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New Blur, NFT Collateralisation, On-Chain Privacy & More
Not going to lie — the last couple of weeks were lively, to say the least.
Welcome back!
This is J264G and in this week's newsletter we’ve got these titbits for you:
Blur On Solana: Tensor, the Blur of Solana, raised $3 million.
NFT Collateral: Solana NFTs are now collaterable for USDC on Rain.fi.
On-Chain Privacy: Elusiv is live — bringing on-chain privacy to Solana.
😮💨
I aged more than 3 years over the last couple of days.
But Joe, Jerome, and Janet say my stablecoins are safu 😮💨
All of tech and banking after the Fed stepped in:
— brexton (@brextonpham)
1:22 AM • Mar 13, 2023
Let’s get going!
Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.
Spotlight
Stablecoins
Not going to lie — the last couple of weeks were lively, to say the least.
This holds particularly true in the context of stablecoins — USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI, and UST.
Last year, the Terra ecosystem went bust due to a bank run, which depegged UST and crashed the price of both UST and LUNA. Zdravo to Serbia, Do Kwon!
To steelman the other side: I think it's also a failure of our industry to educate non-technical folks how things like stablecoins really work.
— Richard | Tensor 📈⚡ (@0xrwu)
1:53 AM • Mar 12, 2023
Recently, Paxos stopped minting new BUSD tokens at the direction of the New York Department of Financial Services as the SEC was threatening legal action. The allegation: Paxos was selling BUSD as an unregistered security.
UST and BUSD, however, weren’t/aren't as widely used as USDT and USDC.
USDT is the most utilised stablecoin to date; yet, Tether continuously faces controversy over its risk and reserve management.
This has left USDC as the last major coin standing — until now.
Circle’s USDC operations will open for business on Monday morning, including with new automated settlement via our new partnership with Cross River Bank. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire)
3:06 AM • Mar 13, 2023
Over the weekend, USDC fell below its $1 peg because a portion of Circle's cash reserves was held at Silicon Valley Bank, which halted operations and is now under the control of the U.S. government.
At the lowest point, USDC traded at ~$0.88 but its back to its $1 peg since Monday. The prolonged depeg over the weekend might, however, lead to a loss of confidence in USDC and affect its adoption.
And with the USDC carfuffle unraveling, the last major stablecoin, DAI, also took a hit and traded as low as $0.95 over the weekend. Additionally, DAI has its own unique shortcomings:
smart contract risk
collateral risk
oracle risk
liquidity risk
regulatory risk
We are in rough seas.
Stablecoins have the strongest PMF in web3/crypto and are the backbone of the industry, especially with respect to DeFi.
But with USDC wavering, things are looking bleak.
They don’t have to, though.
The Feds have now taken out crypto’s three largest banking partners, served a Wells Notice to one of its top stablecoin issuers, attempted to squash thousands of tokens, de facto ban crypto VC through an egregious custody rule, and hunt down its top global exchange.
Up 10%.
— Ryan Selkis 🥷 (@twobitidiot)
2:54 AM • Mar 13, 2023
This is a good point in time for USDT, USDC and DAI to shore up their business models, risk engines, and make sure they run a tight ship.
I'm confident stablecoins will become increasingly antifragile — we'll get through this!
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor, so hang on, and let's get this bread 🫡
Chart Of The Week
In 2023 SOL has had two hot native SPLs that non Solana natives have actively bridged over for using @wormholecrypto, $BONK and $RLB
Removing native $SOL and stables, they have lapped all other SPLs in terms of wallets swapping for that token within 24 hours of bridging
— Flipside SOL Intern (@FlipsideSolana)
5:37 PM • Mar 7, 2023
News Bites
New NFT Platform: Tensor, the Blur of Solana, raised $3 million in a seed round led by Placeholder, with Solana Ventures, Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings, Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, and others participating.
1/6 We're extremely excited to announce our $3m seed round led by @placeholdervc, with participation from @aeyakovenko, @rajgokal, @alliancedao, @SolanaVentures, @BigBrainVC, @HGESOL, @MonkeVentures, @ABCV3NTURES, @solBOOGLE and many other amazing funds/angels.
— Tensor | Pro NFT Trading 📈⚡️ (@tensor_hq)
1:54 PM • Mar 7, 2023
NFT Collateralised USDC: Rain.fi, the first fully decentralised P2P liquidity protocol for NFTs on Solana, now lets users borrow USDC using Solana NFTs as collateral.
Rainfi lets u borrow $USDC using Solana NFTs as collateral.
Nobody else does that..
🫳
🎤— Rain.fi 💧 (@rainfi_)
9:51 AM • Mar 10, 2023
Full On-Cain Privacy: Elusiv is now available on Solana. The service enables full privacy on-chain in seconds, which allows users to send digital assets to any wallet without revealing their identity.
Elusiv, now available on @solana. ☂️
Try it now: app.elusiv.io
— Elusiv ☂️ (@elusivprivacy)
7:33 PM • Mar 7, 2023
More Open Sourcing: Solend, a lend and borrow service, is fully embracing OSS by open sourcing Solend Lite, a lightweight client for its protocol — a big step towards decentralisation.
Compute For Solana: Akash, an open network that lets users buy and sell computing resources securely and efficiently, will soon be adding support for both Ethereum and Solana.
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This week's job highlights:
Weekly Take
This @coinbase ad is absolutely amazing.
— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker)
10:53 AM • Mar 9, 2023
Keks & Giggles
And that's a wrap!
If you'd like to reach us, respond to this newsletter or reach out to me on Twitter.
Talk to you soon!