🟣 Amazon to IMX?

The rumor of Amazon entering crypto is heating up again as the trillion-dollar giant inches closer to launching its own NFT marketplace. The marketplace will reportedly be available to US customers directly through the main Amazon website, giving users the ability to trade NFTs via credit card. My first reaction is to guess what tech stack they are building on top of. Will they take the Coinbase route and build out an Ethereum L2? A Cosmos app chain? Revitalize Solana or Avalanche with a dedicated NFT marketplace?

The rumor of Amazon entering crypto is heating up again as the trillion-dollar giant nears the launch of its own NFT marketplace.   The marketplace will reportedly be available to US customers directly through the main Amazon website, giving users the ability to trade NFTs using just a credit card.  My first question: which tech stack are they building on? Follow Coinbase and build an Ethereum L2? A Cosmos app chain? Revitalize Solana or Avalanche with a dedicated NFT marketplace?  The current set of circulating rumors leads me to believe that Amazon will build on ImmutableX, an Ethereum ZK rollup that aims to scale NFTs.  As one of the largest public companies in the world, the injection of Amazon's brand and user experience certainly has the potential to reshape the NFT market. Will they continue the trend of relatively useless profile picture NFTs, or will they play a key role in the evolution of NFTs into something more meaningful?  The ImmutableX token, IMX, could greatly benefit from the compounding narratives of Amazon + L2s. If you think a corporate titan like Amazon could become a prolific NFT marketplace, IMX at an FDV of $2.1B seems attractive. For comparison, Blur also sits at an FDV of $2.1B. Of course this is not financial advice, merely my speculation.  - Dan Smith     0xPibblez once told me, "When the price is bad, we must reinforce our beliefs with fundamentals." Daily Ethereum transaction fees have trended higher since the start of the year, peaking at $9.5M on February 14. The increase has led to an expected 71% increase in Q/Q base fees and an expected 16% increase in Q/Q priority fees.  Pricing the same chart in ETH rather than USD removes the price variable and isolates the change in demand for Ethereum blockspace. The chart shows there has been an uptick in activity and increased demand to execute transactions on Ethereum. On Friday, Arrakis posted on Compound's governance forums to use Arrakis PALM for COMP market-making. Arrakis is a yield aggregator that optimizes returns and simplifies position management for Uniswap V3 LPs. PALM (Protocol Automated Liquidity Management) is Arrakis' new solution to bring liquidity to DAO treasuries.  The proposal suggests that Compound should use a portion of the $112M of COMP in its treasury to create on-chain liquidity for COMP, which currently sees a majority of trading volume on CEXs. Allowing PALM to autonomously manage the liquidity will generate fees for the DAO without the need for active management. For the services provided, Arrakis will charge two fees, a management fee of 1% AUM, and a performance fee of 50% of the trading fees generated.  Arrakis PALM has been successfully deployed on the GEL/ETH pool. Adding a popular protocol like Compound pushes Arrakis further onto the main stage. I view this as a win-win for both protocols.  FPI: An Inflation-Resistant Stablecoin In April 2022, Frax introduced FPI, an inflation-resistant stablecoin. The protocol recently launched a staking system for its FPIS governance token. With $2M in profits over the past year, it is worth diving into the protocol to see what comes next. Read More → Basis Trading With dYdX Trading the basis on dYdX perps offers the potential for positive returns while mitigating many risks typically associated with crypto assets. Read More → Supreme Court Ruling Backs XRP 'Fair Notice' Defense: Ripple While we await an outcome to the XRP case, Ripple is keeping the judge up to speed with supposedly relevant Supreme court rulings Read More → Binance Moves to Fix Compliance May Not Placate US Regulators "Specifically, like virtually every other crypto exchange, we did not have proper KYC in place at launch," Binance spokesperson says Read More →   The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm's Financial Disclosures. 133 W 19th St, New York, NY, 10011 Unsubscribe