TLDR Crypto 2022-05-05

Yearn Finance, a yield aggregator, has unveiled Vaults, the third iteration of its core product. The update is the biggest in Yearn's history. Yearn now uses Solidity in order to tap into a larger developer base. The protocol is working on implementing vote locking tokenomics similar to that used by Curve Finance.

Coinbase has opened the beta version of its NFT marketplace to the public. The marketplace aims to take market share from OpenSea. There will be zero fees on the platform for a limited time. Coinbase will grow its user base with a series of NFT collection partnerships, including a Bored Ape Yacht Club film trilogy that will debut in June.

ApeCoin has integrated with Polygon, making it available for over 19,000 decentralized apps and games. Yuga Labs’ recent Otherside NFT mint encountered a list of issues, causing many users to pay extremely high gas fees and miss out on the mint. Yuga Labs was accused of using the mint as a marketing stunt to announce a new chain for ApeCoin. 55,817.39 ETH was burned during the event.

Twitter's Bluesky offshoot has released early code for a decentralized social network protocol. The Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX) will be developed semi-publicly. Data on the network will live in Personal Data Repositories owned by users. Platforms will be able to choose what content to index or show. While Bluesky is funded by Twitter, Twitter has no direct controlling interest.

Starbucks has announced plans to launch an NFT collection later this year. The NFTs will provide owners with access to exclusive content experiences and other benefits. NFTs will help Starbucks extend its 'third place' brand concept. Starbucks' NFTs will likely be multi-chain or chain agnostic. The company is currently searching for a new CEO with an understanding of web3 technologies.

Ethereum users pay for computation speed, and this can affect how the metaverse is experienced. This Twitter thread presents four different models for tokens to have value. In these models, the token value represents the temporal scarcity of block space.

Crypto isn't a fair playing field and most investors are at the behest of whales and venture capitalists (VCs). Most DeFi protocols don't need a token, a majority of VCs make their money through early investing, and many projects don't have a product, so it is important to properly vet tokens before investing in them. APRs are meant to incentivize liquidity so they may not last forever. Whales do the opposite of the market.

The Iowa Title Guarantee system is an alternative to title insurance. It is a 'guarantee system' rather than an 'assumption of risk' system where lenders and owners receive clear title by resolving all defects prior to closing. Title insurance buyers are twice as likely to suffer a title related loss than those with an ITG. The system results in very few defects and produces the cleanest titles in the US. A tokenized land initiative should start from Iowa.

Vitalik Buterin says that Ethereum layer 2 fees should be under $0.05 to be truly acceptable. The statement was in response to a list of average gas fees for eight popular layer 2 networks. The highest fees on the list were on the Arbitrum network at $0.66 for an Ethereum transaction while the lowest was on the Metis Network at $0.02. An average transaction on the Ethereum mainnet currently costs around $14.10. The list is available in the article.