I guess I could pretend to have some powerful insights about the Merge, but I don’t.
Fundamentally, I think it has massive downside potential in the short term, perhaps even by the time you’ve read this email!
But assuming everything happens without too many issues, the upside is medium term: generating the sort of foundational confidence that will see the whole Ethereum ecosystem building stronger and faster.
Potentially, this means in the longer term — all-other-things-considered — we’ll see ETH-based projects rechallenging their all-time-highs, with a stretch goal being the ETH/BTC flippening — we’re already back to 50%.
What’s been more significant for me, however, has been to witness how many people have ended up — whether overtly or covertly — using the Merge to reveal their attitudes to Ethereum specifically, and Ethereum/crypto in general.
Those who previously complained loudest about ‘NFTs destroying the planet’ have — of course — already found new axes to grind.
Surprise, surprise, it was never about carbon footprint.
On the other side of the debate have been those — not-necessarily-Bitcoin-Maxis — but who have now doubled down on the vital importance of proof-of-work for true decentralization.
To be fair, it’s a situation that’s been thrown into recent relief thanks to the issue of Tornado Cash’s sanction by the US government for laundering crypto from the likes of North Korea state-sponsored hackers, Lazarus Group.
The argument is it will be easier for governments — notably the US government — to put pressure on Ethereum as a proof-of-stake blockchain because of the greater concentration of token ownership among US-based big staking pools such as Coinbase, compared to the current concentration of hashpower amongst more geographically-distributed mining pools.
And, of course, there’s also plenty of hopeful schadenfreude from anyone involved in any other non-EVM ecosystems for purely competitive reasons.
If nothing else, Bitcoin OGs love to talk up all the ways the Merge could go wrong and then go on to tell you that even if it doesn’t all go wrong, it won’t make Ethereum any better anyway.
Which always amuses me because they’re effectively performing a double spend, at least in argumental logic terms.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital: Portfolio company Happy Volcano has just released the insanely-difficult-but-neverthless-highly-compelling You Suck At Parking. Now live on Steam and coming to Xbox.
Funding news
I’ve recently seen a lot of startups looking to build out some sort of platform to combine onchain and offchain data in a clever, actionable manner for web3 game developers and/or consumers.
It’s an obvious gap in the market but what’s not clear to me yet is what’s the key focus, because in this market you really need focus especially in terms of B2C or B2B, and even in within B2B about whether you’re building out general market intelligence or highly specific game optimization.
One advantage for US startup Thirdwave Labs, which has announced a $7 million seed round, is the involvement of CEO Peter Jonas, who in a previous life claims to have founded the Games and Mobile Apps business at Facebook, alongside COO Matt Lorenzen, a founding member of Facebook Mobile App Install team.
That experience will be invaluable but it’s still not clear to me exactly what the team is planning, thanks in part to a rather wishywashy interview with VentureBeat.
I’m also not helped by the presented screenshot (below), which makes me think this is more of a generalist App Annie-style platform, not a game-specific platform, which is likely more valuable.
US crypto VC Framework led the round with participation from Animoca and Play Ventures plus degens Shima, Double Peak and Hustle Fund. Stardust also got involved as a strategic.
Sign up for the waitlist here and then fill in the email survey that arrives with exciting information to boost your chances!
Play-to-Earn Reinvented news
Ready for plenty of hot takes about whether Axie Infinity: Origins is going to repeat the success of Axie Infinity: Classic?
Well, Origins is now hooked up to extra rewards with $1.5 million-worth of AXS tokens that will be distributed throughout the 60 day Season One via placement on the game’s leaderboard.
The top 40,000 players will win something, with rewards starting from 518 AXS (currently worth $6,800), with the #1 position worth $90,000.
Of course, the game’s SLP utility token is also available for all players to grind out and then sell or — more importantly — spend to craft runes and charms.
As for whether this will impact the numbers of players, keep an eye on Nansen’s Ronin dashboard.
Double IMX rewards news
Immutable X is about to complete the first 14 day staking period for its IMX token, with users taking a pro rata share of 20% of the trading volume during that period as long as they also make at least one NFT trade during the period.
However, what I hadn’t realized is that this NFT trading doesn’t have to be on the Immutable X marketplace but instead can also happen on thirdparty marketplaces that are part of the IMX partner program, including Rarible.
Indeed, there’s an incentive to trade on Rarible as any NFT trading activity on that marketplace generates double rewards as part of Immutable X’s existing Trading Rewards program, which distributes 100,000 IMX tokens daily to those trading between $10 to $10,000-worth of NFTs.
Sadly, Rarible has stopped its own reward system which gave out RARI tokens for NFT trading, otherwise you’d be able to earn IMX by staking and trading as well as earning RARI by fulfilling the trading NFT element on the Rarible marketplace. That would have been one neat wash trading flywheel.
It does worry me somewhat though, given IMX’s total supply is 2 billion but only 12% is currently circulating. That’s a lot more giving away to happen for a token already close to all-time-lows.
Blankos Reinvigorated news
I’ve not been following Blankos too closely in recent weeks but tomorrow’s launch of Atari mystery boxes looks pretty sweet.
It’s the first random gacha drop Mythical Games has done — and for that reason won’t be available in Belgium, Slovakia, and the Netherlands due to legals — with each $10 box containing one of four Atari-themed characters, Pong, Joystick, Centipede and Tempest.
The drop will be time-limited, running until Thursday 13th October. I will be buying!