Gate.io Podcast | Andre Cronje: Crypto is dead, long live Crypto; Moonbirds NFT sales exceeded $280 million within two days; Nansen report shows NFT market surpassing the crypto market

This episode is presented by Gate.io and Linear Finance (Airdrop). The program will cover the following hot topics: Andre Cronje reappeared and expressed his concerns and expectations for the future of DeFi in a Medium post; Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino told CoinDesk at Paris Blockchain Week that Terra’s UST is comparable Tether In terms of improving its stability, there is still a long way to go. In the NFT field, Moonbirds generated $280 million in revenue within 2 days of its launch; Louis Vuitton launched a lottery activity where its mobile game players have the chance to win a total of 10 Vivienne NFTs; Nansen, a blockchain analytics company, recently released its Q1 report showing astonishing growth in NFTs. Finally, we will delve deep into MakerDao, the pioneer of the DeFi era.

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Today’s Express Delivery:

Andre Cronje: “Regulation is Necessary” Before the Arrival of the New Era of Cryptocurrency 1 | 2 | 3 |
Tether Paolo Ardoino talks about UST: ‘Everything is interesting but not serious’ before reaching a market capitalization of billions of dollars | 1 | 2 Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds Ethereum NFT generated $280 million in sales within two days of launch. 1 | 2 Louis Vuitton is the first to enter the NFT 1 | 2 Nansen report: NFT market growth surpasses the crypto market 1 | 2 |

Sponsor: Linear Finance (Airdrop)
In-depth Analysis: Introduction to MakerDao, the Pioneer of the DeFi Era | 1 | 2 | 3 |

Listen to the entire collection: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1825729/10470166

Introduction:

Welcome back to the Altcoin News Podcast! This series, launched by Gate.io, aims to share neutral perspectives on the latest headlines in DeFi, Metaverse, NFT, and major tech companies. Gate.io is a centralized exchange that takes a neutral stance on current affairs and is committed to protecting user privacy and security.

The information provided in this podcast is designed to help you stay informed about the latest developments in the cryptocurrency field and does not constitute any investment advice. The sources of the news I report in this podcast can be checked by yourself. I will teach you how to be vigilant and discerning in the program, so please stay tuned.

Now, let’s get into the main program.

Andre Cronje: “It is necessary to regulate” before the arrival of the new era of encryption | 1 | 2 | 3 |

Andre Cronje, a popular and controversial DeFi architect, denounced the essence of “crypto culture” in an article titled “The Rise and Fall of Crypto Culture” published on Medium on Monday, arguing that it is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the emerging ecosystem.

The former Fantom Foundation technical advisor and founder of Yearn.finance announced his exit from DeFi and crypto last month, and his return is not unexpected.

Cronje and colleague Anton Nell tweeted about the fate of all the apps and services they built, but didn’t disclose much about their personal motives. They even deactivated their Twitter account from March 6. In fact, anyone who has read Cronje’s article can surmise that these two partners are going through some kind of moral crisis. The words at the beginning and end of the article: “Crypto is dead. May Crypto Last” illustrates his ambivalence when it comes to the future of cryptocurrency.

Cronje also believes that many crypto builders still lack sufficient understanding of monetary policy.

According to Cronje, DeFi developers seem to have read Wikipedia articles about bonds, debt instruments, and seigniorage, among others, and he thinks “they can do better”.

Cronje’s solution to the “new era” of the blockchain economy is regulation. He used the analogy of parents trying to protect their children, arguing that legislation is the best way to stop the crypto community from setting themselves on fire. “They will understand one day, but not today.” He said.

While there is no explicit return to crypto, Cronje does say that he is excited about the future of the crypto industry. He writes at the end of the essay that it was ironic to go round and round, but he found that he had never been so excited. He said he would not set foot in the wilderness again, but was very excited about this new future.

USDT Paolo Ardoino on UST: “Everything is interesting but not serious until the market value reaches billions of dollars” | 1 | 2 |

During the Paris Blockchain Week, Tether Gate.io CTO Paolo Ardoino shared his views on several key points in today’s DeFi environment in interviews with CoinDesk, Grit Daily and others. According to reports, Ardoino told CoinDesk, “If it’s a stablecoin with a market capitalization of $5 billion or $10 billion, then everything is interesting,” but this situation will change as the market capitalization grows. UST is currently the third largest stablecoin on the market, second only to. Tether USDT and USDC in Circle. The market capitalization of USDT and USDC is still much higher than that of UST. However, the native stablecoin of the Terra ecosystem is growing rapidly, with a market cap of $180 million at the start of 2021 and over $17 billion as of April 18.

Terraform Labs is the issuer of the UST stablecoin and LUNA token. The rapid rise of the stablecoin TerraUSD also comes with some risks, as it relies on an algorithm to remain pegged to the US dollar.

UST mints UST tokens by permanently burning LUNA tokens using a smart contract-based algorithm, keeping their value constant at $1.

In Ardoino’s view, “If you use UST-sized algorithmic stablecoins for liquidation in the market, you can still solve this problem.” But imagine if you had an $80 billion or $100 billion market cap stablecoin, like one that is primarily backed by digital assets Tether It’s really hard to predict what will happen and whether there will be enough liquidity to support this huge cascade. Another concern may be that more than 67% of UST demand comes from the Anchor protocol - a decentralized savings protocol based on the Terra blockchain, which provides a high 19.5% UST deposit yield. Therefore, Terra must maintain this yield, otherwise UST holders may quickly try to sell the tokens they hold. Some analysts and traders believe that there may be a risk of token holders simultaneously exiting due to insufficient liquidity in the market. Ardoino pointed out the difference between USDT and USDC when talking to Grit Daily. Tether They have never refused a client’s redemption request. Unlike their competitors, their core focus remains on individuals rather than banks. Therefore, Tether To become a popular, liquid, trusted, and transparent stablecoin.
Tether The issuer of the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, does it have enough collateral to ensure that USDT is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, has always been a focal point of discussion. We will conduct an in-depth analysis of this issue in the upcoming program. Stay tuned.

Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds Ethereum NFT has generated $280 million in sales within two days of launch | 1 | 2 |

On Saturday, the Moonbirds project launched to much fanfare, initiated by PROOF Collective, led by technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kevin Rose.

According to data aggregator CryptoSlam, just two days after the launch, a collection of 10,000 pixelated bird-themed NFTs generated sales exceeding $281 million, making it a top-tier NFT collection.

PROOF Collective ultimately released 7,875 NFTs for sale through a lottery. These Moonbirds NFTs were sold on Saturday at a price of 2.5 ETH (approximately $7,600) each. Data from Dune Analytics indicates that the series of NFTs saw significant sales in the secondary market, leading to OpenSea, a prominent NFT marketplace, achieving the highest daily trading volume in over two months on Ethereum, reaching $177 million.

PROOF Collective is an NFT membership club founded by Kevin Rose, a partner at True Ventures and a well-known technology entrepreneur, most notably as the co-founder of Digg and Revision3. Kevin Rose, also an NFT enthusiast, birthed the PROOF podcast, which gave rise to this brand and eventually led to the formation of the NFT club. The club minted 1,000 membership pass NFTs in December.

While notable sales of NFTs are not uncommon, the rapid success of Moonbirds, a digital art collection featuring cartoon owl-themed NFTs, has energized many in the NFT community.

Louis Vuitton takes the lead in entering the NFT market | 1 | 2 |

Luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton is advancing its non-fungible token (NFT) strategy with the introduction of PFP-inspired NFT rewards in its standalone mobile game Louis: The Game.

Louis Vuitton’s game will run a raffle that will run until August 8, and participating players will have a chance to win a Vivienne NFT for a total of 10 NFTs that support cross-platform transfers. Vivienne is an avatar who travels around the game collecting postcards and information about Louis Vuitton.

The NFT collection was created in collaboration with Beeple’s startup Wenew Labs and sister company Possible and minted from Louis Vuitton’s Ethereum wallet.

A growing number of luxury and fashion brands are experimenting with NFTs and blockchain games in hopes of appealing to Gen Z consumers, who have an estimated $143 billion in spending power.

Last month, dozens of companies, including luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana and fast-fashion brands like Forever 21, took over Decentraland’s virtual streets and runways for the first metaverse fashion week. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the metaverse is often referred to as the next phase of the internet and is expected to create a market value of $800 billion.

While there is a lot of talk around the concept of the metaverse, which is not yet clearly defined, research published by consumer research firm Piper Sandler shows that only about half of the 7,100 teenagers surveyed in the U.S. are interested in the concept. The report obtained by The Block shows that while 26% of teens own a virtual reality headset, only 5% use it on a daily basis.

Despite entering the metaverse, Bernard Arnault, CEO of Louis Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, expressed caution about a possible “bubble” in the metaverse during an earnings call in January when talking about the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 21st century.

Nansen report claims NFT market growth outpaces cryptocurrency market | 1 | 2

Blockchain data analytics company Nansen recently released a quarterly research report on non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The research report highlights that the NFT industry has outperformed the cryptocurrency market year-to-date, with its market valuation expected to reach $80 billion by 2025.

The report shows that the NFT market has outpaced the crypto market with a year-to-date return of 103.7% in ETH and 82.1% in USD. Despite the decline in markets across most asset classes globally as of February 2022, the NFT-500 rose 5.9% in March.

These categories vary in volatility, with blue-chip NFTs having the least volatility (by market size) according to Nansen’s research. Azuki, Clone X, and Doodles are known as Blue Chips because they outperform other OpenSea top sets.

The reason for this is their growing popularity in the crypto world, coupled with the fact that they have been growing and appreciating in value, making them an ideal long-term investment.

The composition of the Social-100 index remained largely unchanged before and after the rebalancing, but the proportion of access & membership NFTs and utility NFTs increased.

The Social-100 Index has returned 49.9% year-to-date when denominated in ETH and 37.5% when denominated in USD.

The research report believes that Metaverse and art NFTs are the most volatile in the NFT market. Metaverse NFTs as defined by Nansen include land and real estate NFTs, avatars, and utility NFTs. It’s more difficult to evaluate pricing, especially for virtual land like Decentraland or The Sandbox.

The subjective nature of valuation, and the somewhat illiquid nature of art, increase the volatility of art NFTs. The study points out that generative art is the most popular among art NFTs, and that most metaverse and art market traders are “speculators”.

The Nansen index also shows that the overall growth of the gaming industry is slowing. The Gaming-50 index fell by 24.4%, the largest decline of any NFT market covered in the study.

Despite the decline, the overall NFT market is still in a relatively healthy state compared to the cryptocurrency market. NFTs are a fast-growing and dynamic track in the cryptocurrency industry, especially for retail investors.

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Sponsor | Linear Finance

Before I dive into today’s “Deep Dive” session, let me introduce our sponsors.

Linear Finance is a cross-chain compatible distributed protocol that enables users to quickly create, trade, and manage synthetic assets in a cost-effective manner.

The project’s whitepaper highlights Delta-One (where the price moves in line with the underlying asset) and synthetic assets (where value is derived from the constituent assets). For example, synthetic assets include futures and options. Synthetic assets allow investors to trade cryptocurrencies without holding them.

Synthetic assets are called liquids because they can be easily exchanged for cash. Linear Protocol supports synthetic assets in markets such as cryptocurrency, crude oil, coffee, market indices, esports, and more.

The project is led by Drey Ng and Kevin Tai. Drey holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Hong Kong, while Kevin holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Both founders are familiar with the technology and finance sectors, with Drey currently serving as CPO at Liquefy and Kevin as VP of structured products at Credit Suisse.

Linear Finance is governed by LinearDAO. LinearDAO is responsible for the basic platform design as well as system parameters such as LINA rewards and frequency, staking rates, introduction of new features, technology roadmap and allocation of transaction fees.

Now in terms of its tokenomics, the LINA token can be used on its network to collateralize debt as well as physical and digital assets. Token holders can earn Linear USD (LUSD), which can be used to trade Linear synthetic assets on the Linear Exchange. In addition, token holders can also participate in governance decisions, such as which assets to list and token distribution models.

We will be giving away 59,000 LINA tokens via an airdrop from April 21st to 28th. If you win the airdrop, we invite you to check out Linear’s staking mechanism. It does not constitute investment advice and is at your discretion.

There are several ways for LINA stakers to earn rewards:1. Stakers will be able to earn weekly transaction fees generated on Linear Exchange, which will be determined by the staking rate. 2. Other ways to earn rewards include liquidity farming, staking rate increases, and providing liquidity in the Linear pool.

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In-Depth Analysis | Introduction to MakerDao, the Pioneer of the DeFi Era

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As we all know, MakerDAO is the issuer behind the stablecoin DAI.

More than just a stablecoin: the core lending protocol.

MakerDAO is a company built on Ethereum that develops lending, savings, and stable cryptocurrency technologies. It has created a protocol that allows Ether and MetaMask wallet users to borrow using DAI.

Collateralizing one cryptocurrency to borrow another has always been a challenge because the value of most cryptocurrencies fluctuates too much, resulting in a significant difference between the borrowed amount and the amount to be repaid in a short period of time. To solve this problem, MakerDAO was created. By combining loans with stable currency, MakerDAO allows anyone to borrow and predict the total amount to be repaid.

A brief history of MakerDAO

Key milestones of MakerDAO: In 2014, MakerDAO was founded by Rune Christensen in California; in 2015, the platform token MKR was born; in 2017, MakerDAO officially launched the stablecoin DAI; in 2018, renowned venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $15 million in MakerDAO, purchasing 6% of the total supply of Maker (MKR) tokens, making it the first investment of A16Z’s $300 million cryptocurrency investment fund.

MakerDAO’s Total Value Locked (TVL) currently exceeds $15 billion, and its market share still accounts for over 20% of the DeFi sector. MakerDAO’s TVL has consistently accounted for nearly half of the entire DeFi sector.

Analyzing the DAI mechanism

With Tether Unlike the USD-backed USDT stablecoin, DAI is issued by pledging encrypted assets such as ETH. The continuous fluctuation of the collateral (in this case, ETH) price may also pose risks to the price of DAI. To avoid the risk of arbitrary price changes, users need to over-collateralize and borrow different amounts of DAI based on different collateral ratios.

When the price of the collateral drops to a certain level, the collateral will be liquidated at a slightly lower price (generally 97% of the market price) to avoid platform losses. Different coin pairs have different collateral requirements. For ETH, the collateral ratio needs to be greater than 150%, which means that only $100 worth of DAI can be borrowed against $150 worth of ETH, that is, a maximum of 100 DAI.

MKR is an ERC20 token created or destroyed based on the proximity of the DAI stablecoin to the US dollar. The creation of new MKR tokens depends on the stability of the DAI price. If DAI remains stable, the amount of MKR destroyed will increase, reducing the total supply. If DAI’s fluctuation relative to the US dollar is too large, more MKR will be created, increasing the total supply.

MKR Token & Governance

DAI, ETH, and MKR coexist in an automatic balancing system, maintaining system stability and decentralization.

When ETH price When there is a crash and too many loans are closed at the same time, MKR will be generated and sold to repay the loan. At the same time, the fee must also be paid in MKR, and the penalty for closing the position will be used to buy back the burned MKR. Theoretically, MKR always has enough value to repay the loan that is being liquidated.

Anyone who holds MKR ghostwriting is joining MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (or DAO for short). Since MKR holders are able to earn from the stable MakerDAO system, they have an incentive to safeguard the interests of the MakerDAO protocol. MKR holders can vote on governance decisions, such as setting fees and determining the type of collateral that is acceptable. In the MakerDAO system, one MKR token is equal to one vote, so an individual or organization that holds a large number of MKR tokens can have a big impact on the outcome of the vote.

However, MKR holders must also face the risk that MakerDAO may eventually be liquidated. When MakerDAO has bad debts and insolvencies due to the rapid decline in collateral prices, the system will issue more MKR to buy back DAI, which will further cause the MKR price to fall. As a result, MKR holders have a similar position in MakerDAO to the company’s shareholders. The smooth operation of MakerDAO needs to be maintained by prudent governance.

summary

Compared with centralized stablecoins such as USDT, DAI is completely open and transparent, and the audit risk is less. At the same time, the lending service provided by MakerDAO also provides users with new options for flexible use of the assets at hand.

Looking back at the history of Ethereum, the birth of MakerDAO and DeFi is an extremely important milestone. Since its inception in 2016, Ethereum has gradually developed into the world’s largest public chain, and its positioning has gradually changed from a “global computer” to a “global settlement layer”. At present, the DeFi ecosystem has been greatly developed.

To sum up, the importance of MakerDAO in the overall DeFi space may have declined, but its innovative ideas are still worth learning.