🗺️ What's hot in crypto land this week?

Dozens of Pricey NFTs Stolen After BAYC Instagram Hack
ETH staking spiked after successful testing of The Merge; Kraken & LIDO lead staking services
UST Remained The Dominant Decentralized Stablecoin
As DeFi’s core segments continue to weaken, more niche products are starting to bloom
Fidelity allows workers to save 20% of Retirement in Bitcoin
NFT aggregator Gem.xyz was acquired by OpenSea shortly after ousting its co-founder for sexual misconduct

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Dozens of Pricey NFTs Stolen After BAYC Instagram Hack — The Instagram account belonging to NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was compromised Monday, paving the way for the theft of more than a dozen individuals’ digital valuables.

Bored Ape Yacht Club @BoredApeYC

A safeTransferFrom transaction is a function within Ethereum designed to check for the eligible ERC-721 token standard transfer of an NFT (non-fungible token) from the owner to the recipient.

“Immediately upon discovering the hack, we alerted our community, removed links to the compromised IG account from our platforms, and attempted to recover the account,” BAYC tweeted.

The account was hacked despite BAYC employing two-factor authentication and following security best practices, it said in a follow-up tweet. BAYC has launched an investigation in an attempt to discover how the hacker gained access.

According to BAYC’s co-founder “Garga.eth,” four Bored Apes, six Mutant Apes, three Kennels and other “assorted valuable NFTs” were transferred to the hacker. Based on the marketplace’s floor price, it is estimated the value of the hack is upwards of $10 million.

ETH staking spiked after successful testing of The Merge; Kraken & LIDO lead staking services — Despite a dip in ETH price within the same period, total staked ETH for consensus layer saw strong upward momentum (+25%) in Q1 2022 The successful Kiln testnet merge on March 14 ushered a spike in staked ETH.

At 11 million staked ETH by end-Q1 2022, this represents ~9% of the total ETH supply. Kraken (9.4%) and Lido (8.8%) still led as the Top 2 ETH staking services by validator count, far ahead of the pack with a combined dominance of ~18%.

The Merge is estimated to reduce daily ETH emissions from 12,000 ETH to 1,280 ETH, a 90% reduction equivalent to a triple halving in Bitcoin terms. (Coingecko)

UST Remained The Dominant Decentralized Stablecoin — Since overtaking DAI’s position as the 4th largest stablecoin in December, Terra USD (UST) continues to go from strength to strength to be the dominant decentralized stablecoin. In Q1 2022, UST saw its market cap increase by 61% reaching $16.3b. DAI’s market cap meanwhile only saw a marginal increase of 3%. With more focus turning towards decentralized stablecoins, issuers have seen sharp increases in their usage. FRAX appears to be benefiting from this interest. The partially collateralized stablecoin saw its market cap increase according to coingecko.com

As DeFi’s core segments continue to weaken, more niche products are starting to bloom — In Q1 2022, though DEXes, oracles, and lending platforms continue to dominate DeFi, each segment has experienced a decrease in market cap of up to 17%. Cumulatively, these three segments accounted for more than 80% of the DeFi market cap. While yield aggregators were certainly one of the biggest hits of 2021, the sector is off to a much slower start in 2022.

Yield aggregators saw a decrease of 25%, or approximately $1.2 billion in market cap lost. However, more nascent spaces in the DeFi ecosystem saw a vast improvement. Both derivatives and asset management protocols saw an increase in market cap, with the latter doubling their market cap compared to the previous quarter, though their share of the market remains small. GMX and Tenset were the largest gainers from each category, respectively.

Fidelity allows workers to save 20% of Retirement in Bitcoin. Fidelity Investments, America’s largest provider of 401(k) savings accounts, is rolling out the Digital Assets Account, a new proprietary offering that gives companies access to Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s leading cryptocurrency. According to a New York Times report, the new product is expected to go live this summer, giving companies the option to save in Bitcoin.

NFT aggregator Gem.xyz was acquired by OpenSea shortly after ousting its co-founder for sexual misconduct — OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, acquired NFT aggregator Gem.xyz (Gem) to “better serve” its more experienced users, the company said in a blog post. The deal, which comes a few months after OpenSea bought DeFi wallet startup Dharma Labs, will allow OpenSea to “learn from Gem’s expertise and intuition about the advanced NFT community,” the company said.

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👀 Under the Radar

PRIMATE is the core of the play-to-earn system being added to Benji Bananas. Players will be able to earn PRIMATE Tokens when playing the game, and these tokens will be swappable for other fungible tokens in the Animoca Brands ecosystem (including SAND, REVV, TOWER, GMEE, QUIDD, PROS, and BONDLY). Check their Opensea account as their NFTs are quickly heating up.
REI Network — Developed to better adapt to the blockchain’s development trend and achieve a lightweight, Ethereum compatible, higher performance, and no fee blockchain framework. A challenging task, but huge upside if successful.
JustCarbon Removal (JCR) — Founded by finance, crypto, and blue carbon experts. JustCarbon’s founders want voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) to be available to all. JustCarbon wants to scale access to funding for project developers and ensure everyone has the opportunity to fight climate change. JustCarbon Removal Units or JCRs represent one tonne of physical carbon sequestrated from the atmosphere. JustCarbon only deals in recent removal meaning all offsets are nature-based and backed by the highest standards (VCS, GS). All credits are visible and recordings are stored on the blockchain. JustCarbon never owns JCRs, it simply mints them and ensures their transparency and quality.
DeFiChain is a decentralized blockchain platform dedicated to enabling fast, intelligent and transparent decentralized financial services. DeFiChain is built on bitcoin (as a software fork) and is anchored to the bitcoin blockchain (via Merkle root) every few minutes for maximum security. It is designed to be non-Turing complete to reduce smart contract errors (extremely important for finance transactions) and its opcodes only allow running decentralized finance dapps. This ensures that only financial transactions are possible, instead of having games and casinos clogging the ecosystem and causing high transaction fees.

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