Some observations about the trad art market, and what it suggests about opportunities for digital art platforms: 🧵 1/ There are two main players in the trad art world:

1. Dealers - think independents, small galleries, etc
2. Auction houses - the name is pretty descriptive

What's going on in the Solana NFT market?

TLDR: royalties, growth vs Ethereum, sticky users 👇🧵 1/ Across all chains, NFT volumes are down ~80% from highs at the beginning of the year...

Staking is critical for ETH's security, and undoubtedly a multi billion dollar industry post-merge.

Here's an overview of current market dynamics and emerging trends: There are broadly 2 options for staking (besides running your own node 😊): service providers and liquid staking. 1/n

0/ We @variantfund are thrilled to co-lead the seed in @NiftyApes, a new NFT lending protocol.

Here’s an overview of the category and NiftyApe's product features: 1.1/ Zooming out, NFT finance is one of the most exciting frontiers of crypto. Today, NFTs are limited to JPEGs, largely collectibles, digital art, and gaming assets, but the category is poised for massive expansion.

What can DeFi learn from fintech?

In short, the sectors could overlap much more than we think 🧵 1/ Looking at the evolution of fintech, IMO two trends become clear:

1. back-ends -> APIs
2. largely 2 successful companies: consumer front-ends and APIs

DeFi has a lot to learn

DeFi is entering an entirely new security paradigm:

Simply put, security measures are going from reactive -> proactive. Here are the emerging trends and projects. 🧵👇 1/ Zooming out, security remains one of the primary bottlenecks for crypto adoptions, particularly in DeFi. A survey earlier this year found it to be one of the primary reasons people don't invest.

There is an almost ridiculous market opportunity in DeFi: insurance

Let me explain the current insurance landscape and the $1b+ protocol opportunity: 👇🧵 1/ <1% of TVL in DeFi is insured. While there's no 1:1 comparison in TradFi, 90%+ of Americans own car insurance and 85%+ own home insurance.

Web3 gaming involves so much more than NFTs.

Let me explain the emerging net new gaming genre: 🧵👇 1/ Zooming out, block space becoming cheaper with rise of scaling solutions. More advanced computation can be brought on-chain. This vastly expands the design space for game devs.

The next cycle is where we go mainstream.

@variantfund Fund III will continue to invest in category defining projects for the coming wave of mass adoption: 🧵👇

variant.fund/articles/intro… We think in decades, not months or even years. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of overreacting to hype / bust cycles when investing on the fringe of innovative tech.

There's something big going on right now @Uniswap 👀

The community just approved the biggest step towards turning on protocol fees. Here's what you should know 🧵👇

gov.uniswap.org/t/fee-switch-d… 1/ Uniswap is the almost uncontested dominant DEX in the Ethereum ecosystem. They control the majority of volume, users, and have 5-10x the number of token listings of their competitors.

0/ We @variantfund are thrilled to lead the seed in @EmpiricNetwork, the first zk-native oracle.

Here’s an overview of its fundamentally better oracle design and why we’re so excited about ZKRs: 👇🧵

variant.fund/writing/empiri… @variantfund @EmpiricNetwork 1.1/ Zooming out, oracles will be a vital piece of infrastructure across all of web3. Data feeds are required for almost every DEX, lending protocol, yield aggregator, etc users interact with. Oracles provide price data to these smart contracts.

Here are 8 things everyone should know about the state of @MagicEden

dune.com/derekw23/magic… @MagicEden 1/ They are tracking ~99% market share of Sol NFTs.

here's what you should know about the latest CPI data 🧵👇 CPI is up 9.1% YoY, the highest level we've seen in decades and more than previous months

We @variantfund could not be more excited to announce our investment in @MorphoLabs.

The project has the potential to transform decentralized lending by introducing an aggregation layer. Here’s a quick overview of Morpho and why it offers some of the most competitive rates: @variantfund @MorphoLabs 1.1/ Morpho is an entirely new layer of decentralized lending: a P2P aggregator that allows users to access the best rates. The protocol is built on top of leading lending projects like Compound, Aave, etc.

The State of Stable Yields:

What just happened and where we’re headed 🧵👇 1/ Zooming in on one of the most popular deposits, USDC organic yields (no liquidity incentives) are ~1/5th of April highs and 1/2th since UST’s collapse, tracking <0.7% APY. What’s happening?

NFTs will become a mainstream asset class over the next decade.

Here's how you value them 👇🧵

mirror.xyz/0xFc2b4861650A… (fyi wrote this piece awhile ago but relaunching on @viamirror)

I firmly believe we won’t all just be using MetaMask in a few years.

Let me explain why wallets are about to unbundle: 🧵👇 1/ We’re seeing the most varied distribution of user personas in crypto’s history. With each innovation cycle, more and more people were brought into the ecosystem. While all these groups overlap, they come with very different preferences.

Variant could not be more excited to back @eulerfinance. Here’s a deep dive on Euler’s permissionless lending pools and why we @variantfund believe it can become a leading decentralized lending protocol: 🧵👇 @eulerfinance @variantfund 1/ Zooming out, we are investing against the thesis that decentralized lending will be a “red ocean” - a competitive market with numerous dominant players.

Token distribution today is unrecognizable vs a year ago. I’ve identified 3 main trends behind this 🧵👇 0/ as I’ve discussed before, token distribution can be thought of in two main buckets: 1) the initial exit to the community, where the token becomes liquid, and 2) ongoing emissions, which includes reward and incentive mechanisms over periods of time

https://twitter.com/Derekmw23/status/1513613987560116225

wrote this thread a few weeks ago and think it's worth zooming in on the current state of BAYC and what it says about the future of NFTs 👇

https://twitter.com/Derekmw23/status/1513297984863158275

the key idea was that NFTs can be used to create meme-like, bottoms-up value using a wide base of owners economically incentived to promote the collection.

this behavior is essentially builds a franchisable, long-term brand in an entirely new way.

so where is BAYC now?

Alright there needs to be some clarity on these terms… here’s my current thinking so please challenge it 1.1/ mechanism design - subset of economics that essentially inverts the logic of game theory