GM Legends,

Chief Twit Elon brought life back to crypto yesterday as the Doge printers went BRRRRRR. Bitcoin and Ethereum are kind of boring right now having been stuck in this range for over 2 weeks.

Today’s newsletter is PACKED full of April Narratives and ideas to keep an eye on plus several upcoming DeFi & NFT launches.

But first a message from this newsletter subscriber legend! 👇🫡 🦧

🧑‍💻 Join the Discord | 🐥 Follow Twitter | 📊 Sub to YouTube & Spotify

Here's what's inside today.

The big topic. 

🕵️‍♂️ The ABCDEs of April narratives

DeFi insights & project updates.

🖼 Kanpai Pandas launched PPDEX, the cornerstone of the panda ecosystem
📅 Sparta Dex testnet begins today with NFT minting on Apr 5th
🦧 Chart of the day: $DOGE… finally going to $1?

Hot off the press.

🐮 Sandwich MEV bots get exploited for $25M
🐻 Fake news: Interpol issues a “Red Notice” against CZ
👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?! Mark these dates off!

Plus Twitter reads from @Route2Fi, @ChadCaff and @DeFiMinty!

🔥 The big topic.

🕵️‍♂️ The ABCDEs of April narratives

March was a wild ride. We witnessed a global banking crisis, Bitcoin's 50% moonshoot, and finally the “wen Arbitrum airdrop”…. drop.

As we move into April, the story is far from over and 4 days in… it’s already been action-packed.

We’ve got countless token launches, governance dramas that put rom-coms to shame and historical events occurring. Pen and paper ready anon it's time to take some notes!

Obviously… NFA, DYOR this is just for research purposes.

A is for Abirtrum

Arbitrum governance is a mess right now so this might be a controversial no-brainer as projects like Treasure DAO and Plutus DAO (high voting power) came out against the AIP-1 proposal which may give them favour amongst the community.

$ARB injected $1bn+ of FREE money…yes FREE MONEY and as the ecosystem cools down there might be some gems to watch including new launches.

What to watch: $ARB, $PLS, $GMX, $GRAIL, $MAGIC, $PENDLE, $LODE with Pepe Games, Sparta Dex and Wombat Exchange all launching soon.

B is for Bitcoin

Because it definitely maybe absolutely IS en route to $1m in 74 days, or at least Balaji and crypto Twitter think it is.

When Bitcoin moves, so does its ecosystem as its bats off the continued FUD.

What to watch: $BTC, $STX, $BADGER, $REN

C is for Concentrated Liquidity & China

Forks, dexes, optimisers…take your pick. Uniswaps V3 license has expired which opens up the code to be freely forked by budding developers.

The battle of the concentrated liquidity dexes and optimisers has begun as teams work to roll out the next generation of liquidity management.

$JOE has done very well over the last few weeks and is likely to continue its dominance with the launch of “Auto-Pools” coming. Which is 1 click yield farming built on top of the liquidity book.

$STEAK is the leading optimiser on $JOE so likely will follow its PA, with $GAMMA and $PILOT being other optimisers that have seen good movement.

$HERMES & $MAIA are two potential sleeping giants as $MAIA launched the first Uni V3 AMM on Metis and will be launching on Arbitrum. $HERMES V2 upgrade included revamped tokenomics and TALOS (details here).

$ICE aka Popsicle Finance is a wild card as we know the power of Frog Nation and Dani’s Tweets.

What to watch for: $LIT

The Hong Kong Web 3 Festival takes place April 12 - 15th so it might make sense that China/Asia coins make a move. Filecoin & Near Protocol are hosting talks, as well as an AI talk run by MicroSoft.

PS. Hong Kong goes crypto-friendly on June 1st.

What to watch: $FIL, $NEAR, $CFX, $ABC, $KAS, $KEY

D is for Doge Day

Doge Day started early this year as Elon changed the Twitter icon yesterday. Officially on 4/20 we can expect plenty of volatility throughout the month as well as $DOGE memes.

Dogechain as an ecosystem might even catch a bid as well as other dog-friendly coins.

What to watch: $DOGE, $DC, $SHIB, $FLOKI

E is for Ethereum Upgrade

Yeah yeah, we mentioned it here last week and since then the tokens have pumped but seem to be cooling off a little

$LDO, $FXS and $RPL are all the big boys here with $RPL’s Goerli Testnet coming at some stage this month & $FXS V3 being teased on crypto Twitter.

What to watch: $BTRFLY, $YFI, $USH, $ZERO and $ACID have all been popular plays with $PENDLE being an opportunity to earn a juicy yield on LSD pools.

And some other ideas to watch for:

• $OP - Optimisms Bedrock upgrade

• $THE - Thenas Fusion upgrade

• $PLS - Plutus DAO tokenomics upgrade

• $AURA - Aura Finance launching on Arbitrum

• $SNX - Synthetix distributes $OP rewards on $KWENTA

👀 DeFi insights & project updates.

The World of DeFi

• Sparta Dex testnet begins today with NFT minting on Apr 5th. (Discord)

• Pepe Games public sale goes live Apr 6th. (Twitter)

• Lodestar Finance relaunches on on Arbitrum Apr 8th. (Twitter)

• Perpy Finance's $10,000 trading competition begins Apr 5th. (Twitter)

• Pancakeswap V3 went live yesterday. Ignas, DeFi researcher breaks down what it means. (Ignas’ Twitter)

The Land of NFTs

• Cathartes NFT whitelist mint goes live today 10am EST with public minting happening on Apr 5th 10am EST. (Twitter)

• Kanpai Pandas launched the cornerstone of the panda ecosystem, PPDEX. Holders can build custom pandas, buy event tickets and more. (Twitter)

• Killacubs part of the Killaverse mints on Apr 20th. (Lucky Trader NFT)

• Doodles genesis boxes were revealed last Friday and included 2 new wearables in each. (Twitter)

• Magic Eden gives you diamonds for every listing that is sold or a bid is accepted. The first diamond drop is coming soon. (Twitter)

Governance Updates

• Plutus DAO voted against Arbitrum’s AIP-1 proposal and give an update to the community as to why. (Twitter)

• Treasure DAO voted against Arbitrums AIP-1 proposal and has set up @TreasureGov for everything governance related. (Twitter)

• Messari released a report on the “State of DAO funding” looking at the top 10 DAOs and the $100m that was allocated. (Messari)

📊 Chart of the day.

$DOGE, the possibilities are endless

$DOGE is the official icon of Twitter and has its birthday on 4/20 which might be all that’s needed to spark a short term $DOGE rally.

Bull case. Break above $0.10 and there’s not a lot stopping it from $0.15

Bear case. We all got lured in by Elon as he dumps his bags and we continue accumulation at the $0.07 zone.

🗞 Hot off the press.

🐮 Bullish News

• Euler Finance’s successful negotiations with hackers lead to the return of the stolen funds. (Twitter)

• Mev bots get drained for $25m as an exploited managed to beat them at their own game. @Samczsun breaks down what happened. (Twitter)

• Coinbase Ventures Joins Rocket Pool’s Oracle DAO and will receive a share of the $RPL inflation produced. (Coindesk)

• Ex-Gemini Execs launch OpenEden an on-chain vault to offer exposure to tokenized Treasury Bills. (The Block)

🐻 Bearish News

• Japanese Regulators flag CEXes including Bitget, Bybit, MEXC Global and BitForex for “unregistered operations.” (Cointelegraph)

• DOGE liquidations rack up $26M after Chief Twit Elon Musk updated the Twitter logo as the apes over-leveraged $DOGE. (Coindesk)

• Interpol issues a “Red Notice” against CZ turns out to be fake. The story broke on Twitter shortly after CZ posted “4” meaning “Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.” (Twitter)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

The Saudis are cutting Oil production by 500,000 barrels as a “precautionary measure” whilst we see this week full of unemployment data coming out. The FED wants more unemployment to prove that what they’re doing is working.

🐥 Twitter reads.

@Route2Fi made us sit and think over the weekend. So, what would you do?

@ChadCaff breaks down the latest gamified dex, Sparta Dex. Think Age of Empires meets Clash of Clans.

@DeFiMinty gives a simple breakdown of how to use DeFi Llama.

And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...

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