Weekly Recap Ending March 17

Notable Messari Intel Updates

1. Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation announced that the transition from proof of work to proof of stake occurred on the Kiln testnet. More information can be found here.
2. The Mina Foundation announced that the Mina Ecosystem secured $92 million in strategic and private sales of MINA, led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital.
3. The second batch of parachains has been deployed on the Polkadot network. The newly onboarded parachains include Composable Finance, Efinity, Nodle, Centrifuge, Interlay, and HydraDX.
4. Synthetix Layer 1 and Layer 2 debt pools are scheduled to merge the week of Mar. 14 - 20, 2022. SNX inflationary rewards will be provided proportional to stakers on Optimism and Mainnet Ethereum once the pools have merged.
5. ApeCoin (APE) is now on coinbase.com and the Coinbase Android and iOS apps.

Notable Messari Governor Updates

1. The Gnosis DAO submitted a proposal that aims to enable GNO tokens locked in smart contracts or liquidity pools to vote. Voting is currently active.
2. The Balancer DAO has submitted a proposal drafted by the Partnership subDAO and aims to introduce a multi-functional platform, called Hexagon Finance. Hexagon will serve as a joint project between BalancerDAO, Ava Labs, and Terra Labs focused on bringing Balancer products and infrastructure (via a smart contract fork) to the Avalanche crypto community. Preliminary discussions are ongoing.
3. The Uniswap DAO has submitted a proposal that aims to deploy Uniswap V3 onto Celo, an EVM compatible blockchain. Voting is currently active.
4. The Protocol DAO succeeded in passing a proposal that aims to replace the existing Snapshot election process used by Synthetix DAOs with the first component of its V3 Governance Module - the Election Module.
5. The QuickSwap DAO submitted a proposal that aims to determine if the QUICK Token Split should be by 1:100 or 1:1000 tokens to determine the maximum supply of QUICK.

Sector Returns

For the fourth week in a row, the sectors covered have seen a 180° reversal. This trend has further solidified the fact that the markets are experiencing a consolidation phase. This week, the DeFi sector came out on top as the best performer (8.58%). It is a much-needed relief given that the sector has endured significant losses since the start of the year, with some of the DeFi 2.0 assets having seen +90% declines since ATH. The second spot was taken by the gaming sector, bringing in 7.85% for the week.

From a technical analysis perspective (seen below), the total cryptocurrency market cap has been consolidating within a pennant pattern which means that breaking this trend could lead to significant moves in the direction it breaks from it.

Top Assets

Last week, Terra (LUNA)’s momentum was questioned after its consecutive three week double-digit return spree amidst adverse market conditions. It’s worth noting that these same market conditions discourage investors from borrowing the stablecoin (UST) it relies on. This week, it was the worst performer amongst top assets by market capitalization and the only asset to finish in the red, declining 12.8%. Polkadot had the highest return with 10.8%.

DeFi Assets

The DeFi sector had the widest range of returns recorded since bringing back Weekly Recaps, spanning 77% across. Leading the sector this week was THORChain (RUNE) with a substantial 52.4% return. The catalyst behind RUNE’s rally can be attributed to the cross-chain liquidity protocol’s recent feature introductions which include the launch of synthetics, coupled with the current positive sentiment within investors towards Cosmos-based projects. Another notable performer was Aave, which saw its AAVE token price grow by 32.4% this week, securing the second spot. After Anchor Protocol’s (ANC) recent rise to ATH earlier this month, the decentralized money market built on Terra has lost more than 55% of its value, and this week, it has secured the last spot in the sector, recording a 24.6% loss. DeFi TVL is sitting at $156.21 billion, down less than $2 billion from the previous week.

Smart Contract Platforms

The smart contract platform sector had a dispersed set of returns for the week, with assets hardly trading in the more commonly seen synchronous pattern. Polkadot (DOT) led the sector this week, closely followed by Avalanche (AVAX) and Ethereum (ETH) which brought in returns of 10.8%, 9.0%, and 8.7%, respectively. Aside from Terra’s LUNA asset, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) was the only other asset within the list that brought in a negative return (-0.3%).

Currencies

The currencies sector had a similarly dispersed set of returns for the week, with assets sharing almost no synchrony in their trading. Monero (XMR) was the best performer within the top currencies sector this week, recording a 9.8% gain. Next up were Litecoin (LTC) and Stellar (XLM) tied with returns of 8.1%. Following closely was Ripple (XRP), which yielded 8.0% for the week. Dash (DASH) was the laggard of the group with a 6.2% decline.

Web3

The Web3 sector had two clear outperformers this week starting with The Graph (GRT) and Basic Attention Token (BAT), each returning 28.6% and 27.1%, respectively. There are various ongoing developments around The Graph that are driving the asset’s rally. These include the recent migration of its subgraphs onto its own decentralized mainnet, the launch of a grant program to help streamline the migration, and the upcoming Graph Day 2022, an event featuring leading protocol and dApp developers along with a hackathon. Stacks (STX) was humbled by the rest of the group and returned a 9.2% loss.

Gaming

The Sandbox (SAND) was the clear winner of the sector and the only top gaming aset with a double-digit gain on the week. The virtual world project recorded a 15.8% return, enough to separate it from the rest of the sector by almost a 7% margin. It was followed by the native token of the Axie Infinity virtual world ecosystem AXS, which saw gains of 9.0% this week. Trailing the sector was Ultra (UOS) as it was the only top gaming asset to end the week with a loss, returning -2.7%.

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