Sei Mainnet & Airdrop

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Good Morning,

The crypto market is fully in PVP mode.

Volatility is close to an all-time low, market makers are scaling back, and all the activities are taking money from one another on newly launched chains. This might be the last quiet moment we get to focus on building before mid 2024, when we’ll see a slew of catalysts (Bitcoin ETF, halvings).

Time to put our heads down.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Sei mainnet & airdrop 🪂

• Case Study: GSR scales back 🚶‍♂️

• Governance & Features: Binance opBNB 🖥️

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Launchy

WHAT MATTERS

Sei Mainnet is Live & Airdrop Announcement

State of play: Sei Labs has launched its mainnet beta, Pacific-1, after a successful test phase. The native token SEI is now also live on exchanges.

• Sei is a Cosmos SDK-based proof-of-stake blockchain.

• Sei has seen 7.5M+ unique wallets during its testnet phase.

• Sei Labs has raised $30M via two funding rounds, with participation from Jump Crypto, Multicoin Capital, and Flow Traders.

• Jay Jog, Sei’s Co-Founder, claims that it is 10x faster than Solana.

• Jeff Feng, Sei’s Co-Founder, said that the focus of Sei is on social platforms, gaming, and carbon credits.

The Sei Foundation revealed its airdrop incentive on Tuesday for whitelisted users who have bridged qualifying assets into the Sei network.

• Qualifying assets: USDC, ETH, maticUSDC, and bnbUSDT.

• Active users on platforms like Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Osmosis can join the airdrop.

• To acquire airdrop tokens, wallets must be "mainnet ready” and linked to the Pacific-1 mainnet.

Why it matters: If Sei’s TPS claim is true, we’ll likely see a set of new DeFi primitives that require faster transaction speed to work properly.

For builders: Choosing the right chain to build your product is key.

• Sei is aiming for the same set of developers as Sui, Solana, and Aptos — promising, high TPS for dApps that require low latency, primarily DeFi applications. Consider your tradeoffs and benefits carefully.

For investors: Be cautious when handling airdrops. Sei stated that the airdrops will be claimable after an initial warmup period.

• However, the community has been riled up, accusing Sei Labs for dumping the SEI tokens as the token was already live before the airdrop page.

CASE STUDY

GSR Scales Back: The Learnings

State of play: GSR, one of the longest-standing market maker in crypto, is pulling back in response to the ongoing bear market.

Several executives, including those at the C-suite and department head levels, have departed. Here is the full list as per August 15.

• Chief Financial Officer, Jonathan Hugh.

• Global Head of Product, Benoit Bosc.

• Director of Trading Operations, Aman Bhalla.

• Head of DeFi and Venture Initiatives, Jake Dwyer.

• Head of Quant Trading, Romain Bernard.

• Director of Business Development, Jeff Stern.

In July 2021, Co-founder Rich Rosenblum mentioned plans to grow the firm's headcount from 25 to over 200 people. However, the count surged past 300 before a round of layoffs at year-end reduced it.

• One source said that “the executive team is mostly friends” and “out of touch with crypto.”

• GSR hired corporate Wall Street executives during the bull market's peak, leading to substantial cost.

• A consensus among GSR staff and industry insiders is that the firm grew excessively and should ideally have a headcount of 100 to 140. Currently GSR headcount is around 250 people.

Our take: Scaling up efficiently is the key lesson here. Hiring super expensive Wall Street veterans that might not have the crypto-natives experience is a misstep that many large firms make.

• Even the largest firms (Coinbase, Jump, Paradigm), ensure that they’re still hiring “crypto-natives” TradFi or web2 professionals.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 100 smart crypto investors' wallet addresses 👇

INSIGHTS

Singapore Finalize Stablecoin Framework

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that it has finalized a new stablecoin regulatory framework.

The framework will apply to single-currency stablecoins (SCS) pegged to the SGD or any G10 currency, that are issued in Singapore.

Issuers of such SCS will have to fulfill key requirements:

• Value stability: SCS reserve assets will be subject to requirements relating to their composition, valuation, custody and audit.

• Capital: Issuers must maintain minimum base capital and liquid assets to reduce the risk of insolvency.

• Redemption at Par: Issuers must return the par value of SCS to holders within 5-business days from a redemption request.

• Disclosure: Issuers must provide appropriate disclosures to users, including information on the SCS’ value stabilising mechanism, rights of SCS holders, as well as the audit results of reserve assets.

Stablecoin issuers meeting the framework's requirements can seek MAS approval for their stablecoins to be labelled as "MAS-regulated stablecoins".

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

Binance to Introduce opBNB L2 Network

Binance is preparing to release opBNB, an L2 scaling solution aimed at greatly enhancing the throughput of its BNB Chain, the L1 smart contract platform.

opBNB claims that it can reach the capacity of 4000+ TPS and 1 second block time with transaction fee lower than $0.005 for transfer transactions.

• Binance announced opBNB at the same time it was launching its testnet on June 19.

• BNB Chain witnessed a 66% decrease in its TVL last year. This downward trend persisted into 2023.

• Tron surpassed BNB Chain in the first quarter as BNB Chain’s TVL to decline to $3.1B.

Why it matters: The launch of opBNB has potential to reverse the decline and long–term downtrend for the TVL and market share of BNB Chain.

Other notable feature updates:

• Base Mainnet goes live.

• Angle V2 goes live.

• Tenet Bridge goes live.

• Preon goes live.

• Friend.tech goes live on Base.

• PancakeSwap goes live on Arbitrum.

• Uniswap goes live on Base.

• Mode Public Testnet goes live.

• DeBank launches L2 on testnet.

• Aevo launches pre-launch token futures.

• PayPal launches PYUSD.

• Ondo launches USDY.

QUICK BITES

• Sei launches its mainnet.

• Singapore finalizes stablecoin rules.

• GSR scales back, top executives depart.

• Maker hits a record $165M 2-year revenue.

• Binance shuts down crypto payments service.

• Stellar invests in MoneyGram.

• Prime Trust files for bankruptcy protection.

• Celsius to poll customers on launching a new user-owned company.

• SBF allegedly used $100M of customer funds for political donations.

• Binance US seeks protective order against 'fishing expedition' by SEC.

• Republicans wants the SEC to hand over documents on Prometheum.

MEME & NOTEWORTHY READS

• Paradigm’s read on the open problems of onchain games.

• Multicoin Capital’s read on the hidden costs of modular systems.

• Sheila Warren’s read on what progressives get wrong about crypto.

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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.