The second episode of Across the Chains by BlockBytes’ was hosted by Austin Rampt and Clay Kilgo. They were joined by Buns Enchantress, Nick Drakon, Justin Bebis, and 24 dollars.
They touched on the recent events in the regulatory space, the Fantom metrics from Nansen report, GameFi, and other topics.
Read our notes below to learn more.
XRP vs SEC
Austin
● If motion is granted, a decision is going to be made on the claims involved without holding a trial.
● Digital Chamber of Commerce has been brought into an advisory role.
● Everyone in the crypto community can root for XRP in this case.
Clay
● XRP’s stance is that the holders couldn’t reasonably expect profits because there was no contractual obligation between XRP and the holders.
● The SEC’s stance is that there can be an investment contract without a contract.
● According to John Deaton, there has been a positive turn of events.
● XRP price is pumping based on buy the rumor, sell the news type of price action.
CFTC Fines bZx and Ooki DAO
● bZx had a centralized futures trading platform and it transitioned bZx holders over to Ooki DAO in 2021
● CFTC said that they need to be registered to execute these types of transactions.
Nick
● Jake Chervinsky is a drama queen in the way that he words things.
● Regulators are coming for all of the projects and they will look for opportunities ● to pick some of them off.
● This isn’t going to stop, it will only amplify.
● Everyone will be overcompensating and be more cautious than they were before.
● In this specific case, the founders are liable and everyone that voted within a governance vote may also be liable.
● ETH is a better investment than it was 6 months ago and one of the reasons might be these types of regulatory actions.
Justin
● bZx is responsible for tens to hundreds of millions of USD lost due to negligence.
● Most companies in the crypto space are relatively ready for regulations.
● Government bodies are usually 2 to 3 years behind.
Nansen Report on Fantom
Clay
● Nansen released a quarterly report on the Fantom ecosystem.
● 116k users on Sep 21, 110k on Feb 22.
● Optimism has 35k 1-day and 72k 7-day unique users.
● Fantom has 31k 1-day and 73k 7-day unique users.
● Polygon has 273k 1-day and 960k 7-day unique users.
Austin
● The top dApp on FTM by the number of unique users was Spookyswap with 154k users in Q2.
● Tomb was the next dApp with 42k users.
Bebis
● He wonders how much of that activity is bot activity. It’s not a bad thing because bots make markets more efficient.
● Spookyswap has big enough liquidity and low enough fees to be a center for arbitrage for all of DeFi.
● It’s possible to go directly from Binance to Fantom, swap on Spookyswap, and arbitrage across any other chain.
● There are a lot of big money and smart bots exploiting arbitrage opportunities on Fantom.
● Routing trades through FTM is cheaper than doing it elsewhere.
GameFi
Clay
● There are at least 31 GameFi projects being built on FTM today.
24Dollars
● The games have to be very compelling for people to play them.
Justin
● Blockchain doesn’t lend itself that well to gaming.
● MMO games have existed without NFTs for a very long time and developed economies around them.
● Games haven’t figured out yet how to have in-game plus real-world economies.
● GameFi is desirable as an investment only because DeFi is in a regulatory gray area.
● Payments on DeFei are the blockchain use cases, Justin doesn’t see anything else becoming essential as much as DeFi.
● You can’t scale as a game on an EVM network.
● The number one software attribute in gaming is speed.
● Game developers write code that executes fast and it does not matter how secure it is.
● This does not align with blockchain.
Nick
● Projects need to be better than the things that were available before.
● DeFi is better because it removes intermediaries, making it faster and accessible to everybody.
● Kids are happy with the games that they are currently playing.
Solana 100b TX
● Solana had surpassed 100 billion transactions.
● The chain is averaging 3,300 transactions per second in September.
Clay
● AVAX founder Emin tweeted that these numbers are inflated.
● On Sep 7 Solana had 312k NFTs minted in one day.
Justin
● Solana is being disingenuous.
● Fees are not being paid on these transactions, therefore, they don’t matter.
Arbitrum Nitro Upgrade
● Arbitrum now has 7 to 10 times higher throughput and decreased transaction costs.
Justin
● Increased throughput doesn’t matter much right now.
● If you’re not pushing more transactions to the EVM, there’s not going to really be more throughput.
Clay
● The Nitro release has been a big upgrade in the tech.
● Gained 950k unique new users since January.
● GMX added 120 million TVL in the break market month over month.
● Arbitrum is winning the L2 race right now.
GMX Exploit
Justin
● It was a problem with their code and that is how flash loan exploits work.
● This was an arbitrage exploit - someone taking a lot of money, manipulating prices to confuse an oracle.
● Now they need to re-design their oracle.
SEC vs Ian Balina
Nick
● Regulatory bodies are not going to play fair.
Justin
● All the people being targeted are already being investigated by the FBI.
Clay
● Matt Blaine tweeted an argument against the SEC’s jurisdiction.
PaintSwap
Clay
● Paintswap has released what they have achieved so far.