Welcome, dear reader, to Gryphsis Academy’s weekly cryptocurrency digest. We bring you key market trends, in-depth insights on emerging protocols, and new industry dynamics, all designed to enhance your expertise on cryptocurrency and Web3. Happy reading! Follow ourTwitterandMediumGet deeper research and insights.
Market and Industry Snapshot:
Layer 2 Overview:
Last week, Layer 2 as a whole showed positive growth, with Optimism breaking through a TVL of 1 B this week. The zkSync Era has the most significant growth, at 39.83%. Protocols like ZKSwap, Steer Protocol, and Popcorn have demonstrated noteworthy TVL growth rates.
LSD Sector Overview:
In the LSD field, Ethereum staking maintained a slight growth, but the staking rate dropped slightly, but not significantly. In terms of market share, all blue-chip LSDs are showing growth, with swETH showing significant growth this week at 16.01%.
RWA Sector Overview:
Last week, the total market value of the worlds real assets increased by 21.07%, and the industry share increased by 0.013%. In addition, RWA’s active private credit value and tokenized treasury both increased slightly. Notable growth tokens include $STBU, $DETF, and $CHEX. Tokens like $BRTR, $URQA, and $PENDLE experienced larger losses.
Main Topics
Macro overview:
US Stock V.S. Crypto
Big news this week:
Binance Fined $ 4.3 Billion, CEO Resigns, BTC Spot ETF Expected to Rise.
Weekly Agreement Recommendations:
Seneca
Weekly VC Investment Focus
AI 21 Labs($ 155 M)
Blast($ 20 M)
Privy($ 18 M)
Twitter Alpha:
Aaron.D on weekly governance
Michael Rinko on Consumer Fraud
Teng Yan on Blast and Blur
Joseph A.C. LIoyd ON Shrapnel
@0x Tindorr on Gamefi narrative
Macro overview
This week, both the stock and crypto markets showed growth trends, with the crypto sector gaining more significantly. The SP 500 and Nasdaq rose 1.19% and 1.14% respectively, while $BTC and $ETH rose 3.3% and 6.4% respectively. In the coming week, pay attention to consumer information, PCE price index, ISM manufacturing index and other major events.
Big news this week
Binance was fined US$4.3 billion, CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) resigned, and BTC spot ETF rose as expected
On November 22, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was criminally indicted for violating sanctions and money transmission laws and agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve the charges, one of the “largest fines” ever obtained by the United States from a corporate defendant. one. Founder Changpeng Zhao CZ pleaded guilty in Seattle, agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down as CEO. Richard Teng, the former head of the Abu Dhabi regulator and later Binance’s regional market head, will take over as CEO.
Binance was accused of failing to maintain a proper anti-money laundering program, operating an unlicensed money transmission business and violating sanctions laws. Binance’s fine will be added to the amount it owes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and settled with the U.S. Treasury Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Under the plea agreement, Binance is required to appoint an independent compliance monitor for three years and report its compliance efforts to the U.S. government, as well as pay a fine. Changpeng Zhao is banned from participating in the operation or management of Binance for the next three years, but this ban will end three years after the appointment of the ombudsman.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/11/21/binance-to-settle-charges-with-us-doj-source/
As soon as this news came out, the price of $BNB fell from 264.54 to 227.95 that day, a drop of 113.8%. And according to The.Block report, Binance’s total 24-hour outflow exceeded US$1 billion, but the total net outflow in the past seven days was US$703 million. In comparison, Binance’s incident had a greater negative impact on it.
Not only that, BTC also fell significantly on the 22nd. The main reason is that the excitement over the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF has gradually faded, replaced by the reality of continued crackdowns by U.S. regulators. Bitcoin (BTC) fell more than 2% to $36,400 after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would unveil “significant cryptocurrency enforcement actions” later this afternoon.
But some observers pointed out that Binance’s settlement agreement may actually clear the way for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to finally approve a spot Bitcoin ETF. Binance’s neutralization and CZ’s exit may have eased the agency’s concerns about overseas manipulation of Bitcoin prices, they said.
Crypto services provider Matrixport wrote: “With this plea agreement, expectations for spot Bitcoin ETFs may have risen to 100% as the industry will be forced to adhere to the rules that TradFi companies must abide by.”
Weekly Agreement Recommendations
Welcome to our Protocols of the Week segment – where we spotlight protocols making waves in the crypto space. This week, we choose Seneca, a full-chain CDP protocol for yield-generating assets.
Seneca was released in March this year and has been audited by Sherlock. Currently supporting the Arbitrum chain, the ecosystem has three tokens, the native token $SEN, $senUSD mortgage stablecoin, and $sSEN as a governance token and enjoys protocol income, which is still in the testnet stage.
1.$SEN: The maximum supply is 100 M, you can obtain $sSEN by staking $SEN
2.$sSEN: can be converted into $SEN, and holders can enjoy protocol income fees and governance rights.
3.$senUSD: As a CDP stablecoin, the price is dynamically adjusted to reach $1
1) If it is less than $1, users who open CDP can buy senUSD at a low price from the market to repay the debt
2) If it is greater than $1, users can open a CDP to lend senUSD, then sell it at a high price in the market, and then buy it back after the price drops.
In general, senUSD achieves loose anchoring of senUSD and USD through user arbitrage and market self-regulation.
However, since it is in the test network stage, users can currently lend senUSD by staking WETH, and we cannot realize senUSD arbitrage now. Officials are encouraging users to stake $SEN and receive $WETH rewards. In addition, we are also actively adding collateral types including $ARB, $wstETH, and $rETH, but they are not all online yet.
The agreement has the following characteristics:
1. Isolate liabilities and leverage: Debt is independent from collateral, which means that each CDP will not affect each other.
2. Profit redistribution: sSEN holders are entitled to enjoy the income consisting of the agreement’s Trading Tax (priced in WETH), borrowing fees, interest, and liquidation fees.
Generally speaking, Seneca’s mechanism is similar to MakerDAO’s imitation disk, and there is still room for profit in the early stages. Its just that if you want to build an omnichain CDP platform, the entire system is currently being built slowly and it still takes time.
our insights
CDP (Collateralized Debt Positions) mortgages debt positions, and Maker DAO is its first issuer. It currently ranks among the top 5 in the entire Defi track, with a total TVL of $9.9 2B. In the entire CDP track, MakerDAO, JustStables, and Liquidity are the top three protocols.
The general path of CDP is that users mortgage their own assets in exchange for (excess) mortgage stablecoins. CDP will lock the assets until the user repays the stablecoin before they can get back the mortgaged assets. When the collateral value is lower than the liquidation value, CDP will be liquidated and the position will be forced to be liquidated.
The only difference from Lending is that the soft-anchored stablecoins lent by CDP have obvious arbitrage opportunities in the early stages when the pool depth is shallow and are easily manipulated. Although the currencies lent by Lending are not stable coins, most of them have deep liquidity. Although they fluctuate, they have a large market value and high manipulation costs.
In the case of Seneca, there are potential arbitrage opportunities in its mechanism and stage of development. However, for its most important senUSD, the current collateral available is limited to WETH, and senUSD currently has no other DEX available for trading. Therefore, this excellent user-driven target has not yet been officially opened, but you can stay tuned and participate in the early SEN incentive activities.
The only one currently supported is Camelot DEX, which allows SEN-ETH Swap and LP (APR 281%). The official also provides WETH rewards (APR 177%) for $SEN staking. In the future, the official will give LP of the SEN/senUSD pool incentives based on two parts, one is Bribe, and the additional $SEN emission per Epoch. The earliest Epoch will emit 90,268 $SEN per day.
In summary, you can keep an eye on Seneca, and the current APR data is ideal, so you can participate in advance and wait for senUSD to go online for arbitrage.
Weekly VC Investment Focus
Welcome to our weekly Investing Spotlight, where we reveal the biggest venture capital developments in the crypto space. Each week, we’ll spotlight the protocols that received the most funding.
AI 21 Labs
AI 21 Labs has successfully completed a $155 million Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $283 million, at a valuation of $1.4 billion. Investors include Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB 1 0X, b 2 venture, Samsung Next, Google and NVIDIA. The company aims to bring reliable generative AI to enterprises, providing them with innovative natural language solutions based on its leading LLMs and neural symbolic systems.
https://x.com/AI21Labs/status/1697211212616843727?s=20
Blast
Blast, the second-layer expansion solution for Ethereum, has been launched in the early access phase, and its founding team is the original team of the NFT market Blur. $20 million invested by companies including Paradigm and Standard Crypto. Blast, which claims to offer native second-layer yield generation for Ethereum and stablecoins, has already attracted over $30 million in assets.
https://x.com/Blast_L2/status/1726747087906464024? s= 20
Privy
Privy, a developer tools platform designed to securely collect data, has closed an $18 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm. Other participants include Sequoia Capital, Archetype Ventures and BlueYard Capital. The project will use the new funding to expand the team and continue building out its library so developers can create engaging on-chain applications that anyone can use.
https://x.com/privy_io/status/1726967584472576157?s=20
protocol event
Binance saw $ 1 billion in net outflows
PancakeSwap proposes veCAKE launch to boost governance influence and liquidity
Ethereum Layer 2 Kinto migrates to the Arbitrum ecosystem
Blast goes live in early access after $ 20 million raise
KyberSwap offers 10% bounty to hacker following $ 47 million exploit
Industry updates
SEC recently met with Grayscale for spot bitcoin ETF listing
Altcoins lead market retrace ahead of release of Fed minutes
Paradigm leads $ 18 million Series A raise for web3 infrastructure startup Privy
Wintermute Asia executes first options block trade through CME Group
SEC files new lawsuit against Kraken for allegedly operating online trading platform without registering
Twitter Alpha
Theres a lot of alpha in crypto Twitter, but navigating thousands of Twitter threads can be difficult. Each week, we spend hours doing research, curating threads full of insight, and curating your weekly picks list. Let’s dive in!
https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/having-a-blast-with-blur?&utm_source=link&utm_medium=portal
https://x.com/0x Tindorr/status/1728438340708704398? s= 20
next week events
news source:
https://www.theblock.co/post/264579/kyberswap-offers-10-bounty-to-hacker-following-47-million-exploit
https://www.theblock.co/post/264204/binance-saw-1-billion-in-net-outflows-over-the-last-24-hours
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/11/21/binance-to-settle-charges-with-us-doj-source/
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading this weeks newsletter. We hope you benefit from our insights and observations.
Follow us on Twitter and Medium for instant updates. See you next time!
This weekly report is provided for informational purposes only. It should not be relied upon as investment advice. You should conduct your own research and consult independent financial, tax or legal advisors before making any investment decisions. And the past performance of any asset is not indicative of future results.
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