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No.1 tuyere field
Storage layer opportunities brought about by the explosion of NFT
On August 19, the development team announced that the properties of CryptoPunks (that is, metadata, including hairstyles, glasses, beards, hats, etc.) and images (NFT files) were all put on the chain. That is to say, before this, CryptoPunks worth up to millions of dollars were stored off-chain.
There are two types of NFT-related data:
NFT metadata: description, name, attributes, images, and other data. (It can be understood as the constituent elements and instructions of synthetic art)
NFT file: The final rendered image file.
On-chain IDs (e.g. CryptoPunk #2517, BAYC #1597) correspond to metadata (description, attributes) that are typically stored on Google Cloud, Amazon Cloud, or other cloud servers run by developers.
TokenURI is the NFT file storage location (unique resource identifier), usually pointing to a website (URL), server, IPFS or other decentralized data protocols.
Uncertainty: Servers are down and pictures are hard to find.
Volatility: Developers can modify images against the will of collectors.
Opensea launched the "freeze" metadata function on June 17, supporting the use of IPFS and Filecoin to store NFT metadata. Once the metadata is "frozen", it cannot be modified, and the new URL generated after "freezing" needs to consume gas to re-upload to the Ethereum network.
The NFT standard Metaplex on Solana has adopted Arweave as the default tool for metadata storage.
Mintbase uses a combination of Ethereum and Arweave to mint NFTs.
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Correspondingly common NFT off-chain storage solutions:
If the metadata and files of an NFT are controlled by a centralized server, then the NFT is centralized, and there will be two problems:
Imagine a collector who nominally owns a painting, but the original is lost. Is his ownership still meaningful? Once a large-scale storage security accident occurs, the blow to NFT will be huge. With the explosion of NFT at an unimaginable speed, the need for decentralized storage has become particularly urgent. The Snap Fingers weekly report sorts out the progress of the current mainstream decentralized storage solutions, as well as the storage solutions adopted by NFT/content platforms.
-01 Filecoin（FIL , $71.74, 7d -10.2%, 8/31）
Filecoin is the leader of decentralized storage. Currently, the effective storage capacity of the entire network is 24PB, and the number of files is 235,000.
https://filecoin.tools/
Filecoin can undertake Ethereum's on-chain storage as well as NFT metadata and file storage. Recently, the Ethereum smart contract development tool Truffle announced on Twitter that it has reached a cooperation with Filecoin to help developers around the world create and deploy fully decentralized applications. In May of this year, the IPFS official protocol laboratory officially launched the NFT.Storage project, users can store NFT content or metadata in IPFS and Filecoin for free.
-02 Arweave（AR , $58.15, 7d 85%, 8/31）
The biggest feature of Arweave is that it can save data permanently. The total storage capacity now reaches 10.98 TB, which is 2.76 times that at the beginning of this year. The daily transaction volume on the chain reached a peak of 110,000 on August 14, a substantial increase from the beginning of the year.
https://viewblock.io/arweave/stat/cumulativeWeaveSizeHistory
Recently Arweave launched a new token system called "PST" with a profit-sharing feature. Developers can use SmartWeave to add a mechanism to their applications to charge users a small fee for transacting on their platform and distribute these fees to PST holders. Arweave's token AR can be used to pay for storage fees and serve as the network's unit of account (UoA). AR is also the main trading pair composition of PST tokens.
03 Storj（STORJ, $1.46, 7d 4.7%, 8/31）
Storj's decentralized cloud storage platform Tardigrade has entered the commercial stage. Users can store data on the Tardigrade network when using open source software, and open source projects can share with Storj the fees paid by users when using storage services, and in this way achieve a win-win situation with open source projects. Storj currently has a total storage capacity of 5.5 PB. According to the official comparison, it only costs $55 to store and download 1 TB of data using Tardigrade, while Amazon S3, Google Cloud, and Azure cost $108, $146, and $105, respectively.
https://www.storj.io/
04 Sia（SC，$0.019,7d -6.4%,8/31)
In February 2020, Sia released Skynet, a decentralized content distribution and sharing platform. Official data shows that the current storage scale has reached 3.8 PB. Every file uploaded to Skynet returns a unique content identifier called Skylink, which is similar to IPFS's CID. Skynet provides mainstream programming language SDKs for Web 2.0 developers, and is the perfect choice for client-side web applications and static generator deployments.
https://sia.tech/
05 Filebase
Centralized companies like Filebase or Pinata package decentralized storage protocols into more usable services for direct use by individuals or developers.
The chain decentralized storage scheme adopted by the NFT project:
Related Links
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/989010024241.htm
No.2 project attention
Solana Market Value & Ecological Explosion
On August 30, the price of the Solana token SOL hit a record high of $101, an increase of 208% within 30 days, and its market value surpassed USDC, ranking 8th. Solana's total lock-up volume increased by 151% in 1 month to $3 billion, ranking 5th.
Solana's uniqueness and key nodes in its development:
Solana uses the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) proof mechanism to achieve high throughput, and uses the Proof of History (PoH) mechanism to improve decentralization. If decentralization is measured by the "Satoshi Coefficient" (a commonly used method created by Balaji Srinivasan), Solana outperforms Ethereum or Bitcoin on this metric.
In July 2020, Solana ushered in its first major turning point: the cryptocurrency trading platform FTX announced that it would build DEX Serum on Solana. SBF said in an interview with Forbes on August 30: You can think of me as a fan of Solana, which is a very cool product. Building Serum on Solana is our best choice.
Earlier this year, Armani Ferrante, a developer at Alameda Research, released Anchor. Solana uses the Rust programming language, but Anchor makes building applications for Solana more like programming in Solidity.
In June, Solana Labs completed a financing of US$314 million, led by a16z and Polychain Capital.
Serum is a DeFi ecosystem, including Serum Dex, Serum front-end Bonfida, Raydium integrating AMM liquidity, Maps.me of offline map app, and Oxygen, a prime broker agreement.
Star Atlas is the flagship project in the Solana GameFi field. It is a space-themed MMORPG (massively multiplayer network role-playing game) with a sci-fi background. It is built with the Unreal 5 engine and has cinematic visual effects. The Star Atlas game will be launched in the Q2 quarter of 2022. Recently, Star Atlas announced a partnership with blockchain game and NFT developer Animoca Brands.
*Animoca Brand's titles include The Sandbox, F1®Delta Time, MotoGP Ignition™ and more.
*Star Atlas will launch a token sale on Raydium on September 1st.
Audius is a Web3 music streaming platform built on Ethereum and Solana. It issues and manages $AUDIO Token on Ethereum, and runs upvotes and likes on Solana. These functions need to be built on high-speed and low-cost underlying facilities in order to provide Internet-level user experience.
The execution layer is more valuable than the settlement layer.
It can borrow PoW security from ETH or BTC
Sharding destroys DeFi's composability
In traditional finance, the value of TradFi flows to the execution layer, such as VISA and NASDAQ. These execution layers are more valuable than their respective settlement companies, but execution and settlement are not separated - there is no need to consider settlement issues when using VISA. In the blockchain as well, there may be value in having execution and settlement in the same place.
Execution layers like Solana and Polygon may not be able to borrow security from PoW blockchains at scale, and people are happy to pay higher transaction fees for more security.
#macro
On August 27, Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, said that the Federal Reserve will begin to reduce the scale of its $120 billion monthly bond purchases before the end of the year, but it must wait until the job market and inflation rate pass a more stringent test. Will raise rates. The U.S. dollar index (DXY) then fell, the S&P 500 index rose to a record high, and Bitcoin (BTC) rose by about $1,500 within an hour. Indicating that market participants viewed Powell's speech as "dovish".
On August 24, the total issuance of stablecoins on the chain exceeded 81 billion US dollars. At present, the total circulation of stablecoins on the chain has reached 82.15 billion US dollars (DeBank, 8/30), an increase of 2.8% from last week. Among them, USDT accounted for 41.23%, USDC accounted for 31.53%, and BUSD accounted for 14.81%.
#New public chain
The total lock-up volume of the avalanche protocol Avalanche exceeded 2 billion US dollars, hitting a record high, and currently stands at 2.14 billion US dollars (8/30).
*A community member said that the founder of FTX, SBF, has allocated USD 170 million for mining in the agreement, of which USD 86 million and USD 73 million have been invested in BENQI and TraderJoe respectively.
On August 28, the total lock-up volume of DeFi hit a record high, reaching 165.4 billion US dollars.
On August 26, the total trading volume of the decentralized derivatives trading protocol dYdXL2 exceeded US$10 billion. On August 29, the trading volume reached US$2.55 billion, a record high. The current total trading volume is US$14.77 billion (8/30) .
In August, the trading volume of the NFT market reached 2.3 billion US dollars, of which Opensea contributed 2.23 billion yuan (The block, 8/30), breaking the previous peak of 315 million US dollars in March and setting a record high.
Visa purchased CryptoPunk 7610 for US$150,000 and released a white paper announcing its entry into the NFT field. This move triggered market FOMO sentiment and frantic sweeps. The daily sales of CryptoPunks increased by 11 times within 24 hours, and the floor price increased to 75.5 ETH. Visa will buy more NFTs, says head of Visa cryptocurrency.
NBA star Stephen Curry bought BAYCNFT's work for about $180,000 and used it as a Twitter avatar.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) will appear at Sotheby's from September 2 to 9.
#Ethereum #Layer2
The Ethereum client Geth released version 1.10.8 to fix the vulnerability before the London upgrade.
L2 expansion plan Optimism released a new gateway interface, allowing any ERC20 token to access Optimism.
#New public chain
Cardano has entered the final stage before activating the smart contract function on the main network. It plans to launch the Alonzo hard fork on the main network on September 12. This upgrade will allow users to run smart contracts. (U. Today)
Aave announced the upcoming launch of the Aave Governance Cross-Chain Bridge Tool.
The Aave community initiates a proposal to decide whether to launch the Centrifuge Real World Assets (RWA) marketplace on the Aave protocol.
Sushi joined the Avalanche Rush DeFi reward program with a bonus of up to $15 million.
#NFT#Metaverse
The Solana NFT Alliance is officially launched. The NFT Alliance will help create a common NFT standard on Solana while preparing for mass adoption of the network.
Metaverse platform Cryptovoxels announced the launch of BOOP tokens as a reward for the number of visitors to player buildings. BOOP token rewards will be distributed according to the number of visitors to player buildings 1:1.
Immutable X, the NFT second-tier solution, will open the public sale of the token IMX on the CoinList platform on September 8.
According to data compiled by Solanians, the number of Solana ecological projects in July increased by 130% compared with March. Well-known projects in the Solana ecosystem:
* After the decentralized music streaming protocol Audius announced its cooperation with TikTok, the price of the governance token AUDIO doubled within 24 hours, and the market value exceeded 1 billion US dollars for the first time.
Solana's success in public chain competition relies on several assumptions:
The risk is that these assumptions are falsified:
Related Links:
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/847729457993.htm
No.1
market data
#macro
#Stablecoin Issue#Bitcoin
#New public chain
#DeFi
#NFT
No.2
Encryption Project Progress
#Ethereum #Layer2
#New public chain
#DeFi
#wallet
#NFT#Metaverse
#encryptedmedia
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No.3 CeFi·Traditional Finance·Large companies
#CeFi#Mining Enterprise#Financing
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid Global received $120 million in debt financing from FTX.
Cross-border payment service provider XREX completed a financing of US$17 million, led by CDIB Capital.
Its BitCheck platform provides encrypted asset custody services, and the encrypted exchange MyXchange provides business custody services, trade financing, digital wallets, and fiat currency exchange channels for the B-end market.
Blockstream completed $210 million in Series B financing and acquired chip design company Spondoolies, and will launch its first enterprise-level mining machine next year. (Bitcoin Magazine)
Facebook is considering building NFT-related products and features. Facebook executives said that the digital wallet Novi can support NFT storage and is studying more ways to participate in the NFT field
Visual China may launch an NFT digital art trading platform.
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NFT+
No.4 Voice · Viewpoint
Fidelity predicts that the price of Bitcoin will rise to $100 million per coin in 2035.
Bloomberg: Axie Infinity turns the unemployed due to the epidemic into crypto traders.
Ryan Wyatt, Director of YouTube Games: NFTs are taking over the gaming industry"self-evident". Ryan Wyatt is also Head of Global Games Partnerships at Google and Head of Virtual and Augmented Reality at YouTube. (Zycrypto)
YFI founder Andre Cronje (AC): The NFT fragmentation protocol is a Ponzi scheme. The token issuer converts any valuable meme NFT into fragmented tokens, and then distributes 10% to themselves to profit from it.
No.5 encryption project investment and financing
#DeFi
Permissionless lending protocol Euler has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Paradigm.
Apricot Finance, a Solana ecological lending platform, completed a financing of 4 million US dollars, and Delphi Ventures and others participated in the investment.
1inch Network is raising Series B funding at a pre-money valuation of $2.25 billion. The target financing amount is 70 million US dollars.
The blockchain streaming platform Eluvio has completed the A-round financing of US$100 million valuation led by Fox, and will provide a technology platform for NFT business.
Music tokenization platform Royal completed $16 million in financing, led by Founders Fund and Paradigm. Royal was launched by American electronic dance music artist and producer Justin Blau, aka 3LAU.
Alethea AI, a smart NFT infrastructure service provider, raised $16 million through token private placement, with participation from Alameda and Dapper Labs.
Natural Selection Labs, the development team of the decentralized social and content protocol RSS3, has completed multi-million dollar financing.
NFT-based DeFi platform Vera has completed $3 million in financing, led by Animoca Brands.
#Crypto Fundraising
Prime Venture Partners' fourth $100 million fund may invest in DeFi and cryptocurrencies in part.
OKEx BlockDream Ventures established a $10 million OEC GameFi special investment fund.
#NFT
#Crypto Fundraising
