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A simple guide to the web3 developer stack

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A guide to the projects and companies working to make web3 development as easy as web2

Around the Block, from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Jonathan King, Connor Dempsey, & Hoolie Tejwani

Special thanks to Mike Armstrong, Aaron Henshaw, Michael Atassi, Steven Willinger, and Shan Aggarwal for helping to inform this article.

Despite the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with the emergence of new categories like DeFi, NFTs, GameFi and DAOs, web3 developers represent less than 1% of the 31.1M software developers globally.*

So why are there so few developers in web3 today? For one, the tools and infrastructure available to web3 developers are much less robust than that of web2. This simply makes it more difficult to get started building, experimenting, and deploying in web3. That’s all quickly changing however, as the number of monthly active web3 developers hit all-time highs at the end of 2021. And to support this growing contingency, is a vibrant ecosystem of teams working to simplify the entire web3 developer journey, which will ultimately help unlock the next stage of web3 growth and innovation.

In this edition of Around The Block, we’ll explore the growing web3 developer stack.

The Web3 Developer Stack

Building in Web2 vs Web3

Software development is the process of building computer programs. There are three main components to a given program:

  1. The front-end (what users interact with)
  2. The back-end (what users don’t see)
  3. Database (where critical data is stored)

The front-end that a typical user interacts with through a mobile or desktop browser is basically the same in web2 and web3. A web3 app like Uniswap looks similar to a typical web2 app because both front-ends are mostly created using React — a popular developer framework for web and mobile apps.

It’s under the hood where web2 and web3 differ. The backend frameworks and types of databases that make web3’s defining characteristic — user-defined ownership — possible are new and unique.

Where web2 applications largely rely on centralized databases, web3 applications are built on decentralized databases (blockchains). This requires entirely new backends and new primitives like wallets.

The tools that aid in the creation, deployment, and maintenance of web2 applications are incredibly developer-friendly, thanks to decades of cumulative development. Out of the box solutions, mature infrastructure, shared code libraries, and easy to use frameworks largely make building in web2 a breeze.

Web3 on the other hand still requires specialized expertise to interface with complex infrastructure and commonly involves many redundant processes given that the stack is less developed, leaving teams to have to reinvent the wheel. That said, the tooling that will help onboard the next 1M+ web3 developers is rapidly improving.

Let’s take a (non-exhaustive) look at the evolving Web3 developer stack layer by layer (* denotes Coinbase Ventures portfolio company).

Protocol layer

The first decision a web3 developer has to make is which blockchain protocol to build on. Building on Bitcoin is entirely different from building on Ethereum, and Solana differs from Ethereum, etc.

For faster and lower-cost applications, developers might want to build on a layer2 protocol — Optimism*, Arbitrum*, etc. For applications that need to port value from one chain to another, developers will want to leverage cross-chain bridges like Hop* or Synapse*.

Once these decisions are made, developers can start to incorporate building blocks that make user applications possible.

Infrastructure primitives

The next thing a developer needs to figure out is how their application will ultimately interact with the underlying blockchains. This is where infrastructure primitives come into play.

Node infrastructure — Nodes are where an app’s interaction with a blockchain “happens.” They’re computers that read the state of the blockchain and write updates to it once a user interacts with an application. Node infrastructure providers like Coinbase Cloud, Infura*, and Alchemy* let developers easily set-up, manage, or access blockchain nodes, saving developers considerable time and resources.

Wallet & Key Management — Blockchain wallets, like Coinbase Wallet, allow users to manage the private keys needed to perform transactions within web3 applications. Wallet and key management providers like Web3Auth* or Pine Street Labs*, enable developers to build secure connectivity between blockchain wallets and user-facing applications.

Identity — protocols like ENS* serve as a user’s identity across applications. Spruce* provides frameworks and toolkits that developers can use to verify user credentials to authenticate actions on Ethereum. For example, developers can use the Spruce ID toolkit to empower users to sign into dApps with their ENS accounts. Additionally, companies like Lit Protocol provide developer tooling for granting access to content, software, and other data utilizing their tokens or NFTs.

Decentralized compute — Compute resources provide processing power that applications rely on to carry out computational tasks. Currently, most of the web’s compute is provided by centrally owned providers like AWS. Decentralized compute is a shift towards community-owned networks, in which compute resources are distributed in a permissionless manner at low-cost. Companies like Akash Network and Aleph.im have emerged to provide peer-to-peer compute resources that are highly-performant and optimized for smart contracts and blockchain applications.

Decentralized storage — Storing every piece of data associated with a given web3 app directly on blockchain nodes is costly. Rather than storing data on a centralized database, web3 developers can use peer-to-peer data storage protocols like IPFS, Arweave*, and Ceramic Network* for certain data. For example, web3 blogging site Mirror is built on Ethereum, but stores actual blog content on Arweave.

Oracles — For a typical Ethereum application, the blockchain stores transaction history and “state” (balances, smart contracts, and other variables). It can’t, however, natively store and interact with data from external sources — i.e. transaction history from other blockchains or “real world” data like the weather in San Francisco. That’s where oracles like Chainlink or Flux*come in, connecting blockchains to on-chain and off-chain data sources.

Interoperability — many different blockchains exist but few have the ability to exchange value and make use of information cross-chain. Interoperability protocols like LayerZero* and Astar Network* provide SDKs and APis for developers to build dApps that are portable and can communicate with different blockchains.

Developer tools

Atop the infrastructure primitives that allow applications to interact with blockchain networks are tools that allow developers to more seamlessly interact with the above-named primitives.

Frameworks & IDEs — Developer frameworks consist of libraries of code that other developers have created that make development easier. Web3 frameworks like Truffle, Moralis*, Tatum, and ThirdWeb*, let developers leverage existing code for smart contract applications so they don’t have to build everything from scratch. They also let developers test and deploy applications. Integrated development environments (IDEs) like Foundry and HardHat combine common source code editors, and build automation and debugging tools into a single, easily accessible interface.

Low-code / No-code — These platforms enable user-facing applications to be quickly designed/deployed entirely via drag-and-drop interfaces. Companies like Settlemint provide developers with smart contract templates for NFTs to prevent web3 developers from having to reinvent the wheel.

Index & query — Data indexers help people locate and access specific data within an underlying database. In Web2, Google search is the most popular data indexing service that allows users to query data stored in online databases with sub-second response times. In Web3, decentralized indexing services are emerging to help dApp developers fetch, process, and query blockchain data. The Graph Protocol*, Covalent*, and Coherent* all provide APIs for extracting and making use of data from decentralized data storage providers and EVM-compatible blockchains.

Test, simulate, & monitor — It’s important to test and simulate web3 applications before they’re released into the wild. Companies like Tenderly* and Kurtosis* offer a variety of tools for simulating how smart contracts and transactions will behave once live, as well as tools for debugging any issues. Blocknative* provides dashboards and tools for monitoring transactions before they are submitted on-chain.

Security & audit — Given the potential for smart contract exploits, these platforms let developers apply security and audit best practices to their applications. OpenZeppelin*, Certik*, and Certora* all provide a variety of services, frameworks, and monitoring tools for developers to mitigate potential security risks and vulnerabilities.

Messaging — Web3 apps often involve sending various communications to end users. For example, a crypto wallet may want to push a user alerts regarding transaction confirmations. Companies like XMTP Labs* and EPNS are building secure messaging protocols and decentralized communication networks that drive user engagement and power these notifications within Web3 applications.

Analytics — There’s a host of platforms and services that let developers explore, analyze, extract, and visual blockchain data. Dune*, Nansen*, and Messari* each offer a variety of APIs and reporting capabilities to build data visualization features within web3 apps. Flipside Crypto* offers SDKs (software development kits) and APIs to create and share data insights on various crypto projects.

App Enablement Layer

The application enablement layer ties all of the above layers into specific web3 uses. NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and gaming each have their own bespoke developer solutions.

NFT focused tools offer infrastructure for creating and managing NFT assets. DAO tools offer solutions for DAO creation (Syndicate*, Samudai*), governance (Snapshot*), and treasury management (Utopia Labs*). DeFi focused tools offer APIs that let developers access various DeFi primitives. Gaming focused tools ( Venly*, Joyride*, Horizon Blockchain Games*) provide solutions for creating virtual worlds and blockchain based games.

The ever-evolving dev stack

The protocols, infrastructure, and developer tools mentioned above make up the nascent, yet evolving web3 developer stack. The modular and interoperable nature of web3 means that the stack can be combined in endless ways to create new and interesting applications.

While the framework and layers we highlighted will likely remain unchanged, we continue to see new developer tooling primitives emerge and expect the entire stack to evolve dramatically in the coming years.

Coinbase Ventures will continue to invest in the next generation of platform and developer tooling that will ultimately onboard millions of developers into web3. If you’re as dedicated to building out the web3 dev stack as we are, we would love to hear from you — JK’s DMs are open!

Further Reading

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

A simple guide to the web3 developer stack was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Decentralization, privacy, and a credibly neutral Ethereum

Coinbase

Tl;dr: The following post recaps this episode of Coinbase’s Around The Block podcast in which Viktor Bunin hosts Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discuss decentralization, privacy, and a credibly neutral Ethereum.

By Viktor Bunin, Senior Protocol Specialist at Coinbase Cloud

After 7 years of research and development, the Merge is just around the corner. A crowning achievement, the Merge will finally transition Ethereum from Proof-of-work (PoW) to Proof-of-stake (PoS).

I encourage everyone to listen to the whole episode, but I wanted to take this opportunity to pull out what I believe are the key messages to take away from the conversation between two industry giants.

  • The transition to PoS wasn’t immediately obvious. As Vitalik put it, even if the idea can be scary as if it’s a pond filled with sharks, once you figure the sharks out, you at least know what you’re going up against, which makes it possible to deal with the problem.
  • Scientists and engineers are equally needed. Incredible researchers, like Vitalik, do the tough work of pushing the envelope on what’s possible, but it’s up to the builders to then take the baton, commercialize the products, and bring the technology to millions of users.
  • Good times create centralized projects. Bull markets tilt the scale from principles to expediency until a bear market tilts them back. The reality is that principles aren’t just principles, they result in decisions that keep projects secure and mindsets that keep builders building.
  • Decentralization is vital low in the stack. If the foundational layer breaks or is corrupted, everything built on top of it breaks as well.
  • Ethereum is more robust and decentralized on PoS. Anyone can spin up an Ethereum validator anywhere in the world with much less capital and technical skills compared to mining. All you need is a computer with an internet connection.
  • Ethereum will continue decentralizing its infrastructure operations. Proposer-Builder Separation will take away a validator’s ability to express a preference over the contents of the blocks they create, making censorship at the block level impossible.
  • OFAC took its first action involving DeFi. The recent Tornado Cash action is the first time OFAC has sanctioned a technology (smart contract) and it has raised questions with many groups (CoinCenter, EFF, CCI, etc.) about whether this was an overstep of OFAC’s authority.
  • Coinbase prioritizes and supports decentralization for Ethereum’s base layer. As mentioned earlier, decentralization is vital low in the stack, and there’s nothing lower than Ethereum’s base layer. In the hypothetical scenario where Coinbase is forced to censor, we would rather wind down our staking operation to preserve the integrity of the overall network.
  • Privacy is solvable. We can solve swaths of the challenges with privacy through technological solutions that enable user privacy while minimizing privacy for criminals.
  • We need to build the future we want to see. You need to make “stuff!” It doesn’t just magically appear. Decentralized identity must be created, it won’t spawn into being just because crypto becomes successful.
  • Values and culture must be cultivated. Whether the community is centralized or decentralized, it’s crucial for leaders to set and encourage cultural alignment around a set of values. Without cultivation, undesirable characteristics may rise and cause community fragmentation.
  • Crypto is global. The world is moving towards a global mindset and crypto is already there. One way in which Coinbase is adopting this mindset is by supporting global apps like Coinbase Wallet.
  • There are still unsolved problems. The best currency, building the “freedom stack,” e-charter cities, VR, climate change, and so on must be decided upon and created.

There’s still a lot more to build and it’s important we continue working together to build the future of crypto, grow the entire ecosystem, and remain eternally optimistic and collaborative.

Decentralization, privacy, and a credibly neutral Ethereum was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Is the Bitcoin Lightning Network for real?

Coinbase
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Bitcoin

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey & Sam Newman

In the 13 years of its existence, Bitcoin has risen from obscurity to $1 trillion highs, settling over $60 trillion in total transfer volume along the way.

Despite these feats, Bitcoin’s decentralized design limits it to a mere 7 transactions per second. In times when demand to use the network exceeds 7 transactions, users experience long wait times and fees as high as $60 per transaction at the extreme. Even with fees recently hovering between $1–2, the network remains unsuitable for buying that proverbial cup of coffee.

Enter the Lightning Network: a layer-2 protocol built on top of Bitcoin that can theoretically scale to millions of instant transactions per second that cost pennies to send. If it gains traction, it can even undercut the fees of giants like Visa and Mastercard, along with the entire global remittance market.

But will it?

Lightning 101

As with most layer-2 solutions, Lightning seeks to increase transaction throughput and lower costs while retaining sufficient decentralization by moving activity to a second network. Once BTC is on the Lightning network, it can be transacted instantly typically at fractions of a penny.

Rather than expensively sending each transaction over the Bitcoin blockchain, users deposit BTC into the Lightning Network and then transact inexpensively through payment channels. As with most networks, the more people and companies that join, the more useful it becomes.

Obviously at <1 cent fees, Lightning transactions are cheaper than using the Bitcoin network. More intriguing however, is that Lightning has the potential to replace existing payment processors for fiat transactions without the consumer knowing that BTC was used as the underlying settlement layer. We’ll explain.

Disrupting the payment giants

Visa and Mastercard are the world’s dominant payment processing networks. By collecting 2–3% transaction fees everytime someone swipes a debit or credit card, they pulled in $24B in 2021. Payment processors leveraging the Lightning Network could undercut that.

Let’s say you want to make a $100 payment to a merchant. Using your credit card would cost the merchant $3, which is then passed along to you via hidden costs. Now what if you converted $100 USD into BTC, transferred it over the Lightning network for less than a penny, before converting the BTC back to $100 USD. A service called OpenNode is able to leverage the Lightning Network to do just that, for a 1% fee. A similar logic can be applied to the $40B global remittance fee market, which averages 6.4% per cross-border transaction.

However economic it may be to replace Visa/Mastercard and international remittance companies with Lightning, it’s easier said than done. The incumbents enjoy large network effects, and like any young network, Lightning faces a cold start problem.

So how’s adoption looking to date?

Lightning adoption

Where the potential to disrupt the incumbents is there, current Lightning adoption is still tiny (but growing!). Arcane Research estimated that in Q1 22, Lightning facilitated $20–30M in monthly payments. That’s a 4x YoY increase, but a far cry from the $866B Visa facilitates each month.

The main way that Lightning growth is measured is by “public node capacity” — essentially how much BTC is locked in public Lightning channels. An estimated 30% of channels are private, making it difficult to state the true value in the network. What we can see however, is that public capacity is growing.

When measured in USD, the network has taken a predictable hit with the overall BTC price decline. However, encouragingly, the amount of total Bitcoins in the network is hitting new all-time highs at over 4,500 BTC (around $100M).

More importantly, as adoption ticks upward, the ecosystem around Lightning is growing as well.

The Lightning stack

The Lightning protocol sits atop of Bitcoin. On top of Lighting, sits core infrastructure. On top of the core infrastructure, are a growing number of payment and financial services, as well as consumer applications.

Core infrastructure consists of Lightning implementations and node & liquidity services. Lightning implementations are the software programs that individuals and businesses can run to connect to the Lightning network — the largest being Lightning Labs’ LND with 70% of the market (as of 2020). Node and liquidity services host hardware, provide user-friendly interfaces, and help manage Lightning payment channels (running your own node is complex).

Built on top of the core infrastructure are a range of payment and financial services as well as consumer apps. For example, Strike is built on an LND implementation that lets users buy and sell BTC, tip creators on Twitter, and allow Shopify merchants to accept BTC.

Also built on core infrastructure, are a growing number of budding consumer use cases. Mash, for example, aims to disrupt the creator subscription model via streaming micropayments — think paying your favorite Twitch streamers a couple cents each minute you watch, rather than buying a one-size-fits-all subscription. Zebedee uses Lightning to enable in-game economies that reward players with small amounts of Bitcoin.

Growing accessibility & momentum

As the Lightning ecosystem steadily grows, so has the access that users have to the network. Between Cash App’s Lightning integration and El Salvador’s rollout of the Chivo wallet, access has exploded from 10M to 80M users (the success of El Salvador’s rollout has been mixed, with research suggesting that only 5% of sales in the country use BTC).

26 exchanges support Lightning as well, with Kraken, Bitfinex, and Bitstamp being among the most prominent. Robinhood also recently announced an integration for 20M+ users, and P2P marketplace Paxful offers support for its 7M+ users. Users of these exchanges can instantly and inexpensively deposit and withdraw bitcoin to and from any Lightning wallet, increasing the speed and lowering the cost compared to a typical BTC transaction.

Funding is picking up as well with OpenNode raising a Series A at a $220M valuation and Lightning Labs raising $70M for its Series B. Notably, former head of Meta’s crypto initiative David Marcus’s Lightspark, raised a Series A at an undisclosed amount to build Lightning infrastructure for companies, developers, and merchants.

Hurdles to adoption

The potential, funding, and momentum is there, however significant hurdles remain. Principally, the lack of developer tooling, demand for payment use cases, technical hurdles, onboarding challenges, as well as compliance and regulatory issues.

Developer tooling still needs to be built out to enable more user friendly applications. With most still treating BTC as an investment, we’re yet to see broad demand to use it for payments (use of Lightning rails for fiat payments remains a compelling opportunity). Despite progress from infrastructure companies, Lightning is still cumbersome for new users and merchants. Additionally, onboarding low income users in developing countries remains a major challenge to fulfilling the promise of Lightning remittances.

Lastly, the lack of compliance and regulatory frameworks limit the ability for existing payment and banking service providers to onboard and serve a global customer base.

Early days

After launching in 2018, it’s still early days for Lightning. With about $100M locked in the network, its size pales in comparison to Ethereum’s billion dollar layer-2 networks, Arbitrum and Optimism. Lightning payment activity, however, is more indicative of real world utility when compared to the more speculative activity driving much of the growth on smart contract platforms.

Humble beginnings aside, the potential to turn crypto’s most valuable asset into a true medium of exchange has the power to bring greater financial inclusion to anyone with a smartphone. The ability to cost effectively route fiat transactions over Lightning rails without users ever knowing they’re using Bitcoin can disrupt $150B+ a year industries.

What Visa/Mastercard is for fiat currencies, Lightning can be for Bitcoin. The combination of a universally accessible payment network atop the world’s first open-source protocol for money can help Bitcoin evolve into a true global reserve currency. Should it happen, look for developing countries with high inflation and more smartphones than bank accounts to lead the way.

When Coinbase?

This article should not be construed as an indication that Coinbase has imminent plans to add support for Lightning. Rather, a few employees at the company simply found its potential compelling enough to research, write, and share.

With that said, it’s hard not to be encouraged by the growth that the Lightning Network is showing — particularly over the past six months. It’s noteworthy that this growth is coming in a bear market, where Bitcoin fees are relatively low. In a future bull market, we could see Lightning activity spike as fees on the base chain rise, sending users looking for cheaper ways to transact.

If growth of the Lightning Network continues, it will have major implications on the future utility and value of the world’s oldest and most valuable digital asset.

H/T Nick Prince, Kevin Choe, and Yash Parikh for also helping inform this article.

For deeper reading on the Lightning Network, check out:

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Is the Bitcoin Lightning Network for real? was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Read more
Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Coinbase Ventures Q2 investment memo

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Bitcoin

Around the Block sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey, sourced from the work and insights from the entire team at Coinbase Ventures & Corp Dev

TLDR:

  • Coinbase Ventures deal activity reflected the overall pace of the venture landscape, down 34% QoQ. Activity remained up 68% YoY, reflecting the steady growth of our venture practice over the past year
  • Among the key trends observed, we believe that Web3 gaming will onboard the next massive wave of crypto users, with experienced founders from Web2 gaming continuing to pour into the space
  • We’re excited about Web3 user applications working to upend the captive models of Web2 and give users control over their audiences and communities
  • The Solana ecosystem continues to show impressive momentum and developer traction
  • Massive UX improvements are coming to crypto that will obfuscate away complexity and deliver experiences on par with Web2
  • The United States continues to be home to the bulk of companies in our portfolio, with Singapore, UK, Germany, and India all establishing impressive innovation hubs
  • Where CeFi lenders faltered this year, DeFi lending platforms were resilient
  • Current price action aside, we remain convinced that the opportunity within crypto and Web3 are far greater than most realize.

The first half of 2022 was turbulent for all markets. The Dow and S&P had their worst first halves since 1962 and 1970. The NASDAQ had its worst quarter since 2008. Bitcoin had its worst quarter since 2011, DeFi TVL ended down 70% from its high, and June NFT sales slumped to levels not seen in a year.

A core part of the crypto market chaos stemmed from the collapse of the $60B Terra ecosystem in May. This contributed to the implosion of a $10B crypto fund (Three Arrows Capital) that had leveraged exposure to Terra along with a few other trades that moved against them (GBTC, stETH). Next, it was revealed that Three Arrows Capital had borrowed heavily from some of the largest centralized lenders in crypto. Unable to recoup these loans, several of these lenders were forced into bankruptcy.

The macro market downturn seeped into the venture landscape as well.

Venture landscape

The broader venture market began to show signs of cooling in Q1, with total funding dropping for the first time since Q2 2019. That trend continued in Q2, with total venture funding dropping 23%, marking the largest dip in a decade. The quarter also saw later stage companies like Klarna raising down rounds; a further sign of the times.

Crypto venture funding still saw a record Q1, but as we wrote in our last letter, we’d already begun seeing signs of a slowdown that we expected to surface in Q2. Sure enough, data from John Dantoni at The Block showed that crypto venture funding dollars decreased 22%: the first down quarter in two years.

In Q2, Coinbase Ventures continued to rank among the most active investors in crypto, but also saw deal place slow, with the total count decreasing 34% QoQ, from 71 to 47. Despite the slowdown compared to the fervent pace of late 21 and Q1 22, our Q2 activity still increased 68% YoY; indicative of the overall growth of our venture practice.

The decline largely reflected the overall market conditions — with volatility in the markets, we saw many founders rethink or put their rounds on pause, particularly at the later stages. We’re seeing that many companies are foregoing a fundraise unless absolutely necessary, and even then, only if they feel confident that they can show the growth needed to justify a new round.

Gloomy macro environment aside, there are still plenty of high quality founders raising at the seed stage, where we’re most active. Looking beyond the price action at the areas that we invested in shows the range of real utility that’s continuing to be built and paints a promising picture of the future: one with a vibrant array of Web3 user applications, improved UX, robust DeFi markets, scalable L1/L2 ecosystems, and all of the tools developers need to build the next killer app.

Here’s how our activity broke down over Q2.

Now, let’s look at some themes that stood out. (* denotes Coinbase Ventures portfolio company)

The coming era of blockchain gaming

With the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of Axie Infinity activity, many pundits have been gleefully quick to dismiss blockchain gaming as a passing fad. As we wrote in September, Axie was experiencing a positive feedback loop that could turn negative should the fervor driving the game die down, which is ultimately what happened. Regardless, Axie posted nearly $1B in sales in a single month and attracted 2M DAUs with essentially zero marketing budget. This put the entire gaming world on notice to the power of this new vertical.

With an estimated 3.2B+ gamers in the world, we strongly believe that Web3 gaming will onboard the next massive wave of crypto users. Web3 gaming remained a sector of heavy investment in Q2, with The Block estimating that $2.6B+ was raised. Our activity over the last few quarters only strengthens our conviction.

As we saw in Q1, founders with strong track records in Web2 gaming continue to embrace this category. For example, Azra games*, was founded by the creators of the $1.4B+ mobile blockbuster Star Wars Galaxy Heroes. Their goal is to build a combat RPG game with a robust in-game economy that can still garner mainstream appeal. The space has also attracted Justin Kan, co-founder of the game streaming platform Twitch, which was sold to Amazon for $1B. Kan’s new company, Fractal*, is building a marketplace for NFT gaming assets.

Companies like Venly* will add fuel to the fire with a suite of tools that let Web2 game developers seamlessly make the leap into Web3. Established gaming powerhouses are even starting to come around, with Fortnite creator Epic Games now allowing NFT based games into its game store.

It will take some time for this sector to mature, but it’s growing increasingly clear that blockchain gaming will be a massive category in the future. Expect an increased focus on sustainable economics and gameplay that infuses NFTs with more familiar Web2 gaming experiences.

Rewiring Web2

Beyond gaming, the next generation of Web3 user applications are working to upend the captive models of Web2 and to give users control over their audiences and communities. One company we’re particularly excited about is Farcaster*: a sufficiently decentralized social network founded by Coinbase alumns Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan. Their early product resembles Twitter, but with the key difference of letting users own the relationship with their audiences.

Farcaster is an open protocol, similar to email (SMTP). While Farcaster has built the first social app on the protocol, other developers can build competing clients, just like we have Gmail and Apple iCloud. While you can’t take your Twitter followers with you to TikTok, someone could build a TikTok equivalent on the Farcaster protocol, and Farcaster users can take their followers with them to a new, differentiated platform. Not only can users maintain better ownership of their audience, but it also opens the door for more aligned monetization. Where most advertising spend goes directly to Twitter, Instagram, etc, Farcaster users with large followings can monetize their audiences directly across platforms.

Another investment we’re excited about is Highlight.xyz*, which sits at the burgeoning intersection of Web3 and music. Highlight will let musicians create their own web3-enabled fanclubs / communities (no coding necessary), complete with token gating, access to NFT airdrops, merchandise and more. Highlight joins other CBV portcos like Audius*, Sound.xyz*, Mint Songs*, and Royal*, all offering musicians new avenues for connecting with and monetizing their fanbases.

All told, we remain excited about Web3’s potential to reimagine entrenched Web2 models for social media, music, and more, and ultimately return power to creators.

Solana sunrise

Noticeable in our Q2 activity was the continued momentum behind the Solana ecosystem. While Ethereum and the EVM remain king as far as developer traction and compatible apps, we’re noting a clear trend in early teams placing importance on Solana. All in, we did 10 deals building on Solana in Q2.

Source: Messari

Given that Solana smart contracts are coded in Rust as opposed to the EVM’s Solidity, founding teams often choose between building in one or the other. Increasingly, we’re seeing teams opt to support both the EVM and Solana from the onset — like recent additions in Coherent and Moralis. We’ve seen others start on EVM and opt to fully transition to Solana while the above mentioned Fractal opted to build on Solana from the onset.

Add in the fact that multiple large funds have publicly expressed support for the ecosystem, and it suggests that Solana’s staying power is real. Chain liveliness however (the ability for Solana to remain online) remains an issue that is paramount for the Solana team to solve.

The UX of Everything

An overall clunky and disjointed crypto user experience has long been a hurdle for adoption. Think of what a user has to do to execute a typical transaction: convert fiat to crypto, transfer crypto to a wallet, bridge crypto to their network of choice, and then finally execute a transaction.

In Q2, we’ve invested in multiple teams (not yet announced) working on streamlining and verticalizing the entire retail transaction journey. Soon developers building in crypto and Web3 will be able to deploy the entire transaction stack with a few simple lines of code and standard set of APIs.

The end result will be a future where, for example, a user can execute a DEX transaction in a single click. In the background, fiat will be converted into crypto, moved to a wallet, bridged to an L1/L2, before executing the swap and custodying the asset in their wallet of choice. All of the complexity will be obfuscated away and we’ll have user experiences on par with Web2 — a massive unlock.

Where are the buidlers?

This quarter we took a look at where the founding teams we’ve invested in are based. While crypto is a global industry, somewhat unsurprisingly, the largest concentration of our founding teams hail from the United States — home to 64% of our 356 portfolio companies; all the more reason for regulators to foster rather than inhibit this fast growing sector.

Singapore has established itself as the base of many of the teams building in Asia. Meanwhile, the UK and Germany are home to growing hubs, with policy makers proactively working towards regulatory clarity. We continue to be impressed by founding teams in India, who we expect to play a major role in the future of crypto adoption (CBV portfolio company Frontier, with 30 engineers in India has built a wonderful mobile-first DeFi aggregator supporting 20+ chains and 45+ protocols).

This quarter, we were also excited to back five teams founded by former Coinbase employees, including the aforementioned Coherent and Farcaster, as well as three others not yet announced. We’re proud to continue to support employees who receive a world class crypto education at Coinbase and go on to found world class companies and projects.

Wrapping up

While there’s plenty to be excited about in the future, there are also plenty of lessons to be learned in the present. The current crypto crises is similar to those we’ve seen play out in traditional finance. The opaqueness that centralized lenders and Three Arrows Capital operated under resulted in an inability for lenders to properly evaluate the risk of their counterparties. Lenders didn’t know how much the others had lent to 3AC, nor did they know how much leverage and risk 3AC was taking on. Investors didn’t know how much risk they were exposed to altogether. When the market moved against both the lenders and 3AC, lenders were left with massive holes in their balance sheets, and investors were left holding the bag.

However in contrast to the centralized lenders facing insolvency, it’s important to note that blue chip DeFi lenders Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO operated without a hitch. Every loan and its terms remained transparently on-chain for all to see. When collateralization levels fell below thresholds, collateral was sold via autonomous code and lenders were paid back. This same code also dictated that Celsius was forced to pay back $400M in loans to Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO — no court order needed (though overcollaterization played a role). All told, it served as a powerful proving point for decentralized finance.

That’s just to say that it may be easy to get discouraged by the current price action while forgetting just how far we’ve come in a short period. When the last bear market hit, the most popular user application was Crypto Kitties. These days, there are more profound, impactful innovations than we can count. DeFi, NFTs, a rich DAO ecosystem, all came about in the last two years, and even came together to make a real impact on the world stage. Meanwhile, layer2 scaling solutions are finally here, and can take us from the dial-up to broadband phase, capable of supporting a rich array of user applications with simple UX to boot.

As in previous downturns, detractors are once again confidently pronouncing crypto dead. However, from our seat in the industry, we’re invigorated by the brilliant founders we see working tirelessly to move this technology forward. As the entire financial system and world digitizes itself, we remain convinced that the opportunity within crypto and Web3 are far greater than most realize.

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Coinbase Ventures Q2 investment memo was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Coinbase Ventures Q1 recap and market outlook

Coinbase

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey

TLDR:

  • Despite the market downturn, Q1 was another highly active quarter for crypto venture funding.
  • On the infrastructure side, we’re seeing a ton of activity within cross-chain solutions and DAO tooling. New layer-1s are still being incubated.
  • Familiar DeFi primitives developed on Ethereum are expanding into newer layer 1s, and Polkadot is picking up steam.
  • NFT projects are focused on bringing more utility to the space, with Yuga Labs making serious waves over the quarter.
  • The rise of Axie Infinity has attracted successful traditional gaming devs to build in Web3, with South East Asia emerging as a hotbed of activity.

After peaking in November 2021, liquid crypto markets fell into the new year and more or less treaded water in Q1. The private markets, however, kept up the torrid pace set last year.

According to data from The Block, Q1 2022 saw a record of $12.5 billion in venture funding — a figure that has increased for seven consecutive quarters. Coinbase Ventures was busy as well, closing 71 new deals in Q1, generally targeting early stage investments. We will note that we’re starting to see signs of a slow down, particularly with later stage investments, that will likely be visible in our Q2 activity.

Deal volume is a reflection of the continued influx of new companies and projects being formed in the space. This is aided by the low startup costs that crypto & Web3 companies enjoy thanks to open-source code and the ability to bootstrap or self-fund via token issuance.

CBV overview

As a refresh:

  • Coinbase Ventures advances crypto & Web3 by partnering with exceptional founders who share Coinbase’s mission of creating more economic freedom for the world.
  • We’ve been recognized as one of the most active corporate VCs in the world by deal count.
  • Ventures partners with founding teams at the earliest stages and throughout their journey. We invest across all categories within the cryptoeconomy, seeking to align ourselves with the best and brightest minds in the space.
  • To date, we’ve invested in 300+ teams building everything from layer 1 protocols, Web3 infrastructure, centralized on-ramps, decentralized finance, NFTs, metaverse technologies, developer tooling, and more.

We generally break down our investments across six categories. Within these six categories, here’s how our activity shook out in Q1 ‘22.

Given that we invest in projects in their infancy, our activity can offer a lens into what the industry has in store in the near future. With that, let’s dive into some of the trends and themes that we identified in Q1.

Cross-chain & Web3 infrastructure bloom

In the early days of crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum dominated. With new layer 1s coming online in recent years, ecosystems outside of BTC/ETH have exploded, and there are now more than 10 chains hosting over $1B in value.

The growing value across multiple networks has brought an increasing need for value on one chain to flow to another. As such, we’re continuing to see cross-chain infrastructure being built out to facilitate activity between blockchains (CBV Q1 investments: LayerZero, ZK Link, LiFi, Foxchain, Socket, Composable Finance).

Even with the multi-chain future assured, we’re still seeing new experimental layer 1s in development. Our investments in Aptos (general purpose L1 from former Diem employees), Celestia (modular blockchains), and Subspace (Proof-of-Archival consensus) suggest that the industry is not done innovating at the base layer. It also begs the question — will the dominant layer 1s of today someday be usurped? Time will tell.

Further up the stack, there’s more tooling on the way to help DAOs and Web3 communities flourish. Solutions for payroll (Diagonal, Zebec), social engagement & networking (Taki, Backdrop, Bonfire), and commerce (Rain) all point to a future where these online communities can coordinate more seamlessly.

DeFi’s multi-chain proliferation

Speaking of the multi-chain world, we’re seeing familiar patterns emerge across these burgeoning layer 1 networks. Basically, Ethereum set the tone for the foundational apps and protocols needed for an ecosystem to thrive: an AMM (Uniswap), money markets (Compound/Aave), an oracle (Chainlink), and yield aggregators (Yearn.Finance) to name a few.

For an emerging layer 1 to compete, teams understand they’ll need those same foundational primitives. As such, it’s becoming common to see Ethereum’s DeFi building blocks replicated across layer 1s like Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, Polkadot, etc. Betting on these foundational protocols is a good way to gain exposure to a broader ecosystem: a playbook we followed in Q1.

For example, from our Q1 investments, Aurigami on NEAR and Solend on Solana resemble Compound. Katana and Francium on Solana resemble Yearn.finance. Redstone resembles Chainlink, leveraging Arweave for cheaper storage to offer oracle services to longer tail tokens and NFT data feeds. And while these projects resemble apps first created on Ethereum, they’re each innovating in unique and differentiated ways.

Polkadot Cometh

Elsewhere in DeFiland, we were particularly active in the Polkadot ecosystem in Q1. With the long-awaited launch of Polkadot parachains arriving at the end of 2021, we’re seeing momentum around DOT pickup steam.

You can think of Polkadot as a network that you can launch layer 1s on top of. Each of these layer 1s, called parachains, are capable of interoperating with one another. With parachains live, Polkadot is now capable of hosting user applications.

We’ve now invested in 4 of the 5 live parachains (Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, and Astar) and waded deeper into the DOT waters in Q1 with investments in Composable Finance, Satori, and Coinbase alum Luke Youngblood’s new project: Moonwell.

NFT expansion pack

After a breakout summer, NFT sales have come back down to earth a bit from their earlier highs. Below the surface, however, innovation is more vibrant than ever.

Where NFT activity in 2021 centered around simple buying and selling (aka flippin’ JPEGs), the next wave of projects are building utility around NFTs. NiftyApes and PawnFi, for example, are working to bring liquidity to NFT holders by letting them take out loans collateralized by their NFTs. Platforms like Cymbal aim to bring more community and social features around NFT ownership.

Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, made waves this quarter by raising at a $4B valuation to build a BAYC branded metaverse. Next, they acquired the IP rights to NFT collections CryptoPunks and Meebits. They capped it off by announcing a movie trilogy (produced by Coinbase) where BAYC NFT holders can submit their NFTs to be cast in the films and get paid a licensing fee — an interesting new experiment with on-chain licensing.

GameFi 2.0

Blockchain based gaming had its coming out party in 2021 centered around the rise of Axie Infinity. Sales of Axie Infinity NFTs peaked at a staggering $848M in August before falling precipitously. (Note that despite the obvious trend reversal and a major hack, Axie still posted a respectable $30M in March NFT sales).

Axie’s multi-billion dollar run was enough to put the entire gaming world on notice and the next wave of blockchain based games have been quietly raising ever since. Notably, many of the teams raising have track records building highly successful mobile, web, and AAA games (Clockwork Labs, Block Tackle, Summoners Arena, Third Time, Avalon).

The blockchain based games of the future will infuse crypto NFTs into more familiar Web2 gaming formats — MMORPGs, FPS, MOBA etc. Other CBV portfolio companies like Joyride will make it easier for game devs to integrate crypto/NFTs into existing titles.

At present, South East Asia is establishing itself as the center of the crypto-gaming world, led by the Philippines and Vietnam, among others. We’re particularly excited by developments in this region and the progress of Vietnamese based gaming guild and CBV portfolio company Ancient8.

Ventures outlook

Amidst a shaky macro picture, many crypto investors are on edge. More frequently, we’re getting asked how the market downturn will affect CB Ventures’ activity. To date, there’s no shortage of high quality entrepreneurs building in crypto and Web3. It isn’t however unreasonable to expect a slowdown should prices continue to sag, similar to what’s been observed in broader venture funding (down 19% QoQ). Regardless, our strategy won’t change much.

It bears reminding that some of the most successful projects of today were funded during the bear market of 2018/19. In that light, our early investments in projects like Compound, OpenSea, Polygon, Arweave, Starkware, Blockfi, NEAR, and Messari among others come to mind. As such, we’ll continue to invest in quality founders and projects moving the industry forward regardless of broader market conditions.

It also bears repeating just how much the investible Web3 landscape has broadened: DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, metaverses, and gaming are all evolving across a rich array of layer 1s. Then there’s cross-chain infrastructure to stitch all together as well layer-2 solutions to help it all scale. Not to mention a thousand other ideas not yet dreamed up. In other words, there’s more than enough innovation taking place to keep the CB Ventures’ team busy indefinitely.

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Coinbase Ventures Q1 recap and market outlook was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Crypto’s emergence as a geopolitical force

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12AOdx755kGofHDkNPBTGR72g-1
Bitcoin

Examining crypto’s usage in Ukraine, sanctions, and the Biden Executive Order

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey

There’s a gravitational shift taking place within our industry. Since Russia’s shocking invasion of Ukraine, crypto has been:

  • used to crowdfund tens of millions for the Ukrainian defense
  • incorrectly speculated as a viable avenue for the Russian government to evade sanctions
  • the focus of a historic Executive Order put forward by the Biden administration

At this point, one thing is clear: this technology is a major emerging force in the geopolitical landscape. In this edition of Around The Block, we examine crypto in a geopolitical context, along with the difficult questions the world is asking.

An email address for money

In the aftermath of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, crypto’s power for coordinating economic activity was put on full display once the official Ukrainian twitter account tweeted out a plea for aid, accompanied with two long strings of letters and digits.

These long strings of characters were the Bitcoin and Ethereum addresses of the Ukrainian government, and the tweet represents the first time a nation state has ever sought aid directly in crypto. At a time when the Ukrainian government and banking sites were being flooded with DDoS (denial of service) attacks, and crowdfunding platforms were deplatforming organizations raising aid for Ukraine, the utility of permissionless, borderless networks for sending money was vividly illustrated.

At this time of writing, the Ukrainian government has collected over $50M in Bitcoin, ETH, ERC-20 stablecoins, and in other assets like DOT, DAI, and even Dogecoin.

The Ukrainian government has said that it has been using the funds to buy military supplies including bullet-proof vests, drones, gasoline, and night vision goggles. What’s more interesting is that 40% of suppliers have accepted payment in crypto.

Many have pointed out the oddity of private citizens from around the world essentially crowdfunding a war effort. Yet another sign of just how unprecedented all of this is.

NFTs enter the fold

Fungible crypto assets weren’t the only donations to pour into the Ukrainian government’s crypto wallet. NFT enthusiasts also answered the call, donating over 200 pieces of digital art work and even ENS addresses. Most notably, a rare CryptoPunk worth an estimated $200,000 was donated.

What’s interesting is that since the ownership provenance of the CryptoPunk will forever be associated with the defense of Ukraine, this added historical significance could raise its value over the long term.

The NFT aid didn’t stop there, as they were also combined with another crypto primitive to support the defense of Ukraine: DAOs.

UkraineDAO

Decentralized autonomous organizations were cast into the limelight last year after ConstitutionDAO crowdsourced $40M in under a week in a bid to buy one of the original copies of the US Constitution. While the bid ultimately failed, it underscored the power that these software enabled organizations have for coordinating economic activity at the speed of the internet.

After a Ukrainian NGO (non-government organization) supporting the war effort called Come Back Alive was de-platformed from crowdfunding platform Patreon for supporting military activity, they also turned to crypto. Shortly thereafter, UkraineDAO was created to help support this NGO.

The DAO minted a 1:1 NFT of the Ukrainian flag and put it up on PartyBid, which allows groups to pool funds to buy NFTs. In essence, the DAO created its own NFT, crowdsourced as much money as they could to buy it from themselves and then donated the proceeds to Come Back Alive. All told, they raised $6.7M. They also distributed commemorative “valueless” tokens called LOVE to those who donated.

Crypto on the main stage

Between the Ukrainian government and various NGOs, over $80M and counting in aid has been raised. While in the grand scheme of things this amount is a nominal sum not likely to turn the tides of war, it’s also far from insignificant. The sum represents over 20% of the $350M pledged by the Biden administration and is a powerful display of the promise that decentralized, borderless money holds.

Slowmist, where we’re pulling this data, also noted that when you factor in other organizations and cryptocurrencies they’re not tracking, the full figure is likely over $100M. The Giving Block, for example, raised over $2.3M in crypto donations for over 20 non-profits supporting Ukrainian relief.

Beyond support of the Ukrainian government and organizations, crypto has also proven useful for individual Ukrainians affected by the crisis. One Ukrainian who fled to Kazakhstan reported that he lost access to his savings and that his credit cards were no longer functioning, leaving crypto as his only financial life raft: yet another example of the utility of permissionless finance.

At their core, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like are neutral technologies that anyone with an internet connection can use. While we celebrate the use of these neutral technologies to help a nation defend itself against a foreign invader and as a lifeline for refugees, it also begs the question: what about their use by those on the other side of the conflict? Principally, the Russian government.

The burning question

Western governments responded to Russian aggression with unprecedented sanctions against the Russian government. This coincided with widespread narratives surrounding the potential for cryptocurrencies to be used to circumvent those very sanctions.

Before we examine the fact or fiction behind these claims, it helps to understand what these sanctions entail.

Russian sanctions

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, governments around the world, including the U.S., have imposed sanctions targeting the Central Bank of Russia, major Russian commercial banks and companies, Vladimir Putin, Russian elites, among others. In aggregate, these sanctions cut targeted individuals and entities off from international banking and in many instances, freezes their assets.

Among the most substantial sanctions imposed was kicking major Russian banks out of SWIFT, which is the financial network used by over 11,000 banks and institutions to move trillions of dollars across borders. This severely limits Russia’s ability to receive payments for oil and gas: their main export. For context, when Iranian banks were banned from SWIFT in 2012, and sanctions were imposed on Iranian oil purchasers, Iran lost nearly half of its oil export revenue and 30% of its foreign trade.

The most drastic sanction is from the US, UK, and EU banning transactions with the Russian Central Bank. The Russian Central Bank holds roughly $630B in the form of the world’s major reserve currencies — the dollar, euro, pound, yuan — as well as 2,300 tons of gold. With this sanction, Russia suddenly has no one to sell its reserves to, rendering its entire stockpile useless.

Is crypto their answer?

We’ve seen public speculation on how crypto could be used to evade those sanctions. However, that speculation has been unfounded as the crypto market is simply not large enough to help Russia meaningfully circumvent them.

Consider the Russian Central Bank’s $630B in immobilized assets. That’s 85% of Bitcoin’s market cap and larger than the rest of the crypto market put together. Converting that much fiat into crypto would take 5–10x the total daily traded volume of all digital assets, so the liquidity just isn’t there.

Additionally, as our Chief Legal Officer previously pointed out, trying to obscure large transactions using open and transparent crypto technology would be far more difficult than other established methods (e.g., using fiat, art, gold, or other assets).

The Biden Executive Order

As crypto played a significant role in the defense of Ukraine, it was also cast into the fore of the American political system. Late last week, the Biden Administration published its long awaited Executive Order on digital asset regulation.

The Executive Order simply directed federal agencies to study the benefits and risks of digital assets, as opposed to putting any immediate legislation into action. On one hand, many were pleasantly surprised with the optimistic tone of the EO, as it acknowledged crypto and Web3 technologies as critical for the future of U.S. national economic competitiveness. On the other, the report focused more on the potential risks of crypto rather than its societal benefits.

The EO calls on a total of 23 federal government agencies, organizations, and White House Offices to assemble huge reports on the risks stemming from crypto. This outsized focus on risk, when compared to past EOs, has caused some people to worry that the Biden Administration doesn’t fully recognize the power and potential of digital assets, even as that power is being plainly demonstrated on the world stage.

While the EO may have felt like a milestone, it is ultimately the start of a long road ahead. One in which the whole of the US government will finally seek to fully understand the importance of this technology. It is critical that the government fully explores not only the risks, but also the benefits that digital assets bring, with enough transparency to allow the public to weigh-in on a federal approach to regulation.

Ultimately, this presents a tremendous opportunity for the industry to engage with regulators about how to best embrace the transformational nature of crypto and Web3 technologies.

Closing thought

To sum it all up, regardless of how you feel about crypto’s application in funding a war effort or the increased attention it’s receiving from the most powerful government in the world, it’s apparent that we’ve entered uncharted territory: this next phase of crypto adoption will look drastically different from the last.

ATB Podcast: Crypto’s Role in the Ukraine Crisis with Elliptic’s Dr. Tom Robinson

https://medium.com/media/1aa83504a739e7cf4d72f5c8f7d9f41b/href

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Crypto’s emergence as a geopolitical force was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Ventures’ Takeaways from ETH Denver

Coinbase
12AN1j8xsABE9TtmeGzhAmMDQ
coinbase

The last time ETH Denver was held in person, ETH’s market cap stood at $30B, DeFi hadn’t had its breakout summer, and few people outside of the 6,000 attendees knew what an NFT was. Fast forward to 2022 and a 10x in ETH’s market cap, the rise of NFTs, a DAO resurgence, and a year where Ethereum did more transactional volume than Visa, a record crowd of 12,000 in Colorado were met with an entirely different energy.

What had historically been an event for hackers and coders received an infusion of artists and creatives, as well as a governor, a former presidential candidate, and a heavy dose of EDM — a reflection of Ethereum and crypto’s growing awareness within the mainstream.

Despite the new faces, ETH Denver retained its authentic quirky disposition, complete with bright neon colors and Vitalik dressed as a “Bufficorn”. Beyond a lone Doge Lambo, the main event was mostly free of flash and still felt authentically Ethereum.

Attendee sentiment

Even amidst a 50% market drawdown from late November highs and multi-hour long check-ins in the frigid cold, builder energy was sky high. Where Ethereum was still finding its footing during last ETH Denver, this year’s event featured heavy discussion across all of the new verticals thriving today: DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, gaming, and more.

It was also apparent just how much private capital is still flowing into crypto, undeterred by macro market headwinds: with seed stage deals raising at a minimum $50M and seed token rounds going for $100M+ (no shipped code needed), one might argue too much. In either case, it’s clearly a builders market.

Real Politik

In addition to investor and builder excitement, there was also a noticeable presence from mainstream politicians: most notably, Colorado Governor Jared Polis and the Forward Party’s Andrew Yang. With crypto and Web3’s growing popularity, it seems many in government are seeing the upside to embracing this emerging constituency.

In addition to posing with Vitalik, Gov. Polis announced during the conference that Colorado will accept crypto as payment for taxes in addition to making Colorado, “the first digital state” with favorable regulations for the crypto economy. This mirrors the positions of other crypto-forward governors like Miami’s Francis Suarez and New York’s Eric Adams.

Photo credit: Westword

In a surprise appearance, Andrew Yang took the stage with Bankless’s David Hoffman, sharing his thoughts on why Web3 represents “the biggest anti-povery opportunity of our time.” His appearance came on the heels of his Lobby3 initiative, which will advocate for thoughtful regulation in Washington to support crypto innovation.

All of the while, Biden’s executive order on crypto regulation loomed large (however if you bumped into CoinCenter’s Neeraj he would have told you that the EO is nothing to panic over). Either way, it’s clear that crypto has entered the fore of the American political discussion.

NFT Mania

Beyond the bullish builder sentiment, private investor froth, and political participation, NFTs were everywhere in Denver. NFT art installations, musicians performing with their NFTs on display, and some events even requiring NFTs to gain entry (shoutout ecodao).

POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) NFTs, which give people digital mementos commemorating attendance of a particular event by scanning a QR code, were particularly pervasive. The inventive ways different projects found to engage via POAPs suggests that they may be the next mainstream crypto community use case.

If you were mingling at any of the NFT centric events, odds are you bumped into a former FAANG employee newly entering the NFT space. A sign that despite the macro market downturn, NFT mania is still in full swing and the brain drain from Web2 to Web3 continues.

Signs of DAObt

Following a year that saw ConstitutionDAO capture global attention, DAOs have regained much of the crypto limelight. Conference booths were packed with projects building DAO infrastructure and discussions on how decentralized autonomous can rewire the world were prevalent.

While DAO enthusiasm was evident, many noted that DAO participants were starting to show signs of fatigue with many DAOs struggling to retain contributors. Joseph Delong, former CTO of SushiSwap who notably left the decentralized project, gave a memorable talk on why DAOs simply need more structure to be effective (also discussed in our recent podcast with Orca Protocol’s Julia Rosenberg).

With over 1B in startup equity for DAO tooling and under 200 DAOs, it begs the question: is there enough DAO to go around?

The long term outlook of DAOs seems to be bright, but the industry is still grappling with how exactly DAOs should function. Given that there’s no standardization around DAO operation, it’s hard to know what tools they actually need. As such, the DAO infrastructure sector will likely see a lot of turbulence over the near to medium term.

The Merge

After years in the making, experts stated that Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake is expected to happen in Q2 or Q3 this year. As a quick refresh, Ethereum’s PoS chain (the beacon chain) has been operational since December 2020, however all applications still live on the proof of work chain. The merge basically consists of migrating these applications to the PoS chain.

As such, the merge was a major point of discussion for devs this year. If all goes well, ETH holders won’t have to do anything, but developers and infrastructure providers are in preparation mode. This includes running testnets and conducting dry runs in anticipation for the real thing.

The Ethereum ecosystem is making a big bet on PoS in conjunction with layer 2 scaling solutions (rollups). In a post-merge world, Ethereum will transition to become a settlement layer for large transactions while most user activity is pushed to layer 2. This will create an environment where all EVM compatible layer 1s compete with ETH L2s for users and developer mindshare.

Also prepping for the merge, is Coinbase Cloud, which powers a portion of Coinbase’s ETH staking product as well as node infrastructure for many players in the space. Cloud developers showed up in force hosting a hackathon, a variety of panels, workshops, and a party for over 500 attendees. Learn more about how Coinbase Cloud is thinking about client diversity ahead of the merge here.

A builders market

In the days since ETH Denver wrapped, the market drawdown intensified as Russia escalated the situation in Ukraine. While crypto has rebounded, markets will likely remain shaky given the uncertainty of the current geopolitical situation. Regardless, teams building the next generation of Ethereum and Web3 remain well funded and the building will continue.

As evident by the increased diversity of both projects and participants at this year’s conference, what gets built on Ethereum will keep venturing out in a myriad of new exciting directions.

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Justin Mart

Top Reads & talks from ETH Denver

Top tweets on ETH Denver

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Ventures’ Takeaways from ETH Denver was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Vampire attack! LooksRare vs. OpenSea

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Analyzing a new contender for NFT marketplace dominance

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey, Justin Mart, & Mike Cohen (WE’RE HIRING)

Only in crypto can a platform built by anonymous founders come out of nowhere to challenge an industry leader, all in a matter of weeks.

That’s precisely what happened with the launch of NFT marketplace LooksRare, whose $9B+ in January volume nearly tripled that of OpenSea. On top of that, within 30 days of launch LooksRare produced $307M in protocol revenue, vs OpenSea’s $110M over the same period.

https://medium.com/media/d038b0dfd1a72181a239aae83dc21786/href

The raw numbers don’t tell the full story, however…

In this edition of Around The Block, we’ll explore the LooksRare vampire attack of industry leading NFT marketplace OpenSea.

The OG vampire attack

Vampire attacks are purely a crypto/Web3 phenomena. At their highest level, a vampire attack refers to a method for sucking users out of an existing platform into a competing one by offering some kind of incentive (typically tokens).

The most notorious vampire attack occurred in 2020, when SushiSwap launched a near identical decentralized exchange to industry leading Uniswap with one key difference: users who migrated their liquidity from Uniswap to Sushiswap were given $SUSHI tokens. $SUSHI offered holders governance rights over the platform in addition to a cut of trading fees collected on SushiSwap.

The result? Uniswap’s liquidity temporarily took a nosedive, as users moved $1.2B in funds over to Sushiswap to cash in on the superior incentives being offered. Uniswap eventually recovered and responded with a token launch of their own, but a new DEX was bootstrapped over a relatively short period of time.

LooksRare’s vampire attack

LooksRare followed the typical vampire attack playbook which is as follows:

  1. Identify industry leader
  2. Build competing, yet strategically differentiated platform
  3. Offer superior incentive for users who migrate over

The main difference between SushiSwap’s attack and LooksRare’s is that SushiSwap was a near identical copy of Uniswap’s code (known as a fork) with token incentives built on top. LooksRare appears to have built their own smart contracts (according to their documents); everything else in the playbook is the same:

  1. Identify industry leader: in this case, it’s OpenSea by a country mile.
  2. Build a competing, yet differentiated platform: looksrare.org.
  3. Offer superior incentives for users to migrate: meet the $LOOKS token.

A $LOOK at the initial incentives

Due to the open-sourced nature of blockchains, the LooksRare team was able to identify OpenSea users who had traded at least 3 ETH worth of NFTs over the prior six months and airdrop them LOOKS tokens. However to claim these free tokens, users first had to list an NFT on the LooksRare exchange.

Airdropping tokens to an existing community of active NFT traders proved effective, as NFTs flooded onto the new marketplace. The LOOKS token would climb to nearly $7 just 10 days after launch, fetching a $1B marketcap in the process.

And the incentives didn’t stop there…

MOAR Incentives

Beyond the initial airdrop, users of the LooksRare platform could earn more tokens by staking their LOOKS and by trading NFTs on the platform. LooksRare charges a 2% fee for every sale (vs. 2.5% on OpenSea), and staking (locking LOOKS into a smart contract) entitles stakers to 100% of those fees. Stakers also earn additional LOOKS on top of trading fees.

At the time of writing, staking LOOKS earns an eye-popping 500%+ APR.

The trading incentives is where things start to get interesting. It’s pretty simple: buy or sell an NFT on LooksRare and earn LOOKS. Rewards are paid out daily, based on the % of that day’s volume. Currently 2.8M LOOKS, or just under $10M USD at current prices, are being awarded daily.

So far, a free airdrop was enough to get people to the platform, and a $10M daily reward has been enough to keep daily trading volumes outpacing OpenSea. However, when you look the total daily # of users, it’s clear that these volumes aren’t as impressive as they initially appear.

Wash trading

While LooksRare is doubling OpenSea’s volume on any given day, OpenSea has 20–40 times more active users than LooksRare. This suggests that LooksRare’s volume is fueled by a small number of traders gaming the incentive system to earn LOOKS.

There’s nothing stopping a user from swapping the same NFT back and forth between their own wallets at a high dollar amount. Since daily rewards are paid out as a % of the day’s volume, if, for example, someone can wash trade their way to 10% of that day’s volume, they can net $1 million in LOOKS.

The wrinkle here is that for every trade, users must pay a 2% fee priced in ETH. The math works out such that the fees traders are paying in ETH are roughly equal to the rewards being paid in LOOKS. As such, traders are basically swapping ETH for LOOKS, which will pay off should the price of LOOKS appreciate relative to the price of ETH.

Essentially, there’s an interesting bit of game theory in motion, as early adopters will be rewarded should the LooksRare platform succeed.

Beyond wash trading

At this point, no one would dispute that LooksRare’s staggering volumes are a result of their lucrative incentive scheme. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that LooksRare is all hat and no cattle.

At the end of January, Crypto Slam estimated that about $8B of the $9B in January volume was washtrading. However, the remaining legitimate NFT volume is still more than what NFT marketplaces Rarible, SuperRare, Foundation, Makersplace, and Aysnc did in all of 2021 combined.

Even with washtrading eliminated, LooksRare’s launch can still be considered a success. Plus they offer other interesting and novel features such as no transaction fees for private sales and the ability to make a single offer across an entire collection of NFTs. Lastly, their “real volume” is continuing to grow.

Is it sustainable?

LooksRare’s trading rewards will wind down over the course of the next two years, at which point the marketplace will have to compete on its product and community alone. Whether it can continue to grow its market share without powerful incentives is up to the anonymous team behind it.

We can look to its vampire attacking predecessor, SushiSwap, for a glimpse into what the future may hold. SushiSwap by many measures has remained relevant after its initial rewards dried up. They continued to innovate and deploy across multiple chains, with nearly $5B in TVL today.

However, usurp Uniswap they did not. Uniswap eventually launched a token of its own (there’s speculation that OpenSea may one day do the same) and has maintained its standing as crypto’s dominant DEX with over $7.5B in TVL today. It’s also worth noting that no contentious hard fork (Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, etc) or vampire attacker (SushiSwap, Swerve, etc) has ever supplanted an incumbent.

While Sushiswap has enjoyed success, it has had its fair share of struggles as well. Community infighting between the core team and Sushi token holders led to the exit of several high profile team members, including the project’s CTO. Once LooksRare hands governance over to LOOKS holders, it will likely be reminded of how nascent and messy DAO governance truly is.

Lastly, for LooksRare users, it bears mentioning that anon teams always come with rugpull risk. On top of that, LooksRare’s smart contracts launched unaudited and without a public GitHub repo — so trader beware.

Top analysis on LooksRare and past vampire attacks

Top tweets on LooksRare

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Vampire attack! LooksRare vs. OpenSea was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Crypto’s 69 most interesting charts from 2021

Coinbase
12AQioVpQhV8qEaX4I617fk0Q
coinbase

As most of us were enjoying some R&R over Christmas break, Coinbase Cloud protocol specialist Elias Simos was scouring the web for the most interesting crypto charts of 2021: 69 of them to be exact.

In the latest Around The Block podcast, we sit down with Elias and discuss some of the most interesting data points from the year, and what it all means for the future. (High level takeaways below)

https://medium.com/media/7b9a66be5a63161f98b8f7001a2394bc/href

Metaverse and smart contract assets outperform

Price isn’t everything, but the two top performing assets in 2021 are indicative of broader trends throughout the year. 2021’s best performing assets were:

  • Metaverse gaming tokens
  • Smart contract platform tokens

The governance tokens of gaming worlds Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND) each posted 16,000 and 13,000 percent gains respectively. Meanwhile, platform tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, all posted 8,000% gains or more.

Given that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout year, and layer 1s not named Ethereum saw strong adoption, these trends should be of no surprise. Now let’s dig a bit deeper.

The state of Layer 1s

Ethereum’s native token (ETH) did a modest 2X over the year, while it was somewhat of a rough year for Ethereum DeFi blue chips, with the DeFiPulse index down 80% over the year vs ETH.

The price of DeFi assets doesn’t tell the entire story, however. TVL of Ethereum DeFi applications showed tremendous growth over the year, and the number of unique Ethereum addresses interacting with DeFi protocols 4x’ed.

DefiLlama and Decentral Park Capital

Regardless, ETH killers and sidechains won the year when measured by growth of overall market share.

DefiLlama and Decentral Park Capital

The great migration & the EVM standard

In May, there was $200M sitting in Ethereum bridges. That number climbed to $20B by the end of the year, underscoring the great migration of value from Ethereum to other ecosystems.

The flipside, however, is that despite this migration away from Ethereum, most value still sits in EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible environments.

Remember that the EVM is essentially the brain of Ethereum that performs computations for the network. When other Layer 1s adopt the EVM, it makes deploying existing applications on new networks easier for developers, in addition to making it easier for users to migrate to these new chains.

The dominance of value on EVM compatible chains (Avalanche, Polygon, etc) suggest that a standard is forming around the EVM. This should ultimately keep Ethereum as the gravitational center of the smart contracting world, as ETH applications and assets will be natively interoperable with most other chains.

Rise of the app chains

While EVM chains still dominate the landscape, the end of 2021 saw a rise in value on Tendermint chains. Recall that Tendermint is a standard popularized by Cosmos, that lets developers build application specific blockchains that are capable of interoperating with one another.

Building app-specific chains in the past came with significant opportunity cost, because they were cut off from most liquidity and users. With the growth of Tendermint chains like Osmosis (AMM), Umee (lending), and Stargaze (NFTs), that’s becoming less of an issue.

Now that these app specific chains have a widening array of use cases and liquidity that they can interoperate with, look for more builders to take advantage of customizability that these chains offer in 2022.

The ENS airdrop + DAOs

In 2021, ENS reminded everyone of Web3’s native user acquisition strategy: the airdrop.

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) addresses are best thought of as email addresses that you can send money to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years in development, the project shifted to a DAO model, and airdropped ENS governance tokens to every user with an ENS address.

After the drop in November, awareness of ENS and registration of .eth addresses skyrocketed.

Dune Analytics, matoken.eth

Since the ENS DAO treasury collects revenue from new .eth registrations, revenue for the newly minted ENS DAO treasury ramped up significantly: another testament to how much a well orchestrated airdrop can move the needle.

Dune Analytics, matoken.eth

Beyond ENS, DAOs had a strong year, evident by the growing usage in key pieces of DAO infrastructure. Gnosis Safe, which is the most popular multisig wallet DAOs use to manage their treasuries, saw 3x growth in both the number of Safes and transactions executed in 2021. Snapshot, a tool that helps DAOs execute off-chain votes with on-chain verification, exhibited strong growth as well.

EN-EFF-TEES

Activity on the dominant platform for NFTs tells you all you need to know about the breakout year NFTs enjoyed.

Dune Analytics, Richard Chen

OG NFT CryptoPunks saw 60x YoY growth, reaching a total volume of 650K ETH, or $1.7B at current prices. This figure however, includes a flashloan powered $500M wash sale — a powerful reminder of how much subjectivity there is in on-chain data.

The second most notable NFT project of the year was Bored Ape Yacht Club, which went from a niche community to the celebrity NFT of choice, including the likes of Steph Curry, Shaq, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, among others. At one point the BAYC floor (price of the cheapest NFT in the collection) momentarily flipped the CryptoPunks floor.

In the heat of new issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections achieving billion dollar market caps, the average price of NFTs changing hands did a 150x from 0.1 ETH to roughly 15 ETH by year end.

Dune Analytics, Richard Chen

One of the most interesting NFT launches of the year was Loot (covered here), which let anyone mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that could form the basis of a Dungeons and Dragon style RPG game. Initial excitement was skyhigh, before fizzling out as time went on.

Dune Analytics

While Loot’s flame may have dimmed, it was still a landmark year for NFT based gaming, with the breakaway success of Axie Infinity bringing play-to-earn and GameFi narratives to the forefront. As the data shows, Axie Infinity NFT volume dwarfs that of any prior NFT based game.

CryptoSlam and The Block

Lastly, while Ethereum was the center of the NFT show, marketplaces appear to be springing up across multiple chains. The data shows that lower fee environments are enabling different types of user activity. Solana’s Magic Eden, for example, has more transactions than OpenSea since users are unencumbered by exorbitant gas fees.

More in Elias’s epic thread

Beyond being chock-full of illuminating data points on the year in crypto and Web3, the full thread underscores the beauty of on-chain data and the increased maturity of the industry. The ability for one person to put together a dataset this rich is a testament to all of the great data providers the industry now has at our disposal.

If you haven’t already, check out the full thread which covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, MEV, L2 adoption, ETH2, staking, Web3, memecoins, DEXes, stablecoins, and a whole lot more.

~Written by Connor Dempsey & Justin Mart.

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Crypto’s 69 most interesting charts from 2021 was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Reflecting on Coinbase Ventures’ record year in 2021

Coinbase
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coinbase

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. Written by Connor Dempsey, Ryan Yi & Justin Mart.

2021 was a historic year for both crypto markets and venture capital funding. Driven in part by institutional inflows, Bitcoin soared to new highs to start the year, the entire market followed suit nearing a record $3T market cap in November. Meanwhile, $30B in venture funding poured into the space: more than all prior years of crypto’s history combined.

2021 was also a record year for Coinbase Ventures, with just under 150 deals, averaging a new deal every 2.5 days. On a cumulative basis, more than 90% of the capital Coinbase Ventures has deployed since inception was deployed in 2021, reflecting an accelerated pace of activity in our fourth year of operation.

Coinbase Ventures is among the most active corporate venture funds in operation, with the mandate of increasing economic freedom around the world by supporting the leading entrepreneurs and projects in the ecosystem. Ultimately, we see crypto and Web3 as a rising tide that lifts all boats, Coinbase included, and Coinbase Ventures is dedicated to making investments that are crucial to the space’s overall growth.

In this edition of Around The Block, we’ll peer into the future through the lens of Coinbase Ventures’ 2021 activity. (Learn how Ventures aligns with Coinbase and its customers here).

Deal split by practice area

Coinbase Venture’s portfolio now consists of over 250 companies, and broadly breaks down across the following verticals.

Let’s break down the pie, slice by slice.

Protocols & Web3 infrastructure

2021 saw crypto reach new heights in terms of utility, particularly in the nascent “Web3” space, which we generally think of as a trustless, permissionless, and decentralized internet that leverages blockchain technology: essentially, the plumbing that underpins everything from DeFi, NFTs, metaverses, and DAOs. At the bottom of the Web3 stack sit Layer 1 protocols, led by Ethereum, but 2021 saw Web3 begin to expand to other Layer 1s like Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Terra, Flow, among dozens of others.

To help scale existing Layer 1s and enable higher throughput, we supported Layer 2 solutions including Matter Labs, Optimism, and Arbitrum. As multiple Layer 1s have proliferated, so has the demand to safely and easily move funds across blockchains. As such, Ventures’ was active in investing in projects working to facilitate this cross-chain movement, including Biconomy, Movr, LayerZero, Chainflip, and more. We also observed and funded new protocols working to bring better privacy to Web3 through various zero-knowledge solutions (Aleo, MobileCoin, and a third TBA).

We were also active across the infrastructure layer of the Web3 stack: primitives that form the backbone of user applications. Specifically, technologies that introduce standards to Web3 for data storage (Arweave), messaging (XMTP), and identity (Spruce). Given that 2021 was a great year for DAOs, we were active across infrastructure projects focused on enabling DAO creation/incorporation (Syndicate, Utopia), discovery/participation (Snapshot/Consensys’ Metamask), payroll/operations (Diagonal), and coordination (Orca).

Given investments made over the year, in 2022 we expect to see Web3 mature across multiple Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems with UX that more closely resembles Web2 applications. Additionally, we expect to see the continued flourishing of DAOs in the year ahead, as well as better privacy features for Web3 applications.

DeFi

While 2021 hinted at a future where Web3 activity takes place across multiple Layer 1 and Layer 2 platforms, DeFi activity already began its migration over the course of the year. Much of this activity took place within EVM compatible chains (Avalanche, Polygon, BSC etc.) and Layer 2 environments (Arbitrum, Optimism). Meanwhile, non-EVM chains (Solana, Terra, Cosmos, Polkadot etc.) also saw impressive growth.

We’re believers in the multichain future, and although we remained most active within Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, we also invested across Solana (Orca, Solend), Cosmos (Umee), Algorand (Folks), Polkadot (Acala, Moonbeam), NEAR, Polygon and Bitcoin. The multichain future of France appears bright, with just about every financial primitive one could imagine in development.

While DeFi made great strides in 2021, exploits of these nascent financial protocols hampered the ecosystem, amounting to over $10B. Better user protection remains paramount, which is why Coinbase Ventures supported DeFi insurance financial protocols including Neptune Mutual, Risk Harbor, Cozy Finance, and Nayms.

In 2022, the smart contract wars will rage on as Layer 1s and Layer 2s fight for user and developer mindshare. Hacking risks will persist but we’ll see increased maturity in DeFi insurance solutions. Lastly, it’s shaping up to be the year we see institutions enter the fray via “permissioned DeFi”, complete with KYC’d user pools and on-chain attestations.

NFT / Metaverse

2021 was also a year that saw the rapid rise of NFTs and renewed interest in “the metaverse.” Projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club took NFT sales from $200M in 2020 to a staggering $25B in 2021. Meanwhile, NFT based game Axie Infinity put play-to-earn gaming on the map as people in the Philippines were able to turn the game into a full time job. And elsewhere, Facebook’s rebrand to “Meta” catalyzed excitement around the metaverse.

In large part, NFTs spent 2021 in their “V0” phase, with most activity centered around simple buying and selling on marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible. 2021 also saw NFTs emerge across L1/L2 ecosystems such as Flow (MomentRanks, Eternal GG) and Solana (Magic Eden, Solanalysis).

Ventures has now invested heavily in the NFT “utility” phase — one in which NFT assets expand to new types of mediums such as audio (Royal, Mint Songs, Sturdy), avatars (Genies, OFF), AR (Anima, Jambo), and gaming/GameFi (Ancient8, GuildFi). This will allow interesting social features to be layered on top of the programmatic recognition of NFTs (Gallery).

These NFT and gaming investments can broadly be bucketed with the metaverse, as they inch us closer to a possible future where we have a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with fully functioning economies. In 2022, look for a host of new gaming titles and applications, including those launched by traditional gaming studios. Also expect metaverse applications to expand from both decentralized initiatives like Decentraland and the Sandbox and incumbent Web2 companies like Microsoft/Activision and Meta.

Platform & Developer Tools

Without developers, there would be no crypto or Web3 applications for anyone to use. As such, support for the tooling that developers need to make crypto and Web3 thrive is a critical part of advancing the ecosystem.

Over the year, we followed the “developer journey” from staging (Tenderly), collaboration (Radicle), query (Covalent), audit (Certik, OpenZeppelin, Certora) and real-time simulation/monitoring (Chaos Labs, Gauntlet). We also invested in developer toolkits like API providers (Alchemy, Consensys’ Infura).

We expect the industry’s collective investment made in dev tooling to pay dividends in the years to come. With all of the developers pouring into Web3 from Web2, they’re sorely needed.

CeFi

Much of the value that finds its way into crypto initially does so through centralized platforms, and as such, centralized finance (CeFi) remains an active category. We believe that crypto is inherently global and there is a need for localized platforms that serve as onramps across distinct regulatory, banking, and infrastructure regimes. This is why in 2021, we were active investors in crypto financial service providers everywhere from LatAm, Pan-Africa, MENA, South Asia, Europe, and North America.

The year also saw a move towards traditional vehicles for crypto exposure — IRAs, IAs, ETFs, Trusts, etc. — punctuated by the approval of the BTC Futures ETF in the US. Coinbase Ventures actively invested in asset managers and brokers including AltoIRA, Onramp, Valkyrie, ForUsAll, Ledn, and One River Digital. We were also investors in various CeFi “picks and shovels”, with follow-on investments in TaxBit and CoinTracker, which automate crypto tax reporting across platforms. In addition, we supported projects helping startups integrate crypto with traditional fintech offerings, including Paxos, Tribal Credit, and Meow.

2021 set the stage for more regulated and compliant ways for institutional and individual investor capital to gain crypto exposure through centralized exchanges and traditional investment vehicles and fintech platforms in both the US and abroad. We expect this to be an ongoing theme in 2022.

2022 & beyond

Macro uncertainty has prices falling sharply into the new year, but one thing is certain: this is not the crypto ecosystem of 2018. Between the best performing asset class of the last decade being much more accessible to investors around the world, the maturation of the Web3 stack, and an explosion of exciting new use cases across DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, gaming, and the metaverse, this industry appears to be hitting escape velocity.

Just as the boom of 2017 fueled investments that laid the groundwork for the applications that are thriving today, what do you think the record $30B funneled into crypto and Web3 in 2021 will yield? The market appears uncertain in the near term, but the future appears brighter then it’s ever been.

More great year-end recaps

Top year-end tweets

This website does not disclose material nonpublic information pertaining to Coinbase or Coinbase Venture’s portfolio companies.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”) and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase. This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only. Third-party websites are not under the control of Coinbase, and Coinbase is not responsible for their contents. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Reflecting on Coinbase Ventures’ record year in 2021 was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Read more
Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

Bitcoin ETFs surpass gold ETFs in AUM

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