TLDR Crypto 2022-04-06

Lightning Labs has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round. Its new Taro protocol will enable stablecoin transactions on the Lightning Network. The Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution for Bitcoin that enables instant, low-fee transactions. Taro allows developers to move stablecoins from the Bitcoin network to the Lightning Network.

Hivemapper is a decentralized digital mapping network that seeks to provide an alternative to the services provided by tech giants. It plans to start selling a dashcam in July that will award users with HONEY tokens for capturing dashcam footage. The dashcam will run on Helium's network of nearly 700,000 nodes. Helium is a decentralized wireless network that pays its users HNT tokens for sharing their home Wi-Fi signal. It grew from 14,000 to more than 500,000 nodes in 2021. Hivemapper hopes that its token incentive model will grow its network in the same way.

This Twitter thread introduces the NEAR protocol and presents a deep dive into its technology, tokenomics, and more. NEAR is a layer 1 network that uses sharding to achieve high transactions per second. It uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism to secure and validate transactions. The NEAR token is inflationary, but it can become deflationary with increased network usage. Links to more resources about NEAR are provided at the end of the thread.

This Twitter thread looks at how governance creates value through utility. The greater fool theory says that assets without cash flows are worthless. Some governance tokens, such as Uniswap, give holders control over a project, but they don't give any revenue to its holders. However, this doesn't mean that the tokens are worthless as governance has value. Governance in crypto has much more impact than governance in traditional equities.

Today's decentralized communities are primarily valued by their token price. This incentivizes communities to uphold exclusivity, which is against web3's vision of a truly open Internet. Future communities will be focused on utility. Capital will no longer be the primary status symbol in web3.

Crypto collectors traded $11 billion worth of NFTs in Q4 2021. Experts estimate that approximately 80% of artworks on OpenSea are counterfeits. OpenSea has policies to remove these works, but they aren’t effective or efficient. Current laws allow sites like OpenSea to claim immunity for a variety of conduct on its site for which they lack specific knowledge. Changing those laws could help artists, but OpenSea also has the choice to implement better policies and processes.

Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn crypto game developed by Vietnam-based studio Sky Mavis. Players need to buy three Axie NFTs to start playing Axie Infinity. Many people are not able to buy their own NFTs, so some investors loan out their NFTs to others so that they can share the revenue from playing the game. This article takes a close look at the businesses that loan out Axie NFTs and the Axie Infinity ecosystem.