This article has been republished with permission from Binance News.
11 August 2023
Happy Friday! The Weekly Market Highlights is an initiative from the Binance Research team to round up the week, summarizing key market events and views from the team.
🔎 Macro/TradFi
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) has committed up to S$150M over three years to the development of innovative FinTech solutions, with a focus on Web3.
- Binance has become the first fully licensed crypto exchange in El Salvador.
🔎 Crypto
L1/L2:
- New Ethereum L2, Base, has officially launched its public mainnet. Developed on Optimism’s OP Stack, Base has attracted ~US$160M in TVL in its first week.
- Aptos Labs has partnered with Microsoft to build new AI-powered blockchain solutions. This includes Aptos Assistant, a chatbot to help onboard users and developers into the Aptos ecosystem. They are also partnering on blockchain-based financial services solutions, including asset tokenization, payments and CBDCs.
DeFi:
- MakerDAO started the week by increasing the DAI Savings Rate to 8% for users of its sister project, Spark Protocol. The rate has since fallen to ~5% following a surge of deposits. Later in the week, founder of MakerDAO, Rune Christensen, introduced a proposal to create a new governance token for Spark Protocol and airdrop them to early users.
- Etherscan has launched the Blockscan Chat mobile app, which allows users to chat to any web3 address via wallet-to-wallet messaging.
- The TON blockchain, originally created by Telegram, has announced the launch of its self-custodial crypto wallet, TON Space. The wallet is currently in beta and only for developers. It is set to be integrated within Telegram after further testing.
Stablecoins:
- PayPal announced the launch of their U.S. dollar pegged stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD). It is an ERC-20 token and currently only available to U.S. users. PYUSD will be issued by the New York-based crypto firm, Paxos Trust, and be fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries, and cash equivalents.
Others:
- The y00ts NFT collection, which migrated from Solana to Polygon earlier this year, is set to now migrate to Ethereum. Their sister project, DeGods, moved from Solana to Ethereum, with this move set to “unite the DeGods and y00ts communities”.
- Coin98 has reported a seven-figure investment from DWF Labs.
- Web3 gaming platform, Mahjong Meta, has announced a US$12M funding round. They also officially launched on 7 Aug after a two-month beta.
- Bitcoin web3 wallet, Xverse, has announced a US$5M seed round.
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About Binance Research: Binance Research is the research arm of Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange. The team is committed to delivering objective, independent, and comprehensive analysis and aims to be the thought leader in the crypto space. Our analysts publish insightful thought pieces regularly on topics related but not limited to, the crypto ecosystem, blockchain technologies, and the latest market themes.
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