Welcome to this 18th issue of the Chain Reaction newsletter for the week commencing 21st March 2022.
In the news last week we saw big moves in NFTs and the metaverse space with Yuga Labs buying up CryptoPunks and Meebits, Australian brokerage app platform Stake has started offering cryptocurrency investing, EU's parliament reject a proposal to effectively ban proof-of-work, the Defiant continues their series on Why do gamers hate NFT's and we begin to see how NFTs and blockchain are continuing to be adopted by the sporting industry (this time locally).
It's a big week with Blockchain Week (run by Blockchain Australia) starting this week. We look forward to the talks and events and spreading the good word about web3. We get enough spotlight on the negatives, let's focus on the good being done here!
What you can expect in this newsletter
In the News
Videos of the week
Charts and Data
Around the world of social media
Education
In the news
CoinDesk - Ethereum Merge Takes Place on Kiln Testnet - The move towards Proof of Stake (PoS) for Ethereum is closer with the move to the Kiln Testnet (the final public testnet) before this protocol moves to its consensus layer of work. Eth2.0 is coming
Decypt - Why Larva Labs Sold the CryptoPunks NFT IP to the Bored Ape Creators - Diving into why the Meebits and CryptoPunks projects (and their IP) was sold by Larva Labs to Yuga Labs and what both firms have said about the deal and the paths forward for both groups.
CoinDesk - LimeWire and the Zombie Brands Pivot to Crypto - In this opinion piece, we look at the resurrection of LimeWire (formerly the music sharing site) which has now jumped into NFTs. Whilst it looks like a potential cash grab, it’s not uncommon for old brands to be resurrected like this.
Australian Fintech - Crypto to complete the ‘holy trinity’ for modern investors. Aussie broker Stake showing the Big Banks how it’s done. - Stake, the local retail brokerage app platform that started with US equities and then added Aussie ones, is now getting into crypto. Their Aussie equities foray has added 100k users to the existing 450k so we’ll see what crypto does to that figure.
CoinTelegraph - Binance temporarily halts Polygon deposit and withdrawal to sync nodes - Binance announced a pause of withdrawals for the Polygon Network after network outages from that protocol. Polygon advised the network is working fine but it was enough of a cause for Binance to act but the halt was temporary.
Yugalabs Pitch Deck Leaked - Yuga Labs, the creator of The Bored Ape Yacht Club is set to expand the BAYC metaverse and drive the Web3/crypto space forward in their leaked pitch deck.
ApeCoin Launches for Bored Ape Ethereum NFT Holders With Reddit, FTX, Animoca Execs on Board - ApeCoin DAO has launched a token, ApeCoin which has been adopted by Yuga Labs as the primary token for all its future products and services. On ApeCoin DAO's board are notable names such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, FTX's Amy Wu and others from Animoca Brands, Sound Ventures, and Horizen Labs.
CoinDesk - Proposal Limiting Proof-of-Work Is Rejected in EU Parliament Committee Vote - The European parliament voted on Monday against a proposed rule by the EU that could have effectively banned the use of proof-of-work. Lately crypto mining has come under heavy criticism from some European leaders over energy concerns.
The open source platform Gitcoin launched its 13th round of grants, with $1.2 million in matching funds, supporting projects in the Ethereum ecosystem and various social causes.
Videos of the week
ausbiz - The Blockchain opportunity in Australia - In this video, Andrew Geoghegan from ausbiz chats with the CEO of Blockchain Austrliaa, Steve Vallas on the eve of the heralded Blockchain Week (next week from 21st to 25th March). They discuss the festival and speakers, upcoming regulations, CBDCs and more. 18mins
ausbiz - Bitcoin accumulation | EU's attempt to ban Bitcoin - Double dipping here with 2 guests as Adam Stokes from the Crypto Land discusses the crypto trilemma of decentralisation, security and scalability and EU regulation. Also mentioned was the market consolidation with Josh Gilbert from eToro talking about the on-chain metrics from CryptoQuant. 18mins
The Defiant - Why Do gamers hate NFT's? Part 2 - In this follow up piece to last week, The Defiant team dive into a more detailed response to the original Line Goes Up, this includes more details on what it is that led to this hatred (think microstransactions) and what future games need to move towards (e.g. adding value to games rather than extracting value from them) bt this was the place that blockchain gaming was moving towards anyway. Ironically, NFTs and blockchain is moving towards the same space anyway. 26mins
The Defiant - The Unstoppable Force acquires the Immovable Object - Quick update on the big stories from the week such as Biden’s crypto regulation and then the Yugalabs purchase of MeeBits and CryptoPunks NFT collections. 7mins
Robert Breedlove - Philosophy Resolves Conflict with Tuur Demeester (WiM159) - In this What is Money episode, Robert talks to Tuur Demeester to discuss philosophy, argumentation ethics, and the 4 causes of conflict as well as universal solutions in relation to property and self-ownership. 2hrs9mins
Charts and Data
CoinGecko
Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as at the 17th Januuary 2021 2:54am AEST on CoinGecko. A sea of green as most cryptocurrencies improved in price over the past 7 days.
RugDoc
This week we highlight the safety risk that some coins have out there and there are various services like RugDoc which can help to combat this. This week we take a look at Cate Coin which is a meme based token meant to offer rewards for content creators but which has been deemed by RugDoc to pose high risk for the following reasons:
View more details here: https://rugdoc.io/project/catecoin/
If you’re interested in other DeFi safety tools and services, check out our Resources - Risk page on our website.
Social post of the week
With Blockchain Week starting today, we take a look at this piece from @NFTFestAus looking at how NFTs and blockchain are crossing over into major sports. From sports stars here and overseas getting into NFTs and league officials as well, it's hard to ignore the way this tech can go more mainstream. https://twitter.com/NFTFestAus/status/1504948145230585861
Education
Digital Asset Regulation in Australia: Where to from here? - This week, it's all about regulation with this piece from Monochrome Asset Management on Regulation. The team there have produced a series of research articles and tests which count towards CPD points for those in the financial services. This looks at the issues regulators like AUSTRAC, ATO and others face in this space as well as how they might address them.
This newsletter was compiled by LEO LUK (see LinkedIn).
If you're interested in contributing to these newsletters in future - please join us on Discord or reach out to us on info@defi.org.au
Also, if you would like to dig deeper into why and how is the blockchain relevant to international matters and to get more insights on regulations and Defi knowledge , join us on our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ZRCTDdsVEF
