w3.catch of the week
Posts
PayPal on Solana & Ethereum ETFs Update

PayPal on Solana & Ethereum ETFs Update

🎣 w3.catch-of-the-week cw23

Vicktoria Klich & Quinn Wilhelm
May 31, 2024

GMGM and welcome to the 🎣 w3.catch-of-the-week, the Newlsetter which casts its fishing rod weekly to serve you fresh Web3 use cases every Friday.

This week I had to fight my way through a lot of news about memes (again). And even though memes are not the Web3 killer use case - they are a part of our culture and that’s why some highlights are worth mentioning:

🐶 $Floki has made it onto the Timesquare

All the top NFT projects combined are worth less than that legendary frog called Pepe 🐸 ...

Memecoins remain the best-performing asset class - Hate it or love it 🤷‍♀️

It is important that you remember that not everyone can get rich from memes. Wherever someone profits, someone else loses…

🚨 Ethereum ETFs S1-Filings
⚡️ $PYUSD on Solana
🤑 Funding Highlights
🕹️ The Gaming Launchpad in Telegram
🤩 Berlins Web3 Builder

Ethereum Spot ETF Update

Last week, the SEC approved several 19b-4 filings for Ethereum Spot ETFs, allowing them to be listed on exchanges. However, the S-1 filings, which are necessary for institutional trading, have not been approved yet.

The approval of Ethereum Spot ETFs suggests that Ethereum is considered a commodity rather than a security, as the ETF products were defined as “commodity-based trust shares” in the filings.

This week, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas reported positive news. BlackRock updated its S-1 filing, indicating progress towards approval. Eric mentioned that a launch at the end of June or by July 4th is a realistic possibility.

🤓 BTW: The Blackrock Ethereum ETF will be launched under the abbreviation $ETHA.

PayPal Expands $PYUSD to Solana

PayPal has expanded its stablecoin, PYUSD, to the Solana network. Launched in August 2023, PYUSD was initially available only on Ethereum. This expansion aims to leverage Solana's high transaction speed and low costs.

PayPal's Vice President of Blockchain, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, stated, “Making PYUSD available on the Solana Blockchain furthers our mission of enabling a digital currency with a stable value designed for commerce and payments.”

In addition, the press release stated that Ethereum did not meet the required criteria. Shots fired 🤪:

Solana can process up to 2500 transactions per second at costs as low as $0.0025, significantly outperforming Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second with higher fees.

New Feature: Token Extensions

Over 3 years, Solana developers have been working with Paypal officials to make this feature possible. A token extension has been developed that allows token issuers to set certain conditions on who can interact with the asset created on the network and block those who do not meet them.

👉️ You can read more about it here.

Bigger Picture

This collaboration opens the door for PayPal's 420 million active customers to interact with the Solana network. Stablecoin adoption leads to deeper liquidity and wider user base/network participants.

New w3.talk episode

In the latest podcast episode, my co-host Marvin and I dove deeper into the Solana ecosystem with our guest Noe Rieker and also talked about why Solana is so popular among both developers and brands.

Welcome to our w3.Investment Corner, where I share with you the most exciting fundings from the world-wide web3:

$100k

Lucia Ciric Bagaric raised $100k after reaching the Grand Slam main draw, supported by our portfolio company FANtium 🎾.

FANtium helps young athletes get the funding needed to start their professional careers. Fans can invest in athletes and share in their future success. Sounds interesting? 🤓 Learn more.

$150 Million

The decentralized media protocol Farcaster has raised $150 million in funding to grow daily active users, add developer primitives, and hire engineers throughout 2024. During BasedBerlin I got some fresh insights about Farcaster.

Here are 3 use cases developed on Base in a Farcaster Frames.

Telegram has 900 million monthly users and Web3 is full of discussions around the TON (The Open Network) Blockchain. One reason is Notcoin, a mini-app and game within Telegram, which has rapidly gained popularity. It reached 35 million users in just three months.

So what is Notcoin? 🤔

In their words:

Notcoin is known for being a Telegram-based "social clicker" game that allows users to earn its in-game token by clicking on a gold coin displayed on-screen. Additional rewards are now available for completing quests and using "boosts".

Development and Goals 🏹

Open Builders founder Sasha Plotvinov has expressed ambitions to create "the Netflix of social, viral games." This vision aims to transform Notcoin into a platform where other developers can create their own crypto social games.

Recent Achievements 🏆️

Two weeks ago, Notcoin's much-anticipated coin, $NOT, was launched. The airdrop rewarded over 35 million early users. It was the largest gaming token launch of 2024.

Last week, Notcoin introduced "earning missions," which allow users to earn passive rewards by completing quests. These missions boosted the token's trading volume and increased its value by over 50%. The quests typically require players to participate in partner project communities and are allocated based on the player's in-game level, determined by staking $NOT.

Market Impact 📈

Following the introduction of the earning missions, the $NOT token surged by over 100%, reaching a price of $0.01300 and a market cap of nearly $1,3 billion. This moved $NOT into the top 100 assets by market cap, with a 24-hour trading volume surging to $1.4 billion.

Advertising Revenue in Telegram 💡

An interesting fact is that advertisers on Telegram have to pay for advertising with Toncoin. Of this revenue, 50% goes to the channel owners, creating a sustainable revenue model for content creators on the platform 😮.

If you want to learn why Telegram is becoming more and more of a Web3 Super App, check out our Deep Dive.

Recap of Berlin Blockchain Week

For all those who unfortunately couldn't make it to Berlin Blockchain Week and weren't able to experience our wonderful community space, I'd like to share a few impressions:

TL;DR Here is a visual recap without text :D

After Monday's Base Hackathon, the hacking continued at Solana's 24h Hackathon on Tuesday (yes they brought ⛺ ).

On Wednesday, we welcomed everyone to a cozy Tezos Brunch, listened to the Solana pitches, and then met for 🍻 and 🍕 at the Kraken Digital Asset Exchange & DLT Finance AG event.

We got off to a sporty start on Thursday with a community run led by Henrik

gm!
This morning we pumped muscles on our first community run
PS: Who is in for w3run club? 🏃🏼‍♀️
— w3.hub (@w3_hub)
1:21 PM • May 23, 2024

This was followed by not one, but two more events where you could choose between:

The Multichain Event by Staking Facilities & Wormhole, including speeches, panels, workshops and cool mini-games or the Web3 x AI Event by BerChain in cooperation with Berlin Partner 🎢.

Friday got off to a delicious and interesting start with a Morning Mixer from Chainlink, which covered the importance of oracles in Web3 🔑 .

Afterwards we had our first ✨art exhibition✨ on the 4th floor accompanied by talks about the connection between art and technology.

On Saturday it was time for our first event in months in an exciting combination with our friends from Celestia 🥳.

The day revolved around the topic of applications of the future, including Peter Grosskopf telling us about the first onchain bank aka Iron Bank.

🥃 The evening transitioned into our BBW Checkout Event with our friends from Jägermeister (for the cocktails), Value of We (for the AI photobooth) and Google Cloud (for the beerpong tournament).

Last but not least: The week ended on Sunday with a cozy community brunch hosted by Near, which was also attended by co-founder Illia Polosukhin 🥐.