News
- Amber Group Denies Allegations Of Insolvency
- Vitalik Urges DeFi to Embrace Real World Assets
- DeFi and Web3 Startups Attract $3B in Funding in Third Quarter
- Chainlink Launches Staking Service as LINK Rallies 32%
NFT Roundup
Opinion
Podcast
Video
DeFi Explainers
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News
FTX Contagion
Amber Group Denies Allegations Of Insolvency
On-chain Data Shows $11M In Assets at Trading Firm
By Owen Fernau
The contagion from FTX’s collapse may still be spreading. Lookonchain, an on-chain analyst, claims that Amber Group, a crypto trading and asset management firm, appears to be on the brink of bankruptcy. Lookonchain said six wallets allegedly owned by Amber have only $9.46M in assets between them — Amber claims on its website to have over $5B “on its platform” and to be responsible for $1T of trading volume.
Read the full story in The Defiant
DeFi + TradFi
Vitalik Urges DeFi to Embrace Real World Assets
Ethereum’s Chief Scientist Predicts Stablecoins Will Split Into Three Groups
By Samuel Haig
Embracing one of the thorniest and most promising projects in decentralized finance, Vitalik Buterin, the chief scientist and co-founder of Ethereum, is bullish on the integration of real-world assets into DeFi and stablecoins. Buterin encouraged devs to explore blockchain-based assets tracking traditional financial instruments in a Dec. 5 blog post entitled What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me.
Read the full story in The Defiant
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DeFi Funding
DeFi and Web3 Startups Attract $3B in Funding in Third Quarter
Fundraising is Down 24% But Decentralized Sector Holding Its Own in Harsh Year
By Samuel Haig
No surprise, DeFi and web3 fundraising has taken a hit in a year roiled by a bear market and a series of crypto scandals. Yet what is eye opening is how much investment continues to flow into the burgeoning sector. In the third quarter, venture capitalists and other investors plowed almost $3B into DeFi, NFTs, and metaverse startups, according to CB Insights, an investment data provider. While that’s a 24% drop from the second quarter, it’s still more than the $2.7B investors placed in the decentralized sector in the same period last year.
Read the fully story in The Defiant
NFT Roundup
ApeCoin Holders Pre-stake $34M Ahead Of Rewards Launch
NFT Collectors Pile Into Pudgy Penguins After Art Basel
By yyctrader
Crypto markets might be fretting over Fed meetings and FTX contagion, but that didn’t stop NFT degens from having a good time. By all accounts, Art Basel, the recently concluded NFT conference in Miami, was a smash, and we’ve seen a slew of updates from popular NFT projects over the last two weeks.
Read the full story in The Defiant
DeFi Staking
Chainlink Launches Staking Service as LINK Rallies 32%
Web3 Oracle Provider Offers Tokenholders Native Yields for First Time
By Samuel Haig
Chainlink, the leading web3 data oracle provider, launched support for the beta version of its staking service on Dec. 6, allowing holders of its LINK token to earn a native yield for the first time. LINK holders can now lock up the token in Chainlink’s smart contracts to back performance guarantees for the protocol’s oracle services. The beta release enabled staking to secure Chainlink’s Ethereum mainnet data feed for the price of ETH/USD.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Opinion
Forget the Snickering… Here’s Why the Metaverse Will Prevail
The Internet, Broadband, Mobile Computing… Sweeping Change Takes Time and the Metaverse Will be No Different
Drawing on tech history, guest writer Stephen Fromkin makes a provocative case for the metaverse.
“Most things that succeed don’t require retraining 250 million people.”
Wired magazine published this line in 1995, in reference to the Internet.
You could apply the same thought to the metaverse. There is a lot of skepticism about this digital ecosystem in the market, and many critics have dismissed the innovation as little more than hype or retrofitted virtual reality, which never took off. Yet the skeptics are wrong. They often start with a flawed premise — that the metaverse is being built from the ground up.
Read the full essay in The Defiant
Shoutout
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Defiant Video
Vitalik’s Top 5 Crypto Use-Cases
Juan Benet is Working to Upgrade the Heart of The Internet with Blockchains
DeFi Explainers
What Happened at FTX?
A Step-by-Step Guide to the Collapse of the Crypto Exchange
Before its demise in November 2022, FTX was the No. 2 cryptocurrency worldwide. Founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, a self-styled evangelist for cryptocurrency with strong ties to TradFi investors, FTX sported a valuation of $32B following a funding round in January 2022. Yet after doubts arose about the exchange’s balance sheet and symbiosis with Alameda Research, a crypto investment fund also controlled by Bankman-Fried, FTX lost the confidence of investors and rapidly unraveled.