TLDR Crypto 2022-04-27

Optimism has launched a DAO called the Optimism Collective. It will airdrop OP tokens to 267,000 addresses. The tokens will go to wallets that have used the protocol, positively contributed to web3 communities, and those that could benefit from using scaling technologies. People should check for eligibility even if they haven't used Optimism. More details about Optimism and how the Optimism Collective will be governed are available in the article.

Axel is a developer platform that unifies DeFi protocols into a complete solution. It makes it easy for developers to integrate decentralized finance into any application. Axel can reduce days of engineering time down to minutes.

Flashbots is a dataset that makes MEV data accessible to the web3 community. It aims to democratize access to information and create equal opportunities for everybody. Flashbots can be used for investigating arbitrages, liquidations, sandwiches, and more on Ethereum. The service is now live on Dune.

NFT cycles can help determine how to rotate in and out of assets. A bull market is when everything is going up. In a bear market, even the best projects are hardly moving and some projects get crushed. Cycles happen every few months and are driven by adoption events. Each cycle becomes more competitive, and projects have to evolve to keep up with the next cycle. NFT cycles are impacted by ETH/dollar fluctuations.

Avalanche's fees have increased by almost three times year to date. Its fee structure involves a base fee based on blockspace demand and a tip to determine how a transaction is ordered in a block. An idle play-to-earn game launched on Avalanche in November has steadily consumed blockspace on the network and is now driving more than 50% of transaction fees. Over 25% of the game's users are likely bots farming the game. This example shows how the key performance indicators don't always tell the full story.

web3 features immutability, enabling autonomous and trustless transactions to be made. Users can send funds anywhere in the world in seconds for a fraction of the cost of other services. Its decentralization allows for censorship resistance, access to a transparent financial system, democratized work, and more. This Twitter thread presents problems that web3 addresses and how it can solve them.

Most projects take a process-centric approach toward protocol development, resulting in long and convoluted chains of processes over time. This creates architectures that can be difficult to understand as simple interactions are broken into multiple layers of abstract knowledge. A new standard currently being developed called the Default Framework aims to create a consistent design pattern that removes the potential for long or circular dependency chains to form.

LooksRare is the leading NFT marketplace competitor to OpenSea. Both platforms do little else but host a website, but OpenSea has up to a 90% share in traded NFTs. LooksRare could utilize its token currency to incentivize users by cutting fees in proportion to how many LOOKS users have staked. This could create a floor valuation on the token as users start staking the token to avoid trading fees. It could also create platform loyalty.

Fidelity Investments has launched a new workplace digital assets account that will allow investors to allocate part of their 401(k)s into bitcoin. The plan will allow investors to allocate up to 20% of their retirement accounts to bitcoin. Investors will be limited to bitcoin and will not be able to invest in other cryptocurrencies. Fidelity launched a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Canada in December after the SEC blocked its attempts to list a similar product in the US.