Wormhole's $2.5 Billion Airdrop

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Good Morning.

We’re officially entering price discovery. Inflows aren’t slowing down, Ethereum nears $4,000, and BlackRock plans to add BTC to its Global Allocation Fund. Let’s keep our A-game and continue building, cheers.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Wormhole's $2.5B airdrop 🪂 

• Founders Highlight: Pascal and Rand of Zama 🔑

• Deal Flows: Scallop’s $3M round 💰️ 

You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at [email protected].

TOGETHER WITH

Flare Networks

As the number of blockchains increases, the need for a strong interoperability framework in a modular environment becomes extremely important.

Join Flare at ETHGlobal London for a night of code and connections with Hyperlane, as well as our other community partners including HomeDAO, Encode Club, and the Cambridge Blockchain Society.

Date: March 14th, 2024 — numbers are limited so the location will only be revealed to approved registrants in your confirmation email.

Head over to the registration page to grab your spot 👇

WHAT MATTERS

Wormhole's $2.5 Billion Airdrop

State of play: Cross chain messaging protocol Wormhole has announced the upcoming launch of its W token, alongside its airdrop plan to reward early adopters with 617M W tokens.

• The W token, with a total supply of 10B, will initially circulate 1.8B tokens in ERC20 and SPL formats across Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.

• 82% of the tokens are initially locked; they will gradually unlock over four years.

• 6.17% of the W token supply is allocated to 397,704 wallets from the Community & Launch category.

• This airdrop includes 500M W for users active on the 30+ blockchains connected by Wormhole

• ~117M W is allocated for community members: Wormhole Discord users, NFT communities, the Monad community, and top Pyth stakers.

Here is the link to check your eligibility: http://airdrop.wormhole.com

Priority for the airdrop was given based on the duration and consistency of engagement with the Wormhole protocol, overall activity volume, and participation in ecosystem applications.

• The snapshot was taken on February 6, 2024, at 23:59 UTC.

• Wormhole's airdrop includes holders of NFT collections like Bad Kids, DeGods, Mad Lads, and y00ts.

• However, a pseudonymous Bad Kids NFT investor, 0xAllen, reported to DL News that many holders missed the Wormhole airdrop.

• According to Decrypt, the W token traded at 2.49 USDT on Bybit's OTC markets on Monday, a five times increase from the price a month ago.

• With an initial circulation of 1.8B W, the airdrop's current value stands at $2.73B, possibly ranking it among the largest in crypto history.

Why it Matters: As the number of blockchains increases, so do the interoperability solutions that try to connect them all.

• These protocols will be vying for users via various growth hacking strategies, including airdrop, which further injects liquidity into the onchain markets.

For builders and investors: When picking an interoperability solution, make sure that you consider the tradeoffs. This includes the protocols’ technical capacity, as well as, the potential rewards for becoming an early user.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Pascal Paillier and Rand Hindi of Zama

Intro: Rand Hindi and Pascal Pallier are the Co-Founders of Zama, an open-source cryptography company building state-of-the-art FHE solutions for blockchain and AI. Pascal served as the CTO while Rand is the CEO of Zama.

Previous background: Pascal is a seasoned Cryptography Expert with 15 years of experience. Rand is a tech founder who advises a broad range of companies. Both Rand and Hind hold a PhD.

• Pascal earned his PhD in Cryptography in 1999 from Telecom Paris, while Rand earned his PhD in Bioinformatics in 2011 from UCL.

The big idea: Rand and Pascal through Zama are working on applications using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), a technology allowing data processing without decryption, offering privacy protection in blockchain and AI.

• Zama just raised a $73M Series A to build “Fully Homomorphic Encryption” applications.

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

Paul Veradittakit’s Take on Web3 Social

Credits to Paul Veradittakit for the original piece.

Paul Veradittakit, the Managing Partner of Pantera Capital, has shared his take on the Web3 social landscape. The piece explores how these web3 elements are being used to redefine social interactions online.

Here is the summary:

Today's web3 landscape sees the rise of social platforms, facilitated by Layer 1 and Layer 2 technologies that offer low fees and data storage solutions which have led to diverse blockchain-based social platforms.

• Open protocols like Farcaster and Lens are shaping a new era of social platforms, not by replicating traditional models like Facebook but by enabling a plethora of applications that could attract millions of users.

• Crypto-native mechanisms alongside innovations like PWAs and L2 solutions simplify user onboarding experiences and enhances the monetization avenues for creators.

• Incentive rewards have already shown potential in overcoming initial network growth challenges, as seen with Blur's success over OpenSea.

Looking ahead, social applications leveraging crypto's core features—open data, tokenization, ownership, and identity—will be key in ushering the next wave of users into the crypto space.

DEAL FLOWS

Scallop Protocol $3M Strategic Round

Deal flows soared this week, we saw $196M+ in deals 💼

Scallop Protocol, the leading lending and borrowing protocol on Sui, announced last week that it has raised $3M in a strategic round co-led by CMS Holdings and 6th Man Ventures.

• The round included prominent investors like Kucoin Labs, Blockchain Founders Fund, Oak Grove Ventures, UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital, and Mysten Labs, among others.

• This funding will be used to scale, integrate new features for a better user experience, and aim to be the top All-In-One DeFi protocol.

• Scallop Protocol will advance to its next development phase with the launch of its governance token, SCA, via an IDO round on the Cetus Protocol’s launchpad.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Hedgehog, $1.5M Pre-Seed Round

• Oyl, $3M Pre-Seed Round

• Firewall, $3.7M Pre-Seed Round

• Stack, $3M Seed Round

• Privasea, $5M Seed Round

• Cosmology, $5M Seed Round

• Sahara, $6M Seed Round

• Blackwing, $7.5M Seed Round

• Utila, $11.5M Seed Round

• Taiko, $15M Series A Round

• Baanx, $20M Series A Round

• Ionet, $30M Series A Round

• Zama, $73M Series A Round

• CredShields, $1M Strategic Round

• Scallop Protocol, $3M Strategic Round

• TON, $8M Secondary Market

QUICK BITES

• Fidelity FBTC hits a record daily inflow of $473M.

• Aevo offers pre-market trading for its own token.

• Fireblocks adds new executive after new CFO hire.

• Kamino announces KMNO token airdrop for April.

• Uniswap passes fee switch temperature check vote.

• Spot Bitcoin ETFs own 4% of the entire Bitcoin supply.

• Optimism Foundation plans to sell $89M worth of OP.

• Worldcoin files legal challenge to Spain’s temporary ban.

• Genesis and Gemini discussed a possible merger in 2022.

• FTX reaches settlement with BlockFi; may pay up to $874M.

• JPM Analyst thinks BTC portfolio allocation won’t match gold.

• GBTC outflows reach $10B in two months after ETF conversion.

• Revolut integrates with Metamask for in-app crypto purchases.

• BlackRock plans to purchase Bitcoin for its Global Allocation Fund.

• Uniswap passes fee switch temperature check vote.

• SEC pushes back the timeline on BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF options trading application.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Travis Kling’s read on financial nihilism.

• Arthur Hayes’ read; “Dust On Crust Part Deux.”

• Nosleepjon’s read on 10 modular thoughts after ETHDenver.

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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.