GM Legends,

Now tell me that wasn’t a wild weekend as Goreli’s testnet gETH caught a bid, Machi Big Brother dumped the NFT market and Arbitrum still hasn’t had its airdrop… yet.

Bitcoin teeters on the edge of $23,300 and Ethereum is still trying to make its mind up - do we pump or dump going into the Shanghai update?

So, Goreli’s gETH. What is it? Why should we care? And will CoinBase help price movement?

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Here's what's inside today.

🔥 The big topic. $gETH catches a bid before Shanghai, but why?

🗞 Hot crypto news. Liquid staking beats DeFi lending as #2 largest crypto sector, Shanghai’s second testnet Sepolia is a success, Voyager Digital dumps on us…again AND MORE.

👀 Updates across the bloc. KuCoin list Arbitrum ecosystem coins, Popsicle Finance & the Frog King are BACK, OasisSwap DEX officially launches AND MORE.

🛡 Chart of the day. $BTC - do your thing!

🧵 Thread of the day. Arbitrum is still the flavour of the month. 0xFlip looks at 8 projects that are flying under your radar.

🔥 The big topic.

$gETH catches a bid before Shanghai, but why?

gETH is to ETH, what GME is to AMC, and KSM is to DOT.

Well maybe not quite what GME is to AMC but the speculative bids and memes are working fantastically as price action did a casual 140x in 72hrs from the $0.012 low to the $1.68 high.

But WTF is $gETH? Why is the price pumping? And should we even care?

WDF is gETH?

gETH simply put, is Goreli testnet ETH which is claimable through the Goreli faucet for devs to test out their tech before deploying on the Ethereum mainnet.

Why did the price of gETH pumping?

Because Layer Zero labs created a bridge to convert actual Ethereum into testnet Ethereum. So now this worthless testnet Ethereum has cash money value which, you guessed it, drew the speculative attention of the apes and degens to pump and dump, causing all kinds of frustration for devs who just wanted to test their tech over the weekend.

Should we even care?

Well, depending on which side of the testnet you sit on.

Yes.

Yes, we should care.

Devs and node operators will want to get their hands on testnet tokens so they can test their tech before deploying onto the Ethereum mainnet.

The speculating apes and degens should definitely care because where there’s speculation there’s an opportunity and where opportunity lays in crypto there are usually golden corns to be had.

Which undoubtedly caused much annoyance to the community over the weekend (before he ultimately parted ways with his bag, lol).

However, let’s not forget CoinBase’s Based L2 that’s currently in testnet development, with an active campaign to get builders to begin building cool tech there.

gETH on Base, anyone?!

And yes… you can flip your favourite NFTs on Goreli as well. Madness!

Buuuuut hold up!

gETH is to ETH what KSM is to DOT.

Hold your horses there, young buck. Put the calculator away and put on hold those thoughts that your 26-cent gETH is going to $700+, and take a moment to read this tweet from Ethereum Foundation Protocol Support guy Tim Beiko…

New testnet inbound… wen airdrop?!

The Holešky (Holsovice for the non-European folk) testnet goes live in September with the Holli? hoETH token? I can already hear the sound of Christmas memes!)

Like Tim says: “it’s hard to fix live testnets but fairly simple to spin up a new one.”

TLDR, they’re looking to solve the current issues of distribution that Goreli has from the faucets becoming less efficient.

Devs dumping wtf?!

With the Sepolia (private testnet for ETH validators only) going live on Feb 28th to run a simulation of ETH withdrawals ahead of the Shanghai update in March, devs with leftover tokens took the opportunity to part ways with them.

A cool, calm and casual $48,727 made from worthless testnet tokens.

Not bad for days worth of devving, that.

Time to drop some LSD

A top of LSD is needed as the narrative has gone quiet and the markets are focused on the home grocery narrative. Surprised we didn’t see a Poptart or Hershey coin come up.

The ETH withdrawals are long overdue and today Sepolia private testnet gets underway. With the withdrawals, we can speculate that there will be a rotation of withdrawn ETH into liquid staking protocols as DeFi degens are looking for bigger returns.

Our Take

Is the fact that we are using testnet tokens to rotate and go head-to-head in battle royale fashion a sign that the altcoin market has become tiresome and the China, AI and home grocery narratives have all run their course?

Is a pullback coming in the alt market or are we all just burnt out after two months of relentless PvP-style rotations?

And anyway, historically speaking March tends to be a bit of a downer for crypto.

🗞 Hot crypto news.

🐮 Bullish News

Liquid staking takes the #2 spot ahead of DeFi crypto lending as the second largest crypto sector. The value of crypto that has been deposited into LSDs has increased to $14 billion. With the Shanghai Update right around the corner could the LSD narrative catch another break?

The second ETH Testnet is a success as the private testnet Sepolia went live earlier today to simulate the Shanghai Hard Fork. You can think of Sepolia as a private dress rehearsal before the final test on Goreli.

Binance bites back against Forbes FUD whilst minting the TruUSD as it becomes the 5th largest stablecoin by market cap. Binance, again, stands the test of time.

🐻 Bearish News

CoinBase to suspend BUSD as the war of the exchanges continues to heat up. Starting on March 13th CoinBase will officially say goodbye to the Binance stable coin as it “doesn’t meet its listing standards.” Is this a clever ploy to get rid of Binance’s US presence for an upcoming Wall Street Led exchange?

The SEC’s crackdown continues with Robinhood and his band of merry men, by slapping them with an investigative subpoena in response to the platform's “cryptocurrency listings, custody of cryptocurrencies and platform operations.” Another blow for yet another US-based crypto-friendly platform.

Voyager Digital dumps its crypto assets at an alarming rate. Since the start of February, it’s been reported by the on-chain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence that the crypto broker has made over $121m worth of deposits with over $50m in the last 7 days. According to data, there’ only $500m left to go…

👀 Updates across the bloc.

Project Updates

Cat in a box raised 3520.9 ETH in their liquidity generation event. Potentially one to watch as seems to be under the radar despite such a large raise. Essentially it enables borrowing boxETH against your stETH.

El Dorado Exchange a perp platform originally based on BNB has now expanded to Arbitrum and its IDO sold out in less than 10 minutes.

KuCoin lists Camelot Dex (GRAIL), Synapse (SYN), Radiant (RDNT), Gains Network (GNS) and Dopex (DPX). Deposits began on February 27th and withdrawals on March 2nd. Which Arbitrum-based coin is next?

OasisSwap DEX officially launched yesterday. More liquidity will be added to pools over the coming week.

Popsicle Finance and the King of Frogs, Daniele Sesta is back and I quote “with a renewed focus on Popsicle Finance,” and from the King’s official Twitter “Fork or not to Fork UniSwap?” Hard to fade Daniele’s pumpamentals.

Smilee Finance partnered with Camelot Dex for their trading competition with GRAIL being included as a trading pair. The whitelist for the trading competition hasn’t been released. Keep an eye on Smilee’s discord and Twitter.

UniDex Exchange looks to be the next L2 on OP after CoinBase as an app chain with a potential announcement at Eth Denver. The UNIDX price action has been strong despite the macro headwinds. UNIDX have also gotten to the finals of the Canto Online Hackathon.

Yield Farming Index's second round of presale will be going through GMD’s launchpad. Public presale begins February 28th 5PM CST, closing March 1st. YFX will be the first token to launch off of the GMD launchpad and is led by Betsy Kettleman (Spec ops of GMD) and Saul Goodman (GMD Builder).

ZyberSwap’s concentrated liquidity went live during their V3 upgrade yesterday. Projects have already been lined up to be released on their launch pad with details of the updates coming soon.

Plus Euler dropping hints of testing on Base? Plus hinted in discord that a deployment to BNB might be coming soon.

Governance Updates

Aave… another week and another AAVE governance proposal has been submitted by Marc Zeller, Aave Chan initiative founder. This time to add cbETH to the Aave V3 "LSD" emode category which will “allow both high staking yield via LSD loops & to bet on cbETH re-peg post-shanghai.”

Aave’s rescue mission of tokens that were sent by mistake goes live today. If this passes users who have lost or stuck tokens will be able to claim them back.

Hermes DAO has submitted a proposal asking the community if they should invest $250,000 into low-risk investments, holding $50,000 back to DCA, such as LINK, DOT, BTC and ETH.

Mantle submits a proposal to BitDao to introduce a $200 million ecosystem fund to the BitDAO community to invest in more than 100 early-stage projects building on the Mantle Network.

🛡 Chart of the day.

$BTC do your thing!

Come on, Bitcoin… do your thing!

I know we are teetering on the edge of the liquidity that’s tempting you down below, but now’s your time to shine en route back to $25,000 for one final test before breaking out.

However, both the MACD and RSI on the 4hr do look like they are running out of bullish steam.

Bull case. We hold above the $23,300 zone and see a spike in volume as the bulls finish the month on a high running the price back up to $25,000.

Bear case. The Bitcoin bears dump it into months end to finish a month of romance with a red monthly candle.

Coming up this week.

Let’s just hope that the Consumer Confidence numbers today give Bitcoin and the rest of the market the thumbs up for another leg to the upside.

🧵 Thread of the day.

Yeaaa, Aribtrum is still the flavour. Optimism tried last week to steal some of the spotlight but let’s be honest… it doesn’t quite have the community of the Arbinauts.

Chief Twitter researcher and threadoor 0xflips take a dive into the Arbitrum ecosystem with 8 gems that might be flying under your radar right now.

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

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

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