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welcome back to Chain reaction.
PSA: I’ll be at ETH Denver this week, so if you see me, say hi! I will have some Chain Reaction pins on me and the first people to find me will get one. Think of it like a free NFT, but instead of going to your crypto wallet, it’s going to your wallet, wallet. Wow!
Anyway, let’s get into the news; Oh, and happy March!
February ended as a big month for the NFT market, as non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed $1.5 billion in volume for the first time since May 2022.
The NFT Blur market reached an all-time high monthly volume of $1.12 billion in February, representing 74.6% of total volume across all Ethereum NFT markets, according to data from the block. (The Block’s data aggregation filters out wash trading, when traders buy and sell items from each other to artificially increase volumes and prices.)
By comparison, OpenSea, now the second largest Ethereum NFT marketplace, had volume of $270.11 million in February, the data showed. At its peak, OpenSea had monthly volume of around $4.8 billion in January 2022, but has since seen its total transaction volume deflate.
Amid the recent rally, Blur has surpassed once-largest NFT marketplace OpenSea in monthly volume for the third month in a row, as the cryptomarket debates the issue of NFT creator royalties.
“If you look at what’s been happening recently with OpenSea and Blur, obviously it’s a concern more broadly in terms of the market and the royalty fights,” Yat Siu, president of Animoca Brands, told TechCrunch. “However, the volume as a result of that has increased tremendously, which means it has brought another kind of excitement to the space.”
Below.
This week on web3
Ethereum NFT Market Passes $1 Billion In Volume For First Time Since May As Creator Royalty War Intensifies (TC+)
As mentioned above, the NFT market is heating up again and Blur’s rise in the NFT market has helped reignite the royalty debate. In previous quarters, OpenSea tried to balance creator royalties as it held the top position in the NFT markets, but Blur’s aggressive stance is causing OpenSea to change course. But as the massive NFT markets cut fees, this could be a “slippery slope” that hurts creators in the long run, Siu said.
Does web3 need a business bailout now that AI has all the hype? (TC+)
Shifting investor priorities, more expensive cash, and a dearth of big deals that were so common during the last start-up boom could leave many late-stage web3 companies strapped for cash. And time is running. For startups stuck in a now-old-fashioned category, watching venture dollars flow elsewhere can’t feel good, even if such evolutions in capital flows are par for the course.
Chainlink’s new platform allows web3 projects to connect to Web 2.0 systems like AWS and Meta
Chainlink, a web3 services platform, is launching a serverless self-service platform to help developers connect their decentralized applications (dApps) or smart contracts to any Web 2.0 API, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. This new platform also supports popular programming languages such as JavaScript so that developers who are new to web3 can enter the space. It will also provide integrations to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, and others.
the last pod
For last week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Lolli. Founded in 2018, Lolli is a bitcoin rewards app that allows people to earn bitcoin or cash back when they shop online or in person at over 10,000 stores like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Dunkin’, CVS, Costco, etc. .
Adelman was previously on the team that built a commerce gateway, Cosmic, which was acquired by PopSugar in 2015 and then Ebates and Rakuten in 2017. And like Jacquelyn, Adelman also went to UNC-Chapel Hill: wow! Tar Heels!
Lolli has grown significantly in recent years, from partnering with fewer than 1,000 stores to over 10,000 stores to date. Adelman dove into the rewards system in the crypto ecosystem and how it has evolved over the years, and what the future holds for Lolli.
We also delve into the topic of Bitcoin NFTs and ordinals, which is all the rage for the community. We discuss whether Bitcoin NFTs are good for the ecosystem, how the technology can grow in the long term, and the chances that these digital signups will potentially fit into Lolli’s business model.
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follow the money
- Blockchain that complies with China regulations Conflux raised $10 million in a private token sale
- decentralized crypto exchange Mangrove raised $7.4 million in a Series A round
- Singapore-based digital asset exchange DigiFT raised $10.5 million in a pre-Series A round
- DeFi-focused institutional asset management platform hash note raised $5 million
- Term Laboratories raised $2.5 million in a seed round to create safer crypto loans for institutions
This list was compiled using information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.