Issue #4

The Merge is scheduled, Mastercard partner with Binance to offer crypto payment services, THORSwap launch their DEX aggregator & more...

Aug 30, 2022

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market $US1.0T, down 6.0% from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto and NFT assets.

After the successful upgrade of all public testnets, The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet. The process begins on Sept 6, with the execution layer transitioning to Proof of Stake around September 15th.
Mastercard partners with Binance to enable customers to spend cryptocurrency at 90 million stores worldwide.
Samsung is launching its own cryptocurrency exchange in the first half of 2023
Nearly 7 million people from 224 countries have visited Nike’s metaverse store since its November 2021 launch.
Nike has earned ~US$185m from NFTs sales since their acquisition of RTFTK last year.
Crypto media company The Block will become the first newsroom to launch a tokenised paywall.
Unlike fellow stablecoin behemoth Circle, Tether confirms it will not be unilaterally freezing all wallets that have interacted with Tornado Cash until it receives instructions from law enforcement.
Latin American crypto company Ripio has launched a pre-paid Visa card in Brazil that allows holders to pay in store with crypto and receive up to 5% 'cash' back on purchases, paid in Bitcoin.
Mars signed a deal with Universal Music Group to create limited edition M&M’s based on Kingship, UMG’s virtual band made up of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club apes.

THORSwap launched a Ethereum ERC-20 Decentralised Exchange Aggregator, meaning users can now swap between 4,800+ whitelisted ERC-20 tokens and Layer 1 blockchains such as Bitcoin, Binance Beacon Chain and Cosmos in a non-custodial manner without the use of bridges or wrapped assets.
MakerDAO has partnered with Huntingdon Valley Bank to write the first commercial loan between a U.S. Regulated Financial Institution and a decentralised digital currency.
DeFi borrowing protocol Compound, which has processed $100B+ of transactions, launches v3 of its platform, with an emphasis on security, capital efficiency, and user experience.
The Ethereum Foundation approved EIP-3475, enabling anyone to create their own custom-made bonds on the Ethereum blockchain.

ThirdWeb raised $24M in a round led by Huan Ventures to continue building its suite of web3 developer tools.
Spectral raised $23M in a round led by General Catalyst and Social Capital to help create web3 credit score system.
Metaverse avatar platform Ready Player Me raised $56M from a16z and others.
Inworld AI has raised $50M to populate games and the metaverse with smart characters.
Orange DAO, led by Y Combinator alumni, have raised an $80M fund to back crypto startups.
Safeheron raised $7M to make private keys safer for crypto wallets.
Comm raised $5M to build a crypto-native competitor to Discord.

Ethereum and Polygon continue to dominate L1 and L2 blockchain user adoption.