🇺🇦 Wishing glory and security to Ukraine
This is Shashank’s Newsletter, a newsletter with bite sized content on everything that happened in web3 over the past week.
In today’s email,
🇺🇦 Wishing glory and security to Ukraine
💸 Terra gets 1 BILLION $
📱 Interesting fintech products on Crypto
🎣 OpenSea phishing attack
🪙 Coinbase financials
Weekly gainers
🇺🇦 Wishing glory and security to Ukraine
This is not a newsletter on politics but the recent conflicts have definitely struck a nerve. We often talk about all the innovation happening in web3 and how it can change the world but it’s important to remember that the world is very fragile. Wishing glory and security to Ukraine!
So how is crypto playing its part here? During times of war, as restrictions on bank accounts and credit cards increase, crypto is giving a way out for people as self-custodial wallets are turning out to be people’s life savings in such times of crisis. The Ukrainian government is even accepting BTC/ ETH donations and the crypto community has come together to donate over 3M$ to their Ethereum wallet. You can check this by simply entering the wallet address onto etherscan.
💸 Terra gets 1 BILLION $
LFG raised a whopping 1B$ through a private token sale to form BTC reserve for the Terra ecosystem. These tokens have a four year vesting schedule for these firms, which means they are incentivized to see long-term growth of the ecosystem.
So what is Luna? Luna is Terra blockchain’s token that collateralizes and stabilizes the price of its native stablecoin called UST (4th largest stable coin). One of the most popular applications of UST is its savings protocol called Anchor that gives you 20% yield on your UST.
How does Luna work? When users buy UST, the algorithm burns some Luna, and creates UST. As the supply of Luna reduces 🔥 , price goes up ⬆️ . When users sell UST, the supply of Luna increases 🪙 and price goes down ⬇️.
Why is this 1B$ raise important? In a bear market, when people are both selling Luna and UST, there is a death spiral that could add a lot of pressure on UST. With the introduction of BTC reserves (decentralized sound money), the risk of such a spiral is minimized. Instead of increasing the supply of Luna, there is now the option to swap UST to BTC instead. This is a great step in the long term stability for UST and the wider Terra ecosystem.
Even in a bear market, LUNA token price has shot up by 35% over the past month taking it to a 29B$ market cap 🤑
📱 Interesting fintech products on Crypto
There are so many interesting and novel fintech products in the crypto space. Its so fascinating to see the innovation in these products. Here are a few of my favorites,
Fold app provides a reloadable VISA debit card. Every time you buy something with your Fold Card, you spin the wheel for a chance to win. You can earn a 1% spending boost, 10% category boost, 1 bitcoin bonus, deposit matching and other perks. They have very nicely gamified the cashback program. 🎰
PoolTogether is a novel savings protocol that introduces lossless lotteries. People enter by pooling money and one random winner gets to win all the reward earned on that pool over the past week. Everyone else gets back their principal. 🤙
OnJuno lets you get your paycheck in crypto in BTC/ ETH/ USDC with a nice 4% savings account. They also recently announced a new program with 10% cashback on their USDC card 💵
🎣 OpenSea phishing attack
Another day, another hack in crypto.
So what happened here? A hacker sent a phishing email impersonating OpenSea asking users to “sign” a message on a supposedly new OpenSea contract. They used this signature to hack the OpenSea contract and sell NFTs on behalf of the users using the collected signatures. Technically speaking, they used code injection techniques to run their malicious code in the OpenSea contract which essentially sold all the NFTs. You can read more details of the technical hack here.
So how much did they steal? The hacker sold over 250+ NFTs worth 1.7M$ and you can look at all the stolen tokens in this spreadsheet.
Just as I mentioned in my previous weekly letter with the Coinbase hack, token approvals and signatures could be dangerous and there needs to be more education around this.
🪙 Coinbase financials
Coinbase grew revenue by a whopping 654% in 2021 while delivering 49% net income margins. An interesting split is by coinbase vs coinbase pro, because that's where the fees really differ. App charges ~3%; pro charges ~0.02%. (150x higher on the app!)
But…the stock still fell over 3% because of future guidance. Coinbase expects trading volume to be lower in the future given the market conditions.
How did you enjoy this week’s edition?