While Rarible's volumes have slowed with the NFT market cooldown, a large reason for this was that it didn't offer the trading of non-Rarible assets.
However, now assets like Sorare are tradeable on the platform, Rarible users are back to pre-NFT market top levels.
The Rarible marketplace – which has a %5 fee – has generated $8m in fees with $3.8m of that revenue coming within the past 90 days.
Impressive, but still behind OpenSea which is above $25m, and Axie marketplace which generated ~9m in the same timeframe respectively.
Competition is strong in NFT marketplaces.
Rarible's ability to remain a top marketplace will come down to a few factors:
1) Permissionless, open development on top of Rarible protocol 2) Ability to lock in NFT liquidity 3) Integration of more NFTs (Flow, ImmutableX, etc)
As the NFT market grows in the tens and then hundreds of billions of dollars, marketplaces & liquidity protocols serve as a key piece of infrastructure poised for success.
Perhaps the most entertaining story on governance this year comes from your neighborhood gas station, Exxon Mobil.
Exxon's story also shares an example of how the value of governance will evolve in crypto.
A Thread on Proxy Wars, Exxon, Crypto, and Governance 👇🏻
Exxon Mobil – one of the largest oil producers in the world with a market capitalization of $270 billion – has recently entered the proxy fight of its life.
Activist fund, Engine No 1 bought 0.02% of Exxon with the intent of pressuring Exxon to adopt a greater ESG focus.
The argument is that Exxon’s unwillingness to divest from oil and gas has resulted in the underperformance of the company which is management’s (the board’s) fault.
Orchid's key piece of infrastructure is nanopayments – probabilistic payments where instead of sending $1, a consumer would send a payment with a provably fair 1% chance of paying $100.
Orchid's infrastructure can be used to create other marketplaces that require nanopayments.
Orchid faces competition from existing VPN providers, but can potentially compete on a few axes:
1) Price - most important for consumers
2) Security - enhanced encrypt, no single server or point of failure
3) Privacy - many VPNs are free but collect your data and sell it
The most valuable assets are intangible. However, this hasn’t always been true.
Before the 1990’s the most valuable assets – as categorized as components of the S&P 500 – were tangible assets(i.e. Land, equipment, etc).
Crypto will increase the value of intangible assets.
This trend might not surprise you, as it might intuitively make sense in the context of everyday life.
Disney+ is valuable because of Marvel and The Mandalorian. People drink Coca-Cola instead of the clearly tastier Pepsi. Users buy Fortnite skins which hold zero in-game value.
Intangible assets, in particular, intellectual property are often described as illiquid and inefficient for a variety of reasons including market opaqueness, inconsistent valuations, and lack of standardization.
Digitizing & programming IP assets can help alleviate these issues.
The bull market has caused DAO treasuries to balloon over the past year, with the top ten treasuries now possessing balance sheets worth hundreds of millions, or in some cases, billions of dollars.
However, DAOs in their current form are set up for financial failure.
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Nearly all of the top treasuries have the entirety of their assets in their native token and don't hold a notable % allocation of stablecoins or less volatile assets like Ether or Bitcoin.
Effectively, most protocol treasuries are subject to the turbulence of the market.
Proper risk management ensures protocols have sufficient capital to cover immediate expenses and weather uncertain tides.
Read the Messari Enterprise Report for an analysis on how DAOs can restructure to avoid significant loss if the market corrects. messari.io/article/a-cris…
Messari Screeners track over 35 of the largest crypto-focused venture and hedge funds including Coinbase Ventures, Pantera, Polychain, a16z, and more.
Of these funds, we’ve analyzed their public holdings and found the most commonly held assets across all the portfolios.
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Investing like a crypto fund – venture or hedge – has never been easier. An average investor can quite literally copy-trade these portfolios and mirror any of their favorite funds.