The lowdown on Blur & Blast

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone! We’ve got an action-packed edition to make sure you’re caught up with all the craziness of the past week.

Today we cover:

• The low down on BLUR & BLAST

• Doodles… the next big hit?

• Solana NFTs go mad

• Our favourite tweets

Let’s kick things off with our meme of the week:

All Eyes On Blur & Blast

The most interesting thing that happened this week has got to be Blur / Blast. Here’s the TL;dr for those who missed it:

Blur’s Season 2 ended on Monday, and 300M+ BLUR tokens were unlocked. Many expected the price to dump but instead, it’s risen almost 100% since the token unlock. Bullish unlock indeed.

• Another $40M was raised for Blur. Perps product in development. New Blur products will be built on Blast

• Season 3 incentive program will be in BLAST tokens.

  • 50% for holders. Stake Blur to earn points. Higher multipliers the longer you stake.

  • 50% for liquidity providers on Blur & Blend

334M BLUR is currently staked (29% of the circulating supply). The narrative driving the price here is that BLUR is the only practical way for many investors or funds to capture the upside of NFT market growth.

It’s a strong narrative, to be honest. Funds that are looking to capture future exposure to NFTs have to chase the price before it gets too high.

And as for Blast, it’s a really wild one.

• Blast is an L2 built on the OP stack and promises native yield: your ETH rebases similar to stETH

• $20M raised from Paradigm, egirl capital, and other angels

• Testnet in January, BLAST airdrop will be in May, with 50% of rewards to bridgers and 50% to devs.

• You bridge ETH to earn spins (1 spin per week per ETH bridged). Spins give you points randomly (lottery style)

• Invite-system where you can earn 16% of the points of your invitees and 8% of their invitees

• Bridge ETH is locked for the next 3 months till February 2024. You cannot withdraw it till then.

• The invite and spinning game keeps things interesting for farmers, cos they have something active to do instead of just locking up their ETH

So far, almost $400M (!!) has been locked on the Blast bridge in just 5 days. And it’s not even an L2 yet: it’s just a multisig wallet with 5 signers right now. This has generated a lot of controversy.

MapleLeafCap pontificates on the potential yield for Blast farmers. It does look juicy, if you’re willing to take on the risk of the multisig wallet getting hacked (which has happened before):

Doodles Reveals New Roadmap

Julian, CEO of Doodles, gave a full presentation about Doodles and where they’re going next. It’s worth taking a look. According to Happy, the main alpha is:

• New Web3 App launching Q1 2024

• Stoodio leaving Beta Q1 2024 & kick-off with a big brand announcement

• eCommerce integrations

• Token-gated storytelling & loyalty rewards

If the big brand announcement next year is anything similar to what we saw with Pudgy Penguins and Walmart, the sky is the limit. Keep a close watch on this.

Solana NFTs Go Mad

Solana has been red-hot lately. Speculators are seeking out the next big play after BONK and went diving into NFTs. At least that’s what it’s looking like.

MadLads, the top NFT project on Solana, has gone on a wild run these weeks, doubling to almost 100 SOL each ($5,700).

Are the lads going to be the cryptopunks of Solana? 🤔

What makes MadLads stand out is its expansive ecosystem supporting the NFT collection. The team is building out a crypto exchange (“the next FTX”) with verifiable proof-of-reserves. They have also launched a multi-chain wallet called Backpack and created xNFTs that can run apps straight from your wallet.

With Solana NFTs still making up just 4% of Ethereum's market, there is substantial room for growth. Just see how MadLads has flipped the previous king DeGods who moved from SOL to ETH.

Our Favourite Tweets

 🐥 NFTs are getting a small pump

🐥 apix gives the lowdown on 5 early games not to miss

🐥 sparkc talks about the next big token after PRIME

🐥 Parallel Colony livestream in early December

🐥 Freaz7’s web3 gaming list. It’s good

🐥 LooksRare launches a game you can play now

🐥 Frame, a new L2 that allows creators to migrate easily

🐥 PFPs = skins for Twitter?

🐥 Pluid Interviews the biggest Blur farmer

🐥 InfiniGods gaming airdrop?

🐥 Sudoswap launches gradual dutch auctions

🐥 ACK gets major success with Warothy collection

🐥 Proposal to build and deploy Apechain on OP stack

🐥 @NFT, a known grifter, returns on Instagram. A sign of the bull market?

That's it for today folks. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe with just one-click:

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only. None of this is financial or investment advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets. Minting and buying NFTs is risky. Please do your own research.