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welcome back to chain reaction.
PSA: I’m on ETH Denver this week, so say hello if you see me! I have some chain reaction needles with me and the first people to find me get one. Think of it like a free NFT, but instead of going to your crypto wallet, it goes to your wallet. Wow!
Anyway, let’s get to the news; Oh, and happy March!
February ended as a big month for the NFT market as non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed $1.5 billion in volume for the first time since May 2022.
The NFT Blur market hit an all-time high of $1.12 billion in February (block data aggregation filters out wash trading, when traders buy and sell items from each other to artificially inflate volumes and prices).
By comparison, OpenSea, now Ethereum’s second-largest NFT marketplace, had $270.11 million in volume in February, the data showed. At its peak, OpenSea had a monthly volume of approximately $4.8 billion in January 2022, but overall transaction volume has declined since then.
In the recent rally, Blur has overtaken the once-largest NFT marketplace OpenSea in monthly volume for the third straight month as the cryptocurrency market debates the issue of royalties for NFT makers.
“When you look at what’s happened with OpenSea and Blur lately, this is clearly a more general issue in terms of market and licensing battles,” Yat Siu, president of Animoca Brands, told TechCrunch. “However, the volume was turned up a lot, which means it brought a different kind of emotion into the room.”
Below.
This week on web3
Ethereum NFT Market Exceeds $1 Billion in Volume for First Time Since May as War for Maker Royalties Intensifies (CT+)
As mentioned above, the NFT market is heating up again and the emergence of Blur in the NFT market has revived the royalty debate. In previous quarters, OpenSea has attempted to break even on maker royalties as it held the top spot in the NFT markets, but Blur’s aggressive stance causes OpenSea to change course. But as massive NFT markets lower fees, it could be a “slippery slope” in the long run that hurts makers, Siu said.
Now that AI is all the rage, does web3 need a rescue? (CT+)
Changing investor priorities, more expensive cash, and the lack of big deals that were so common during the last startup boom could leave many late-stage Web3 companies short of cash. And time is ticking. For startups trapped in a category that has become old-fashioned, it can be no fun to see venture dollars flowing elsewhere, even if such developments in capital flows are normal.
Chainlink’s new platform enables web3 projects to connect to Web 2.0 systems such as AWS and Meta
Chainlink, a Web3 service platform, is launching a self-service serverless platform to help developers connect their decentralized applications (dApps) or smart contracts to a Web 2.0 API, the company announced exclusively to TechCrunch. This new platform also supports popular programming languages such as JavaScript, allowing developers new to web3 to jump into space. It also offers integrations for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta and others.
the last sleeve
For last week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Lolli. Founded in 2018, Lolli is a bitcoin rewards app that allows people to earn bitcoin or cashback when they shop online or in person at more than 10,000 stores such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Dunkin’, CVS, Costco, etc.
Adelman was part of the team that built a trading gateway, Cosmic, which was acquired by PopSugar in 2015 and then by Ebates and Rakuten in 2017.
Lolli has grown significantly in recent years, from partnerships with fewer than 1,000 stores to more than 10,000 stores today. Adelman explored the reward system in the crypto ecosystem, how it has evolved over the years, and what the future holds for Lolli.
We also delved into the topic of Bitcoin NFTs and ordinal numbers, which is a hot topic in the community. We discuss whether Bitcoin NFTs are good for the ecosystem, how the technology can grow in the long run, and the likelihood that these digital signatures will fit into Lolli’s business model.
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Follow the money
China Rivers Union Compliant Blockchain Raised $10M In Private Token Sale Mangle Decentralized Crypto Exchange Raised $7.4M In Series A Digital Asset Exchange Round In Singapore DigiFT Raised $10.5M In A DeFi Focused Institutional Wealth Management Platform before Series A hashnote raised $5 million
Term Labs raised $2.5 million in its first round to create more secure crypto loans for institutions
This list was compiled from information provided by Messari and TechCrunch’s own reports.
Source: La Neta Neta
Jason Jack is an experienced technology journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in computer science and engineering, he has a deep understanding of the latest technology trends and developments. He writes about a wide range of technology topics, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, software development, and cybersecurity.
