$75 Billion+ ETH Staked

📢 Sponsor | 💡 Telegram | 📰 Past Editions

Good Morning.

Happy CNY folks. Don’t forget that we’re entering the year of the dragon. Coincidentally, the crypto markets are up. Maybe, it’s time to max long (NFA). If you’re celebrating, enjoy the weekend and see you next week. Cheers!

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: $75B+ ETH staked 🔒

• Founders Highlight: Varun of Farcaster 📱

• Deal Flows: Oobit $25M Series A 💰️ 

WHAT MATTERS

25% of ETH Supply Staked ($75 Billion+)

State of play: As of the time of writing, 25% of ETH supply or approximately 30.2M of ETH has been staked.

• This amounts to $75 billion+ in capital staked.

• EigenLayer and the restaking hype is a significant contributor to the recent rise in the number of ETH staked.

• Combined with the upcoming spot Ethereum ETF, it won’t be surprising if this number continues to go up.

Why it Matters: $75 billion-plus in value staked means that there will be more applications that can benefit from ETH's cost of security, especially as EigenLayer enables AVS.

For builders and investors: Study what Pendle is doing. It’s imperative to be able to understand the ongoing narrative and adjust your growth/product strategy accordingly.

• Build products and features that jump on top of the ongoing restaking thread.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Varun Srinivasan of Farcaster

Intro: Varun Srinivasan is the co-founder of Farcaster, a “sufficiently” decentralized social media protocol that’s recently gotten a lot of traction thanks to the launch of Farcaster Frames.

Previous background: Varun was previously the Senior Director of Platform of Coinbase. Before that, he was the co-founder of SoundFocus and a Product Manager at Microsoft.

• He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010 and entered Y Combinator in 2023 before pursuing his entrepreneurial endeavor.

The big idea: A decentralized social media protocol allows its users to own their data, enabling the transfer of ownership such as followers to other applications.

• Example: imagine moving the entirety of your Twitter followers to Instagram’s Thread.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Jupiter Launchpad Future Tokens

The Solana DEX aggregator has announced the next tokens that will launch via its LFG launchpad.

• Jupiter used its own launchpad to launch its JUP token last week.

• Potential next candidates include liquid staking service Sanctum, NFT collateralization platform Sharky, and cross-chain interoperability protocol deBridge.

• Additionally, Jupiter plans to launch Jupiter DAO with its operational funds and include participation incentives this month.

• The launchpad fee is 1% of the total supply.

• Jupiter earned $54M from the launch of the JUP token using its own platform.

DEAL FLOWS

Oobit $25M Series A

Deal flows remain steady this week, we saw $85M+ in deals 📈 

Oodit, a crypto payments app, raised $25M in Series A funding to make the “tap-and-pay feature” more accessible.

• The round was led by Tether, CMCC Global’s Titan Fund, 468 Capital, and Solana’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.

• Consumers can use the Orbit app to pay merchants with their crypto on any Point of Sale system that accepts Visa and MasterCard.

• Oobit plans to open up its capability to third-party wallets.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Kodiak Finance, $2M Seed Round

• Fuzzland, $3M Seed Round

• GLIF, $4.5M Seed Round

• LightLink, $4.5M Seed Round

• Flood, $5.2M Seed Round

• Superform Labs, $6.5M Seed Round

• Pixelmon, $8M Seed Round

• Startale Labs, $3.5M Series A

• Oobit, $25M Series A

• Omega, $6M Private Round

• Merlin Chain, Undisclosed $ Private Round

• LN Markets, Undisclosed $ Seed Round

• Bitlight Labs, Undisclosed $ Seed Round

• Nibiru Chain, $12M Undisclosed round

• Stride, $4M Strategic Round

• Hivello, $2.5M Private Round

QUICK BITES

• Kraken EU secures Dutch license.

• Frax launches layer 2 network Fraxtal.

• Dymension reaches $5B+ in valuation.

• Ex-Consensys Product Lead joins OP Labs.

• Hong Kong calls for Yuan stablecoin issuance.

• Prometheum picks Ethereum as its first product.

• Jupiter unveils next launchpad token candidates.

• Thailand waives value-added tax on crypto gains.

• StarkWare plans ‘Cairo’ upgrade to verify layer 3s.

• Bakkt warns it might not be able to remain in business.

• Ex-Terra CFO charges with alleged fraudulent marketing.

• Yellen says treasury could have more authority over crypto.

• Wormhole announces airdrop and 4-year tokenomics plan.

• JPM survey shows 50%+ of institutional trades don’t want crypto.

• Hong Kong launches consultation on crypto OTC regulatory proposal.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Binance Research’s read on ERC-404 explanation.

• Luca Prosperi’s read on reconstructing the monetary stack.

• TokenBrice’s read on farewell to the GHO liquidity committee.

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.