Markets
‘Personal Jet Branding’ Is One Way Polkadot Burned Money
June proved to be an incredibly ugly month in the crypto markets (see our blood-red chart below), but it wasn’t completely devoid of decent blockchain technology stories. One obsession of the crypto Twitterati over the past week has been poring over the line items in Polkadot’s treasury transparency report. The $6.8 million to sponsor a “prestigious football club” was just one of many expenditures held up for public scrutiny.
Polkadot spending more than doubled from the previous quarter. (Polkadot)
BURNING RATE: At the very least, Polkadot has to be given credit for transparency. On Tuesday, the blockchain project released a long reportIncluding spreadsheets and copies of invoices detailing its spending over the past six months. No good deed goes unpunished, however, and right on cue, the Twitterati lashed out at the project’s multi-million dollar spending on activities such as marketing, advertising, sponsorships, events and influencers. At the highest level, the project spent $87 million worth of its own DOT tokens on various activities during the first half of 2024, a pace that would deplete the $245 million currently in the treasury in approximately two years, as relayed by Shaurya Malwa of CoinDesk. But it was the green-spectacled details that left readers of the report open-mouthed — $4.9 million to influencers, $1.9 million to sponsor race car driver Conor Daly, $1 million for digital ads on CoinMarketCap, $490,000 to press release site Chainwire, $180,000 to “private jet branding“$6.8 million for a “deal with a prestigious soccer club,” as the report called it. (Lionel Messi’s team, Inter Miami?) Sarcastic posters on X commented that despite all the spending, the influencers looked strangely inactive – while others joked that the report was finally bringing Polkadot into advertising that coveted. Polkadot officials noted that spending has been higher than expected, thanks to this year’s bullish crypto markets: “We can see a big jump in spending as proposals have become more ambitious in scope and size of requests recently,” the report said. “The good news is that the average DOT price has risen this half year, resulting in more returns for DOT, highlighted by the fact that DOT spending has increased 2.4x, but the USD equivalent has increased 3.2x over the same period.”
NOT SO FAST! Hey, Bitcoin gained ETFs earlier this year, and now Ethereum seems to be heading in that direction, possibly bringing billions of dollars in just a few monthsbased on research from Galaxy Digital. So what about an ETF for Solana, seen as one of the most promising blockchains? Probably not anytime soon, experts say. Speculation began last week when investment manager VanEck filed for a Solana ETF, sending the project’s native token, SOL, up 8%. Another firm, 21Shares, make a request a day later. But how reported by CoinDesk’s Helene Braun“Solana has failed to clear a prerequisite for the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission: a well-established regulated derivatives market. Both bitcoin and ether have had that, in the form of CME Group’s cryptocurrency futures contracts.” Another potential hurdle is that the SEC has, in some of its legal cases, claimed that SOL is an unregistered security — and that cloud may have to clear before an ETF sees any sunlight. “It’s unlikely there will be a decision on this in the near future,” as institutional analysts at Coinbase put it in a weekly research report.
Last week’s top picks from our Protocol Village column, highlighting the main updates and news about blockchain technology.
Website montage for singer-songwriter Ainsley Costello, whose music can be heard on the Wavlake music platform, compatible with the Bitcoin Lightning Network.ainsleycostello.com)
1. Developer teams behind the Tezos blockchain revealed”Tezos Xa set of technology upgrades that they say can bring a “major increase in performance, composability and interoperability.” road mapoutlining a development plan for the next two years, it calls for splitting transaction execution into a separate “canonical rollup” that would support “atomic transactions in smart contracts written in different programming languages.” The main Tezos blockchain would serve as a base layer for consensus and settlement.
2. Igloo Inc.The parent company of Pudgy Penguins, announced on Monday that it has acquired the Frame team. “Frame’s co-founders and notable blockchain developers Cygaar and Beans will contribute to building a new Ethereum L2, Abstract, designed to take advantage of the consumer cryptocurrency opportunity,” according to the team.
3. World currency announced that it is partnering with Alchemy to provide trusted infrastructure for World Chain, a new blockchain designed for humans, according to the team.
4. Blockchain startup Obol Laboratories formed a new industrial group that aims to promote the growing field of distributed validation technology – at the heart of the latest push by developers to eradicate single points of failure in decentralized networks like Ethereum. The Obol Collective includes a consortium of Ethereum ecosystem participants “dedicated to the security, resilience, and decentralization of Ethereum consensus,” according to a Wednesday blog post from Obol Labs. Early participants in the collective include EigenLayer, Lido, Figment, Bitcoin Suisse, Nethermind, Blockdaemon, Chorus One, DappNode, and ETH Stakers.
5. Lake Wava music and podcast distribution platform, has partnered with ZBD to revolutionize creator payments. According to the team: “Unlike Spotify and Apple Music, which pay meager royalties, Wavlake empowers independent musicians and podcasters. Through Wavlake, creators can upload content that is distributed on platforms like Source.fm. Listeners can tip artists using the Bitcoin Lightning Network, enabling instant microtransactions. Ainsley Costello earned over $700 in Bitcoin for a single track, beating Spotify.”
CEO of Pi Squared Grigore Rosu (Pi Squared)
Regulatory, Policy and Legal
Leaders and laggards were crushed by cryptocurrency markets in June, with bitcoin as the benchmark (BTC) falling 8.5% – and this week falling below $60,000well below the all-time high above $73,000.
All members of the CoinDesk 20 Index were losers during the month. Uniswap’s UNI had the least bad performance, with a drop of 8.1%. XRP fell 8.8% and Ethereum ETH lost 9.4%.
The dog themed meme coin SHIB produced the largest decline in the index, at 32.9%, surpassed by the 32.7% loss of Internet Computer (PIC).
(Pallavi Chintam/CoinDesk Indices)
July 8-11: EthCCBrussels.