Overview
- L2 progress update
- Markets: Trending sideways ahead of a tough month.
- Michael Saylor looks to onboard millions into BTC Lightning Network.
- Nigeria and Binance.
Good morning Banter Fam,
It’s time to check on the progress of some Layer-2 (L2) networks and explore any new incentives the emerging blockchains have to offer.
Layer Two Progress Check: Incentives programs and more!
While the markets are stricken in a bearish winter trance, there are projects building for the future.
The L2s began small but are starting to grow despite market conditions, and with the Ethereum merge weeks away, L2s stand to reap the benefits.
Looking at TVL across the market, three L2 projects are in the top ten (Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism). While Solana and Avalanche have struggled to keep TVL with monthly losses of -25.56% and -6.61%, respectively, all the L2s in the top ten had positive growth for the month.
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Source: DeFi Llama
Moreover, the newer kids on the block, Arbitrum and Optimism are bolstering programs to encourage users to join their networks. For example, Optimism is running several incentivized pools across its protocols, which will provide yield and additional OP token payouts. Chart below.
Source: Optimism
The Optimism network is seeing growth in its ecosystem use, with most users bridging from Ethereum.
Source: Messari Twitter
The Arbitrum network, which rolled out its much anticipated Nitro mainnet upgrade last week, has set the stage for the horde of users about to enter its network to participate in the Arbitrum Odyssey program.
The eight-week Odyssey program, which began in June, will likely restart sometime in the next few days. In exchange for using different protocols on the network, users will be rewarded with NFTs (and possibly an ARBI token airdrop).
For some further insight into some Arbitrum projects, check out the Twitter post below by @corleonescrypto:
Source: Twitter
Market update 🌍
The crypto market continued to trend sideways during the holiday weekend. With the Fed decreasing its balance sheet this month and another possible rate hike of 75 basis points, it could prove to be a tough month for crypto, something we covered in last week’s newsletter.
Bitcoin continues to range between $19.5k and $20.5k while volume continues to decrease. The US Stock market is closed today, which could showcase wild price action for BTC. The combination of a closed US stock market could present the opportunity for whales to unload in a low liquidity atmosphere and manipulate the price. Keep a close on the $19.2k support level today. BTC completed the daily candle up 0.85% to $20,000.
High-resolution chart
The dollar continued its strengthening upward trend versus other major currencies during the weekend. The EURO fell below 98 cents versus the USD and appears to have broken a significant support level. While investors flock to USD, the chances they want to invest in risk assets or equities are limited.
High-resolution chart
| US markets close | Gain/Loss |
| S&P 500 | *Closed Weekend |
| Nasdaq | |
| Dow | |
| VIX |
Notable Gainers (7d):
| Protocol (Coin) | Price ($) | Gain (%) |
| GMX (GMX) | 56.06 | +40.5 |
| DeFiChain (DFI) | 1.18 | +35 |
| Celsius Network (CEL) | 1.43 | +25 |
| Lido DAO (LDO) | 1.98 | +23 |
| Ergo (ERG) | 4.31 | +33 |
| Pocket Network (POKT) | 0.12 | +27 |
| Balancer (BAL) | 7.07 | +23 |
| CUBE (ITAMCUBE) | 0.12 | +114 |
| Manifold Finance (FOLD) | 80.87 | +87 |
| Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) | 1.92 | +78 |
| Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index | 23 Extreme Fear |
| “Crypto” Google Trends 90d | 40 |
| “Bitcoin” Google Trends 90d | 26 |
Newswatch 📰
Michael Saylor is developing on the Lightning Network. Former MicroStrategy CEO said (at the Baltic Honeybadger conference) that the company has developers working on solutions to onboard many people onto the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Saylor, a famous Bitcoin evangelist, said,”
“The advantage of Lightning is not just that you could scale up bitcoin for billions of people, or drive the transaction cost to nearly nothing, but also, the ethos of bitcoin is to go very carefully and not move fast on the base layer without the universal consensus, but in Lightning, you can move much more aggressively developing functionality and take more risks with the applications than you can with the underlying bitcoin layer”
The Lightning Network allows for fast and cheap transactions, is built on top of Bitcoin, and is mainly used as a decentralized payment network.
Sudoswap token airdrop. The NFT marketplace “sudoswap” announced the retroactive airdrop of its new SUDO governance token for liquidity providers and XMON token holders. As a result, the cohort will receive 41.9% of the 60 million token supply.
News tidbits:
- Nigeria and Binance are in talks to create a digital economic zone to bolster the growth of fintech and blockchain tech.
- Arcane Research releases “How Bitcoin Mining can transform the Energy Industry” report.
NFT & metaverse update 🐵
Highly anticipated y00ts NFT mint put on hold. The team behind y00ts announced a “blocker bug” during testing of the NFT launch that will delay the mint of the y00ts NFT collection by one day.
FIFA’s World Cup NFT platform. The governing body for international soccer, FIFA, has announced the launch of an NFT platform on Algorand that looks to sell soccer-themed digital collectibles for the World Cup.
Banter’s take
You don’t have to buy a lot of tokens to take opportunities across the crypto-verse. A large majority of the networks allow for cheap gas fees.
With L2s such as Arbitrum and Optimism just beginning incentive programs, it will open the door for airdrops, liquidity provider incentives, and NFT drops. Moreover, it’s a great way to learn how to use crypto-based protocols for cheap!
Cheap transactions + rewards + airdrops = cheap crypto education
Don’t miss out on our future coverage!
Gabri
Follow me on Twitter for daily updates!
Disclaimer
Good Morning crypto (issued by Crypto Banter) is a newsletter for entertainment purposes only.
All opinions expressed by the publisher, writers, and chartists should not be construed as financial advice and do not necessarily reflect the views of Crypto Banter. The publisher, writers, and chartists may hold positions in the tokens and assets discussed. Readers are encouraged to do their own research.
