Crypto Research Updates
News this week on NFTs, Cosmos, and Binance Smart Chain
Thank you for checking out the inaugural Crypto Chemistry research update. This newsletter will primarily serve as a mechanism for myself to stay up-to-date on projects I’ve bookmarked. By learning in public and sharing these updates, I hope to encourage further information sharing and topic exploration among the team. 🧪
Trending Topics
The topic du jour is NTF’s; I continue to fail to understand how to thoughtfully make money in this space. Seems you pretty much have to throw money in and guess, which is a strategy I’m uninterested in pursuing.
My bets on NFTs are based on what I can glean from following @coin_artist (CEO of Neon District). She is a prolific early crypto adopter and has done some really dope things in the past. Originally, I met her at a blockchain event in Chicago during early 2018 and was blown away by her framing of the future of NFTs in gaming. Having been addicted to online gaming in high school, the idea of owning in-game character equipment via an NFT system really blew me away. If you want to be smart on NFT’s, ignore all the sensationalist hype and follow her.
In summary, my TLDR on NFTs is that I own some Neon District loot from 2020 and while these have yet to appreciate, I’m not dying of NFT FOMO (but maybe I should be).
Project-Specific Updates (sorted by ecosystem)
Cosmos
ApolloDAO
ApolloDAO is in alpha testing for its auto-compounding vaults. From their discord, community farming for ApolloDAO will be delayed a few weeks. It was set to begin this week, but the team is facing delays.
The ApolloDAO team was interviewed on a recent QiPodcast episode where they discuss their upcoming yield aggregator and decentralized venture fund (built on LUNA and soon expanding to SOL) - link
Having witnessed explosive growth gained by the early BSC yield aggregators, I believe ApolloDAO should not be ignored. The ability to autocompound equity-based Mirror tokens will be next level.
ChainFlip
ChainFlip development update from Sept 3rd: https://blog.chainflip.io/chainflip-development-update-september-3rd-2021/
Not much in terms of action items here - they closed some fundraising this summer and I continue to watch this one.
SCRT / SEFI
SecretNetwork and TangoKey unveiled Duplex, a new program and product designed to deliver yield on stablecoins via a cross-chain, multilayer strategy. Super geeked for this:
The Secret Network Ecosystem Roadmap was released for the first time ever. There is so much to unpack and get excited about in this. SCRT will be playing a huge role in ‘Privacy as a Service’
NEW: For the first time, we're finally ready to reveal the current Secret Network Ecosystem Roadmap, featuring some never-before-seen products from over 20 teams and individuals supporting our network! Supernova is coming 💥 Now the apps are too. Read 👇 scrt.network/blog/secret-ne…
I’m seeing people in the discord having issues with the XMR<>SCRT bridge if using a hardware wallet with the Monero bridge. So, be sure to check the discord before trying to use the Monero bridge with a hardware wallet.
Sienna
New podcast episode interviews the Chief Evangelist of Sienna. From what I can tell, Sienna is trying to do what SecretSwap already does. At a $6M market cap, the Risk/Reward seems worth evaluating.
Sienna x Secret Code Podcast 🎧 Secret Code Podcast Ep 9: Monty Munford
Nym
Testnet is down for maintenance. I went to create a node to participate on the testnet, but the current version is only available to those who were testing the prior version. Will have to wait a bit before being able to participate.
BSC
xBLZD
Snowbank v2 launched this week, which reflected a huge drop in native xBLZD token emissions. Non-native LP vaults no longer reward you with freshly minted xBLZD tokens, which has hampered APYs. This is part of their strategy to reduce selling pressure of xBLZD tokens, and it seems to be working. The token has risen from $1.00 to over $3.00 this week, and currently trades at $2.82 at the time of writing this.
There is a lot to unpack in the Snowbank v2 launch but my TLDR is, this reputable team continues to innovate bigly in their approach to defi.