🦍 Alpha Ape #3 - ChatGPT Twitter Takeover, Arbitrum Alpha & More

GMGM

Our World Cup dreams have been crushed (again) and this week is probably one of the most pivotal weeks of the year.

SBF speaks in front of Congress Tues/Weds, US CPI numbers on Tues, and the FOMC on Weds followed by the press conference.

But before the games begin we’ve put together a collection of alpha tweets, 3 project updates, and 3 governance TLDRs to kick-start your week off.

Remember: Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice and is purely for entertainment purposes only. The projects mentioned are just interesting finds.

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

But before we jump in, and if you’re new around here, then hit that subscribe button. We’ll keep you ahead of the trend, drop you some alpha and so much more.

🐥 Top Tweets - blocmates (& maybe Binance) are assembling a crypto footy team, Ryan Selkis from Messari turned bearish in 9 days, ChatGPT continues to take over Twitter, TheDefiInvestor looks at top AI projects, Polygon NFT sales are pumping with Starbucks partnership going live and Crypto_Linn reminds us pumpamentals > fundamentals.👀 Might be Something - We look at Eth perp and delta neutral vaults from Rage Trade, Factor DAO, the Draft Kings of trading and the real yield ecosystem builder Mellow Finance.👨‍💻 Governance Proposals - Lyra 🚴‍♀️ Velodrome, Sweat 💧 Vote to 🔥 Burn and UniSwap 🦄 Governance Voting Proposal Update.📝 Thread of the Day - Arbitrum is still the hottest topic in crypto right now and ViktorDefi breaks down some of the top protocols.🎧 Podcast of the Day - With the launch of chainEDGE we look back at the time when Onchain Wizard joined us.

They’re coming home again but Binance 🤝 blocmates might be starting something?

Something definitely happened to go from this…

…to this in just 9 days?

Su-Kyle are on a comeback tour but let’s not forget what 3AC did

Enter the Matrix…

…and let The Defi Investor show you the way with these AI projects

Arbitrum alpha…wen airdrop?! (soon)

Rage Trade ensures user safety ahead of their vault launch

Polygon NFT scene is popping

Whilst the Starbucks 🤝 Polygon partnership begins

A journalistic cucumber hunt must begin asap according to Jesse

The Beacon Settlement Cup Qualifiers begin…

Whilst the number of founding characters minted edges closer to 50,000

The battle of the stablecoins continues

NFTPerp showing real product market fit in private beta…

…whilst adding Azuki and Milady perps

 What if?

The public beta of chainEDGE goes live

And finally, let us not forget

…but then again could be nothing. This is just a collection of projects that might be worth keeping an eye on.

1) Rage Trade

Resources: Website - Medium - Discord - Twitter

Rage Trade is set to be the “most liquid, composable and omnichain Eth perp platform” thats built over on Arbitrum and backed by the likes of Tetranode, Wartull, Defi Frog and DCF God.

As of December 12th, their delta-neutral GLP vaults go live, and by using a unique mechanism they can neutralise the delta of GMX’s GLP which allows them to create a “risk on” and “risk off” vault.

Risk On Vault has no delta exposure but is instead exposed to the PnL of GMX. So when the GMX traders are winning GLP is negatively impacted and when the degens start losing GLP gets positively impacted. This should generate up to around 20-30% APY.

Risk Off Vault has no exposure to GMX’s PnL so essentially becomes a lending vault with around 8% APY.

The good news is the vaults auto compound into USDC so your position isn’t exposed to delta or a highly volatile asset. Check out The Calculator Guys breakdown video here.

2) Factor DAO

Resources: Website - Medium - Discord - Twitter 

Factor DAO is providing the infrastructure for strategists, builders, and degens to create their own tokenised baskets (de-facto ETFs), vaults, derivatives and tokens.

What’s going to be unique is the gamification of their leagues and leaderboards which ranks baskets and pools by various performance metrics. You can think of this as Draft Kings but for trading.

Set for a 3-stage launch in Q1 2023:

Stake will allow users to “bootstrap FCTR liquidity or stake their FCTR to accumulate Factor's non-transferable governance and revshare token.”

Discover look at creating the “first set of vaults on mainnet, allowing anyone to deposit into community-voted indices.”

Create is where the fun really begins as we will be able to “create a vault, tailor active/passive investment strategies, and earn management and performance fees on any deposits.”

3) Mellow Finance

Resources: Website - Medium - Discord - Twitter

Mellow Finance is creating trustless automatic DeFi strategies through an ecosystem of permissionless vaults. By providing liquidity to a vault a user will get Mellow Vault LP tokens that can be used cross-protocol which will enable cross protocols strategies to be built.

The strategies that are in place on launch will all have different approaches including Boosted UniV3, Fearless Gearbox and the Mellow-Voltz LP Optimizooor. Check this Going Live - Strategies and Launch medium for more details.

Mellow Finance is currently in a 1-month gated access phase of testing that launched on 17th November. This was open to members of Lobster DAO and Degenscore Beacons.

Community initiatives are about to begin and public applications to the official whitelist are open…its a good ole fashion quiz that’ll get you in!

Lyra 🚴‍♀️ Velodrome

→ Leap 40 ←

TLDR: Add 2 liquidity mining programs to Velodrome on Optimism to test the effectiveness of the incentives. The belief is that they can generate more volume and great liquidity per $1 of incentives by using Velo’s bribes and Lyra’s voting power.

Sweat 💧 Vote to 🔥 Burn

→ To burn or not to burn ←

TLDR: To burn or not to burn $1,000,000 worth of sweat tokens purchased on the open market. To vote holders can send tokens to a YES or NO wallet. Voting ends on December 12th and 10% of each wallet goes back to 10 lucky winners at random.

UniSwap 🦄 Governance Voting Proposal Update

→ Proposal 19718 ←

TLDR: To reduce the amount of friction in the community governance process by:

1) Removing the first off-chain Snapshot poll, and replacing it with a “Request for Comment” post.

2) Increase quorum for the remaining off-chain Snapshot poll in the second phase to 10M UNI.

and a quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible

If you are a builder in this space and are hiring a remote-first team take a look at one of our partners, Deel. They allow you to hire, manage, onboard, and pay from anywhere in the world without the hassle. Yes, Deel allows you to pay your team in crypto too…

The latest thread

The blocmates discord is full of Arbitrum chatter and a lot of new apes have been asking about it. Viktor gives a great overview of the network plus a short sharp, to-the-point write-up on some hot projects to keep on your watch list. Don’t forget RiddlerDeFi's Tweet from above for even more Arbi alpha

The latest podcast

With the recent launch of chainEDGE (Nansen for degens) here is a look back at that time when the Onchain Wizard himself joined Grant to talk about his experience finding alpha wallets, following smart money, and an overview of what chainEDGE is.

Tune in on YouTube or Spotify.

And that’s it anon, from the whole team we hope you enjoyed it!

Your opinion matters to us, if you’ve 3 minutes let us know how you found today’s edition.

Loved It | Average | Didn’t Like It

We’re ready to ape in, at any time. Got a good idea that needs funding? Send us an email with all of the info to [email protected]

Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? and get your project or idea in front of people who matter. Send us an email or Sponsor Section and we will see if it is a good fit for our audience!