Weekend Recommended Reading | 10 Articles to Review This Week's Hot Topics and In-Depth Research
Chain Catcher selects a number of articles every weekend based on factors such as readership and influence for readers' reference.整理：Richard Lee
This weekend kicked off with a big market in the crypto space. This article is a special feature by Bloomberg on Dan Morehead, the founder of Pantera Capital, introducing his personal background and the founding experience of Pantera Capital. In the interview, he predicts that rising inflation and how central banks respond will be a major theme in 2022, and the expectation of a more aggressive tightening of policies by the Federal Reserve will continue to drag down cryptocurrency prices.
2. “Why is Ethereum the Foundation of Digital Civilization? | Ethereum 2021 Year-End Summary”
This article is a year-end review of the development of Ethereum and its ecosystem in 2021, mainly covering Layer 2, the NFT creator economy boom, the EIP-1559 upgrade, and DAO toolization. It is also a "listing" style review, but unlike other reports, it finds that Ethereum's development is highly aligned with the overall hotspots of the crypto market and the evolution of underlying technologies. Therefore, the author likens Ethereum to the "cornerstone of digital cities."
This article features a dialogue between The Information and Sarah Tavel, a general partner at the well-known venture capital firm Benchmark. Benchmark is an early investor in well-known companies such as eBay and Uber, and has recently ventured into the crypto space.
The interview mainly revolves around Sarah Tavel's views on Web3, the a16z investment frenzy, and investing in DAOs. Unlike mainstream crypto VCs, Sarah Tavel emphasizes that the Web3 network will be the consumer-oriented part of the crypto space, and startups within it still need to possess the same skills as the winners of Web2.0.
4. “Irene Zhao's Account: The Success Behind Her Fame is the Web3 Creator Economy”
Earlier this week, a selfie by IreneDAO and an Indonesian guy sold for a high price, becoming the latest hotspot in the NFT market. This article is a self-narrative by internet celebrity Irene Zhao published on Twitter, which Chain Catcher has compiled. In her narrative, Irene Zhao attributes her success to the results of the Web3 creator economy.
This article analyzes the phenomenon of IreneDAO and the Indonesian guy's rise to fame, examining how "power" supports the value of NFTs and the underlying reasons for the popularity of selfie NFTs.
6. “Interpreting the Alternative Rise of LooksRare: How to Surpass OpenSea?”
LooksRare is another major hotspot in the NFT space this week. RbC Office analyzes the competition between "LooksRare vs OpenSea," detailing the characteristics of both platforms and providing specific data, pointing out that LooksRare's high transaction volume is not only due to the attractiveness of its token incentive model but is also likely the result of operations by a few arbitrage teams.
Regarding whether LooksRare can break through the existing NFT platform landscape, RbC Office has also proposed observation indicators such as arbitrage intervention, data transparency, and user experience improvement, which are worth reading.
In this article, Mint Ventures provides a comprehensive summary of the user base, underlying technical logic, business data performance and its reasons, team background, and more for the cloud storage project leader Arweave. It also analyzes the overall situation of the decentralized storage track and assesses Arweave's position and prospects in the competitive landscape based on its strengths and weaknesses.
The progress of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is a significant piece of information that is easy to overlook this week. In addition to the breakthroughs of the digital yuan pilot in consumption scenarios, the U.S. Federal Reserve also released the long-awaited CBDC report on Thursday. Chain Catcher introduces the development status of CBDCs in countries and regions such as China, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Sweden, the United States, the Bahamas, Nigeria, and Europe, highlighting their major progress in 2021.
9. “How Hot is the New AC Project? The Vampire War of Fantom Ignited Overnight”
This article provides a detailed interpretation of the Fantom Vampire War triggered by the new AC project ve(3,3), including a detailed introduction to veDAO, which saw its TVL exceed $2 billion within one day of launch, as well as the strategies of competitors like Grapes Finance and Radial Finance. Additionally, you may refer to the article “When Dani and Andre Come Together, They are Assembling the DeFi Lego Death Star.”
10. “Polygon Refutes Offchain Labs: ZK Rollup is the Future of Ethereum Scaling”
Last month, Offchain Labs published an article titled “Why Optimistic Rollup Represents the Future of Ethereum Scaling Better than ZK Rollup?” comparing the two scaling technologies, ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollup. On January 19, Brendan Farmer, a zero-knowledge proof engineer at Polygon, responded to the OR community's article, stating that ZK Rollup is indeed the future of Ethereum scaling.
