Financial and Financial Securities Crimes of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has summoned all employees of Terra developer Terraform Labs for an investigation. It is understood that these employees participated in the initial development of Luna and Terra in 2019. Prosecutors obtained a statement that Do Kwon forcibly launched the token even though there was opposition to the launch of Luna and Terra at the time. Former employees said the opposition was because the pilot model had failed internally at the time. It was also pointed out at the time that if investors are paid tens of percentage points of interest without a stable collateral or profit model, there may be a swarm of people at first, but at a certain point, it will collapse. Because it cannot withstand interest payments and fluctuations in value. Prosecutors are looking at whether Terraform Labs executives such as Do Kwon were aware of Luna and Terra’s design flaws in advance. In addition, prosecutors will investigate whether Do Kwon deliberately manipulated prices and whether the country’s virtual currency trading platform passed proper listing review procedures.
3. Trending project analysis — Goblintown
This week, we focus on the project called Goblintown, a NFT collection full of mysteries. The first secret is that in just a few days, the floor price of this NFT increased sharply by over 7.5 ETH (US$13861.35) at the time of writing, and the total volume approaches 19.7 ETH (US$36376.64). In this bear market, Goblintown created a miracle that attracted many traders.. Another secret is that Goblintown consists of 9,999 goblins. The NFTs were minted for free, and then gained significant real-world value over time. It is one of reasons why this project is getting noticed. Without any frills, major promotions, or commercial hype, Goblintown’s floor value increased from 0.5 ETH by May 23 to 7.5 ETH on June 1, which is about 1,400 times. There are many experts who have started to
analyze this project. Therefore, we will discuss how Goblintown attracts consumers following.
Introduction to Goblintown
In general, Goblintown.wtf is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, and each NFT features a grotesque goblin, to be used as a profile picture on Twitter, Discord or Instagram, each with different attributes and accessories.
The design of Goblintown website is really simple. You can find one mock SMS conversation between goblins “garf” and “urki” and three useful information are shown below:
1.The NFTs are free to be minted.
2.They are researving 1,000 goblins for no reason.
3.No roadmap, no Discord, no utility. CC0 (creative common — no rights reserved).
Why is Goblintown so attracted?
As of June 1, Goblintown’s transaction volume increased by about 500% in the last 7 days. The market cap is about US$139.77 million, which increased by about 480.93%.
There are several reasons that Goblintown became popular in this market. Firstly, their design is brilliant and highly recognizable. Their heads doesn’t have perfect circles. Instead, their heads are like potatoes that are too long. Also, their eyes are asymmetric and misshapen. Their colors are earthen. They are similar to Dobby, the tormented house elf from Harry Potter, and Gollum, the emaciated, Ring-obsessed hobbit of Lord of the Rings. Overall, Goblintown is intentionally ugly. Interestingly, Goblintown #6485, #8995, #9249 took the top three spots with US$150507.29, US$135964.79, and
US$58,557.33 respectively.
Secondly, since the project was sold out, the Goblintown project team has spread the Goblin language through official social media, Twitter Space and other channels. According to observations, the online discussion on the 26th lasted for three and a half hours, and the maximum number of simultaneous listeners reached more than 1,700. Interestingly, each bearer speaker got into the vibe of a goblin role-playing identity and had fun. The phrase-AUUGHHH!- itself is a meme.
Thirdly, the crypto and NFT market hasn’t been healthy since the beginning of this year, and there have been several crashes such as the bloodbath of LUNA. Therefore, everything about the crypto market and the NFT project looked meaningless. However, the existence of Goblintown provides some meaning to the market. For instance, the literal translation of Goblintown itself from English represents the current market atmosphere: an ironic description and sigh, “ugly” and “weird” allude to the current market. People found out that the newfound NFT could be one way to express their feelings. The connection between Goblintown and people’s feelings have helped make the NFT successful.
What should we think about the NFT market?
The transient success of Goblintown might give some useful advice to the NFT market. Initially, the NFT is simply digital art. People buy them because they like them, and not just for investing. Secondly, one important note of the newfound NFT is what we can learn about it. Goblintown tells us an interesting story about the world of goblins. This story behind the NFT might work.
4. Calendar of future popular asset events
I. NTF mint Calendar
II. Token Airdrops
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