🔵 The New L2 Wars: Base vs SHIB

🗞 Market commentary.

Legends of the grass once touched, Good Morning!

Ryoshi, is that you bro?

Are you trolling us or is this time different?

We’re expecting BIG announcements (and hopefully not an announcement of an announcement) this week from the SHIB team as they take over the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Canada. The official SHIB account has been tweeting “WEN LISTING” at Kucoin as the SHIB ecosystem tokens start to see speculative movement again, quite possibly leading an OP vs ARB style Layer 2 Wars Narrative… Base vs Shib.

It wouldn’t be a weekend without some kind of rug, this time coming from UniSwap employees who rugged FrensTech on Base for peanuts which, as you can imagine, led to Hayden publicly firing them. Surprising to see UniSwap employees butter their fingers in the shi*tcoin casino despite this being a fruitful bear market.

After seeing Binance’s “protective order” over the SEC’s “fishing expedition” headlines this morning, CZ is probably loading up another 4 meme in his Twitter drafts in preparation for another SEC and media onslaught. One final dip before tomorrows FED meeting minutes??

And finally Hsaka predicted it again as the battle of billionaire backyard brawlers appears to be on hold after Zuck’s posted on Meta Threads that Musk “isn’t serious” and is using “surgery as an excuse.” The internet would have lost the plot seeing a backyard brawl between these two tech titans. Leave a comment below, who do you think is being the bigger chicken? Musk or Zucks?

🤓 In today’s email.

• Degen corner. Get BASE’d this summer

• DeFi insights. 14 need to know insights

• ICYMI. Podcast with Insrt Finance with research on Savvy DeFi LBP and the best on/off ramps

• Top Tweets. Imagine, Binance sues SEC, Grayscale wins, Coinbase wins and Netflix makes a documentary

• And finally. A lot happening this month so just read this section

🔥 Degen corner.

Get BASE’d this summer

So Base officially went live on August 9th and in true degenerate speculation, the apes bridged early to get rugged on by BALD dev who was rumoured to be SBF, Sam “Tabasco” or just a p*ssed off FTX employee who had the keys.

What ever the truth was behind BALD, it brought early dollars, created market commentary and the necessary feeling of numbness to keep degening in the Base ecosystem pushing it further ahead of other recently launched Layer 2s. 

So far, its been a pretty BASE’d launch with Total Value Bridged (TVB) exceeding $200m exceeding recent Layer 2 launches, Mantle and Linea’s with a combined $84m TVB.

Early activity looks good.

Combined with the proposers of the next 1000x, the Base “On-chain Summer” campaign is one that will position itself in the minds of normies as Coca Cola launches the “masterpiece” NFT collection and daily active users on Base reach 100,000+.

Gamefi project Parallel let’s you mint a starter deck, Social Fi Friends Tech lets you buy shares of your best frens whilst Zora network lets you mint music and generative art whilst we wait for the Base DeFi boom to commence.

In Brians words:

Coinbase has seemingly taken lessons from other L1/2, applied some bald Base’d Brian magic to re-write how its done. We’ve, slightly more subtle, Andrew Saunders level “commentary” from Brian, iconic memecoin mania (and rugs) and normie friendly marketing partnerships that will get mainstream media news coverage.

Afterall, Coinbase is one of the top cexes, has a phat stack of Ethereum and is in a position to bridge it’s user to DeFi on Base. Or at least once they have created an onboarding experience so seamless it feels like tapping your credit card and watching your real life digital money disappear.

Whats next?

Something something with UniSwap (and probably a shameless Bankless shill) as those beady little emoji eyeballs signify one of two things… something BIG is coming or plenty of LARP.

Could we speculate that Eth’s Cancun upgrade will fall between these dates? Remember, Coinbase devs have been helping the Eth devs behind the scenes whilst UniSwap is home of on-chain trading volume.

Base’d is the narrative for degens, it’s the testing ground for Brian and chances are it will be a market mover as it gets painted with a normie friendly brush with a one click experience to go from cex to on-chain. 

Speaking of LARP… Wen Quest for LARP 4?! 🤔

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Curve Finance - Gets a 9x leverage button - read

• DeGods - Welcome to Season III, downgrade your NFT for a less serious look - read 

• Fuji Finance - Layer3 campaign kicked off - read

• Good Entry Labs - Whitelist spots open for Ouroboros NFT plus event details for Token2049 - read

• Maia DAO - Everything you need to know about Hermes V2 - read

• Mori Finance - Goes live on mainnet - read

• Odyssey 2.0 - Quest 2 goes live featuring GMX - read

• Overtime Markets - Sports betting incentives on EPL, NFL and NBA - read

• Parallax Finance - Launch plans updated due to “potential legal complications” using SpartaDEX - read

• Rainmaker - The first account abstraction wallet on BASE - read

• Tenet Protocol - Information on recent liquidity migration - read

• Unstoppable Defi - Spot DEX is live, supporting all Uni v3 tokens/pairs for Spot & DCA orders with more updates featured in discord - read

• Yearn Finance - yETH update, TLDR launch soon, earn yield now - read 

• Yolo Nolo - Quests go live on Zealy and smashes $500,000 volume in the first 5 days of live trading - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• a16z & Paradigm support Coinbase in their fight against the SEC - read 

• Former FTX exec, Ryan Salame, pleas the fifth and plans not to testify under oath about SBF’s alleged illegal campaign donations - read

• Immutable launches zkEVM public testnet goes live for the new layer-2 blockchain, Immutable zkEVM - read

• Machibigbrother.eth drops defamation case against ZachXBT - read

• Senator Lummis urges courts to dismiss lawsuit against Coinbase - read

• UniSwap Founder fires employee for deploying and rugging FRENS for peanuts - read 

🫠 ICYMI.

Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.

Podcast: A New Way to Mint with insrt Finance Perpetual NFT Mints

Listen & Watch.

Grant was joined once again by Lauris the co-founder of insrt Finance to catch up on the latest developments and product updates. The biggest new product rollout is Perpetual Mints, a game changer in how NFTs can be minted or change hands.

Tune in on YouTube | Twitter →

Savvy LBP: Making LBPs Great Again 

Research.

First off, what are LBPs? 

If you’re relatively new to DeFi, there’s a decent chance you have no idea what LBPs are. 

You see, when a project launches they need to figure out the best way to get their tokens to the public. TradFi has its method figured out. It’s IPOs.

Read more →

The Best On/Off-Ramps

Thought Provoker.

“I love crypto. But how do I buy it?” Said (probably) no one ever in 2023. 

There are loads of new platforms that have emerged that help in easy and efficient on-ramping and off-ramping for crypto. Let’s start with the most basic ones. Exchanges. 

Read more →

🐥 Top tweets.

To save you doom scrolling.

twobitidiot, IFs, BUTs and WENs…

RunnerXBT, imagine that

ZoomerOracle, the answer is often staring you in the face

🦍 And finally…

August is gearing up to be a big month, Fed meeting minutes later today, Lybra V2, ZERO hit main net, Mori Finance TGE, Parallax launch and Shibarium. All whilst Base continues to pump, microcaps keep printing for insiders and Bitcoin does its thing chilling in this devastatingly boring choppy range.

This has however probably been on of the best bear markets we’ve seen with opportunities being presented on a daily basis with a narrative rotation that leads us to all to break even or down bad due to gas fees.

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🤝 A final word.

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