Daily Alpha - 24 Jul'24: $107m Inflows and $1.1b Volume for Spot ETH ETFs, Mt Gox Proceeds Hit Creditor Accounts, dYdX Planning to Sell v3 Software

Jul 24, 2024

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(Ref)links to farms: Usual, Infinex, mETH, Ethena, Blast, Sanctum, Zircuit, Karak (code: pEZOP)

Ethena introduces reward bearing asset proposals, inviting issuers to pitch Ethena for an allocation of their RWA. Securitize (distributor of BlackRock's BUIDL) and Steakhouse have applied. Separately, Ethena also launched ENA governance by committee whose mandate is to generally identify, evaluate, and manage risk within the Ethena ecosystem
Doodles launched DoodlesTV, a token-gated platform that gives fans exclusive access to community-focused premieres of music, films & digital artwork. It will partner with Base to launch the Super Pass, unlocking early access to DoodlesTV premiere events
Puffpaw, a vape-to-earn project on Berachain, goes live
Superstate announces the launch of Superstate Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), leveraging the BTC and ETH carry trades to offer yields to users
Elixir teases an announcement for 31 Jul'24
Skate's stateless app will power Polymarket on telegram soon
The Fantom Foundation is offering 200m S to migrate partners to Sonic, the first awardees are Beethoven X, Debita and Thunder Dome
Grass introduces its Desktop Node in an invite-only beta, using <5% resources of Chromium browser and handling 10x more bandwidth than chrome extension. Features include 2x network score multiplier, improved uptime, and priority routing

Lightning Labs released Taproot Assets v0.4 on mainnet, allowing users to mint digital assets like stablecoins on Bitcoin and send them via the Lightning Network
Base fault proofs go live on Base Sepolia Testnet
Symbiotic core contracts go live on Github, marking the first code implementation of slashing in a restaking protocol
Bunni's v2 testnet goes live

Bloomberg reported that dYdX is in talks to sell its v3 software (Advisors: Perella Weinberg Partners, Potential buyers: Wintermute & Selini Capital). This news drew criticism from Gabriel Shapiro and Jeff Dorman. dYdX put out an article following the news breaking
AltLayer changes its token vesting schedule, pushing back vesting for investors, strategic partners, team, treasury and others by 6 months from 25 Jul'24 to 25 Jan'25. Vesting completion date remains unchanged (accelerated vest after the pause)

Karak launches native staking for MKR token offering restakers 1x Karak XP. Phase 2 will feature NewGovToken (NGT) staking, with automatic upgrade from MKR to NewGovToken. MKR and NGT holders can earn additional rewards by securing Distributed Secure Services (DSSs) built on Karak
The Spark Lido Rewards Program launches, distributing 225 wstETH to all ETH borrowing positions on SparkLend
Ethena integrates with Scroll, allowing USDe to be used on Nuri Exchange and Ambient Finance

Spot ETH ETFs go live, ending the day with +$107m net inflow ($480m ETHE outflows) bringing total AUM to $10.2b (vs. BTC's $60b). The ETFs collectively did $1.1b in volumes (vs. BTC's $2.4b)
Franklin Templeton says 'Solana has shown major adoption and continues to mature, overcoming technological growing pains and highlighting the potential of high-throughput, monolithic architectures', which could suggest a SOL ETF application is underway
Bitwise will be donating 10% of profits from its ETF fees to open source protocol development and will be using ENS addresses to transparently display ETF reserves

dYdX v3 website was compromised (dYdX v3 contracts and dYdX 4 were unaffected). This website has now been recovered and is safe to use
Spectra's router contract was targeted as part of an exploit. The attacker hijacked the transactions of 4 users, resulting in a 168 ETH ($580k) loss. The team has since offered the hacker a 10% bounty

Bitlayer Labs, a Bitcoin Layer 2 network developer, raised a $11m Series A round with a $300m valuation co-led by Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and ABCDE
Pluto Studio, the publisher of telegram game Catizen, raised an undisclosed round from Binance Labs. Pluto Studio had previously raised a $2.2m seed round and a $4m strategic round
Network3, a web3 AI infrastructure developer, raised $5.5m in pre-seed and seed funding
Igloo Inc, the company behind Pudgy Penguins, raised a $11m funding round to build a consumer focused L2 named Abstract led by Founders Fund

Kraken customers are reporting Mt Gox distributions arriving in their accounts
Elon Musk removes laser eyes PFP, sparking a decline in DMAGA, a token associated with the PFP
Bitcoin Conference is in talks with the Kamala Harris campaign for her to speak at the conference. Tyler Winklevoss says she will need to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler, withdraw all SEC enforcement actions against good actors and end Operation Chokepoint 2.0 for her to stand a chance in winning back the crypto voting block
Mark Cuban says Kamala Harris' camp has reached out with 'multiple questions' about crypto

VanEck uses Pudgy Penguins in an advertisement to promote its ETH ETF
Hamilton Lane, a $920b AUM asset manager, launches a fund on Solana
Toyota is looking into the potential of incorporating Ethereum blockchain technology into its vehicles

Menya’s Substack