February 24, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • The Block published a deep dive on Chainalysis’ claim of de-mixing CoinJoin transactions (an integral part of identifying the alleged DAO attacker).

  • Christine Moy, who co-led the launch of JPMorgan’s crypto unit in 2020, is leaving the firm after 18 years.

  • Crypto ads in India will now have to add a disclaimer that these products are unregulated and risky.

  • 77% of family offices are interested in or involved in crypto, according to a BNY Mellon survey.

  • Phantom, a Solana-based crypto wallet, is partnering with password manager 1Password (notably, users will be able to store their private keys on 1Password).

  • A gunman (now in custody) demanded $230 million in crypto after taking a hostage at an Amsterdam Apple Store.

  • Ethereum staking provider Rocket Pool now accounts for 1% of Ethereum’s network validators.

  • Mintable was able to recover three NFTs stolen from OpenSea in a recent phishing attack.

  • Tubby Cats is the most popular NFT project on OpenSea by volume over the past 24 hours.

  • A collection of 104 CryptoPunks were withdrawn from a planned Sotheby’s auction at the last minute.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

  • Puma registered the puma.eth ENS domain.

  • The European Union reportedly plans to give its new anti-money laundering unit oversight of crypto.

  • Warner Music Group is partnering with Splinterlands to develop P2E games.

  • Japan’s largest bank is shutting down its blockchain payments project.

The $$$ Corner…

  • Solana-based payment protocol Zebec raised $15 million in a Series A.

  • NFT platform Ucollex raised $10 million in a Series A led by Animoca Brands.

What Do You Meme?


What’s Poppin’?

Solana’s #1 NFT Marketplace Is Airdropping NFTs

The largest NFT marketplace on Solana and sixth largest in crypto, Magic Eden announced plans to create a DAO and airdrop NFT governance tokens to existing users.

The Magic Eden team dropped three levels of NFTs, or “Magic Tickets,” to active users of the platform. To qualify for the airdrop, users must have made a transaction on Magic Eden in the month leading up to the announcement. Additionally, users were required to connect both a Discord and email address to their Magic Eden profile because, as the team explained, “we wanted to make sure people receiving the airdrop were actual people.”

Notably, Magic Ticket holders will each gain voting rights regarding Magic Edens’ mission, operational rules, funding, treasury activities, and more. The decision to launch a DAO via NFTs flies in the face of precedence in the crypto industry, as the status quo is to usually establish a DAO governed by fungible tokens (like SUSHI, LOOKS, etc.).

The Magic Eden team appears excited to “experiment” with this new governance primitive. “While we are not launching a token-based DAO, we are creating an NFT-gated access to MagicDAO via Magic Ticket and consider this an experiment to grow closer to our community,” explained the team.

According to Jack Lu, the CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, the move to decentralize the platform is right in line with Magic Eden’s core principles. “How many NFT marketplaces have a DAO? We do 😉,” asked Lu in a thread on Twitter (perhaps poking fun at OpenSea). “‘Community Obsession’ is our foremost principle – if there is something that is good for the Community vs. something that is good for Magic Eden, we always choose the community,” he explained. “The other critical principle for Magic Eden is “Web3 > Web2”. This means that if there is a Web 3 way of solving a problem, we will prefer that way over the Web2 way.”


Recommended Reads

  1. FinTech Collective’s Sean Lippel on the state of DeFi:

  1. Arca on how to evaluate blockchains:

  1. Decentralised.co’s Joel John on metaverse real estate:


On The Pod…

The Chopping Block: Why Hacking The DAO Is ‘Something to Be Proud Of’?

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. Show topics:

  • their thoughts on The DAO hacker reveal

  • the importance of The DAO and why it made Robert fall in love with crypto

  • how the alleged attacker was found (feat. a deep dive into the Morden testnet and Wasabi)

  • dumb DAOs: why the guys are unimpressed with DAOs seeking to purchase, among other things, the Denver Broncos and fast-food restaurants

  • how to fix price discovery for DAO mergers and acquisitions

  • whether Anchor’s 20% yield on UST is sustainable in light of Luna Foundation Guard’s decision to backstop its reserves with $1 billion in BTC

  • why deploying funds from a large treasury is difficult

  • why the BlockFi fine was not a surprise

  • what lessons the BlockFi settlement taught crypto companies

  • why Tarun still loves Olympus DAO and OHM

  • how EthDenver has changed since the NFT boom


Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Feb. 22. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians