AAVE Considers Open Market Buyback

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Good Morning.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: AAVE buyback 👻 

• Founders Highlight: Ray & Olivia of aPriori 👾

• Deal Flow: Galaxy’s $113M fund 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

AAVE Consideres Buyback

State of play: Aave Chain Initiative (ACI) published a temperature check of the “AAVEnomics” update proposal to leverage the Safety Module Umbrella update to create a clear path and roadmap related to the protocol “fee switch.”

• The next step involves the Aave community giving feedback. If consensus is achieved, the proposal will advance to a snapshot vote.

• Marc Zeller, the founder of ACI, stated on X that the proposal could lead to Aave protocol restaking.

• If approved, the proposal will continue rewarding staked AAVE with AAVE tokens and introduce a "Buy & Distribute" program.

• The "Buy & Distribute" program, funded by excess revenue, will purchase AAVE from secondary markets.

• The proposal indicates that the new system will create constant demand for AAVE assets in secondary markets.

Why it Matters: The proposal, based on a governance suggestion by BGD Labs, aims to enhance Aave's safety module, which addresses potential "bad debt" in its liquidity pools.

• This will also provide consistent AAVE buy pressure on the open market; something that a fully functioning and profitable protocol needs to have.

For builders and investors: Eventually, value accrual matters — it’s encouraging to see the OG DeFi protocols paving the way.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Ray & Olivia of aPriori

Intro: Ray and Olivia are the co-founders of aPriori, a MEV-powered liquid staking platform on Monad.

Previous background: Ray is a Jump Crypto and Pyth Data Association alum. Ray started his career as a project manager at Sandia National Laboratories. He then worked at Flow Traders as a trader for two years.

Before aPriori, Olivia was a senior software engineer at Coinbase for almost four years.

The big idea: Ray and Olivia aim to provide an efficient MEV marketplace that reduces spamming and increases validator incentives on Monad through aPriori.

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

30 Celebrity Tokens on Solana in June

Credits to Slorg for the original tweet

State of play: Slorg shared a table of 30 celebrity tokens launched on Solana in June. The table shows that all of the celebrity tokens are down from 73.23% to 99.98%.

• The list includes the tokens related to 50 Cent, Doja Cat, Floyd Mayweather, Caitlyn Jenner, Iggy Azalea, Barron Trump, and Andrew Tate.

• The best tokens in terms of market cap are Tate’s DADDY ($66M), Azalea’s MOTHER ($69M), and Trump’s DJT ($77M).

• 22 of the tokens are down more than 90%.

• The best-performing tokens were DADDY, JENNER(ETH), ALEXIS, and MOTHER, which all declined more than 70%.

• 50% of the celebrities abandoned the tokens or deleted tweets related to the tokens.

DEAL FLOWS

Galaxy’s $113M Crypto Venture Fund

Deal flows soared this week, we saw $115M+ in deals 💼 

Galaxy Asset Management has raised $113M for Galaxy Ventures to invest in early-stage crypto protocols, software infrastructure, and financial applications.

• Due to growing interest from institutional investors in digital assets, Galaxy anticipates continued fundraising into next year, aiming for a $150M target.

• The fund will broaden Galaxy Ventures' investments in digital asset innovation companies.

• The venture capital fund is led by Galaxy Ventures General Partners Will Nuelle and Mike Giampapa

• The fund aims to create a portfolio of around 30 investments in digital asset companies.

• Galaxy Digital has invested in over 100 portfolio companies, including Ethena, M^0, Mona and Plume.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Network3, $5.5M Pre-Seed & Seed Round

• Kuru, $2M Seed Round

• Etherfuse, $3M Seed Roud

• Kintsu, $4M Seed Round

• Nirvana Labs, $4M Seed Round

• Redpill, $5M Seed Round

• DAOBase, $6M Seed Round

• aPriori, $10M Seed Round

• NPC Labs, $18M Seed Round

• Caldera, $15M Pre-Series A

• Bitlayer, $11M Series A

• Igloo, $11M Strategic Round

• Pluto Studio, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round

• OpenSocial, $6M Strategic Round

• Multipool, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round

• ZAP, $15M Private Round

• Zircuit, Undisclosed $ Private Round

• RiskLayer, Undisclosed $ Private Round

QUICK BITES

• Coinbase UK fined $4.5M by the FCA.

• Jersey City's pension fund will invest in bitcoin ETFs.

• StarkWare works to integrate Cosmos IBC into Starknet.

• BlackRock says there won’t be a long list of crypto ETFs.

• Jito releases an open-source restaking service for Solana.

• Polymarket’s volume surpasses $275M, hits record high.

• TON launches gasless tx following new smart wallet standard.

• Aave considers activating fee switch and buying back tokens.

• Arbitrum opens a proposal to deploy Orbit chains beyond Ethereum.

• MARA purchases $100M worth of bitcoin, holdings surpass 20K BTC.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Smokey’s read on launching a new chain.

• Kyle Samani’s read on predictions markets.

• Alex Kruger’s read on recent crypto markets correction.

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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.