So Jedi and Dan are on a massive adventure running around Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon like two excitable kids who’ve just seen Santa for the first time. They’re on the hunt for alpha, interviewing the superstars of the future and connecting with industry giga brains to give back to you, the blocmates community.

Oh who are we kidding, they’re on the hunt for free T-shirts, water bottles, and a snapback.

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In Todays Enclosure

• The Big Topic - It’s Arbi SZN!• Bitesized bits - Meta mints on Matic, BNB buys a bank? and the bird might not be the word​• Chart of the day - the $BNB bulls are in charge• Ape Chasers - 🕵️‍♂️

🔥 The Big Topic - It’s Arbi SZN!

Now how’s that for some Arbitrum alliteration?!

Yes serrr! Arbi season is here and the ecosystem is booming right now but first let’s start with a recap from late August 2022 when we wrote about Arbitrum in this EPIC threadoooor.

What is Arbitrum?

Arbitrum is a mad science experiment that hatched itself from Off-chain Labs. Ed Felten and his co-founders CEO Steven Goldfeder and CTO Harry Kalodner are the gentlemen who have masterminded, what is rapidly becoming, one of the most vibrant ecosystems and entertaining communities to see on crypto Twitter. But long story short, its a Layer 2 scaling solution that uses optimistic roll-ups to keep your gas fees down and speed up transactions do you can ape in that bit faster….glorious! It’s no wonder that 62% of Ethereum transactions are now done on Arbitrum.

Slow moon is the best moon…

That’s how the saying goes right?!

Since the July lows Arbitrum has seen one of the most consistently steady, slow moon increases in TVL compared to other blockchains like Avalanche, Solana and Polygon who have all seen major steady bleed outs in TVL .

The increase in TVL most likely due to the airdrop as there are some fantastic projects building over there such as DPX, Umami and the monolith that is GMX but also down to the broader crypto community seeing that little bit of special that awaits them over the bridge (and a few dollars for night off of the ramen!)

With UniSwap and SushiSwap integrating on the network it means that whales can create liquidity pools for the degens out there to swap in and out of.

Now…where are my Arbi UniSwap microcaps?!

But anon…why so special?!

I mean I won’t bore you with the fact that they have some serious backers and firepower behind them such as Coinbase Ventures, Pantera, Blocknation and Compound who have all been in from the start as it goes much deeper than that.

In today's crypto environment, having a based product that works and generates money isn’t quite always enough as I’m sure we could both reel off a whole host of giga-brain Defi tech projects, protocols and ideas that should be revolutionising the world….but they don’t.

Community…yes that dreaded C word that gets thrown around telegram all the time when you become a community member because dev went to sleep and rugged the project. BUT what we have seen from the Arbitrum ecosystem is the impact that a community has on making it fun because if it’s fun (and profitable) you’ll want to continue having fun (and making money….duh!)

Now onto the G word playaaaaa…Gamification. The giga brains behind the scenes thought it would be smart to make the (at the time) speculative airdrop a game by completing tasks, earning rewards, and getting stuck into the wonderful world of the Aribrtrum ecosystem through the Odessey Quest Logs. If you’ve not heard of it already…where have you been??? It’s also said that the Odessy Quest will resume shortly so stay tuned for more epic adventures.

Arbitrum Nova is that little gem you don’t quite see getting shilled all over CT too much but the potential it has is huge. Nova is designed for gaming and social-related apps and just so happens to be one of the platforms of choice for Reddit and their community points tokens moons. Reddit has also just onboarded over 3 million new users into web3 with the launch of their collectible avatars…yeah…big things ahead!

Engage Nitro Boosters

It feels like we are now in a fast and furious movie and as of August 31st, the Nitro boosters were engaged. This essentially fine-turned the network and made it faster, cheaper, and even more user-friendly for devs to do all that dev stuff they like to do so much…lovely!

Achilles heel

Alas, that infamous airdrop. That airdrop that’s been threadoooor’d more than any other. That airdrop that’s comparable to the Superbowl as it has been talked about all year and the expectations, like the Superbowl, is huge. The community has been questing, coin swapping, NFT flipping and of course shilling those colourful love hearts all over Twitter but will it be its downfall?

I wonder if we will see Matt Damon in an Arbritrum halftime advert, moments before launch.

Our Take

So TLDR, it’s faster, cheaper, gamified and most importantly the flow of money (aka TVL) has been slow mooning off the lows in anticipation for the most sort after airdrop in 2022. Will the airdrop live up to the expectations? I’ll be bold to say that it probably will be as the marketing team, whilst professional CT [redacted]posters have also managed to capture and create a community that’s inclusive of all elements of Defi, yes, even the die-hard NFT community have been warmly welcomed.

As we’ve mentioned over the last few weeks, it might be an idea to follow the flow of money and the momentum by taking the time to see what’s hot, what’s soon to be launching, and what has first mover advantage over there.

So to conclude all of the above couldn’t be done without the Arbitrum Arbinauts who are on the path to accelerating acceptance through community builds, NFT drops and of course, Twitter raids with large-scale adoption potentially being closer than we think.

🗞 The Bitesized News Bits

The Bullish

Meta on Matic, as the social media giant announces that creators will be able to mint and sell NFTs on Matic and sell through Instagram. That’s another major win for the Matic biz dev team adding another major partnership to the list.

MoneyGram enables crypto, as the payments giant adds Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin to the list. Users will be able to use MoneyGrams mobile app to buy and sell these crypto assets giving users a “trusted and easy-to-use platform.”

Visa launches NFT collection ahead of the Fifa World cup. The Masters of Movement collection is set to feature footy fan favourites Jared Borgetti, Tim Cahill, Carli Lloyd, Michael Owen, and Maxi Rodriguez.

Banking on Binance, as CZ drops subtle hints that may indicate the future purchase of a trad fi bank in order to create the ultimate “bridge between crypto and the traditional, financial world.”

The Bearish

Solend gets attacked by a market manipulation that sees the Solana-based lending platform exploited for over $1.26m.

The bird might not be the word, as Twitter is getting sued for violating employment laws after Chief Twit Musk dumps employees after the takeover.

Shoulda woulda could been an Ethereum maxi. Saylor, one of the globe’s biggest bitcoin maxis could have made $1.5bn if he just bought a bag of Eth….ooft!

The IRS be hunting! As it ramps up hiring and is in the process of developing hundreds of crypto-related cases.

🛡 Chart of the day: $BNB

Our Take

BNB is breaking out of every single chart right now. The BNB/BTC chart is only up making daily all-time highs and if this momentum keeps up we could see BNB reclaiming its former glory.

Bull case, would see the BNB bulls take back the psychological level of $400 with the chart looking poised ready to punch up to the $413 mark.

Bear case, the BNB bears send it right back down into its accumulation zone of $265-$275.

🤝 Here’s the Deel

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…

🦧 Updates from the bloc

The latest thread

Is Web3’s soul deep inside the Metis ecosystem? Today Jedi breaks down MetisDao including the revolutionary reputation power system.

The latest podcast

The lads sit down with Radix Founder Dan Huges in this exclusive interview taking a dive into what’s next for Radix and the future of the XRD token.

🕵️‍♂️ Ape Chasers

Last week we added another tool to our toolbox and to round off this week let’s keep our eyes on a potential next meta being free NFT mints. Now, please be careful when minting anything for free, DYOR, and always use a burner wallet.

But sauces are looking strong that once the airdrop crypto Twitter meta has passed that free mints may see a comeback. We are on the hunt and will continue to post in the discord what we find.

🦍 The Ape Enclosure

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] - Equally, if you would like your project to be featured in our Sponsor Section, contact us and we will see if it is a good fit for our audience!