Chart of The Day: Optimism Causes Spike in L2 Settlement

With Optimism’s $OP token launch, the L2’s activity has spiked to new highs. This pushed the total ETH Gas spent on L2 settlement to the highest it has ever been.
On June 1st, Optimism took up the largest share of gas spending, representing 68% of total L2 gas spending. Daily transactions hit 487K, a significant increase from its prior daily rates of 50-90K transactions per day.
It is likely that the bump upward is temporary and is expected to slow down as users finish claiming their $OP tokens on Optimism. However, the launch of Velodrome might continue to garner traction as capital bridges toward Optimism to yield farm.
You can check your $OP airdrop eligibility and claim it here.
For more on Optimism, Delphi Members can see our Delphi Pro Report here.

Illuvium Land Sale, X2Y2 Climbs & A Dive Into Pixel Vault

[Excerpt from a Delphi Insights Report]

A narrative that received some traction last year was that ‘blue-chip’ NFTs could be a hedge for ETH prices and that they would hold their value in USD terms. Looking at the data over the past 8 months, it was a reasonable idea between Oct ’21 – Jan ’22. as BAYC floor prices (in ETH) rose even as ETH fell. However, we can see that this is no longer the case, and both BAYC floor prices and ETH prices have been trending in only one direction in May — downwards.

Weekly Highlight — A Dive Into Pixel Vault

Pixel Vault celebrated its 1-year anniversary in May, having launched at around the same time as Bored Ape Yacht Club. It’s a milestone that not many NFT projects can tout since most are barely several months old. Pixel Vault has been building in the shadows relative to its more prominent counterpart Yuga Labs, but its ambitions in the space are just as large.
Introduction: At its core, Pixel Vault’s ambition is to build a media empire through storytelling, similar to Disney or Marvel, but in a decentralized manner where its fans are owners of the IP and can co-create the universe alongside the company. This is one of the promises of web3 technologies such as NFTs.
Pixel Vault is founded by GFunk, an ex-lawyer turned NFT builder. Today, the Pixel Vault team is 50 people strong, relentlessly building, and “dedicated to telling great stories.” Some of the big wins for Pixel Vault include:
- raising $100M in funding in Feb 2022 from Velvet Sea Ventures & 01 Advisors
- securing a partnership with Adidas (which features in PUNKS Comic Issue #2)
- joint venture with Ultimate Fighting Championship for Pixel Vault Sports

Events Ahead to Watch For

Release of Punks Comic #3 in June. This is the PUNKS x MetaHero crossover edition and the last standard issue for sale.
Release of Sidekicks, “arguably the most complex PFP collection to date.” The date is still to be announced.
Pixel Vault Gaming (16 team members and growing) to launch a gaming platform and accompanying portfolio of games based on the PUNKS & MetaHero universes over the next year.
Pixel Vault Sports is the latest spinoff division that focuses on telling athlete-inspired stories. This is led by a former Sports Marketing Lead at TikTok who has already announced 2 major partnerships with the Ultimate Fighting Championship & Major League Baseball.
Read the latest team update from GFunk here.

Some thoughts

PV has secured several solid brand partnerships, proving its team’s abilities to bridge web3 and the real world. These business partnerships will take time to develop into something meaningful, but the rewards can be huge down the line if they pan out.
The team is well-capitalized with its recent raise and will be able to build through the bear market.
One criticism of PV has been that the supply of its NFTs is very high (some collections are 90K+ in size), diluting value for its holders. This is a valid concern since the current audience is still relatively small, and the games have not been launched yet.
PV has been quietly building under the radar: this is reflected in the muted price performance of its NFTs over the past year. It could be a good opportunity to accumulate PV assets if you believe they will succeed in the coming years and be able grow their community & brand.
Among the NFTs, I like the Founder’s DAO NFT for its broad-based exposure to the PV ecosystem. The DAO will continue to accrue value as the PV ecosystem grows through token allocations, airdrops & direct access to the core team.

For more, Delphi members can see the full NFT Insights here.

Funding Web3 Bit By Bit

[Excerpt from a Delphi Podcast]

The key to BitDAO’s success is their large treasury, primarily consisting of ETH. If they lack the funds to invest in new organizations or attract partnerships, BitDAO will fail to create the network’s feedback loop. Luckily for BitDAO, they wield a treasury of more than $1.5 billion in liquid assets accumulated from a series of massive raises. This treasury is still a sizeable $870 million, excluding protocol-owned BIT. The project has a well-diversified treasury of BIT, ETH, FTT, stablecoins (USDT and USDC), and even a small xSUSHI allocation.

The treasury has enough funds to invest in projects across the ecosystem. However, this investment network will require years to develop before it can begin driving value back to BitDAO. As we previously mentioned, as far as we can tell, none of the investments have yet returned a profit to BitDAO. In the meantime, the sizable, liquid treasury can provide more than enough runway to seed future projects. Further, thanks to the ByBit Pledge, BitDAO already has a strong passive revenue stream. ByBit has pledged to contribute 2.5 bps of futures trading volume to BitDAO, which is roughly 35% of ByBits futures revenue. The Pledge is paid monthly in ETH (50%), USDC (25%), and USDT(25%). The Pledge itself represents a continuous investment by ByBit into BitDAO, for which BitDAO allocated 60% of the BIT token supply to ByBit.
Since the Pledge began on July 15th 2021, ByBit has contributed around $760 million to the BitDAO treasury, averaging $2.4 million per day. If we annualize these earnings, BitDAO stands to make $876 million from ByBits continuous investment alone, giving BIT a P/E of 9. However, funds from ByBit are reliant on trading volumes, which would probably decrease in a sustained bear market.
For more, Delphi members can see the full Delphi Pro Report here.

Notable Tweets

Sypool’s Synthetics

We like synthetics protocols when they are #PoweredByPyth 🔮

Let’s take a deep dive into Sypool 🤿

Learn more in the 🧵 👇

— Pyth (we’re hiring!,🔮) (@PythNetwork) June 2, 2022

Binance Supports BEP2 RUNE Mainnet Swap

THORChain is going mainnet – with full support of
@Binance
– the most liquid venue for BEP2 RUNE.

Mainnet switch will happen soon.

Onwards $RUNE

— THORChain (@THORChain) June 2, 2022

Dive into Aura

With the Aura protocol launch right around the corner, we want to give the
@BalancerLabs
,
@ConvexFinance
, and
@10b57e6da0
communities a chance to review allocations and understand vlAURA better.

Here is what you need to know 🧵

— Aura (@AuraFinance) June 2, 2022