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Circle announces native USDC support on 5 more blockchains, and unveils a tool to facilitate cross-chain transfers. USDC to $2!

CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam opines on the price benefits of regulation, NFT volume on Solana inches higher, and our Research team takes a look at Sudoswap.

This is the Delphi Daily. Let’s dive in.

🚨 In Case You Missed It

Circle announces native USDC support on Arbitrum, Cosmos, NEAR, Optimism, and Polkadot. Circle also unveiled a tool to facilitate cross-chain transfers.
CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam says, “Bitcoin might double in price if there’s a CFTC-regulated market.”
Record label Warner Music Group has partnered with OpenSea to offer early access to the new NFT drops product to select artists.
Meta announces that US-based users can connect their wallets to Facebook and Instagram and share NFTs.
SWIFT, the interbank messaging system, is working with Chainlink on a cross-chain interoperability protocol that will allow member banks to send messages instructing on-chain token transfers.

📊 Solana NFT Volume Market Share Increases As Mints Surge

Since Aug 14th, Solana’s market share of total NFT trading volume has increased from 7% to 27%, with a peak market share of 36% in the week of Sept 4th. During the same period, Ethereum’s market share fell from 85% to 58%.
Out of the top five blockchains by NFT trading volume, only Solana and Flow had an increase in 30-day NFT trading volume. Flow had a 9% increase, while Solana has seen a 117% increase.
NFT minting transactions on Solana have also spiked to reach an all-time high of 389k transactions during the week of Sept 11th, representing a 350% change from two weeks prior. This was likely driven by the release of several NFT collections on Solana.
The top five NFT collections on Solana by 30-day trading volume include y00ts: mint t00b, Abracadabra, DeGods, UkiyoNFT, and Critters Cult. Out of these, all but DeGods were minted in the last three weeks.
The number of Solana wallet addresses associated with first-time and returning buyers is also up. First-time buyers are up 80% while returning buyers are up 78% in the last 30 days.
For more on NFT trading volume, Delphi members can read our latest NFT Insights report here.

⚡ Sudoswap: Where DeFi Innovation Meets NFT Markets

OpenSea has averaged 76% dominance of NFT volumes over the past 90 days, peaking at 89%.
Its dominance has been contested, albeit momentarily, by marketplaces that prioritized user acquisition, incentivized trading, and returning service fees.
LooksRare has failed to gain meaningful traction with this methodology. LooksRare’s market share has diminished from 19% to 3% since the beginning of the year.
On the contrary, X2Y2’s market share has risen 19% recently despite having near-identical token economics to LooksRare.
Contributing factors to this situation include direct NFT project launches, buyer optionality in paying royalties, and the lowest trading fees alongside Sudoswap.
The CryptoPunks marketplace is a standalone marketplace for Punks, which has fended off competition for its Punks by charging only gas fees through its marketplace.
In early July, Sudoswap comprised a mere 0.1% of total marketplace volume, peaking at 18% in mid-August as a result of the Sudo-NFT frenzy.
Sudoswap has been able to rival LooksRare and the CryptoPunks marketplaces – without token incentives to boost rewards.

A breakdown of Sudoswap users shows that 60% made just a single trade. These users are likely comprised of curious traders, airdrop speculators, and regular NFT enthusiasts looking for optimal prices.
40% of users made two or more trades, implying they are returning users. Only 1% of users traded 20-100 times, with 0.1% making more than 100 trades.
This is likely a result of trades made in large batches and bots that arbitrage price differences between many different exchanges.
With integrations with NFT aggregators now live, the percentage of returning users will likely increase as trades automatically route to the most efficient price, which happens to be on Sudoswap most of the time.
For more on Sudoswap, Delphi members can read our Delphi Pro report here.

🐣 Notable Tweets

Primer on Play-to-Own

0/ Play-to-Earn? Free-to-Own? Play-to-Own. Bear markets are for long-form writing, excited to present our Web3 Gaming Thesis that has been in the works for some time.

We will offer a short primer on Play-to-Own & our Web3 Gaming thesis in this thread 🧵 :

— DeFiance Capital (@DeFianceCapital) Sept 25, 2022

Most Diversified DAO Treasuries

Which DAOs have the most diversified treasuries? 👀

We ranked the top 15 most diversified DAO treasuries, and @NFTX_, @Rook and @BitDAO_Official lead the pack!

— Autonolas (@autonolas) Sept 28, 2022