Did Blur crash the NFT market? 💥
NFT marketplace Blur's negative impact on the ecosystem. Scientists create AI crypto portfolio manager. Coinbase's Grogan is crypto’s Indiana Jones. Shiba Inu designer fights to stop commercialisation
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Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and other top collections are taking a nosedive, and all eyes are on Blur! With prices plummeting, fingers are wagging, pointing at Blur for the NFT rollercoaster ride.
The Rise of Blur
Launched in October 2022 by Blur.io, Blur raised $14 million from top investors. Blur's vision is to empower the NFT trading community by catering to their specific needs. It became popular pre-launch, promising faster sweeps, better fees, sorting functions, and an intuitive interface. Outmatching OpenSea volumes, Blur aims to be the NFT marketplace leader.
What sets Blur apart is its focus on advanced traders, offering features like batch transactions, portfolio analytics, marketplace aggregation, and sweeping tools. In February 2023, Blur made headlines with the debut of its native token, BLUR. Airdropping 12% of its circulating supply to users, some reaped millions of dollars.
Backlash and Market Impact
Blur emerged as the leading Ethereum NFT trading platform, overtaking OpenSea, by incentivising trading and offering a token airdrop.
Flipping NFTs became popular on Blur, raising concerns about wash trading and undermining the uniqueness of NFTs.
Falling NFT prices led traders to question Blur's approach and its influence on the market.
Critics blame Blur's tactics for harming the market, lowering NFT prices, and incentivising risky behaviour.
Some traders have experienced losses and liquidations due to over-leveraging on Blur's platform.
Let's dive into the details.
The Blur farmers
Blur is not just any NFT trading platform - it has its own governance token called $BLUR. And here's the interesting part: they reward users with Blur Points through their Season 2 Airdrop program. Basically, the more you engage with the platform, the more points you earn. These points can be earned through activities like bidding, listing, and lending.
Blur farmers - These are participants who are solely focused on racking up as many Blur Points as possible. They love bidding because it involves less risk, especially when they use good old ETH and hedge their bets with short futures.
But here's the cool part: they have a strategy to maximise their points. They bid strategically - not too close to get filled, but close enough to earn a decent amount of points. And if they do get filled, they list those NFTs during the grace period, and if they don't sell, they just sell them right back into the bid.
Short-term profit seekers who move their assets around to chase the highest yield.
Blur and NFT prices
Those farmers on Blur, they're always adjusting their strategies based on how many other farmers are in the game. Too many farmers means fewer points to go around, while too few farmers result in bids getting filled left and right, leading to losses. Enter Blend, the secret weapon of farmers. It lets them convert their unwanted NFTs back into Blur points in a jiffy, no waiting required. Sounds good, right?
Well, here's the catch: this Blend thing ends up creating a cycle of dumpers dumping into dumpers. Farmers keep offloading their NFTs, which leaves fewer for genuine buyers who actually want them. And you know what happens? NFT prices take a nosedive. So, Blur farming messes with NFT prices, and Blend makes the decline happen even faster by reducing supply and keeping the dumping cycle going.
And while it brings some volatility to the market, the genuine liquidity folks are still there, trying to keep things stable.
Now here's what Pacman the CEO has to say
Tieshun “Pacman” Roquerre argued that liquidity injections and removals have a greater impact on prices. He acknowledged that criticism comes with the territory and considers it the cost of doing business.
“Bad takes spread like wildfire and at this point I just consider it the cost of doing business.”
TTD Scientists 👩🔬
Scientists have gone above and beyond and created an amazing AI that manages cryptocurrency portfolios using on-chain data. It's called CryptoRLPM, which stands for Cryptocurrency reinforcement learning portfolio manager.
This AI system is all about reinforcement learning, where it interacts with the crypto environment and updates its training based on rewards.
CryptoRLPM has five super-smart units that work together - data feed unit, data refinement unit, portfolio agent unit, live trading unit, and agent updating unit.
They all team up to process information and manage structured portfolios.
To put CryptoRLPM to the test, the scientists gave it three portfolios with different crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Storj, Bluzelle, and Chainlink. They conducted experiments over a period of almost two years, measuring its performance against standard market evaluation.
It showed significant improvements compared to the baseline Bitcoin performance - 83.14% improvement in the accumulated rate of return, a fancy 0.5603% improvement in the daily rate of return, and a solid 2.1767 improvement in the Sortino ratio.
TTD CryptoJones ✅
Coinbase's Conor Grogan is crypto’s Indiana Jones.
What? Yes.
He uncovered a hidden treasure worth $322,000.
Grogan, the head of product at Coinbase, revealed how he embarked on a quest to find dormant crypto and reconnect it with its clueless owner.
Back in 2016, when the Ethereum blockchain forked, creating Ethereum Classic (ETC), investors who held Ether (ETH) were airdropped an identical amount of ETC. But many people completely forgot about these airdropped funds, leaving them untouched and gathering digital dust.
Armed with his crypto sleuthing skills, Gorgan combed through the ETC rich list, identifying wallets that had never touched their ETC.
After diving deep into the rabbit hole of wallets, Grogan finally stumbled upon an address with the elusive prefix "0x475." And guess what? This wallet held not only ETC but also a cryptocurrency called eosDAC that was airdropped to Ethereum holders in 2018.
Using his newfound knowledge, Grogan connected with the wallet's owner, tracing their legal name through legal documents.
And in an unexpected twist of fate, Grogan contacted the owner, revealing the existence of their long-forgotten riches.
TTD Commercialisation 💸
Designer Sveinn Valdimarsson created the iconic Shiba Inu logo as a proud member of the memecoin community. However, he now finds himself struggling to prevent his creation's commercialisation.
Some companies are using the Shiba Inu logo for real products. Fashion houses, crypto storage firms, and even a fast-food joint are hopping on the Shiba Inu bandwagon.
Sveinn Valdimarsson is not too thrilled about this. Valdimarsson is fighting back, urging the Shiba Inu team to stop allowing enterprises to leverage the logo. He's even seeking legal representation to put an end to this appropriation.
The Rise of Shiba Inu and Commercial Ventures
Shiba Inu, initially created as a rival to Dogecoin, gained immense popularity with its Japanese hunting dog mascot.
With a market cap of $4.5 billion, the token attracted attention from various companies looking to leverage the Shiba Inu logo for real-world products.
The Logo game
Valdimarsson, a proud member of the Shiba Inu community, developed the logo without any formal contracts or agreements, intending it to be a symbol for the community.
But, he still maintains ownership rights. Just like buying a house, if the seller isn't the actual owner, they can't sell it to you. Similarly, using the logo without Valdimarsson's permission is a no-go. While community members argue that the logo is free to use or in the public domain, Valdimarsson contends that commercial ventures need to obtain proper permission.
Valdimarsson isn't out to ruin the Shiba Inu community or take away their beloved logo. He simply wants companies to respect his rights as the designer and seek permission before profiting from his creation. He's even found support from co-owners of a vegan restaurant in Thailand, who are standing by his side in this battle for logo justice.
TTD Bounty 🤑
After Twitter, now Reddit is gonna have a big rival?
The decentralised social media protocol DeSo is waving around $1 million bounty for anyone who can build a decentralised alternative to Reddit using their native blockchain.
You see, Reddit recently stirred up quite a storm within its community by limiting API access. This move sparked a rebellion with 48-hour subreddit blackouts in protest.
“This price hike for their API has forced existing third-party developers to shut down as maintaining their applications becomes impossible."
And it doesn't stop there.
Elon Musk, the controversial genius himself, put reading limits on new and verified Twitter accounts, all in the name of combating data scraping and manipulation.
Nader Al-Naji, the mastermind behind DeSo, believes that users are yearning for autonomy over their social content, much like owning Bitcoin.
DeSo, founded in 2019, is all about monetisation and decentralisation. They've got creator coins, non-fungible tokens, tokens, and tipping to keep things interesting. Plus, they store everything on-chain, making it impossible to ban or block content at a protocol level.
With $200 million in funding from big names like A16z, Coinbase Ventures, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who's probably wearing a mischievous grin right about now), DeSo is ready to make waves.
Over 150 projects are already part of the DeSo community.
TTD Surfer 🏄
FBI reportedly searched the home of Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell in March as part of an investigation into claims he hacked and cyber-stalked a nonprofit arts group.
DeFi traders lost $228 million to hackers in 2023 Q2. The overall number of hacks has increased by 65% and losses from fraud rocketed up by 225%.
Binance plunges into crisis as senior executives quit over CEO Changpeng Zhao’s response to Justice Department investigation
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