Safe to say that the ETH merge was a little less exciting than expected. There were no party poppers, fireworks, or a star-studded celebrity charity concert to commemorate this landmark historical event.

In today's Ape Enclosure we take a little look at what potential next metas are coming.

PS. Jedi and Dan will be in London attending Zebu Live on 22/23rd September slip into the DMs if you are around and want to meet up. 

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In Todays Enclosure

• The Big Topic - ETH merge...now what?• Bitesized bits - GMX gets exploited, Amazon helps build the digital Euro and is Sonic coming to the blockchain? ​• Chart of the day - ETH then vs now• Hidden Alpha - 👀

🔥 The Big Topic - Eth merge….now what?

You have got to be kidding me right now! Do you mean to say I’ve got to wait 1 year and 157 days until something actually happens again in crypto when the great BTC halving happens?! That’s a long time, it’s crypto …..24 hours is a long time.

Today let’s have a look at some potential up-and-coming trends for the rest of ‘22. And yes Santa InuBobTama was created by Ryoshi back in 2009 (NFA and this is just LARP!) ready for Christmas ‘22.

The ETH merge was the big narrative that was driving the markets. We saw ETH/BTC chart outshining for the last few weeks before the BTC.D chart reignited and has started to shake the markets. But what’s next? Here are a few ideas and narratives that are coming.

Layers 1’s

Are they dead or about to ignite?

• Aptos has been coin the Solana Killer aka Sol 2.0 which has heavy investment from Binance Labs and was formed by some of the Meta (Facebook for you boomers) employees who worked on Diem.

• SeiNetwork is a layer 1 on Cosmos that’s said to be the fastest ever, with a built-in on-chain central limit order book, secured $5m in funding and has a stacked dev team.

• Berachain is a layer 1 on Cosmos powered by a proof of liquidity consensus, that some might call a memechain because of the casual laid-back vibe given off. But don’t be fooled, this could be a powerful layer 1.

• Sui by Mysten Labs, a new one that’s crept onto the radar that has recently gained $300m series B funding and was co-founded by former Meta (Facebook boomer!) Product lead.

Next Gen NFT’s, Gamefi and NFT Defi

Regardless of your view on NFT’s they are hard to fade right now, Starbucks launched their NFT loyalty program, Epic Games list their first NFT mobile game, Solana hits the highest NFT volume & .sol names, the evolution of storytelling NFTs, Reddit launches NFT’s, Gods Unchained team up with Gamestop and the NBA get involved. There a lot but where to start?!

• NFT Defi is about using your beloved Jpegs to provide liquidity and turn them into NFT printing machines such as NFTfi, BendDAO, JPEG and Arcade. Blocmates gives a rundown of Sudo Swap, the XMON token but wen airdrop?!

• Avalabs and Guildfi are both developing FAST in the Gamefi space with the likes of CastleClash, Pulsar, and DefiKingdoms….Avax subnets anyone?! Check out this list of games coming to AVAX.

Fan Tokens

Need we say more? The world cup is coming in November and Binance also recently launched a 25x leverage on a football fan token index. Imagine launching a football country token to hedge against your favourite team?!

• Has to be England…please…for the love of football let us bring it home one more time! (Leave in the comments who you’re rooting for!)

ATOM Ecosystem

ATOM 2.0 gets some shiny new tokenomics at Cosmoverse 26-28th September in Columbia but is it a buy the rumour, sell the news, buy the dip event? Keep in mind ATOM will be used as collateral to mint stablecoins, the launch of Cosmos Hub 2.0, liquid staking and what might be said as the recovery of defi with L1 protocols like Sei Network leading the way.

zkSync 2.0 launch

Set to launch towards the end of October/start of November this is one to keep an eye on. Remember back in March this year the rumours of an airdrop?

• Keep an eye on the airdrop plus here at 5 projects set to launch on it.

Ethereum Liquid Staking

With approximately 11.85% of ETH being staked it makes sense for operators to provide liquidity for staked assets.

• Think Lido and Rocketpool, is it too late for these, or will liquid staking providers see a big leg up once we know the full effects of ETH 2.0?

Miners be Mining

We touched on this last week with Jedi’s thread. The post PoW purge has left a lot of unused (and maybe unloved) mining rigs needing to find a new home so it makes sense that miners be mining and put their rigs to work.

• PoW coins include Bitcoin, Doge, Eth Classic, Monero, Neoxa, Kadena, Ravencoin and Flux. For a full list check out the CMC top list here.

Our Take

There s a lot of noise out there and our advice is to go with what you find most interesting because you’ll be spending a lot of time researching and digging deep into that ecosystem. Before writing this newsletter I found jumping into the blocmates discord helped filter the news and have productive conversations around the latest hot topics.

🗞 The Bitesized News Bits

GMX exploited for $565,000 on Avax as the trader took advantage of spread and “could leverage this price vector and make profits off opening long positions on the dex and doing the same on a centralized exchange.”

Two Sigma Ventures raises $400m for two funds, provings that despite the market big money is still flowing in.

Amazon to help build the e-commerce interface for the European Central Banks digital Euro.

Gary G continues to shake markets as the legality of ETH 2.0 comes to light. Will this become another Crypto vs Sec case? For the price of ETH, let’s hope not.

Are Sonic, Tekken AND Pacman coming to the blockchain? As Bandai Namco, Sega, and Square Enix are backing the future of blockchain gaming in a big way.

🛡 Chart of the day: $ETH

Merge, splurge, submerge and purge but how far will we go? So let’s take a look back at history. For the ‘17 - ‘18 parabolic run we retraced right the way back down to 0.886 Fibonacci lines before going through a long accumulation phase.

Now let’s look at where we are now and potentially en route to the 0.786 lines sitting at $1,112 which on the weekly will be a major retest as there is a lot of liquidity sitting there. Remember the market maker’s job is to collect liquidity.

Our Take

The fundamentals of ETH have changed and whilst looking left can give us an indication of what could play out we simply just don’t know how the market will react to a proof of stake asset. Should we now be comparing ETH to the likes of DOT and KSM? Unless a seasoned professional sitting pretty and sitting sidelines is likely to be the best option right now. Seeing as the weekly RSI is potentially about to flip to the downside this probably isn’t a smart place to “DCA” your ETH bag now either.

🤝 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

It’s a big week in the markets with the FOMC meeting happening on Wednesday 21st so it only seems fitting to dig into a little more.

The latest podcast

Today Grant sits down with @0xdrej and @Crypwalk from Y2K Finance. Y2K allows users to hedge against pegged asset risk in DeFi. This is something not seen before in DeFi and could have resulted in a lot of people not getting completely wiped out by the likes of UST.

Spotify | Youtube 

🎉 Monday Morning Motivation

The bears are saying you can’t do it and it cant be done. We’re not here to simply survive we are here to thrive no matter the weather, markets or your current position in life.

🕵️‍♂️ Hidden Alpha

Soooo you want a 5-minute head start against the rest of the market, well here are our picks to add to your watchlist:

HXRO, have a big annoucement coming on the Sept 20th so it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Stables, As always staying stable in an unstable time that needs a bit of stability is always a good idea anon.

🦍 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!