Orca Users Swell, The Web3 Nintendo, & Cronje's Crypto Future

Chart of The Day: Orca DAUs Soar

• Orca, Raydium, and Serum are native Solana DEXes, with Orca being the youngest protocol out of the three. Though all 3 are DEXes, they do have their intricate differences.
• Serum is an order-book DEX, while Orca and Raydium are swap-based DEXes, similar to Uniswap. Orca stands out as it is the first to bring concentrated liquidity to Solana via Orca Whirlpool that is recently released for public use.
• Orca Daily Active Users (DAU) have seen a rapid climb to 108k, whereas older counterparts Raydium and Serum have stayed around 20k DAUs.
• Where did Orca’s growth stem from? Its growth was likely propelled by StepN’s user growth to >300k DAUs. StepN’s in-app swaps for GMT and GST route through Orca’s AMM. We’ll likely see Orca’s DAU continue to soar as StepN grows its user base.
• As more users pile in, Orca’s transactions have also grown to match figures seen on Raydium. (Serum is not included in this comparison, as it’s an order-book DEX, it will inherently result in more transaction throughput.)
• For more on Orca Whirlpool farms, Delphi members can see our latest Yield Insights here.

Otherside Land Sale, Treasure DAO Update & OpenSea Buys Gem

[Excerpt from Apr. 27th NFT Insights]

• A major shakeup this week is OpenSea’s acquisition of Gem, with the intention to bring Gem’s key features to OpenSea in the future. OS has stated that Gem will continue to operate independently as a stand-alone product & brand after the acquisition. But this begs the question — will Gem face pressure to reduce support for other competitor marketplaces as time goes on? It is a shrewd move since Gem is the market leader in the aggregator space and has been consistently beating out Genie in transaction volumes and new users. Genie is not going down without a fight and has dropped hints of a token soon, possibly as a means to incentivize usage.

Weekly Highlight — Treasure DAO & $MAGIC Update

• Early this week I had the pleasure to catch up with Gaarp (co-founder at Treasure DAO) and chat about all things related to $MAGIC. Coming off the call, I couldn’t be more excited about the long-term potential of the project. To recap, Treasure DAO’s vision is to be a decentralized game studio, like a Nintendo for the metaverse. It is arguably one of the most successful fair launches in NFT history after CryptoPunks, built entirely by the community from the ground up.
• In the past weeks, Treasure has hit a bit of a snag with a falling token price — not purely isolated to $MAGIC but in line with a pullback in the GameFi sector as a whole. There have also been some delays in shipping planned releases, with timelines set back by a marketplace exploit in Feb. However, the team has not been sitting on their laurels after their initial success earlier in the year. They have been building harder than ever. They have taken some time to go back to basics, refining their operational processes to be able to build an organization that has the ability to scale rapidly. They’ve also been hiring, with over 20+ new team members onboarded in recent weeks. This expansion is necessary, since every core product that Treasure DAO is building, be it Bridgeworld or the decentralized Trove marketplace, could be considered an entire project on its own.

Bridgeworld Questing V2 Sneak Peak

• What I like about Treasure is its almost cult-like community and that it has accumulated a treasury that will allow it to operate for years, even in a bear market. Two mid-long term catalysts we can see for $MAGIC are:
  • A high-fidelity game built on Treasure infrastructure and using $MAGIC, which would bring in a new wave of gamers beyond the typical crypto-native gamers who are often financially motivated. They are in talks with potential partners to do this, with funding from the DAO treasury.
  • Transitioning out of Arbitrum to their own blockchain, with $MAGIC as the chain’s native token & reserve currency.
• Of course, its ambition comes paired with risks — competition for attention and users with new upcoming games, being tied at the hip to Arbitrum in the battle for Layer 2 solutions, and a lack of focus with many different product lines. However, if the team executes well on their plans, attention will come back to Treasure in the next GameFi bull cycle. By that time, people might suddenly realize that Treasure has already built out an entire NFT ecosystem and accompanying infrastructure, with marketplaces, AMMs, analytic tools, games, etc.

A few noteworthy things:

• Firstly, a significant amount of $MAGIC will be unlocked from the Atlas Mine in the coming days: approximately 1M $MAGIC a day & peaking at 2.4M on 9 May. This could add to sell pressure on the token until then. After that, the rate of unlocks slows down significantly. (Shoutout to @samuelbjorn for the chart)
• Secondly, while this is still speculation, Arbitrum may launch a token at some point (Optimism, another L2 on Ethereum, announced their token this week). By being active on Arbitrum and playing around the games in the Treasure ecosystem, it could be a chance to qualify for a retroactive airdrop should it occur.
• For more, Delphi members can see the latest NFT Insights here.

Andre Cronje: Out of the Crypto Badlands Into a Regulated Future

[Excerpt from a Delphi Podcast]

• In this episode we sit down with Andre Cronje, a renowned DeFi developer and the creator of Yearn. We talk about the reasons behind rallying for regulated crypto, leaving the crypto badlands, the Solidity launch on Fantom, and much more. 
• Resources: 
  • Andre’s Blog | Article 1 | Article 2 
  • Our Previous Interview With Andre
• Andre’s Work on Fantom: 
  • Fantom contributors (Github)
  • Fantom code walkthrough 
  • Opera consensus paper 
  • Opera transaction ordering 
• More
  • 📺 Watch Video Interviews
  • 💬 Follow Delphi Podcast on Twitter
  • ✅ Follow Delphi Digital on Twitter
  • 🧠 Access Delphi’s Research
• For more, you can see our latest Delphi Podcast releases here.

Notable Tweets

Ribbon V3

Today, we are super excited to announce Ribbon V3. Ribbon V3 is packed with new features which we think will continue cementing our lead as the #1 DOV protocol in the industry.

Here’s a preview of some of the most important features 👇

—Ribbon Finance (@ribbonfinance) April 28, 2022

EVMOS is Live!

Evmos is LIVE 🚀

—Evmos is LIVE ☄️ (@EvmosOrg) April 28, 2022

U.S. GDP Contracts by 1.4%

BREAKING: The U.S. economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter, as GDP fell at a 1.4% annualized rate https://trib.al/bMZWvAi

— Bloomberg (@business) April 28, 2022