Recent Research
📊 Solo, Liquid, or Centralized: A Guide to Staking ETH – 6/6
- In this report, we delve into the diverse options available for staking ETH, the latest developments in ETH staking, and strategies that could amplify the compounding effects of your earnings.
- There’s currently a 45-day waiting period for new validators to enter the network, a factor that represents a significant opportunity cost for solo stakers.
- When comparing purely on yields, solo staking options are the clear winners.
- Liquid staking protocols show strong growth, with them holding the majority share of ETH staking inflows over the past few months.
- CEXs have seen a significant decrease in their market share, falling from 52.8% at the start of 2022 to just 30.6% in May 2023.
- In contrast, liquid staking and staking pools have been progressively growing their market shares, currently at 51.5% and 17.8%, respectively.
📊 May Gaming Roundup – 6/5
- Gaming VC deals are up 240% MoM, but funding is still down 29% from March.
- Ronin’s RON token continues to be the only token to end the month in the green.
- Illuvium raised an additional $10M from Framework Ventures at a reported $289M valuation.
- On May 17th, Sky Mavis announced that Axie Infinity: Origins would launch on the Apple App Store in select countries.
- The recent approval of ERC-6551 token standards will change how NFTs can be utilized in on-chain gaming. ERC-6551 defines a system that can give ERC-721 a smart contract account.
📊 Exploring Web3’s Implications for Multi-Billion Dollar In-Game Item Economies – 6/2
- As mobile gaming grew its share of the global games industry, representing roughly half of total revenue, the free-to-play business was booming.
- Today’s players have embraced certain IAPs, such as in-game cosmetics, to such an extent that they generate more revenue per month than some of the highest-rated games make in a year.
- 81% of US gamers want to get real-world money for their cosmetic items, and 75% of those interested in real money trade stated that they would spend more on skins if they had real-world monetary value.
- Broadly speaking, there are two main monetization models currently implemented by the most popular gaming titles that include some form of in-game purchasable items – the open and closed models.
- Developers may be able to increase their bottom line by introducing NFTs and should be encouraged to open up and incentivize healthy amounts of external competition.
Relevant Reminder
📌 Solana the Monolith – 5/31
- This report focuses on the new and upcoming optimizations for Solana, including isolated fee markets, Firedancer, MEV, state compression, DePIN, DeFi, and SVM rollups.
- It will also cover Solana’s validator decentralization, economics, and some centralization concerns that arise.
- As it stands today, the majority of SOL fees are from voting, usually making up anywhere from 65-85% of validators’ income.
- Until the Solana network starts to generate meaningful fee revenue outside of votes, the minimum stake required to be a profitable validator will be quite high.
- Now, if you’re asking the question “Should Solana just become a rollup on Ethereum?” the answer is a resounding no.