The Unicorn Awakens

Uniswap fee switch, OP Drop, Solana on FC, and more...

Author

Forefront
February 26, 2024

Happy Monday!

Welcome to the 181st edition of the Forefront Newsletter, now more dynamic than ever. If you’re new here, we give you a weekly roundup of the best news and insights at the intersection of crypto, culture, and community.

We’re always looking to improve the Forefront Newsletter. Drop any feedback on the Farcaster /forefront channel.

This week we’re covering:

Let’s get into it…

Week’s Highlight

Uniswap has recaptured the market’s mind with two big moves this week.

First, Uniswap Labs announced the uni.eth ENS subdomain, available for free to all Uniswap mobile app users. This means that anyone can have their own onchain username for free, and Uniswap gets free marketing from everyone sharing their username across the ecosystem.

Mort importantly, though, Uniswap governance is now discussing a new proposal that would activate a fee mechanism to reward UNI token holders that have staked and delegated their tokens. This is a massive shift in policy for the protocol, and would require a protocol-wide upgrade and a change in expectations from the entire ecosystem.

Following the announcement of this proposal,UNI saw a price jump by over 40% from $7.24 to $10.22 in less than an hour.

“Maintaining this lead is only going to get more difficult. Liquidity is fragmenting across many chains, intents are a thing, MEV is a thing, competition is very smart, etc,” Koen wrote in a thread explaining his proposal.

In order to maintain this lead, Koen thinks that it will be necessary to make some governance shake-ups, which include making delegation necessary for UNI token stakers.

Devin Walsh, the executive director of the Uniswap Foundation, says that this upgrade will allow Uniswap to create a more resilient governance system.

All in all, Uniswap is clearly taking a leadership role for DeFi protocols everywhere and is putting its money where its mouth is as the leading DEX. It will be fascinating to watch how this plays out.

What’s Poppin’

Bluesky has announced a significant update to its social network, enabling users to host their own data. This federation allows users to choose where their data is stored, whether with Bluesky, another company, or on their own servers. Users can switch providers anytime without losing posts, likes, or follows. The network is initially open for self-hosters, with plans to expand to larger servers. Bluesky aims to decentralize social media control, ensuring it remains a public good, free from single-company dominance. This approach differs from Mastodon's federated network, offering a global conversation focus, composable moderation, and customizable feeds.

Optimism allocated 10M+ OP to over 22k unique addresses that created NFT collections across the Superchain, including Base, Zora, and OP Mainnet. Over 200,000 addresses have brought NFT collections into the world, crafting the tale of the Optimism Collective. Optimism continues to pave the way for retroactive public goods funding programs everywhere and the right way to airdrop for sustainable growth. Eligibility details are available here – be sure to check if you’re eligible for a claim!

David Furlong announced Open Frames, a draft spec that allow Farcaster Frames to live anywhere. For example, XMTP is launching Frames support using Open Frames to allow in-frame chat. This comes alongside an announcement from Dan Romero who claims that in-frame transactions are coming soon. This would be a massive unlock to onchain social commerce. The team also announced Solana address support for Farcaster last week, unlocking an entire ecosystem of potential onchain users who can experience Farcaster natively.

While digital product passports are increasingly gaining traction in fashion and beauty alike, broader spectrum, the consensus among executives and thought leaders like LVMH head of web3 and metaverse Nelly Mensah and Chalhoub Group director of corporate innovation Nick Vinckier—both of whom spoke on panels during the conference—is that wider crypto adoption relies upon the underlying technology disappearing into the background, seamlessly adding value to client user experience. This piece outlines a variety of examples of crypto x fashion collabs and the future of the space.

Former Bitcoin core dev Martti Malmi shared some email correspondence with Satoshi between 2009-2011. “Satoshi downplayed his writing, but as evident from the emails, his English was perfect, much better than mine. I don't remember a single instance where he even made a spelling error,” he said. Likewise, Pete Rizzo shared an email from Satoshi where he theorized the network would have a maximum of 100,000 nodes. In the email, he goes into the calculation, and the economics of the network at scale. Some really cool history and anecdotes from the creator of Bitcoin.

Multichain Pill

  • Eigenlabs raises $100M from a16z Crypto. EigenLayer is at the heart of a new blockchain-industry trend known as "restaking," where ETH tokens that are deposited or "staked" as security for the main blockchain can be repurposed to secure additional networks and protocols. Earlier this month, EigenLayer, which initially launched in June, temporarily lifted its cap on deposits, citing rising interest in the protocol from new users. It has since soared to nearly $8 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama.

  • L3 Season is Coming. Conduit now makes it insanely easy to launch your own L3 on Base and OP Stack. Syndicate took the lead here, launching its own L3 for Frames called Frame Chain.

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Fun with Fundraising

  • Superfluid raised $5.1M to power payment streaming onchain.

  • Meso raise $9.5M to connect crypto wallets to bank accounts.